River it sounds like you're actually in furious agreement with the people you are arguing with?
You seem to recognise this later with: "So if you think that both the left and right hemisphere need to be in play and have their say: congratulations, you’re on team Right Hemisphere."
That's exactly how I read the post from James Taylor Foreman that you're calling out. James says:
"But to say that the exact opposite is true is to make the same mistake in reverse. You can’t declare war on or abandon the Machine as a category."
James' article is saying that we should not vilify and attack left hemisphere, but instead include it.
Or to put it in your analogy terms, James's article is saying we should not shoot the horse, we should ride it, and that a book titled "Against the Horse" would be promoting a bad idea.
It seems to me that he has read and understood McGilchrist in the same way as you did.
Hard disagree, he’s doing the 50/50 “can’t they just get along??” move. the thing he’s describing as declaring war on the left hemisphere is actually declaring war on left hemisphere capture — which is what this move is built to prevent. This move wants to maintain left hemisphere capture, but make allowances for certain right hemisphere petting zoos where possible.
I also just have a strong “ew, ugh” response to his whole flavor of “yes yes, the world is messed up, but there’s no need to make a fuss about it, just delete instagram” deflation thing he’s doing. I was hoping for some of the valid and necessary critiques of Kingsnorth’s approach, but instead I just got “now now, let’s calm down - things are bad, but nothing that can’t be solved by a hot cup of tea and calling your mom.”
cool james. that’ll solve the air pollution water pollution soil depletion deforestation loneliness epidemic poisoned food mass extinction etc etc — glad to know we can all just take a deep breath and delete instagram.
We may just need to disagree as I just read it again and I can't see anywhere where he says 50/50, and several places where he says the opposite e.g. [What Paul is raging against, more specifically, is our culture’s growing left-brain-as-master outlook of the last couple of hundred years which says, “It would be best if everything was treated like a machine.” That’s what both he and I hate].
The closest that I could see to being understood as 50/50 might be the opponent processing paragraph? But even that is in line with how the hemispheric interaction is often described by McGilchrist.
At another point James says:
"What is less popular to notice, but is also true, is the unbelievable good the Machine affords us. I’m thinking sewage pipes and dollar bills, for one. "
This seems to be the core of his argument. That he doesn't agree with 'Against the Machine' because he isn't against left hemisphere mode itself (the horse) because he can see all the value that it brings. He is opposed to the horse riding the man, as you and I are, and he wants to see the world change to where the man is riding the horse, as we do.
I see James himself as responding to a naive interpretation of McGilchrists work that I commonly hear, which is basically "the left hemisphere is the bad hemisphere and it should be minimised".
The question I have after reading James' piece is what more can we do to keep all the unbelievable good the horse brings while putting the rider back on top? (aside from calling our Mums and deleting insta)
As a specific example, how do we transition to a RH mode in leadership over LH mode, while keeping ~100% of the miraculous gains in reducing child mortality that we have achieved?
yeah again there’s a conflation between “left hemisphere” and “left hemisphere capture” here. The benefits are largely the result of the left hemisphere, which we’re in no danger of losing, and “The Machine” isn’t the LH, it’s LH capture.
Fusing LH and LH capture is intrinsic to the 50/50 move, acting like we’re going to lose the LH by giving up LHC. Which is also where problem #2 comes from, this assumption that by opening into RH, something about the LH will be lost. It isn’t. Only LHC is lost - so LHC creates this internal logic that conflates itself with the LH, as a way to defend itself.
Like the urgency of the infant mortality example — the vast majority of those drops over the past couple centuries come down to things like handwashing and basic sanitation, with antibiotics providing another solid bump. (Also the mortality drop tends to be exaggerated by the fact that it starts right after some of the steeper instances of the urban mortality penalty as the world rushed into cities in the decades before the drop started; iow- infant (and overall) mortality got worse for awhile, due to the conditions (and sanitation) in cities, which was largely an outcome of The Machine — after that, sanitation had to get figured out (because it had gotten so bad), which then led to a decrease in mortality, and that decrease looks much more dramatic than it otherwise would have precisely because The Machine had made things so much worse in the decades leading up to the drop.)
