'The master and his emissary' and 'The matter with things' by Iain McGilchrist.

[Arwenn]

When we were discussing TMAHE in our Reading Workshop, I found this concise summary of the hemisphere differences as explicated by McGilchrist from this website very useful:

It is also really interesting to read what Laura wrote about the hemisphere differences in relation to desire, intent and anticipation in The Wave Chapter 23 (bold emphases mine):

Q: (L) Okay, so this realm changed, as a part of the cycle various choices were made: the human race went through the door after the gold, so to speak, and became aligned with the fourth density STS faction after the right-brain/female energy consorted with the wrong side, so to speak. This resulted in a number of effects: the breaking up of the DNA, the burning off of the first ten factors of DNA, the separation of the hemispheres of the brain…
Q: (L) What was the motivating factor for playing in the dirt? What essential thing occurred? You said once that it was “desire-based imbalance”. What was it a desire for?
A: Increased physicality.
[...]

Many scientists have studied the effects of head and brain injuries. The results have led to theories about two different modes of thinking or styles of thought, which are generally attributed to the left and right hemispheres of the brain. I think that we may find some clues in the comparison of the legend of Orion to the stories of King Arthur and the Quest for the Holy Grail. What does Orion have to do with the Grail Quest? A great deal, I think. The similarities between the stories of Orion and Arthur, in essential terms, are many. [...]

The story of the Grail is the story of the creative potential of the human race in very real, though esoteric terms — the power to re-create the Golden Age — a pathway to knowledge of an ancient technology that gave rise to the great megalithic monuments for which no rational explanation exists — a power that has been hidden from us for ages past. In discovering the true Grail we may also find the source of the Control System that has operated on our planet for the past many thousands of years, keeping humankind in bondage to time, history, misery, decay and suffering.

We note above that the left brain rules by conceptualization, imagination, and dogma. We then note that the right brain rules by sensing, perceiving directly via observation. When the story says that Orion raped his love, the meaning is clear: the left-brain took over the function of the right brain, which was the direct conduit to universal powers of creation within the individual. Eve consorted with the wrong side.

What [religion] is doing is developing mental boundaries. They are creating an image of the world in the left hemisphere mode of thinking. It is fixed, limited, and most of all, prevents discovery, change and spiritual evolution. Worse than that, it blocks creativity in a cosmic sense; it is the desire to possess knowledge in a limited form; to own what cannot be owned and place limits on something that is in reality infinite. What is wrong with wanting a return to God, or higher consciousness or any of the touted experiences that are guaranteed to initiate a person to whatever they desire?

The problem is anticipation. When you seek any of these things by holding the thoughts in the left-brain in anticipation of making it real, you are raping the maiden of the well. What if you are just trying to believe it is now? Belief is a function of the left brain; it blocks the manifestation of creativity because the creative right brain is also the empirical half of the brain that observes the dichotomy between the belief and the reality. Desire is anticipation. Anticipation is read by the right brain as in the future, therefore not right now, and the right brain can only create now. When we desire, we have a future object in mind. The right brain only knows now.[/url]

 

[EmeraldR]

When we were discussing TMAHE in our Reading Workshop, I found this concise summary of the hemisphere differences as explicated by McGilchrist from this website very useful:

View attachment 112558

It is also really interesting to read what Laura wrote about the hemisphere differences in relation to desire, intent and anticipation in The Wave Chapter 23 (bold emphases mine):

Yin and Yang come to mind here !
thanks for sharing :)

 

[Mark7]

The problem is anticipation. When you seek any of these things by holding the thoughts in the left-brain in anticipation of making it real, you are raping the maiden of the well. What if you are just trying to believe it is now? Belief is a function of the left brain; it blocks the manifestation of creativity because the creative right brain is also the empirical half of the brain that observes the dichotomy between the belief and the reality. Desire is anticipation. Anticipation is read by the right brain as in the future, therefore not right now, and the right brain can only create now. When we desire, we have a future object in mind. The right brain only knows now.

