Why the left brain became dominant

Iain McGilchrist offers 6 reasons why Western society has become unbalanced, favoring the left brain hemisphere over the right:

• There are several reasons why the left hemisphere’s view has become the dominant one. Our speech centers are predominantly in the left hemisphere; that voice in your head (who you think you are) is generated in the left hemisphere. The right hemisphere has no voice and much of its processing remains unconscious to us.

• The left hemisphere provides certainty and easy answers which we prefer to the ambiguity of the right hemisphere. Certainty is comforting, making the left hemisphere’s view more appealing and harder to transcend.

• The left hemisphere is responsible for grasping and amassing things which is crucial for survival.

• Since the industrial revolution we have built a world around us which unlike the natural world reflects the left hemisphere’s vision.

• The left hemisphere is responsible for confabulating; making up stories that aren’t true. Therefore it will pretend to know what the right hemisphere knows even when it doesn’t.

• The mathematician Godel proved that there are always truths within any system that can’t be proved within that system. Unfortunately, the left hemisphere doesn’t understand this making it easy to get trapped in its own view.