Why Identity Politics is the Left Hemisphere Gone Too Far
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- čas přidán 30. 07. 2024
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Talking more on equality, Dr McGilchrist gives an example of a situation when something 'fair' is not 'equal'. The discussion continues onto identity politics, and why they brain's right hemisphere is a better judge of a person than the left hemisphere.
Watch more from this series on The Master and His Emissary here:
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the tricky thing with identity politics is the "masking effect." people do not seem to recognize (or care to recognize) when its about their own personal ego insecurity (left brain dominant) OR the common good of the whole (right-whole brain dominant). watching the 60s civil rights media coverage absolutely seems to be about the "good of the whole." Today, it overwhelmingly feels to be about personal egoistic insecurity (e.g. more about he said she said than fighting for social group justice through solidarity, literature, and the arts). I believe it is these very vehicles, tools, that has made some or most of the difference. We traded in the dissertation for the tweet, fine art for the meme, the sit in for the "sit down" (zoom). We have traded the 3dimensional revolution for the 2D "representation of the revolution." The substance for the symbol. Also, sexual repression has also returned, yet another left brain tyranny. Let's just say, the sexually frustrated often conflate this unconscious repression with overt external oppression. what a tangled web we do tend to weave.
Yes! Tricky is the right word for it, too!
A thing I keep noticing happening everywhere, is an idea or value which is conceived in a right-brain integrated manner.... There’s this critical mass point of “uptake” at which it gets parasitized by the hyper-left brain, 2-D, power games thing. And then that thing sort of hollows it out and commodifies it, and walks around with it’s appearance but none of its essence.
Do you know what I mean? It’s hard to put words around, but it’s frustrating!
I've been following Dr. Gilchrist for the last year, and this was the first thought that came to my head when I saw his work.
God bless you Dr. Gilchrist. Having lived on the streets houseless a number of times myself, your work has been uplifting.
Dr. McGilchrist, do you believe that the current political divide is fundamentally a conflict between the hemispheres? Are liberals perhaps more attuned to the right hemisphere and conservatives to the left hemisphere? Or the other way around?
Interesting question, I hope you don’t mind if I give it a try. I teach a university class on the Master and his Emissary, so I’m pretty familiar with his work. The distinction between the “left” and the “right” is itself a left-brain process (ironic?). The left brain excels at categories so much that it can outperform a spatial task (something the right brain excels at) as long as it is about spatial categories. The process of categories is a process of separation and organization. Of course in the East, traditions such as Taoism remind us that all separate categories rely on each other to exist, black cannot exist without white, Yin and Yang etc. You can find people on the “left” and “right” of the political spectrum that are overindulging in left brain processes. The trick is how serious are they? How dependent are they on explicit language? How much do they want to impose (control) their viewpoint on others? How certain are they that they are right? Perhaps the idea of being right is the more obvious pointer…but I could be wrong.
the other... approach? That seems fairly obvious to me on this is how the research data Iain draws on apparently rather consistently shows that a host of symptoms such as hemi neglect/asomatognosia, anosognosia (which unlike asomatognosia, seems to be related more to denial) prosopagnosia, perseveration, impairment of the sense of the flow of time, and of the appreciation of metaphor and music... difficulty detecting false premises of false syllogisms, deficit in empathy etc etc are almost exclusively associated with over reliance on the LH.
It would be interesting if you could test everybody who voted for Democrats and Labour (UK) and those who voted Republican and Conservative (pro Nation State/Brexit) and try and determine whether there is a greater prevalence of cognitive traits comparable to those patients who have suffered RH hemisphere stroke.
I think it would be interesting just to see how people would respond if governments actually proposed such tests/survey. Whilst I think ‘opening windows on people’s souls’ has something troubling about it I do admit I find the prospect of such a survey rather appealing. And after all polls/questionnaires that are already standard are, I think, ethically not so very different.
@@chris5264 wonderful response
🙄
Why should working hard be privileged over any other feature? So many values seem to be assumed here. Nevertheless, pace 🙏🏽
This is all true, but the point of EOE is that people are already so tribalized, they'll not hire a particular "race." These required parameters for employment exist as an (imperfect) safeguard against racist tribalism.
This otherwise intelligent person whose work I enjoy and admire doesn’t seem to get that treating individuals as if they were isolated units, disconnected from history, society, and culture, is an entirely left hemisphere move; it’s narrowly focused, decontextualized, and abstract. It will be interesting to see whether Dr. McGilchrist responds to this line of criticism by falling further into denial and insisting that he is right (a left hemisphere specialty) or by reconsidering and revising his perspectives (a right hemisphere approach).
