That’s one of the aspects which struck me most back in March ‘20. People, even fairly senior people, seemed to become aware for the first time in their lives that they were mortal and that there was nothing they could do about it.
I thought it very odd at the time. Mortality, especially one’s own, ought to be something pretty obvious that one needs to accept (after a fashion) by the time one turns 21 or thereabouts.
Perhaps this is related to the dying off of the war generation. I noticed a distinct infantilisation not just of political but of general public discourse starting around the year 2000. That’s the point when people who had acting memories of WW2 started to leave public life. Regardless of which side they had been on, these people knew that when things go south they can go really south really fast. As a consequence they treated life with a seriousness that our current batch of clowns are simply incapable of.
Footnote: the left hemisphere angle provides an excellent explanation of the frustrating discussions I used to have with Objectivists. “Check your premises!” Indeed.
"a distinct infantilization not just of political but of general public discourse starting around the year 2000" -- to me, that happened with 9-11 (2001), when we (or I should say, our august leaders) in the US went officially and truly crazy.
That was a biggie, yes. In my case it was the inexplicable rush to cancel a successful currency (the deutschmark) and replace it with garbage Monopoly money. It’s playing out exactly as predicted.
This turn of the century mark is interesting - I'll have to think more on this and the changing generational/social/political landscape. Situations like 9-11 could have been major causal factors to accelerate the swing toward a more left hemisphere perspective (to 'grasp', control, and fix).
Will be interesting then what WW3 will do to people's perception of death. Having said that, all cause mortality is now on the rise and people are dying at an above average rate ('suddenly'), but seemingly we are in denial about that - so maybe we will be in denial about our mortality even during a world war.
"the left hemisphere’s attitude is to have total control over this ultimate enemy (of death)."
Yes and the transformational archetype experience is an overcoming of this fear of death. The death/rebirth experience is an acceptance of death and a rebirth into a different state of consciousness that includes right side perception.
Whether one believes it was an actual event or not the account of the crucifiction is in that achetypical realm. The fear of death is confronted and overcome and there is a rebirth, a resurrection. The same archetype plays out across so many seemingly disparate 'things'. It is an underlying theme in a lot of myth, poetry, literature, and music.
In an earlier comment about left/right I mentioned the album Dark Side of the Moon as an allegory/metaphor. One of the cuts on the album, Great Gig in the Sky:
"And I am not frightened of dying, any time will do, I
don't mind. Why should I be frightened of dying?
There's no reason for it, you've gotta go sometime."
Back to Christianity. I think it is possible that the early Christian form of baptism by immersion in water may have been an overcoming of the fear of death experience. Symbolically and literally. It may have been an attempt to induce a near death experience.
"What have we lost in the 21st Century when we can’t accept that death and dying are a normal part of life? " I think it was lost long before the 21st century. Perhaps it has accelerated but atrocities are nothing new and I think they have their roots in the fear of death.
"The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one’s mind, is the condition of the normal man. Society highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal. Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years." R.D Laing 1967
"Truly we are quickly going down the path of insanity which looks very much like the left hemisphere’s version of reality, with no subjection to the right."
The mass of humanity has been on that path for thousands of years. Some step off the path and onto an alternate path. Some leave guideposts, signs, directions. The hope for the future of humanity is on that path. Without that path we might have already become extinct or the world might be in an even greater state of barbarism.
I think of the allegory of the mustard seed. Perhaps the best we can do is to plant seeds.
Certainly baptism is symbolic of death and resurrection, and once dead to one world and alive to a higher one, the believer should no longer fear his mortal state (considering himself already dead to the world). I don't think baptism was to induce a near death experience as much as the public and personal signaling of an actual death experience - albeit the death of 'the old man', not visible, but a reality nonetheless. But of course such notions are incomprehensible to the left hemisphere, even abhorrent.
That's a great quote from Laing.
McGilchrist would argue that the path we have been on for thousands of years has been an oscillation between the two hemispheres - we are just on that swing of the pendulum toward the left hemisphere that destroys sane empires and gives birth to insane ones.
One thing that seemed clear to me during the "covid" project was that one element of the mass psychosis bifurcation was the manifestation of positive feedback loops. The left hemisphere, in its suppression of the right, creates a closed system that is prone toward an increasingly paranoid need for control.
In a mass media and the light-speed environment of narrative shaping, this positive feedback loop becomes especially dangerous. Not only is the noise to signal inverted, rendering the discernment of threats and controls nearly inert, those inputs all become perturbances feeding into that loop.
Lacking both corrective right hemisphere constraints and minimal pro-social modalities of control, those left hemisphere dominant people were almost immediately trapped in their closed system in which negative inputs - and the vehicles like family, church, community bonds that might have purchase to deliver them, accelerated them into the psychosis and to this day they remain.
And as we know, positive feedback loops naturally exponential, move quickly to the extremes. Even though they will decay and ultimately destroy the system. this happens after rapidly oscillating across even diametric positions through these extreme positions in an increasingly chaotic state and so the "cure" of negative feedback inputs becomes increasingly difficult to achieve over time.
Well said. The current propaganda campaign knows all too well that maintaining a closed system of positive feedback is the road to 'success'. Thus the blatant attempts to shut down any alternative narrative (openings in the closed system) and move such narratives into the window (i.e. outside the Overton window) of 'dangerous', 'bizarre', 'cruel', 'extreme', even though they are the complete opposite.
Oh yeah, this positive feedback loop is what feeds the type of mind that is addicted too. So these people are pretty much addicts to "normality". When things aren't normal, they have the superego to twist who they are into believing that they know the solution. Since the superego is pretty much the society, they end up reinforcing the same abusive society that gave them "purpose".
And then there's people like us, who are still on the path of nature. Negative feedback is necessary for control, limits, balance. Also, negative feedback, learning from mistakes is great for true intelligence, whatever we can call it. It's the same mechanism that animals and plants use to grow and survive.
What struck me from the very beginning of Covid was the complete lost of values, especially human dignity: that which at least in the European legal tradition justifies treating humans as beings endowed with intrinsic value in the first place. (Otherwise, you might as well let 'em die to save the others.)
But the left hemisphere seems entirely incapable of even perceiving such deeper values. Hence the mind-boggingly stupid argument, when you confront Covidians with the idea of human dignity, that "dead people don't have dignity, so saving lives must always come first". It's classic LH reasoning - purely utilitarian and stunningly ignorant. But you can't argue with the LH, because it literally can't see what you are talking about when you say "dignity" or "freedom" or "some things are more important than survival".
Yes I agree and remember the left hemisphere will never consider itself wrong even if it has no idea of what it's talking about - it will make up any ridiculous argument (although fully convinced the argument is sound) to justify or make sense of its stance.
So you are right - you can't argue with the left (no political pun intended).
That’s one of the aspects which struck me most back in March ‘20. People, even fairly senior people, seemed to become aware for the first time in their lives that they were mortal and that there was nothing they could do about it.
I thought it very odd at the time. Mortality, especially one’s own, ought to be something pretty obvious that one needs to accept (after a fashion) by the time one turns 21 or thereabouts.
Perhaps this is related to the dying off of the war generation. I noticed a distinct infantilisation not just of political but of general public discourse starting around the year 2000. That’s the point when people who had acting memories of WW2 started to leave public life. Regardless of which side they had been on, these people knew that when things go south they can go really south really fast. As a consequence they treated life with a seriousness that our current batch of clowns are simply incapable of.
Footnote: the left hemisphere angle provides an excellent explanation of the frustrating discussions I used to have with Objectivists. “Check your premises!” Indeed.
"a distinct infantilization not just of political but of general public discourse starting around the year 2000" -- to me, that happened with 9-11 (2001), when we (or I should say, our august leaders) in the US went officially and truly crazy.
That was a biggie, yes. In my case it was the inexplicable rush to cancel a successful currency (the deutschmark) and replace it with garbage Monopoly money. It’s playing out exactly as predicted.
This turn of the century mark is interesting - I'll have to think more on this and the changing generational/social/political landscape. Situations like 9-11 could have been major causal factors to accelerate the swing toward a more left hemisphere perspective (to 'grasp', control, and fix).
We have been living in a nation of perpetual children. It's going to be gratifying watching that change.
This guy curb-stomps it IMO https://freedomfromselfsabotage.com/real-adults-vs-adults-who-act-like-children/
Interesting article. I’m more and more grateful to have been born a humongous dick.
lol I wasn't born that way but I sure grew into it
Will be interesting then what WW3 will do to people's perception of death. Having said that, all cause mortality is now on the rise and people are dying at an above average rate ('suddenly'), but seemingly we are in denial about that - so maybe we will be in denial about our mortality even during a world war.
Another great essay Winston.
My thoughts/opinion:
"the left hemisphere’s attitude is to have total control over this ultimate enemy (of death)."
Yes and the transformational archetype experience is an overcoming of this fear of death. The death/rebirth experience is an acceptance of death and a rebirth into a different state of consciousness that includes right side perception.
Whether one believes it was an actual event or not the account of the crucifiction is in that achetypical realm. The fear of death is confronted and overcome and there is a rebirth, a resurrection. The same archetype plays out across so many seemingly disparate 'things'. It is an underlying theme in a lot of myth, poetry, literature, and music.
