I listened to Russell Brand's Stay Free yesterday. I came because he was interviewing Iain McGilchrist. I stayed because Brand is smart (I always figured he was a clown), fast, and funny. I've only listened to the McGilchrist but I'm getting a Rumble account just so I can subscribe to the full-length Stay Free episodes.
McGilchrist has been using a map analogy lately. He points out that the left hemisphere has a theory, a model, or a map, but it's not the reality. He goes on to say there's nothing wrong with a map, but a map is only useful because it leaves almost everything out. He then says,
A map wouldn't get more useful if you put in all the names of the children who live in the houses along the road.
Brand then interjects, "If the map was for pedophiles . . .". (19:50)
McGilchrist laughs and says, "Thank you for elevating the level of this conversation."
Slayed me.
Two more useful points (time references, btw, are to the Apple Podcast episode which is an abbreviated show . . . I'm not sure how they match the full-length Rumble edition).
The way we look at something matters a lot. . . . The importance of relationship cannot be overstated. Everything is made of relations, not of things. The primary thing is relations and that things are the bits of this picture that stand out to us. 15:20
In the left hemisphere, there just appear to be these isolated things that it targets and then it moves to another target and so on. It sees the world as built-up from fragments and they have no meaning until they are put together in some kind of way. It sees them as static, so it can grab them easily, and familiar, contextualized disembodied, de-animated, and effectively something that is only of use.
Whereas in the right hemisphere you see that nothing is actually completely separate from anything else, but everything is connected in a sort of flowing web so it's not static. It's changing. And the context matters. When you take something out of context, you change it. The world is embodied. That it has emotional and moral value. That it is a living world, a complex and beautiful world. 16:14-17:14
Another good McGilchrist interview:
Iain McGilchrist