All of which is to point at this being actually a solid example of a core point: these feelings of “wow, the Machine has done so much for us” is real. AND much of what it has done has been to fuck up things so badly that it’s forced to find a solution in order to keep limping along. Which then improves and discovers cool things that bring us back down to baseline or beyond it. Which is great and cool. But also plays hard into McGilchrist’s observation that the LH “In simple terms, it takes the kudos when things go well, and denies responsibility when they do not.”
The Machine that causes these massive problems brought on by disconnection and fragmentation — that’s LHC and its downstream consequences. LH itself, without the capture/control, is much more neutral, can be recruited in different directions when well-aligned. And we’re not in real danger of losing it’s benefits when it’s well-aligned. The only thing we’re in danger of losing is that left hemisphere control — and its fear of that is what creates both of the dynamics i wrote about in the article. And the conflation is at the core of the other article and it’s deflating “let’s all just slow down and not do anything rash” tone.
Shorter version of a lot of that: there's been a lot of value that's come out of letting left hemisphere capture stress-test our society so that we had to make a lot of inventions and discoveries to fix the mess. We're not in any particular danger of losing those advances. But it has become clear that A) the ROI on this whole ordeal has been iffy, and B) we're pretty clearly at a point of diminishing returns now on letting this thing keep running amok -- and it knows it and is trying to save itself by brushing off responsibility for its mistakes and conflating itself with the kudos for the advances that have come out of its mess-making
Uff I'm getting very heady in the replies here and I don't love it; this has been helpful to sharpen a couple things for me, thanks for that. I'm gonna go look at a tree for awhile
I like reading this! thanks for writing it.
Gaaa! I was so eager to hear what you had to say about this topic that I subscribed to your stack! A very rightish approach there… well played…
River it sounds like you're actually in furious agreement with the people you are arguing with?
You seem to recognise this later with: "So if you think that both the left and right hemisphere need to be in play and have their say: congratulations, you’re on team Right Hemisphere."
That's exactly how I read the post from James Taylor Foreman that you're calling out. James says:
"But to say that the exact opposite is true is to make the same mistake in reverse. You can’t declare war on or abandon the Machine as a category."
James' article is saying that we should not vilify and attack left hemisphere, but instead include it.
Or to put it in your analogy terms, James's article is saying we should not shoot the horse, we should ride it, and that a book titled "Against the Horse" would be promoting a bad idea.
It seems to me that he has read and understood McGilchrist in the same way as you did.
Hard disagree, he’s doing the 50/50 “can’t they just get along??” move. the thing he’s describing as declaring war on the left hemisphere is actually declaring war on left hemisphere capture — which is what this move is built to prevent. This move wants to maintain left hemisphere capture, but make allowances for certain right hemisphere petting zoos where possible.
I also just have a strong “ew, ugh” response to his whole flavor of “yes yes, the world is messed up, but there’s no need to make a fuss about it, just delete instagram” deflation thing he’s doing. I was hoping for some of the valid and necessary critiques of Kingsnorth’s approach, but instead I just got “now now, let’s calm down - things are bad, but nothing that can’t be solved by a hot cup of tea and calling your mom.”
cool james. that’ll solve the air pollution water pollution soil depletion deforestation loneliness epidemic poisoned food mass extinction etc etc — glad to know we can all just take a deep breath and delete instagram.
Thanks for the reply
We may just need to disagree as I just read it again and I can't see anywhere where he says 50/50, and several places where he says the opposite e.g. [What Paul is raging against, more specifically, is our culture’s growing left-brain-as-master outlook of the last couple of hundred years which says, “It would be best if everything was treated like a machine.” That’s what both he and I hate].
