In this chapter, McGilchrist has written about the seamless transition from the Enlightenment to Romanticism. Given that we, in the 21st century, are experiencing a global crisis (COVID-19), which is challenging our existing ways of attending to the world, and where it is inconceivable that any lasting changes are going to be seamless, it is interesting to think about how this was achieved in the late 18th, early 19th century. McGilchrist writes that at that time the seamless transition came about as the weaknesses of the left hemisphere became exposed, when there was a dawning awareness that differences are as important as generalities, and that a thing and its opposite may both be true. There was a nostalgia for the past and the embodied nature of experience. This idea of learning from the past seems so relevant to our current situation, but although today, in 2020, there might be some evidence of renewed appreciation of the value of a slower, quieter, more reflective approach to life, there is less evidence of learning from the past, or of a longing for past values.
A striking sentence in this chapter relates to the reality that in the lived world of the right hemisphere, opposites are not ‘in opposition’:
This opposition persists despite the right hemisphere’s unification of opposites, for the same reason that a tolerant
society cannot necessarily secure the co-operation of the intolerant who would undermine it, and may ultimately find
itself in the paradoxical situation of having to be intolerant of them (p.378).
This makes me wonder whether the idea of ‘both/and’ thinking, as opposed to ‘either/or’ thinking, will ever be fully achievable. Ultimately, we can only hope for a better balance between the two.
Also in this chapter, McGilchrist writes of the affinity of the right hemisphere for melancholy and sadness, rather than the optimism and cheerfulness of the left hemisphere. If we accept that we live in a left hemisphere dominated world, this suggests that to counter this in our current times, we need more experience of melancholy and sadness. Again, the idea of balance seems important here. I can’t imagine many people choosing to live a sad and melancholy existence.
Finally, I have to admit to finding this chapter particularly heavy going. Is it that McGilchrist himself has found making the case for the right hemisphere more difficult, and that it is difficult to write from a right hemisphere perspective? Or is it that it is difficult to read from what is probably a left-hemisphere perspective if, as McGilchrist says, we live in a left-hemisphere dominated world? Either of these may be possible, but once again, I think that for me at least, it’s the level of detail in the chapter that has made it difficult to read. Interestingly in a recent video published on YouTube by The Middle Way Society, McGilchrist implies that the amount of detail included in his book, and gathered from 20 years’ research, was necessary to combat the criticism he knew would be levelled at him for writing about the divided brain, and making the case for a need to refocus attention on the right hemisphere.
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