Good point. The right brain will assess EACH case for what IT is. there may be ten cases, maybe five where the affirmative action is necessary (due to a proven racist organization) coupled with the fact that the selected minority was indeed equally as gifted as the other candidates; there may be two cases that are completely the opposite of this, say, nepotism or someone sleeping with someone else, only masked as affirmative action, and still yet, 3 more cases that can go either way. the right brain, again, will assess each case for what IT is. years ago I was passed over for a job within a city job's Chinese American administrative hierarchy, by a Chinese guy (we were young) who was not only a flake, but created dangerous situations in the work place. again, the right brain does take the time to assess each case separately. the "gut" often knows the difference even without all the facts. that said, I love Dr Mcgilchrist!
Thanks for the response. I don’t know Dr. McGilchrist personally, so I can’t say I love him. I do love his work, though, which is awesome and groundbreaking. But this response to my comment isn’t very convincing. In order to successfully apply a theoretical insight to a particular case, one needs to be familiar with both. Dr. McGilchrist knows the theoretical part very well, but not the particular case in question. Racism is a broad and multidisciplinary area of academic research, with which he is obviously unfamiliar. Dr. McGilchrist is free to express his opinion, but the fact remains that, unlike his views on neuroscience and philosophy, his opinion on race is not grounded in the relevant literature. That’s perfectly okay, for no one can be equally informed about everything. It’s just that one needs to know what one doesn’t know, for just because one knows something doesn’t mean that one knows everything.
@@footprintsonsand valid points, the problem here is that this is a sound bite not a full lecture . “Sound bitism” has become the thing to do in a new marketing strategy to plug books, not saying this is LM intention but sound bitism creates a lazy jerk response communication style . As for the racism debate it has certainly become counterproductive and I think of Nietzsche’s priestly knightly morality . Malcolm X certainly did not have the priestly morality he grabbed the bull by the horns , fast forward today to the whining egoistic mud slinging . Yuck ! Solid action for change begins not in this mud slinging but in the enterprising spirit of launching businesses that localize economy and bring opportunity to the down trodden . Like an urban garden program for inner city youth . Or a bicycle repair cooperative in the middle of East Palo Alto . Talk is cheap .
Not only that, but he failed to mention that the origin of these equal opportunity employment measures was a metacognitive move by society to curtail racist tribalism.
“Tribalizing society” is not helpful.”
Someone who doesn't recognize the concrete, visceral, and personal realities of prejudice, biases, and oppression is lost in left hemisphere ideology of abstract ideas and categories. Even 'individualism' can become an ideology disconnected from the real world of particular people and communities that experience harm. In fact, in the modern West, 'individualism' is possibly the single most powerful and deluding of dogmatic faiths, in how it so easily is used to rationalize and defend authoritarianism, injustice, unfairness, and unfreedom. The only way 'equality' is an abstraction is the false belief of equal opportunity (liberty as negative freedom).
The right hemisphere makes us aware of the wider context of the beliefs that the left hemisphere confines itself to, and I feel that important aspects of the context of "identity politics" are missing here. The first is sensitivity to the very use of that term, which has become a dismissive bundling label used by the New Right to dismiss the concerns of minorities. A second is the lack of any recognition of the contextual effects that "treating people as individuals" can have in a context where things are socially and politically stacked against a particular group. Dealing with inequality between groups is a necessary prior condition of treating people as individuals, because not dealing with it first merely reinforces the conditions for that inequality, which is itself premised on treating people as members of a group. Over-bureaucratising the issue may not be the best solution, but McGilchrist is in danger of falling into the nirvana fallacy if he can't suggest an alternative feasible way of dealing with it.
What is this ‘Nirvana fallacy’?
What do you make of this
czcams.com/video/nXx9Pv3pC24/video.html
I agree. It's been one of my main concerns about McGilchrist's views. When someone of privilege (racial, gender, and class) complains about identity politics because everyone should be treated as individuals, they demonstrate how little they comprehend the real world the rest of us live in. The whole point is that our society is built on an ideological realism that denies the possibility of fairness and justice in terms of wealth, power, voice, representation, opportunities, resources, etc. And this inequality has been entrenched in rigid hierarchies and prejudicial systems for centuries and continues to this day. Pretending it doesn't exist doesn't make it go away.
@@MarmaladeINFP Would it not just be simpler to provide everyone at the bottom with good education, other opportunities & in general a much fairer society ? Of course that would have to include the white underclass who are it seems fair game to be insulted & stereotyped. Not so much in the UK but in the US, the Woke appear to be happy to raise a few boats while sinking many others, which personally as we have already seen is dangerous particularly as these increasingly resentful masses are often living cheek by jowl with minorities. Shoving your own ideology down the throats of others is think very Left Hemisphere & I believe will result in a backlash from the majority that will be visited on those you seek to elevate - maybe you should read some 20th century history.
Mr Mcgilchrist’s response, on the surface at least, appears to be an apology for the scale of society’s economic inequality. I find this regrettable.
‘On the surface’ reading may reveal precisely the trouble he’s pointing to, here. You’re approaching in a hyper-left brain mode; thus took a 2-D misapprehension
To actually believe that conservatives and liberals don’t each have their right and left brain qualities is soooo lazy dude