The Grapple or to Invoke
Post #2 on Iain McGilchrist's The Master and His Emissary: the structure of the brain possesses two functions and two personas and once again, Hamlet sees first
In my second post on Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary, I want to start with a claim he makes about the brain:
“The brain is not just a tool for grappling with the world. It’s what brings the world about.” (19)
First the brain “grapples” or deals with the world as a physical reality. A terrain. Next, the brain “brings the world about” or constructs it, or calls it into being, or invokes it by paying attention. There are then two worlds, the one constructed and the one given. The world of the ranger and the world of the wizard (or maybe, artist). What is the relationship between these two worlds and these two functions? What does it mean that the brain can somehow do these two things? Where are we—physically and mentally—in relation with these two worlds?
We are unique insofar as we can gain perspective, for we have minds and consciousness. As he says, we humans can
…stand back from the world, from our selves and from the immediacy of experience. This enables us to plan, to think flexibly and inventively, and, in brief, to take control of the world around us rather than simply respond to it passively. This distance, this ability to rise above the world in which we live, has been made possible by the evolution of the frontal lobes. (21)
We can think and muse and imagine and ponder. We are not merely scanning robots with sophisticated servos and sensors running a sophisticated algorithm for unspecified but selfish ends. We have this in us, too. But that is only one of us. We are Hamlet’s, too. So often, as I make my way through this book, does my mind fasten upon Hamlet, or Prospero, or even Iago, or Edmund, or Macbeth. Shakespeare saw first and he saw deepest. It sometimes feels like, even these 400 plus years later, we are still unpacking and making sense out of his vast vision of things. The globe—the world—was present and parsed by his great heroes and villains. But perhaps Hamlet most of all. The two (or more) Hamlet’s that traffic the stage are nearly impossible to contain within the one character: the brooding and contemptuous man of the mind, or the calculating, plot-busting, man of action. Hamlet is haunted by more than just the ghost of his deceased father.
But these two, concurrent domains are both essential. To be in the world or to contemplate the world: to act or to see.
Clearly we have to inhabit the world of immediate bodily experience, the actual terrain in which we live, and where our engagement with the world takes place alongside our fellow human beings, and we need to inhabit it fully. Yet, at the same time we need to rise above the landscape in which we move, so that we can see what one might call the territory. To understand the landscape we need both to go out into the felt, lived world of experience as far as possible, along what one might think of as the horizontal axis, but also to rise above it, on the vertical axis. (21)
Like Hamlet, we occupy the in-between, or as some have noted, we occupy a space between the earth and the heavens: a bit above the animals and a little below the angels. Perhaps we are liminal creatures after all, as the Greeks seem to intuit. But in the above quotation, the physicality of perspective is striking. We must “rise above” in order to see clearly, or to take in the whole. We have to “go out” along both axes. After all, we try to “under stand” what is going on, so that to stand under approximates “getting it.” Our attention is heavily directional and physical and spatial. We always, then, have a view from somewhere.
But why two asymmetrical functions of the brain? Why this redundancy? Why waste valuable resources on our “most expensive” function, our brains? What is the advantage? Why the waste? It must be for some reason, and it appears that we have a need for focused and specific attention while at the same time needing open attention. As you can probably guess, the left hemisphere (LH) grapples while the right hemisphere (RH) calls into being.
In general terms, then, the left hemisphere yields narrow, focussed attention, mainly for the purpose of getting and feeding. The right hemisphere yields a broad, vigilant attention, the purpose of which appears to be awareness of signals from the surroundings, especially of other creatures, who are potential predators or potential mates, foes or friends; and it is involved in bonding in social animals. It might then be that the division of the human brain is also the result of the need to bring to bear two incompatible types of attention on the world at the same time, one narrow, focussed, and directed by our needs, and the other broad, open, and directed towards whatever else is going on in the world apart from ourselves. (27)
We need both sides so that we pay proper and full attention to the world and to others. Hamlet’s Denmark is rotten, and so affords him little chance to achieve a livable, viable perch upon which to live and be.
In my next post, we will spend some time on this curious phrase “to pay attention” and I will bring in another of my favorite thinkers to aid us in our understanding, Jonathan Pageau.
Until then.
The Grapple or to Invoke
An UNDIVIDED HEART, O Lord,
Is what we need each day,
For we are prone to compromise
And wander from Your way.
-D De Haan
McGilchrist is communicating that our grasping and taking left hemisphere has been too dominate in the last few hundred years and that we need the our right hemisphere to regain its historical place of prominence and I heartily agree. Our taking and grasping side has given rise to homo economicus -- man who is governed -- solely -- by mammon. But as Matthew quotes Jesus, A house divided against itself cannot stand; one cannot serve God and wealth. Our current situation has left us with the commodification of everything. Neo-conservatives and Neo-liberals both contribute. Each has engaged in a detachment from reality: the left with regards to biological realities resulting in the absurdity of the transgender/transhuman movement and the political right on the financial front, eg Bitcoin, with the use of increasing abstract financial tools. Both have shadowy players funding them. Both end up hurting the everyday woman and man the most. Our hubris always brings about our hell.
Thanks Daniel. He did seem to be able to straddle the great tensions and mine such fruit. Hamlet always hovers over and around and above so much.