Or, how a pre-frontally damaged left-hemispheric oligarchy grasps at whatever they can in a desperate attempt to control something divorced from reality.
We have overreached ourselves (with rational thinking), we were not content with the idea thinking rationally helped banish many unnecessary woes and mistakes, but we thought we could understand everything. Once you think you can understand everything your chances of understanding anything are remote (greatly reduced). This has been taken to hubristic extremes.
Technology and information have substituted for deep knowledge and wisdom. It doesn’t answer any questions it enlarges our power to alter things, which is only as good as our wisdom to know what needs altering to what end. We have the most power we have ever had and the least wisdom.
I am not familiar with John Vervaeke, but he comes off like a nut here. On the first segment he gives a long run-on sentence as a supposed answer. Sure, the statements are loosely connected and hint at larger points without making cogent argument. It is the rhetorical technique known as the Gish Gallop. Talk about a lack of meaning making.
*Edit* Vervaeke is insufferable in this clip. He is enamored with Latin vocabulary for its own sake. McGilchrist referred to his book, and Vervaeke interrupted him to say he owned it. The listener unfamiliar with the book wouldn't be able to discern the title. Vervaeke comes off like a pseudointellectual. No doubt he is intelligent but he is highly off-putting.
I saw the length of the interview and just haven't had time to go through it. But thanks for your observations Jim.
Even though it's partly my field I've not really taken any notice of Vervaeke, only because there is so many researches, so much content, one can only absorb so much, so he's relatively new to me too.
You’ve “written a little” of McGilchrist’s book, like a couple chapters, as a co-author? Not trolling, just giving feedback on the ambiguity that stopped the flow for me before it began, in the first sentence.
Understand the comment, but it was clear to me. Winston has written quite a lot about the book. So the expression came off as intentionally understated. We know he didn't co-author the work.
Interesting! So, I am going to keep the "Death Cult" label in place for a while longer then. As for words v. meaning, I have found Jordan Peterson to be one of those media figures that manages to say truthy things while also hypnotizing people into a morass of navel navigating gobblyguk that ends up supporting the death cult's penchant for abstractions and relativism - if you take the time to follow the logic, which most don't because hypnosis. To me that's gatekeeping at its finest, but my observation often angers people who seem him as some kind of novel thinker or philosopher and/or have found one of his platitudes to be helpful. It is a strange time indeed. I often feel like Clark Griswold in the London roundabout. No matter how smart the other side presents their worldview, how easy it is to adopt it to accrue social status, I just "can't get left." Big Ben...Parliament...round we go.
There's plenty of time allowed for active play given to the young during their first couple of years of schooling...The young bodies are full of beans, they've more energy than needed, they 'work it off' through active play...They're being broken in...Each year less active playtime, more sitting still - for long hours...The urge to activity, all that bubbling energy, has to be controlled, has to be repressed...The youngster clamp down with their muscles, learn to sit still...(Good training for later boring, repetative office/shop/factory work)...
The brain as muscle also undergoes training...All subjects to be learned favour the logical hemisphere of the brain...It is strengthened, and acts to limit , repress the other hemisphere...(A report about the brain of a male infant being scanned while being circumcised revealed his brain was severely traumatised, and the traumatised area was permanent)...
Schooling of the young is a fundamental building block of the modern world...It's where the young learn to tolerate a life of unfreedom, learn to tolerate others having control over most of their time...(Ever notice: There are two ways The West help 'undeveloped' contries modernise...Arming The State forces, and supplying uniforms (conformity) for the young while corralling them behind four walls aka schools. Oftentimes this latter considered more important than ensuring they are fed.)...
To change the world will require abolishing schooling...
There's muscular armoring...and "Emotional Armoring" by Morton Herskowitz...
Certainly the way we school our children in the west (probably all over the world now) is playing into a left hemisphere bias of 'how the world is'. Play certainly should be given more time, and 'academics' can be postponed until the child is older, but even then, keep the play aspect as a core feature of developing well rounded brains.