The closest that I could see to being understood as 50/50 might be the opponent processing paragraph? But even that is in line with how the hemispheric interaction is often described by McGilchrist.
At another point James says:
"What is less popular to notice, but is also true, is the unbelievable good the Machine affords us. I’m thinking sewage pipes and dollar bills, for one. "
This seems to be the core of his argument. That he doesn't agree with 'Against the Machine' because he isn't against left hemisphere mode itself (the horse) because he can see all the value that it brings. He is opposed to the horse riding the man, as you and I are, and he wants to see the world change to where the man is riding the horse, as we do.
I see James himself as responding to a naive interpretation of McGilchrists work that I commonly hear, which is basically "the left hemisphere is the bad hemisphere and it should be minimised".
The question I have after reading James' piece is what more can we do to keep all the unbelievable good the horse brings while putting the rider back on top? (aside from calling our Mums and deleting insta)
As a specific example, how do we transition to a RH mode in leadership over LH mode, while keeping ~100% of the miraculous gains in reducing child mortality that we have achieved?
yeah again there’s a conflation between “left hemisphere” and “left hemisphere capture” here. The benefits are largely the result of the left hemisphere, which we’re in no danger of losing, and “The Machine” isn’t the LH, it’s LH capture.
Fusing LH and LH capture is intrinsic to the 50/50 move, acting like we’re going to lose the LH by giving up LHC. Which is also where problem #2 comes from, this assumption that by opening into RH, something about the LH will be lost. It isn’t. Only LHC is lost - so LHC creates this internal logic that conflates itself with the LH, as a way to defend itself.
Like the urgency of the infant mortality example — the vast majority of those drops over the past couple centuries come down to things like handwashing and basic sanitation, with antibiotics providing another solid bump. (Also the mortality drop tends to be exaggerated by the fact that it starts right after some of the steeper instances of the urban mortality penalty as the world rushed into cities in the decades before the drop started; iow- infant (and overall) mortality got worse for awhile, due to the conditions (and sanitation) in cities, which was largely an outcome of The Machine — after that, sanitation had to get figured out (because it had gotten so bad), which then led to a decrease in mortality, and that decrease looks much more dramatic than it otherwise would have precisely because The Machine had made things so much worse in the decades leading up to the drop.)
All of which is to point at this being actually a solid example of a core point: these feelings of “wow, the Machine has done so much for us” is real. AND much of what it has done has been to fuck up things so badly that it’s forced to find a solution in order to keep limping along. Which then improves and discovers cool things that bring us back down to baseline or beyond it. Which is great and cool. But also plays hard into McGilchrist’s observation that the LH “In simple terms, it takes the kudos when things go well, and denies responsibility when they do not.”
The Machine that causes these massive problems brought on by disconnection and fragmentation — that’s LHC and its downstream consequences. LH itself, without the capture/control, is much more neutral, can be recruited in different directions when well-aligned. And we’re not in real danger of losing it’s benefits when it’s well-aligned. The only thing we’re in danger of losing is that left hemisphere control — and its fear of that is what creates both of the dynamics i wrote about in the article. And the conflation is at the core of the other article and it’s deflating “let’s all just slow down and not do anything rash” tone.
Shorter version of a lot of that: there's been a lot of value that's come out of letting left hemisphere capture stress-test our society so that we had to make a lot of inventions and discoveries to fix the mess. We're not in any particular danger of losing those advances. But it has become clear that A) the ROI on this whole ordeal has been iffy, and B) we're pretty clearly at a point of diminishing returns now on letting this thing keep running amok -- and it knows it and is trying to save itself by brushing off responsibility for its mistakes and conflating itself with the kudos for the advances that have come out of its mess-making
Uff I'm getting very heady in the replies here and I don't love it; this has been helpful to sharpen a couple things for me, thanks for that. I'm gonna go look at a tree for awhile