The sides of the human brain

marfig

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TED has published a fascinating talk by psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist about the left and right hemispheres of our brains. What we now understand them to be (debunking some old myths), how they interact with each other and the profound effect they have in our lifes. More importantly even, the fact we do seem to have the power to, collectively as a society, influence one hemisphere over the other and how this can affect our social and personal well-being.

If there's one summation I'd like to do, it is precisely the profound and devastating effect this can have on us as individuals and how it affects our societies:

Iain McGilchrist said:
Nowadays, we live in a world that is paradoxical. We pursue happiness and it leads to resentment, and it leads to unhappiness, and it leads in fact to an explosion in mental illness. We pursue freedom, but we live now in a world that is more monitored and in which our daily lives are more subjected to a network of small complicated rules that cover the surface of life and strangle freedom.

His talk was animated by the excellent crew at RSA Animate, which did previews work for TED. It's a must see and hear talk and one you should listen to a few times, taking your time between them (days, if you must), digesting the wealth of crucial and life-saving information Ian throws at you.

It is available here: http://www.ted.com/talks/iain_mcgilchrist_the_divided_brain.html

The talk itself comes in the sequence of Ian's book "The Master and Emissary", a detailed and highly documented scientific study of the hemispheric function of the brain. It's a tremendously important book to anyone wishing to understand a good deal of ourselves, both individually and as a society. If the talk left you hungry for more, that has to be your next step.
 
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