In an earlier comment about left/right I mentioned the album Dark Side of the Moon as an allegory/metaphor. One of the cuts on the album, Great Gig in the Sky:
"And I am not frightened of dying, any time will do, I
don't mind. Why should I be frightened of dying?
There's no reason for it, you've gotta go sometime."
Back to Christianity. I think it is possible that the early Christian form of baptism by immersion in water may have been an overcoming of the fear of death experience. Symbolically and literally. It may have been an attempt to induce a near death experience.
"What have we lost in the 21st Century when we can’t accept that death and dying are a normal part of life? " I think it was lost long before the 21st century. Perhaps it has accelerated but atrocities are nothing new and I think they have their roots in the fear of death.
"The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one’s mind, is the condition of the normal man. Society highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal. Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years." R.D Laing 1967
"Truly we are quickly going down the path of insanity which looks very much like the left hemisphere’s version of reality, with no subjection to the right."
The mass of humanity has been on that path for thousands of years. Some step off the path and onto an alternate path. Some leave guideposts, signs, directions. The hope for the future of humanity is on that path. Without that path we might have already become extinct or the world might be in an even greater state of barbarism.
I think of the allegory of the mustard seed. Perhaps the best we can do is to plant seeds.
Certainly baptism is symbolic of death and resurrection, and once dead to one world and alive to a higher one, the believer should no longer fear his mortal state (considering himself already dead to the world). I don't think baptism was to induce a near death experience as much as the public and personal signaling of an actual death experience - albeit the death of 'the old man', not visible, but a reality nonetheless. But of course such notions are incomprehensible to the left hemisphere, even abhorrent.
That's a great quote from Laing.
McGilchrist would argue that the path we have been on for thousands of years has been an oscillation between the two hemispheres - we are just on that swing of the pendulum toward the left hemisphere that destroys sane empires and gives birth to insane ones.
One thing that seemed clear to me during the "covid" project was that one element of the mass psychosis bifurcation was the manifestation of positive feedback loops. The left hemisphere, in its suppression of the right, creates a closed system that is prone toward an increasingly paranoid need for control.
In a mass media and the light-speed environment of narrative shaping, this positive feedback loop becomes especially dangerous. Not only is the noise to signal inverted, rendering the discernment of threats and controls nearly inert, those inputs all become perturbances feeding into that loop.
Lacking both corrective right hemisphere constraints and minimal pro-social modalities of control, those left hemisphere dominant people were almost immediately trapped in their closed system in which negative inputs - and the vehicles like family, church, community bonds that might have purchase to deliver them, accelerated them into the psychosis and to this day they remain.
And as we know, positive feedback loops naturally exponential, move quickly to the extremes. Even though they will decay and ultimately destroy the system. this happens after rapidly oscillating across even diametric positions through these extreme positions in an increasingly chaotic state and so the "cure" of negative feedback inputs becomes increasingly difficult to achieve over time.
This is far from over
Well said. The current propaganda campaign knows all too well that maintaining a closed system of positive feedback is the road to 'success'. Thus the blatant attempts to shut down any alternative narrative (openings in the closed system) and move such narratives into the window (i.e. outside the Overton window) of 'dangerous', 'bizarre', 'cruel', 'extreme', even though they are the complete opposite.
Oh yeah, this positive feedback loop is what feeds the type of mind that is addicted too. So these people are pretty much addicts to "normality". When things aren't normal, they have the superego to twist who they are into believing that they know the solution. Since the superego is pretty much the society, they end up reinforcing the same abusive society that gave them "purpose".
And then there's people like us, who are still on the path of nature. Negative feedback is necessary for control, limits, balance. Also, negative feedback, learning from mistakes is great for true intelligence, whatever we can call it. It's the same mechanism that animals and plants use to grow and survive.
What struck me from the very beginning of Covid was the complete lost of values, especially human dignity: that which at least in the European legal tradition justifies treating humans as beings endowed with intrinsic value in the first place. (Otherwise, you might as well let 'em die to save the others.)
But the left hemisphere seems entirely incapable of even perceiving such deeper values. Hence the mind-boggingly stupid argument, when you confront Covidians with the idea of human dignity, that "dead people don't have dignity, so saving lives must always come first". It's classic LH reasoning - purely utilitarian and stunningly ignorant. But you can't argue with the LH, because it literally can't see what you are talking about when you say "dignity" or "freedom" or "some things are more important than survival".
Yes I agree and remember the left hemisphere will never consider itself wrong even if it has no idea of what it's talking about - it will make up any ridiculous argument (although fully convinced the argument is sound) to justify or make sense of its stance.
So you are right - you can't argue with the left (no political pun intended).