Perhaps the idea of imagining already having what you want and then forgetting about it has some valid principles at work. Anyway, Lao Tzu said, "The sage rules by weakening ambitions and strengthening bones". Choosing to come into this world of imbalance, we are full of desires and longing for sensation, focused on the self. As a matter of course, we learn the ingrained, hard lessons of life, and hopefully we 'begin to store up treasures in heaven' as we mature.

It seems like these things were on Lau Tzu's mind when he wrote the first chapter of the Tao. Lau Tzu, after working all his life in the emperor's court as an archivist, was rather jaded about humanity and was planning to go live in the mountains as a hermit, but one young man convinced him to write down what he knew before he left. If Lau Tzu was right-brained, Confusious was left-brained and concerned more about the rules and laws of society. AI is rather left-brained as well, as its thinking works primarily in rules-based probabilities, I believe.

Chapter one of theTao Te Ching -

ONE

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
The named is the mother of ten thousand things.
Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.
These two spring from the same source but differ in name;
this appears as darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gate to all mystery.

 

[gottathink]

Just recently Ian McGuilchrist uploaded the following very interesting discussion: TRANSHUMANISM - NEXT STEP IN HUMAN DEVELOPMENT, DANGEROUS IDEOLOGY, NEGLIGIBLE, OR WHAT?

Harald Walach, a German clinical psychologist who has been very critical and outspoken about the covid measures and the dangerous "vaccines", provides a detailed presentation of Transhumanism and the covid vaccinations as field test and tool to access "the human machine". Afterwards these issues are discussed with the other participants like Ian McGuilchrist, the jungian analyst and author Anne Baring and the author Gregg Braden, who seems to be a proponent of a more spiritual science of sorts. I was always hoping that he would eventually discuss a topic like this and go even deeper into the pathocratic nature of our society and all its implications, including the plandemic. Later there is a Q&A where other participants of various walks of life ask interesting questions, one of them a guy who presents himself as one of the original MKULTRA whisleblowers. In the course of this discussion they touch upon all kinds of associated topics like the nature of evil, satanism, AI, a rare converging of various natural cycles and reincarnation.

Ian McGuilchrist: "I don't think that it's completly crazy to think that there are consciousnesses, that are not our consciousnesses, but are disembodied. Every tradition in the world that I know of has such creatures that can be well-disposed or ill-disposed towards us and can inhabit structures that allow them to ingress in such a way that they can help manipulate the world (....) I think there are forces that wish the downfall of humanity and I think they are having a field day right now (...)" [my own audio transcription]

EDIT: added a sentence

I really enjoyed this discussion and has an inspiring message. Thank you for posting it.

 

[KJS]

I must say that I really enjoyed this conversation McGilchrist had with Mattias Desmet.

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Opening Context and Central Themes

This conversation brings together two distinguished intellectuals: Iain McGilchrist (psychiatrist and author of works on brain hemisphere differences) and Mattias Desmet (psychologist and author of "The Psychology of Totalitarianism") to explore the deep connections between modern consciousness, rationalist ideology, brain function, and the emergence of contemporary totalitarianism. The discussion addresses fundamental questions about how Western culture's mechanistic worldview has created conditions for technocratic totalitarianism and societal disconnection.

Desmet's Core Thesis on Technocratic Totalitarianism

Mattias Desmet opens by explaining his central argument from "The Psychology of Totalitarianism": Western culture is witnessing the emergence of a new form of totalitarianism—technocratic totalitarianism—which may represent the "ultimate totalitarianism". Unlike classical totalitarianism led by charismatic gang leaders like Hitler or Stalin, this new form is led by "dull bureaucrats, technocrats, and experts," as Hannah Arendt predicted.

Desmet began writing about this phenomenon around 2017 and accelerated his work during the COVID-19 crisis, sensing urgency in publishing his analysis. His fundamental challenge was connecting what happens at the state system level with society's basic worldview—specifically, the materialist-rationalist view of humanity and the world.