We have a society that has so many positive feedback loops that reinforce the left hemisphere's perception of the world - we continually create more of our world to reflect the left hemisphere's view that in turn inspires us to create even more of our world to reflect the left hemisphere's view...
Dec 6, 2022·edited Dec 6, 2022Liked by Winston Smith
Yes all makes sense, but what is the practical solution? I remember the movie, "The Quick and the Dead." It is a western about a man named John Herod, who ruthlessly ruled a town by gun violence, because he was super fast on the draw, and none could match him. He owned the town, the enforcers, and banks....everything. Once a year, he allowed his enemies to try to kill him openly in an organized gunfight tournament. All who challenged Herod got killed, of course, as none were fast enough. The only three who had a chance were Leo Dicaprio's "The Kid", who was said to be Herod's son, but there was no proof so Herod was cautious about embracing the "Kid" fully. Russell Crowe's character used to run with Herod, but repented and became a preacher of righteousness (the "Word of God"??). Sharon Stone's character was in the gunfight for revenge on Herod using her to kill her own dad as a child.
It is about the left male aspect of action versus the right female aspect of care. The Kid challegned his "dad" to a gunfight, and would not stand down, even though Herod tried to give him an out. It was close, but the Kid got killed, left brained male action alone was not enough. Only when Crowe's character fully embraced violent action again, and became a gunfighter AND worked with Stone's female character, representing heart-care-emotion, that Herod was killed. Working together in balance was the key. Stone pretended to die in a gunfight, but later "rose from the dead" (obvious Christ analogy) to challenge Herod. Crowe cleared the playing field to make sure the final fight would be fair, and Stone got to pull the final trigger. Herod said she wasn't fast enough for him, but he was wrong.
Message: the Kid, representing violent action alone, will not defeat the globalists, who are masters at that, and will even kill their own children to remain in power. When the world at large realizes that left dominant male action must combine with female emotional-care aspects, then together, recombined Christ consciousnesses that have "risen from the dead" will defeat the evildoers. Words, actions, emotions, together in balance. The 99% public ARE Crowe/Stone, still in process of rising from the dead it seems. The 1% Herod-globalists are afraid of the world realizing this. In one scene, Herod said to Crowe before the gunfight with Crowe, "I'm scared, are you? It takes a lot to frighten me. I love the sensation. I've always wanted to fight you. It's just an itch I've needed to scratch." Herod's love of the gunfight proved to be his downfall.
I get the metaphor and agree there needs to be a left/right balance.
The idea that the left is male violence/action and the right is female nurture isn't accurate - although the right is expert at empathy and the left is clueless on that score.
Nevertheless there is two very different ways of 'being' in the world through the two hemispheres and it's only when they are operating together that we have a fighting chance to defeat those who have swung so far to the left that they are a mortal danger to us all.
Scientism is of course the "religion" of the left brain. Scientism is the now world-dominant paradigm which controls and patterns every minute fraction of human culture, including most/all that is promoted as religion
That having been said please find a partial list of think-tanks and the associated foundations which fund/finance them which are the principal propaganda factories for this now world dominant paradigm
Think (stink) tanks
The Manhattan Institute
The American Enterprise Institute
The Heritage Foundation
The Heartland Institute
The Hudson Institute
The Hoover Institution
The Education Policy Institute
There are of course many more in the USA.
The Institute of Public Affairs here in Australia
Some of the foundations which finance them
Bradley Foundation
Scaife Family Foundation
Olin Foundation
Armstrong Foundation
Smith Richardson Foundation
Walton Family Foundation
DeVos Foundation
Perhaps the principal statement re their power-and-control-seeking aims (etc) was the infamous Contract With America promoted by the uber-odious Newt Gingrich which was essentially formulated by The Heritage (lies, lies and more lies) Foundation. A copy of this infamous contract was given to all of the new members of Congress and the Senate.
I’ve found the interview series by the Hoover Institute very informative - don’t agree with all of the interviewees of course, but they host some very interesting characters. https://www.hoover.org/publications/uncommon-knowledge
Its also interesting that there is no real evidence of any kind of right-brained thinking and culture to be found on your website.
