McGilchrist’s book ‘The Master and his Emissary’ makes the case that the left hemisphere of the brain cortex has become dominant in ways that stop us attending to context, whole realities, metaphor etc, and in the process we have become mere users of the world regardless of environmental or social negative effects.
He would argue that what we need are both hemispheres working together, but the rhetorical effect over many hundred pages is that the left hemisphere is the bad guy, and the right hemisphere is the good guy. He acknowledges that between tool using and language production, the left hemisphere is vital, and our wealth today flows from left hemisphere strengths.
I want to suggest another way the left hemisphere is helpful. By working with simplified re-presentations, with models, rather than the complexity of the ever changing world, the left hemisphere has a greater certainty about its perceptions and about what actions will bring about what effects.
There are dangers to over-simplified models and lack of sensitivity to changing context. But over-sensitivity to uncertainty of understanding and the ever changing context leads to decision-paralysis. If we can’t know anything for certain, if we are always second guessing our decisions, then we end up doing less. I think I see this most clearly in leadership. Those who emerge as leaders are not always the most intelligent in the sense of most aware of uncertainties, complexities, and changing situations. Rather, they are people who can achieve sufficient psychological certainty (through left brain simplified models?) to clarify a best way forward and communicate that with clarity and persistence through the ups and downs. There is something about the simplifying effect of the left hemisphere, combined with the galvanising effect of greater certainty, that is vital for those who want to change things.
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