The Problem is Not Just an Evil Elite

A crucial aspect of Desmet's argument is that the totalitarian problem cannot be reduced to a single evil elite. Instead, everyone in society is "to a certain extent in the grip of a certain worldview" that contributes to totalitarianism's emergence. The root cause lies in a rationalist worldview that believes people should live their lives based on rational knowledge and thinking rather than ethical awareness and intuition.

The Mechanistic Worldview and Its Consequences

Desmet traces the problem to the Enlightenment's fundamental shift: when society began considering the universe as "one big machine, one big mechanical system which can be understood, manipulated and controlled in a rational way". Once the world is viewed as a machine, the logical consequence is that this machine must be led by technical experts.

The rationalist mindset led to two critical developments that together constitute totalitarianism's essence:

1. A new kind of leadership using propaganda as the main organizing principle
2. A population that is lonely, disconnected, and vulnerable to propaganda

Hannah Arendt called this the "diabolic pact between the masses and the elite". Totalitarianism can never be reduced to just the totalitarian elite; if you destroy the elite, they will simply be replaced by others because the point of gravity is the masses in the grip of fanatical rationalist ideology.

McGilchrist's Four Ps: Disconnection from Roots

McGilchrist introduces Paul Kingsnorth's concept of the "four Ps"—fundamental connections from which modern society has become separated:

1. Past - disconnection from historical continuity and temporal flow
2. Place - loss of rootedness in specific geographical locations
3. People - atomization and breakdown of community bonds
4. Prayer - elimination of the sacred dimension

McGilchrist emphasizes that we've become "unrooted," like creatures without moorings or attachment to the earth from which we come. He notes that until the end of World War II, nine out of ten people in England had not traveled more than five miles from their birthplace—highlighting how modern mobility represents radical uprooting.

The Importance of Place and Nature

McGilchrist references research showing that a rat is as bonded with its nest as with its mother, emphasizing the profound importance of place to living beings. Our attachment to nature is essential to human being and is rapidly eroding. The modern condition involves being deprived of connections that come "from the ground upwards"—the unconscious realm where intuitions, embodied being, emotions, and memories play their part.

Rationality Versus Rationalism: A Critical Distinction

Both speakers emphasize a vital distinction between being rational and being rationalist. Desmet states: "We cannot be rational enough. We have to walk the path of rationality to the very end because that's the only way to really transcend it". However, when we think that "the destiny of life is rational understanding, we go astray" and become rationalist, lapsing into "absurd irrationality".

All totalitarian systems are based on rationalist ideology—the belief that entire society should be reorganized on the basis of a new rationalist ideology—and after a while, they all lapse into extreme absurd irrationality.

True Science Versus Scientism

Desmet makes a crucial distinction: the great scientists—Einstein, Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg—all rejected the idea that life's essence could be understood rationally. Niels Bohr famously said about atoms: "language can only be used as poetry".

Complex dynamical systems theory, which Desmet considers "the most advanced scientific framework at the moment," shows that almost all complex dynamical phenomena in nature "behave literally like an irrational number"—they can be described by mathematical formulas, but even with the formula, you cannot predict how the system will behave. This demonstrates that "the essence of life transcends rationality".

Nietzsche's Early Warning

Desmet references Friedrich Nietzsche's first book "The Birth of Tragedy" (written at age 24), where Nietzsche identified something fundamentally wrong with Enlightenment culture: "it only honors Apollo the god of rationale and it forgot Dionysus". This represents the ultimate consequence of the rationalist view of humanity and the world.

The Role of Reason in Scientific Discovery

McGilchrist emphasizes that great scientists never made their breakthroughs by simply following logical chains of argument. While logic has its place at certain stages, it has never been the way scientists make real breakthroughs. Great scientists possess imagination and intuition; they often say "I've got my answer" but can't immediately explain how they got there, then spend weeks or months working out post-factum justification.

The critical insight: with intuition and imagination, you see that what you think you know cannot be all. In contrast, ordinary scientists may think "they know it all" and that it's "only a matter of time" before science can account for everything.

Reasonable Versus Rational

McGilchrist forcibly reminds us of the distinction between being "reasonable" and being "rational". Reasonable people incorporate understanding of what a human being is, what humans desire, where human life is situated, and what it's for—not just following rationalistic rules.

The Axiomatic Limitations of Science

McGilchrist demonstrates that you can discover in "about 5 minutes" that science cannot possibly answer all questions because it begins (perfectly reasonably) from axioms. Some of science's axioms explicitly rule out purpose, feeling, and value at the beginning. Therefore, at the end, science cannot claim "there is no meaning, there is no purpose, there's no such thing as values in this world".

Science also assumes that a thing and its opposite cannot be true—axiomatic in mainstream science. However, modern physics and ancient wisdom from both East and West recognize that "opposites need one another, give birth to one another, moderate one another, can't live without one another".

Niels Bohr on Profound Truths

Bohr distinguished between "profound truths where their opposite was also true and everyday truths like whether I had milk in my coffee this morning which are just true". He famously stated that "all advanced truth is a paradox" because it transcends rationality.

The Structure of Human Language and Uncertainty

Desmet presents a profound analysis of human uniqueness rooted in language structure. He argues that humans differ from animals not because we know much more but because "our existence and consciousness constantly gravitates around something we do not know".

In animal communication systems, there is a one-to-one relationship between sign and referent—an animal instinctively knows what a sign means, never experiencing existential doubt. In human language, however, "one word can refer to an endless series of objects dependent on the context, dependent on other words". You need words to define other words in an endless chain, meaning "we always lack one word to be certain in life".

Humans are constantly confronted with uncertainty from the first minutes after birth—a young child will furrow its brows "as if it tries to grasp something that it cannot grasp," sensing that "something on the mother's face will always remain uncertain". We can never answer the ultimate question: "what do I have to do to be loved by someone else?".

Uncertainty as the Precondition for Humanity

Paradoxically, "uncertainty is the precondition to be human". Because we can never be certain and nobody can be certain, "we all have the right to live our lives a little bit in our own way taking into account certain ethical rules and awareness". Without uncertainty, "the human being can never be a human being" and "the entire society is dehumanized".

Totalitarianism tries to eliminate uncertainty, and "in trying to do so it eliminates humanity itself".

The Role of the Brain Hemispheres

McGilchrist introduces his hemisphere hypothesis as providing coherent answers to these questions. The conversation explores how different modes of attention—associated with left and right brain hemispheres—relate to rationalism versus embodied, intuitive understanding.

McGilchrist emphasizes that the left hemisphere offers a simplified, categorized, abstracted version of reality useful for manipulation and control. The right hemisphere provides embodied, contextual, paradoxical understanding that recognizes what cannot be fully grasped.

Schizophrenia as Rationalism Taken to Extreme

McGilchrist notes that in schizophrenia, "people try to reason towards conclusions because they've lost their embodied common sensical embeddedness in the world". They stand outside the world "like a Martian trying to interpret it using rules"—exactly how AI works, which is now "our master".

Desmet agrees, noting that "a paranoid system is a strictly logical rational system with an extremely high internal consistency which does not connect to the real anymore". Jacques Lacan, the French psychoanalyst, compared science to delusion, noting they have the same structure. However, Desmet clarifies that "academic discourse and delusions have more or less the same structure" but that seminal scientists knew "there's a limit to rationality and that the essence of life always transcends rationality".

G.K. Chesterton on Madness

McGilchrist cites Chesterton's famous observation: "the madman is not somebody who has lost his reason" but rather "the person who has lost everything but his reason and he's mad because of it". This is profoundly true—the archetypal case of schizophrenia involves trying to reason while having lost embodied common sense.

The Attraction of the Machine Metaphor

Both speakers explore why the machine metaphor is so attractive to humans. Desmet suggests it relates to humanity's struggle with uncertainty. Humans try to protect the Enlightenment illusion that "once we will be certain once there will be no uncertainty anymore".