The left (or feminine) side of the bodily being expresses and corresponds to the inward-turning, upward-moving, passive, receptive, emotional-psychic, quality or force of bodily life. It is in opposition or play with the right side which expresses and corresponds to the verbally or analytically motivated, outward-turning, downward-moving or life-oriented, active, penetrative, vital-physical, expansive quality or force.
The left (or feminine) side is controlled by the right hemisphere of the brain, the locus of the psychic, spatial, nonverbal, holistic-intuitive functions. The left hemisphere, which controls the (male) right side of the body, is the locus of the intellectual, linear, verbal, analytical-deductive mental functions.
Speaking of the play and/or opposition of these two aspects/sides. Modern culture is very much out of balance or based on an almost (fight-to-the-death) oppositional war between these two sides, instead of a joyful or ecstatic play as signalled by Shiva-Shakti, Krisha-Radha, Rama-Sita,
When I connect this with the bicameral mind theory, I see that even before the current discovery, we have always had left brain dominant crooked leadership. In the past, people heard voices of god. These days they don't, but that imbalance between left and right hemispheres still exists, the voice mitigated by defined language.
Corporations act left brained.
Governments act left brained.
State religions act left brained. (See the obsession with abortion while supporting foreign wars l
And so on.
The way that they have control over people is by language.
Nietzsche explained how language restricts perception.
Perceiving with language is very much superego driven. One sees (or doesn't see) depending on what their "tribe" says.
Perceiving without language requires a true ego. It is very difficult to have a true ego in any society that offers the biggest reward of survival.
This includes the right wing, it's not just a leftie thing.
Interesting. McGilchrist usually says we are all acting like we have had a right hemisphere stroke, i.e. that we are all left-hemisphere over-activated and our right hemisphere has shutdown in a cortical shock. In terms of pathologies McGilchrist usually likens this to schizophrenia and autism like behaviours. I think you are saying something different here... that psychopaths are acting like people with a left hemisphere pre-frontal stroke? But wouldn't this mean they become right hemisphere dominant like in Jill Taylor's example? Or is that they also over-activated in the rest of the left hemisphere, so their right is still also shutdown?
ps here is a comment I left on Harrison's post, I think it is relevant here too...
"I have been pondering whether, as well as something about our society which is selecting for psychopaths into positions of power, is there something about our society which is creating people who select psychopaths? In my latest post, I delve into the "co-dependency" literature, and I think there is something to this https://garysharpe.substack.com/p/the-fawning-and-appeasement-survival ...
I also think there is an aspect of McGilchrist's work which is often missed, that ties into this theme too,..
This model predicts, for example, that since the evolutionary role of the right hemisphere’s way of attending to the world is the open sustained vigilance needed to look out for threats and predators, those under the spell [of left hemisphere over-activation, e.g. the woke warriors] will be left totally exposed to predatory forces.
They will be completely blind to clear and present dangers and warning signs, and will be unable to heed the warnings of those around them, until it is too late, even when it comes to the children."
My professional training in developmental psychology and my experiences of working and living for extended periods in both Slovakia and Ukraine helped me recognize this part of the planet is literally and figuratively the corpus callosum of the Global Brain. And what we are witnessing now is a war between the West/left hemisphere and the East/right hemisphere. Unfortunately, no one seems to be making this connection.
In suitably rich words of Theophilus fella, ‘an eminently sensible and indeed fundamentally necessary approach’ 👌
Taking a glide on a tangent, I happen to wonder: What does all this hemisphere framework imply for Muslims who deem the left hand unclean? Sorry lefties (haha), no way your smudge-free handwriting outweighed the taboo, the Hadith stands firm 🤔
I really think what McGilchrist talks about is at the heart of what is happening. I recently watched a great conversation he had with John Vervaeke.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzT4tcC-aag
In it he said
We have overreached ourselves (with rational thinking), we were not content with the idea thinking rationally helped banish many unnecessary woes and mistakes, but we thought we could understand everything. Once you think you can understand everything your chances of understanding anything are remote (greatly reduced). This has been taken to hubristic extremes.
