Yesterday, I posted The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist. The introduction includes an anecdote:
There was once a wise spiritual master, who was the ruler of a small but prosperous domain, and who was known for his selfless devotion to his people. As his people flourished and grew in number, the bounds of this small domain spread; and with it the need to trust implicitly the emissaries he sent to ensure the safety of its ever more distant parts. It was not just that it was impossible for him personally to order all that needed to be dealt with: as he wisely saw, he needed to keep his distance from, and remain ignorant of, such concerns. And so he nurtured and trained carefully his emissaries, in order that they could be trusted. Eventually, however, his cleverest and most ambitious vizier, the one he most trusted to do his work, began to see himself as the master, and used his position to advance his own wealth and influence. He saw his master’s temperance and forbearance as weakness, not wisdom, and on his missions on the master’s behalf, adopted his mantle as his own – the emissary became contemptuous of his master. And so it came about that the master was usurped, the people were duped, the domain became a tyranny; and eventually it collapsed in ruins.
The Master and His Emissary was finished in 2009 and published in paperback in 2010, a decade and a half ago. Validation of Iain’s thesis is all around us today. The final chapter and conclusion is titled, THE MASTER BETRAYED. Again resorting to ChatGPT, it is summarised thus:
In the final chapter of The Master and His Emissary titled The Master Betrayed (pages 589–636), Iain McGilchrist explores the consequences of the dominance of the left hemisphere in modern Western society and the impact this has had on our worldview, culture, and sense of self. The chapter represents McGilchrist’s culmination of the arguments made throughout the book and offers a stark analysis of the societal and psychological effects of an overemphasis on the left-brain functions, which tend to be more reductive, analytical, and fragmented.
McGilchrist argues that while the left hemisphere’s strengths in logic, control, and manipulation of the world through tools and language are necessary, an over-reliance on these functions has resulted in a disconnection from the world in a more profound, subjective, and connected way. The right hemisphere’s qualities—empathy, intuition, relational understanding, and the capacity for seeing the world as interconnected and meaningful—have been increasingly sidelined. This imbalance, McGilchrist suggests, has led to alienation, a loss of depth, and a tendency toward mechanistic thinking that fails to account for the richness of human experience.
The chapter emphasizes how this shift is not merely a consequence of individual brain function but is reflected in the broader cultural, political, and philosophical trends that have shaped the modern world, including the rise of reductionism, consumerism, and the dominance of technology. McGilchrist warns that if the dominance of the left hemisphere continues unchecked, it could lead to further fragmentation of society, a deepening of ecological and social crises, and the erosion of human meaning.
In The Master Betrayed, McGilchrist calls for a return to a more balanced approach, where the right hemisphere’s integrative and holistic perspective is valued alongside the left hemisphere’s analytical capabilities. He advocates for a worldview that embraces complexity, context, and interconnectedness, suggesting that such a shift could lead to a more sustainable and fulfilling way of life, both individually and collectively.
This final chapter serves as both a critique and a call for renewal, urging readers to reconsider the way we engage with the world and to restore the harmony between the two hemispheres of the brain for the betterment of human experience.
The whole book deserves close attention because it is a valuable perspective on where we have gone wrong. The final chapter describes the dystopia dominated by left-brain-hemisphere thinking; if it sounds familiar, it’s where we are today. Here is a brief extract:
Philosophically, the world would be marked by fragmentation, appearing to its inhabitants as if a collection of bits and pieces apparently randomly thrown together; its organisation, and therefore meaning, would come only through what we added to it, through systems designed to maximise utility. Because the mechanical would be the model by which everything, including ourselves and the natural world, would be understood, people in such a society would find it hard to understand the higher values in Scheler’s hierarchy except in terms of ultimate utility, and there would be a derogation of such higher values, and a cynicism about their status. Morality would come to be judged at best on the basis of utilitarian calculation, at worst on the basis of enlightened self-interest.
The left hemisphere prefers the impersonal to the personal, and that tendency would in any case be instantiated in the fabric of a technologically driven and bureaucratically administered society. The impersonal would come to replace the personal. There would be a focus on material things at the expense of the living. Social cohesion, and the bonds between person and person, and just as importantly between person and place, the context in which each person belongs, would be neglected, perhaps actively disrupted, as both inconvenient and incomprehensible to the left hemisphere acting on its own. There would be a depersonalisation of the relationships between members of society, and in society’s relationship with its members. Exploitation rather than co-operation would be, explicitly or not, the default relationship between human individuals, and between humanity and the rest of the world. Resentment would lead to an emphasis on uniformity and equality, not as just one desirable to be balanced with others, but as the ultimate desirable, transcending all others. As a result individualities would be ironed out and identification would be by categories: socioeconomic groups, races, sexes, and so on, which would also feel themselves to be implicitly or explicitly in competition with, resentful of, one another. Paranoia and lack of trust would come to be the pervading stance within society both between individuals, and between such groups, and would be the stance of government towards its people.Such a government would seek total control – it is an essential feature of the left hemisphere’s take on the world that it can grasp it and control it.
Talk of liberty, which is an abstract ideal for the left hemisphere, would increase for Machiavellian reasons, but individual liberty would be curtailed. Panoptical control would become an end in itself, and constant CCTV monitoring, interception of private information and communication, the norm. Measures such as a DNA database would be introduced apparently in response to exceptional threats and exceptional circumstances, against which they would in reality be ineffective, their aim being to increase the power of the state and diminish the status of the individual. The concept of the individual depends on uniqueness; but according to the left hemisphere’s take on reality, individuals are simply interchangeable (‘equal’) parts of a mechanistic system, a system it needs to control in the interests of efficiency. Thus it would be expected that the state would not only take greater power directly, but play down individual responsibility, and the sense of individual responsibility would accordingly decline.
Family relationships, or skilled roles within society, such as those of priests, teachers and doctors, which transcend what can be quantified or regulated, and in fact depend on a degree of altruism, would become the object of suspicion. The left hemisphere misunderstands the nature of such relationships, as it misunderstands altruism as a version of self-interest, and sees them as a threat to its power. We might even expect there to be attempts to damage the trust on which such relationships rely, and, if possible, to discredit them. In any case, strenuous efforts would be made to bring families and professions under bureaucratic control, a move that would be made possible, presumably, only by furthering fear and mistrust.
In such a society people of all kinds would attach an unusual importance to being in control. Accidents and illnesses, since they are beyond our control, would therefore be particularly threatening and would, where possible, be blamed on others, since they would look like a threat to one’s capacity to control one’s life. The left hemisphere, as will be remembered, is in any case not quick to take responsibility, and sees itself as the passive victim of whatever it is not conscious of having willed.
Iain is one of a growing number of voices that have been warning of the trajectory we’re on. The numbers of those paying attention are growing; the sooner the world listens, the sooner we can all live in our true power to avert catastrophe for our species… and the betterment of human experience.
Since posting yesterday’s article, there’s been some feedback/discussion both by email and on Telegram among which Peter wrote: “Worth considering Joe Dispenza’s work since he wrote Evolve Your Brain“. I did a quick search and came across the following video. As I wrote to Peter in response: “Wow Peter, stuff that I was aware of and try to live, although I haven’t regularly meditated in the conventional sense, expressed with great clarity:
Looks like another essential book, thanks 😊”