Where Has My World Gone?

Reality keeps slipping further and further away

Until recently years, the world I thought I lived in, with all its warts, just showed up everyday. I could act most of the time in ways that were meaningful to me, whether on my own or in the company of others, even if i disagreed with them. More or less, we shared a common view of what was going on in the world, but not necessarily what to do about it. But no longer.

Trump and his minions are living in world other than mine. Everyday it becomes more and more Orwellian where what I know to be true is being challenged by an alternate reality. But it is not only Trump. Technology has become so pervasive and powerful that it, too, is shaping the people’s beliefs about what it out there and what it means.It should be no surprise that the titans of Silicon Valley have aligned themselves with Trump. Both have the same goal: to reshape reality in a way that keeps them in power and benefits them, regardless of the damage to humanity.

The will to power is an old idea, but cannot explain the reality-shifting aspect of what is happening. But I believe that there is an explanation based on the brain lateralization model of Iain McGilchrist. For those who have followed me for a while and know my work, you will already be familiar with main thesis that the two hemispheres attend to and present different worlds to us and that our actions depend on which side dominates. The right side captures the outside world with subsequent actions reflecting both the actor’s persona and, importantly, whatever the actors apprehends about that world that needs to be attended to. Human beings and other animate life is seen as alive and unique. One could say that this mode of action is empathetic, that is, it accounts for the Other’s needs.

The left side contains a world constructed from beliefs abstracted from past experience and bases actions on it and what it perceives its needs to be. That world, perforce, differs from what is really real and, consequently, the actions may or may not fit what is really out there. Humans and the rest of the world, both animate and inanimate, are viewed merely as (dead) objects available to serve the actor’s needs and intentions. Heidegger called such objects, “standing reserve.” Since the needs of the Other are absent from the cognitive processes behind the actions, they may, and usually do, impart some harm. In the extreme, they become cruel, as is much of what is happening today.

McGilchrist argues further that the hemispheric balance has seesawed over the succession of historical eras, ending with a strongly dominant left hemisphere in the current modern era. In the extreme, the influence of the right hemisphere becomes very weak. This is consistent with the cruelty and lack of empathy we see in the actions of Trump and his sycophants. What others would call normality and what I define as flourishing requires a more balanced structure with a dominant right hemisphere. The presumption that reasonable argument is the way to change others minds does not hold here. Although parties to a conversation may be speaking the same language, the words and sentences have different meanings depending on the way the brain is structured. Left-brainers live in a different world from those who are connected via the right hemisphere. What might seem reasonable to what I call normal people is rejected outright by those carrying a different world in their left brain. They don’t and can’t get it. Worse what they consider right and wrong is different from the rest of us.

We, I refer here to once again to what I call normal, well-balanced individuals, can only oppose by taking whatever remedies are available to us. The use of the courts and protest events are important, but are not going to change the minds of those in power. It is going to be a constant struggle.

I know that the divided-brain-model is unfamiliar to many of you. The archive of my old blog has been transported to this Substack newsletter and can ve accessed by searching the posts. I’ll end with a poem i wrote a while ago that tries to encapsulate McGilchrist’s model in a few lines of verse.

My Thinking Cap

What you see is not what you get.
This age-old saw is plainly wrong.
Seeing is what the senses let
Your brain convert to words or song.

What I see may not match your view,
Though we’re in the very same world.
I see what my brain thinks is true;
My unique history unfurled.

If the right side lets the left reign,
I see a world made up of bits
Already stored in the left brain.
It’s only chance if any fits.

When the right controls the last word,
I can see what really is true.
The world is clear and not blurred.
Even more, its meaning shines through.

But when the left has the last word,
Truth becomes hidden from my view.
The real world has been interred
In the left’s pre-recorded brew.

I need meaning to do things right.
Something that the right can bring me.
It captures reality’s light.
Metaphor is its magic key.

Keeping the shifty left at bay
Is difficult, arduous work.
I have to pay heed everyday
Not to drown in its opaque murk.

The right’s caring makes us whole
And provides a path to nourish
The human body and the soul
And opens the way to flourish.