Sincerity as Antidote to Disconnection

Desmet introduces a powerful concept from Samurai culture: "we disconnect through narcissism and we connect through sincerity". The first rule of Samurai martial arts (Budo) was "speak sincerely". Why was this crucial for developing intuition?

Because Samurai understood that "every time you speak sincerely, you literally punch a hole in your ego". Sincerity means showing what people usually hide behind "outer ideal images behind the veil of appearances". "Every time we speak sincerely, we speak from our most vulnerable point. We decide to take the risk".

Truth Speech and Social Connection

When we speak sincerely, we allow something genuine to resonate between people. This creates real connection as opposed to the narcissistic bubble where we remain isolated. The Samurai understood that technical skills alone don't ensure survival on the battlefield—intuition does. There was a proverb: "it's difficult to learn the techniques of the martial arts but if you do not forget them again before you go to the battlefield you will die on the battlefield".

The Propaganda Machine and Mass Formation

The conversation explores how propaganda exploits lonely, disconnected populations. When people are isolated and anxious, they become susceptible to narratives that promise certainty and control—the essence of totalitarian propaganda.

The Danger of Artificial Intelligence

Both speakers express concern about AI as the ultimate expression of rationalist thinking. AI works exactly like someone with schizophrenia—standing outside reality, trying to interpret it using rules without embodied understanding. The fact that AI is becoming "our master" represents a profound danger.

Rupert Sheldrake and Scientific Dogmatism

McGilchrist references Rupert Sheldrake's "The Science Delusion" (American title: "Science Set Free"), which argues that science needs liberation from narrow mindset. The point is not that science is delusional but that it needs freedom from the irrational belief "that it can achieve everything by following these paths".

Sheldrake's work on morphogenetic fields, proposed 40 years ago, is now emerging in biology as answering questions about the forms that create and maintain living creatures.

The Social Media Revolution and Journalism

During the Q&A section, a question addresses how social media has transformed journalism. The questioner suggests this represents a move toward left-brain dominance and Desmet's theory of propaganda. This opens discussion about how digital technology accelerates disconnection and makes populations more vulnerable to manipulation.

Embodied Practices for Reconnection

A question from someone at the Center for Process Studies asks about "embodied experiences of wholeness that will reconnect us to the rootedness we've lost". This prompts discussion of practices like dreamwork, engagement with nature, and cultivation of sincere speech as ways to counteract totalitarian tendencies.

Historical Patterns and Greek Tragedy

McGilchrist notes that myths from every culture warn about hubris and the downfall of those who think they can be like gods—the subject of all Greek tragedy. "Now we're fulfilling a Greek tragedy and it is a great tragedy because we reached a point I think of great interest and sophistication and we will now destroy ourselves if we're not careful".

The Complexity of the Problem

Both speakers emphasize that the totalitarian problem is far more complex than simple conspiracy theories suggest. It's not about one evil elite that can be destroyed and replaced. Rather, it involves:

• A worldview shared across society
• Economic and social structures that produce isolation
• Technology that amplifies disconnection
• Loss of traditional sources of meaning
• Propagandistic manipulation of anxious populations
• The elevation of technical expertise over wisdom

The Path Forward

While the conversation is largely diagnostic, both speakers suggest that the path forward involves:

1. Recognizing the limits of rationality while still being rational
2. Cultivating sincerity and authentic speech
3. Reconnecting with place, past, people, and the sacred
4. Developing intuition alongside technical skills
5. Understanding that uncertainty is intrinsic to human existence
6. Resisting the seduction of certainty promised by totalitarian systems
7. Maintaining connection to nature and embodied experience
8. Valuing wisdom traditions alongside scientific knowledge

The Fundamental Metaphysical Question

At the deepest level, this conversation addresses whether reality is fundamentally mechanistic (machine-like, fully knowable, controllable) or organic/mysterious (living, partially unknowable, requiring humility). The mechanistic view inevitably leads to technocratic totalitarianism because it suggests that technical experts can and should control all aspects of life. The organic view recognizes inherent limits to control and knowledge, preserving space for human freedom, dignity, and authentic existence.