Why are you the way that you are? Why do you hurry, or focus on the technical details, or let your mind drive up anxiety and worry? Do you know? Or, do you, like most people, simply take for granted that your internal state is inevitable and largely unchangeable? That you're just a happenstance combination of genetics, upbringing, scarring social moments, and the civilizational frame you've been brought up in? Neuroscientist, philosopher, psychiatrist, and author Iain McGilchrist (The Matter with Things, The Master and His Emissary) proposes that the essence of your *you*-ness isn't an external phenomenon, and isn't even encoded in your genetics. It's a byproduct of the way your brain is organized, where the left hemisphere - that cataloguing and exacting nag - has effectively taken over not just your cognition, and our cognition, but that of the entire species. Left hemisphere dominance is the reason that capitalism is so corrosive, why our jobs suck and our lives lack meaning, why the singing of birds and the sighing of the wind have lost their luster. It is the key to understanding ourselves, our society, our civilization... and maybe, even, our future.

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  #psychology #polarization #neuroscience