A Brain Divided

Some neuropsychologists are calling linear thinking the “default state of mind.” According to psychologist Kelly McGoinigal in her work The Neuroscience of Change, in the default state of mind, we hold a critical opinion about the present. By time traveling in our minds, we create an alternate reality, regretting the past and projecting it as a negative liability onto the future. Worrying about the past or future prevents us from giving full attention to the present, and it hinders our ability to focus our creative brains to manage current challenges. The default state of mind also creates a self-referential identity, or ego, separate from others, which linearly leads us to be compelled to defend it. According to psychiatrist, neuroscience researcher, philosopher and literary scholar Iain McGilchrist in his The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning and neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor’s My Stroke of Insight, the human brain consciously perceives and processes information in the left-side hemisphere and unconsciously in the right-side. Although dividing the brain strictly into two regions is an oversimplification and is not a holistic approach, when we think linearly (in “default” or “survival mode”) most activity takes place in the left-side hemisphere; when we are thinking nonlinearly by implementing systems thinking, the majority of activity takes place in the right-side. While the left-side brain is analytical, deterministic, judgmental, reductionist, archetypally masculine, and materialistic, the right brain is observant, nonjudgmental, holistic, archetypally feminine, and spiritual. The left-side primarily perceives and processes information in a more orderly, liability management-focused, linear way, creating a model or perception that separates us from the self-organizing universe. The right-side, however, primarily perceives and processes information in a nonlinear manner creating a model or perception of the world that is holistic and focused on asset management, as it is connected and synced with the inherent self-organizing process of the universe.