Crest

Enlarging Thinking

The wave of recent books about the dominance of the brain’s left hemisphere over the right has led me to think we have much greater capacity of mind than we realize. We have been limited by twentieth century models of reality that focused on what could be labeled, categorized ,and analyzed without the input of perceptual intelligence and the overview that underlies wisdom. In his powerful book “The Master and His Emissary” neuroscientist Iain McGilchrest traces the history of world cultures through the lens of which hemisphere of the brain seemed to dominate in each era. Not as simple as the verbal side and the image side, in addition to words and symbols, the left analyzes what’s material and concrete, while the right hemisphere starts with the perceptual reality that sees the whole of where we are. He sees the intensifying domination of the left hemisphere as a dangerous trend that overlooks important situational qualities. The ecology of the world needs the overview to understand the complexity of the relationships between pressing issues. What’s brought our planet to such crisis today is a habit of thinking that only concentrates on parts of a situation. This attitude grew from thinking of the world and universe like a machine. This suited the dominant left hemisphere which sought to handle everything with what it could identify, classify, count, and fix. By the late twentieth century several philosophers suggested it was an untenable model and that we should be thinking in more organic terms, the way one thing affects other things from human industry to nature and weather, the whole inter-related organism of being. As part of the organism model of reality, everything is interdependent. Reality is greater than just what we can identify and grasp. Our model should include the intricate web of relationships within an always unfolding state of being, from the individual to the universal level. Looking at art builds awareness of this crucial property of consciousness. Now that the science behind visual intelligence is available, we can better integrate the powers of the right hemisphere with the left for a more comprehensive understanding of our situation. Teamwork between hemispheres can balance our approach to the serious problems of our time. Spending time with art is always a dialogue between hemispheres. The right hemisphere responds which initiates thought in the left strengthening the communication between them. The left hemisphere tends to disregard the emotions, but neuroscience had found that emotions coordinate cognition. Aware of the overall meaning of a situation emotions initiate thought in relation to the response. By beginning with the sensation and feeling which stimulate the thoughts that connect to them, art strengthens the link between hemispheres.

Inner Truth

The Space Between Words

Over the time that I’ve been teaching it’s been easy to observe how dependent we humans have become on what things are. In a discussion of work a disagreement would crop up that turned out to be because of the words they used. The feeling they were talking about was the same, they just used different labels for the things they identified. The dominance of the written word has allowed truth to be twisted by verbal fluency. Semantics scholar Bruce Powers wrote “…For thousands of years the left hemisphere has suppressed the qualitative judgment of the right and the human personality has suffered from it”. A google search will find several recent books advocating better use of both hemispheres. In his book, “The Alphabet Versus the Goddess” Leonard Shlain noted that the rise of written language was accompanied by the rise of hierarchical societies. Once something was written down the idea existed outside the thinker. This led to disputes about which ideas were right and who had authority to decide. Nobel prize winning scientist David Bohm also saw problems with the dominance of language. Reflecting on the revelations of quantum physics, he felt that words did violence to experience by unnaturally dividing it. The act of labeling and naming of individual objects pushed them apart and emphasized their separation. He felt that naming also led to more sense of separation of the self from the rest of reality, with a feeling of not being part of it. This artificial division led to what Gregory Bateson saw as a mistaken sense of the human individual as separate from their environment. Our dependence on it is as thorough as organs in our body on each other. They have separate functions but depend on each other. So do we. We are a part of a homeostatic organic whole in a constant state of adjustment. Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh used the term “interbeing” for the multiple ways things are connected and dependent on each other and the importance of being grateful for a world that supports and enfolds us. We are learning about interconnections that open new questions. Quantum physics and the wave nature undercut the rigid separation of objects, an illusion partially due to our need to label. In her book “My Stroke of Insight” neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor described one of the effects of the stroke in her left hemisphere as losing the sense of a clear boundary between herself and everything around her. Without the naming and separating function, things lost their individual identity becoming part of an inclusive continuity. More time with art reinforces feelings of things together. The act of looking at art reaches out at the same time it stimulates personal thoughts and feelings offering a place of re-connection.

Deliverance

Visual Growth

Philosophers of embodied meaning draw authority from discoveries in neuroscience which underscore the body as infrastructure for all interaction with the world, the basic relationships to which everything else is compared. It is the basis of our involuntary reactions to the organization of our surroundings. This human heritage is why art from anywhere can move us. The structure and feeling of an image corresponds to the way we relate to the physical world. This common physical heritage is a bridge between cultures. This is why art offers an opportunity to heal artificial divisions between different groups. It’s in the depths that we are the same. At a time when so much attention is directed at surfaces art reminds us of what is beneath opinions and trends. Neither hold any weight next to heartbreak, loss, confusion, triumph, and love which feel the same to all human beings, though strategies for coping can be quite different. Understanding how others cope is often the subject of literature. Their stories give a glimpse into other minds dealing with the struggles of being human. Reading work or looking at art from other cultures show the underlying connection beneath surface differences. Recognizing a feeling prompts a personal story connected to that feeling, reinforcing the shared center. Differences are important if we don’t want our minds to go to sleep. We don’t really take in the familiar so it’s easy to sleepwalk through life if not exposed to enough variety. Instead of making so many distinctions between people according to their variations we might reframe that as how each personal is exceptional. As citizens of one planet, we need to work together. Art is a way to get to know other people we might not cross paths with in life. Variation stimulates the mind and enlarges perceptual sensitivity. Embracing diversity enlarges our conceptual framework with more types of imagery to visualize with. The internet puts art from all over the world at your fingertips and show you more of who you are under the surface. It’s a chance to strengthen the perceptual intelligence essential to any approach to an interconnected world.

Bureaucratic Nightmare