Technology and information have substituted for deep knowledge and wisdom. It doesn’t answer any questions it enlarges our power to alter things, which is only as good as our wisdom to know what needs altering to what end. We have the most power we have ever had and the least wisdom.
That's brilliant. I must watch the interview.
I am not familiar with John Vervaeke, but he comes off like a nut here. On the first segment he gives a long run-on sentence as a supposed answer. Sure, the statements are loosely connected and hint at larger points without making cogent argument. It is the rhetorical technique known as the Gish Gallop. Talk about a lack of meaning making.
*Edit* Vervaeke is insufferable in this clip. He is enamored with Latin vocabulary for its own sake. McGilchrist referred to his book, and Vervaeke interrupted him to say he owned it. The listener unfamiliar with the book wouldn't be able to discern the title. Vervaeke comes off like a pseudointellectual. No doubt he is intelligent but he is highly off-putting.
I saw the length of the interview and just haven't had time to go through it. But thanks for your observations Jim.
Even though it's partly my field I've not really taken any notice of Vervaeke, only because there is so many researches, so much content, one can only absorb so much, so he's relatively new to me too.
I'm with you, I find Vervaeke unlistenable.
In my youth Gish Gallop was referred to as ‘baffle them with bullshit.’
Mattias Desmet comes to the same conclusion his "Psychology of Totalitarianism."
You’ve “written a little” of McGilchrist’s book, like a couple chapters, as a co-author? Not trolling, just giving feedback on the ambiguity that stopped the flow for me before it began, in the first sentence.
Understand the comment, but it was clear to me. Winston has written quite a lot about the book. So the expression came off as intentionally understated. We know he didn't co-author the work.
I wish I was co-authoring with McGilchrist !! I'd probably not be doing this Substack if I had been so.
Sadly I'm not in that position - I've just written about his writings.
You’re a wonderful sport. My left brain scans and reports irregularities with so little regard for meaning amd proportion!
Interesting! So, I am going to keep the "Death Cult" label in place for a while longer then. As for words v. meaning, I have found Jordan Peterson to be one of those media figures that manages to say truthy things while also hypnotizing people into a morass of navel navigating gobblyguk that ends up supporting the death cult's penchant for abstractions and relativism - if you take the time to follow the logic, which most don't because hypnosis. To me that's gatekeeping at its finest, but my observation often angers people who seem him as some kind of novel thinker or philosopher and/or have found one of his platitudes to be helpful. It is a strange time indeed. I often feel like Clark Griswold in the London roundabout. No matter how smart the other side presents their worldview, how easy it is to adopt it to accrue social status, I just "can't get left." Big Ben...Parliament...round we go.
Peterson is a closet authoritarian.
https://www.newswars.com/jordan-peterson-calls-for-youtube-to-censor-anonymous-critics-of-his-fawning-netanyahu-interview/
There's plenty of time allowed for active play given to the young during their first couple of years of schooling...The young bodies are full of beans, they've more energy than needed, they 'work it off' through active play...They're being broken in...Each year less active playtime, more sitting still - for long hours...The urge to activity, all that bubbling energy, has to be controlled, has to be repressed...The youngster clamp down with their muscles, learn to sit still...(Good training for later boring, repetative office/shop/factory work)...
The brain as muscle also undergoes training...All subjects to be learned favour the logical hemisphere of the brain...It is strengthened, and acts to limit , repress the other hemisphere...(A report about the brain of a male infant being scanned while being circumcised revealed his brain was severely traumatised, and the traumatised area was permanent)...
Schooling of the young is a fundamental building block of the modern world...It's where the young learn to tolerate a life of unfreedom, learn to tolerate others having control over most of their time...(Ever notice: There are two ways The West help 'undeveloped' contries modernise...Arming The State forces, and supplying uniforms (conformity) for the young while corralling them behind four walls aka schools. Oftentimes this latter considered more important than ensuring they are fed.)...
To change the world will require abolishing schooling...
There's muscular armoring...and "Emotional Armoring" by Morton Herskowitz...
