115 / The Making of the Western World / Iain McGilchrist

Psychiatrist, lecturer, and author Dr. Iain McGilchrist joins me for this episode. We discuss some of the themes and ideas presented in his book The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. In the very beginning of this interview, Dr. McGilchrist presents a detailed picture of the "divided brain"—specifically, the evolutionary and adaptive perceptual functions of the left and right hemispheres of the brain. We then discuss how the balance, or imbalance, of these relatively different perceptual functions inherent to each hemisphere of the brain informed the development and trajectory of human cultures and societies, up to the present. More specifically, we discuss how the Western worldview (the value systems that have been cultivated in predominantly Western societies), over the course of thousands of years, began to favor a more "left brain" form of organized thinking and cultural development, and how this predominantly "left brain" thinking has lead our civilization, now global in scope, towards the brink of wide-scale ecological devastation. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/iain-mcgilchrist // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast