From my vantage point, human civilization is at the beginning of the largest change in its history. Every aspect of our life will be affected, and many aspects soon will be radically different than they are today. The change will come faster and faster. Adapting to the disruption in our lifestyle will be challenging, and I predict mental illness will become epidemic.
We are facing a serious crises in mental health. Depression, anxiety, sleep disturbance, suicidal ideations, self-destructive behavior, negative ruminations, and irrational anger are rapidly on the rise. Throughout my long career as a psychologist it was my stated goal to help people resolve these problems and restore their sanity. What I observe now is a global trend toward collective insanity. I thought about this for a long time and have come to the conclusion that there has been a growing imbalance between the energy in the left hemisphere relative to the right hemisphere. The trend to become left hemisphere dominant began over 200 years ago. Over the past few years we have rapidly increased this imbalance. On the surface it sounds overly simplistic, but has profound implications, and I believe holds the key to the issues we face individually and collectively.
25 years ago I began studying the differences between the right and left hemispheres. As a practicing psychologist I applied this knowledge to conduct dual brain therapy. This rather innovative method could differentiate the immature side from the mature side. I learned that by strengthening the mature half of the brain, emotional and behavioral issues could be successfully managed in a short time frame. After reading the works of Ian McGilchrist, Jill Bolte Taylor, and Russell Targ I was able to understand the function of these two hemispheres in a much broader context.
Each person constructs their own reality of the world. The information that we receive depends upon the sources we select from. How we interpret the information depends on our filtered perceptions based upon our belief system. We cannot help but do this as we are driven to understand our world and make sense of it. Because no two people receive exactly the same information and will apply their own filters, everyone will have their own unique opinion. This leads to disagreement and misunderstanding.
All information first comes in through the right hemisphere. It crosses the corpus callosum to the left hemisphere. The left hemisphere will analyze and categorize this data and, under normal circumstances, sends it back to the right hemisphere where discernment occurs.
A central feature of the right hemisphere is its ability to process all information simultaneously. It takes in data from all of your five senses and your extrasensory perceptions. The job of the left hemisphere is to organize what appears to be the most salient parts of this data and make it useful. The data is immediately filtered by two mechanisms. One is very primitive and is concerned with safety and biological needs. The second is learned and consists of our cultural family and peer influences. We tend to see what we believe.
The job of the left hemisphere is to manipulate the environment. The left hemisphere uses a working hypotheses about reality and is interested in duality. Things are one way or the other. It’s uncomfortable with shades of gray. You could say the left hemisphere believes and acts as if the world were mechanistic, divided into discrete parts, and ripe for manipulation. Once the working hypotheses is sent back to the right hemisphere, the right hemisphere is given a chance to confirm or disconfirm all or parts of that hypothesis. This is discernment. Your gut will tell you the parts that are correct and the parts that are not. The left hemisphere does not have the capacity to offer “Truth”, only an opinion. The reason is because the left hemisphere is not designed to process all of the information the right hemisphere possesses. The right hemisphere has access to virtually unlimited data. The left hemisphere would be overwhelmed and useless if it were flooded with all the data at the same time. It must filter and be advised which data to use and which to ignore. All opinions will end up having contradictions and anomalies. Again, the left hemisphere will never be able to determine Truth. It’s always an approximation, which means opinion – a best guess. Mind you, these opinions and guesses can be quite useful and beneficial. However, they can also cause a great deal of trouble and disharmony if held as fact and not subject to revision based on new data.
Each hemisphere has a different take on everything. This contributes to the richness of experience. Herein lies the problem. For the last 200 years the Western world has been leaning toward left hemisphere dominance. We are now entering an era where this has become extreme. The result is a moving away from our humanity and toward a complete mechanistic view of the world. We all can feel this trend and unless we change it, our lives will become meaningless and controlled by those who do not have our best interest at heart. You can see it encroaching all around you.
A society that is left hemisphere dominant sees the world as black and white, either/or, fragmented, and sterile. The left hemisphere offers simple answers and takes things literally. It’s worldview is easy to articulate. Everything is explicit and can be explained. It values consistency. It is reductionistic and is driven to categorize, label, and judge. Personality wise, it is arrogant, self assured, and optimistic that if you just follow its lead, everything will work out perfectly. It believes everyone else is wrong if they don’t agree. This righteous indignation triggers internal anger, which sometimes is outwardly expressed. You won’t find much humility on this side. The left hemisphere harbors feelings both of mild paranoia and emptiness. It is a world devoid of context and meaning. It is also devoid of compassion and empathy.
You may wonder then why do we have it? Its value is grasping and amassing things. Trying to live in a world where everything is constantly changing and everything is connected to everything else would be impractical unless you could decontextualize, freeze things in time, and organize it in a useful way. We have to use tools to manipulate things around us. We have to make concrete plans. We must use space and time for our benefit. Sometimes we must get things done regardless of how we feel. The left hemisphere controls our right hand and our speech. We can use logic and reason. We make things explicit to ourselves and others. However, it is a re-presentation and intentionally takes things out of context. The left hemisphere is crucially unaware of what it is missing. It therefore thinks it can’t go wrong.
The right hemisphere is most interested in living things and relationships. It’s view is inclusive, both/and, and integrative. The right hemisphere understands the nuances in communication such as the intonation, facial expression, and body movements. It can understand a joke and make a joke. It puts things in context and ascribes meanings to things and events instead of just facts. It’s the “how” versus the “what”. It sees the gestalt – the big picture. It sees the world as non-linear and understands things in its context. It excels at synthesizing data. It has the capacity to sustain vigilant attention, and most importantly, the capacity to empathize. Since the speech centers are on the left side, the right has literally no voice, and as such, it has difficulty explaining itself. Metaphor and narrative are often required to convey the implicit meanings available to the right hemisphere. Contrary to popular opinion, the right hemisphere has far more intelligence than the left.
We must rebalance our brain to be able to guide ourselves and humanity the way we were originally designed. A healthy brain is one that is right hemisphere dominant while containing the organized data set of the left hemisphere. If we fail to do this, our future is bleak. I am optimistic that collectively we will prevail and not succumb to the all digital, mechanical, technocratic world that is rapidly encroaching upon us. To help us achieve this overarching goal, I am posting practices that will strengthen the right hemisphere.