Certainly the way we school our children in the west (probably all over the world now) is playing into a left hemisphere bias of 'how the world is'. Play certainly should be given more time, and 'academics' can be postponed until the child is older, but even then, keep the play aspect as a core feature of developing well rounded brains.
We have a society that has so many positive feedback loops that reinforce the left hemisphere's perception of the world - we continually create more of our world to reflect the left hemisphere's view that in turn inspires us to create even more of our world to reflect the left hemisphere's view...
We have to escape this hall of mirrors.
Yes all makes sense, but what is the practical solution? I remember the movie, "The Quick and the Dead." It is a western about a man named John Herod, who ruthlessly ruled a town by gun violence, because he was super fast on the draw, and none could match him. He owned the town, the enforcers, and banks....everything. Once a year, he allowed his enemies to try to kill him openly in an organized gunfight tournament. All who challenged Herod got killed, of course, as none were fast enough. The only three who had a chance were Leo Dicaprio's "The Kid", who was said to be Herod's son, but there was no proof so Herod was cautious about embracing the "Kid" fully. Russell Crowe's character used to run with Herod, but repented and became a preacher of righteousness (the "Word of God"??). Sharon Stone's character was in the gunfight for revenge on Herod using her to kill her own dad as a child.
It is about the left male aspect of action versus the right female aspect of care. The Kid challegned his "dad" to a gunfight, and would not stand down, even though Herod tried to give him an out. It was close, but the Kid got killed, left brained male action alone was not enough. Only when Crowe's character fully embraced violent action again, and became a gunfighter AND worked with Stone's female character, representing heart-care-emotion, that Herod was killed. Working together in balance was the key. Stone pretended to die in a gunfight, but later "rose from the dead" (obvious Christ analogy) to challenge Herod. Crowe cleared the playing field to make sure the final fight would be fair, and Stone got to pull the final trigger. Herod said she wasn't fast enough for him, but he was wrong.
Message: the Kid, representing violent action alone, will not defeat the globalists, who are masters at that, and will even kill their own children to remain in power. When the world at large realizes that left dominant male action must combine with female emotional-care aspects, then together, recombined Christ consciousnesses that have "risen from the dead" will defeat the evildoers. Words, actions, emotions, together in balance. The 99% public ARE Crowe/Stone, still in process of rising from the dead it seems. The 1% Herod-globalists are afraid of the world realizing this. In one scene, Herod said to Crowe before the gunfight with Crowe, "I'm scared, are you? It takes a lot to frighten me. I love the sensation. I've always wanted to fight you. It's just an itch I've needed to scratch." Herod's love of the gunfight proved to be his downfall.
I get the metaphor and agree there needs to be a left/right balance.
The idea that the left is male violence/action and the right is female nurture isn't accurate - although the right is expert at empathy and the left is clueless on that score.
Nevertheless there is two very different ways of 'being' in the world through the two hemispheres and it's only when they are operating together that we have a fighting chance to defeat those who have swung so far to the left that they are a mortal danger to us all.
Scientism is of course the "religion" of the left brain. Scientism is the now world-dominant paradigm which controls and patterns every minute fraction of human culture, including most/all that is promoted as religion
That having been said please find a partial list of think-tanks and the associated foundations which fund/finance them which are the principal propaganda factories for this now world dominant paradigm
Think (stink) tanks
The Manhattan Institute
The American Enterprise Institute
The Heritage Foundation
The Heartland Institute
The Hudson Institute
The Hoover Institution
The Education Policy Institute
There are of course many more in the USA.
The Institute of Public Affairs here in Australia
Some of the foundations which finance them
Bradley Foundation
Scaife Family Foundation
Olin Foundation
Armstrong Foundation
Smith Richardson Foundation
Walton Family Foundation
DeVos Foundation
Perhaps the principal statement re their power-and-control-seeking aims (etc) was the infamous Contract With America promoted by the uber-odious Newt Gingrich which was essentially formulated by The Heritage (lies, lies and more lies) Foundation. A copy of this infamous contract was given to all of the new members of Congress and the Senate.
Fortunately it was very soon shot down in flames.
I’ve found the interview series by the Hoover Institute very informative - don’t agree with all of the interviewees of course, but they host some very interesting characters. https://www.hoover.org/publications/uncommon-knowledge
Its also interesting that there is no real evidence of any kind of right-brained thinking and culture to be found on your website.
The left (or feminine) side of the bodily being expresses and corresponds to the inward-turning, upward-moving, passive, receptive, emotional-psychic, quality or force of bodily life. It is in opposition or play with the right side which expresses and corresponds to the verbally or analytically motivated, outward-turning, downward-moving or life-oriented, active, penetrative, vital-physical, expansive quality or force.
The left (or feminine) side is controlled by the right hemisphere of the brain, the locus of the psychic, spatial, nonverbal, holistic-intuitive functions. The left hemisphere, which controls the (male) right side of the body, is the locus of the intellectual, linear, verbal, analytical-deductive mental functions.
Speaking of the play and/or opposition of these two aspects/sides. Modern culture is very much out of balance or based on an almost (fight-to-the-death) oppositional war between these two sides, instead of a joyful or ecstatic play as signalled by Shiva-Shakti, Krisha-Radha, Rama-Sita,
"Its also interesting that there is no real evidence of any kind of right-brained thinking and culture to be found on your website."
Are you making reference to me Jonathan?
And where are people getting these notions of left/female, right/male, hemispheres of the brain?
When I connect this with the bicameral mind theory, I see that even before the current discovery, we have always had left brain dominant crooked leadership. In the past, people heard voices of god. These days they don't, but that imbalance between left and right hemispheres still exists, the voice mitigated by defined language.
Corporations act left brained.
Governments act left brained.
State religions act left brained. (See the obsession with abortion while supporting foreign wars l
And so on.
The way that they have control over people is by language.
Nietzsche explained how language restricts perception.
Perceiving with language is very much superego driven. One sees (or doesn't see) depending on what their "tribe" says.
Perceiving without language requires a true ego. It is very difficult to have a true ego in any society that offers the biggest reward of survival.
This includes the right wing, it's not just a leftie thing.
Interesting. McGilchrist usually says we are all acting like we have had a right hemisphere stroke, i.e. that we are all left-hemisphere over-activated and our right hemisphere has shutdown in a cortical shock. In terms of pathologies McGilchrist usually likens this to schizophrenia and autism like behaviours. I think you are saying something different here... that psychopaths are acting like people with a left hemisphere pre-frontal stroke? But wouldn't this mean they become right hemisphere dominant like in Jill Taylor's example? Or is that they also over-activated in the rest of the left hemisphere, so their right is still also shutdown?
ps here is a comment I left on Harrison's post, I think it is relevant here too...
"I have been pondering whether, as well as something about our society which is selecting for psychopaths into positions of power, is there something about our society which is creating people who select psychopaths? In my latest post, I delve into the "co-dependency" literature, and I think there is something to this https://garysharpe.substack.com/p/the-fawning-and-appeasement-survival ...
I also think there is an aspect of McGilchrist's work which is often missed, that ties into this theme too,..
This model predicts, for example, that since the evolutionary role of the right hemisphere’s way of attending to the world is the open sustained vigilance needed to look out for threats and predators, those under the spell [of left hemisphere over-activation, e.g. the woke warriors] will be left totally exposed to predatory forces.
They will be completely blind to clear and present dangers and warning signs, and will be unable to heed the warnings of those around them, until it is too late, even when it comes to the children."
My professional training in developmental psychology and my experiences of working and living for extended periods in both Slovakia and Ukraine helped me recognize this part of the planet is literally and figuratively the corpus callosum of the Global Brain. And what we are witnessing now is a war between the West/left hemisphere and the East/right hemisphere. Unfortunately, no one seems to be making this connection.
In suitably rich words of Theophilus fella, ‘an eminently sensible and indeed fundamentally necessary approach’ 👌
Taking a glide on a tangent, I happen to wonder: What does all this hemisphere framework imply for Muslims who deem the left hand unclean? Sorry lefties (haha), no way your smudge-free handwriting outweighed the taboo, the Hadith stands firm 🤔