Ever since I heard about this book I’ve been kind of obsessed with it, for reasons I do not know, but I remember the name of the book poking my head for around a year until I finally picked it up, and when I did, I finally understood why I needed to read this— as it’s packed with so much insight I had to take hundreds of notes. The book took me a long time to finish, as it was painfully interesting, meaning that I got restless and had to put the book down at so many points despite being fascinating, to the degree I started (in jest) to wonder if my left-hemisphere was trying to defend itself.

Although I didn’t expect it to be, as the book was about brain hemispheres, it is hands down my favorite philosophical book I’ve read, up there with Maps of Meaning and Theory Of Everything. It has crystallized something I’ve been yearning to have crystallized ever since I was exposed to Alexander Lowen— meaning a proper defense of the body, and more, something that ties authenticity with mindfulness (although the author never uses that word) — ties in my loosely connected ideas of narcissism, schizophrenia, autism and… caffeine— even more, it has given me a mental tool of sorts that can apply to anywhere and anything. Although I’ve enjoyed making music the last couple years, the book made me realize, for example, that music isn’t merely re-presenting something, but is, in itself, whole and complete, and the experience of music is self-explanatory, it’s more accurate to say it’s “presenting” itself, thus the book has made me pay a different quality of attention to the way I play, which is an extraordinary feat from a book in my opinion.

The question McGilchrist brings up in the beginning is: “Why do all creatures with a neuronal system have two hemispheres?” Considering that the brain’s strength is its interconnectedness, a valid question would be why it’s not just one piece. He answers that the two hemispheres have two very distinct roles, “personalities,” and perceive the world fundamentally differently. For example, the left-hemisphere looks at the world by focusing on parts and pieces, and builds up generalizations from there, while the right-hemisphere starts at the whole picture, and goes down into the particulars.

The left-hemisphere is interested in the explicit, in numbers, facts, generalizations, categories, division, bits, and pieces, fixed, static, “knowable facts,” isolated, disembodied, mechanics, function, and utility, and is typically close-minded and arrogant, has a false sense of optimism, spot-light attention — it focuses on the whatness of something, re-presenting the world,

Whereas the right-hemisphere is in the realm of the implicit, beauty, meaning, context, changing, living, “ineffable truths,” wholeness, interconnectedness, melancholy, empathy, feeling, reading faces, wide-awareness, it’s interested in the howness of something, embodied, experiencing the world,

The central thesis of the book is that the world is threatened by a left-hemisphere dominance, which has been growing, especially in the West, ever since Plato. And McGilchrist makes the point that the left-hemisphere has become dominant over the right-hemisphere, whereas the natural order is that the right-hemisphere is dominant over the left-hemisphere. The right trusted the left and left it alone to its powers, and the left has become “power sick” so to speak.

The natural order is first something introduced to the right-hemisphere, then the left-hemisphere works out the details in an intermediate phase and reports back to the right-hemisphere to complete the picture.

In the first part of the book, McGilchrist goes into detail explaining the differences in the hemispheres by showing us experiments of split-brain patients, and people who have had damage to either hemisphere. What was striking to me was that a person can function surprisingly well with only half of their brain intact, which goes to show that a hemisphere is indeed an autonomous sub-personality, so to say. It was striking to me to see how split-brain patients were incredible at confabulating and rationalizing their strange behavior, for example, claiming their hand was their dead mother’s hand.

“The left hemisphere is the equivalent of the sort of person who, when asked for directions, prefers to make up something rather than admit to not knowing.”

Scary to think this is half of our brain!

In the second part of the book, he lays out the cultural and philosophical advancements of the last two thousand years in the West, reflecting on periods of left and right hemisphere dominance.

Although (or because) he discussed such a broad number of topics, I’m a bit surprised he didn’t mention caffeine, and what that has done to our society. Reading this book, kept clicking in place the idea that caffeine makes people (and society) more left-hemisphere dominant. Considering how caffeine ticks off almost every single box on the left-hemisphere behavior checklist (false sense of optimism, less empathy, more interest in things) and is even congruent with the neurochemistry (caffeine is dopaminergic, left hemisphere functions on dopamine, while the right hemisphere is norepinephrine). I suppose it’s a pretty “wild” argument, but McGilchrist said himself that schizophrenia, excessive left-hemispheredness, is treated by dopamine-blockers, to even out the brain dominance.

Whether or not caffeine has any real impact on a hemisphere shift, I think the book indirectly illustrated beautifully why one wouldn’t take it. Huberman, for example, stated that alleviation of mild depression is one of the benefits of caffeine. But the book makes a case for the right-hemisphered “melancholy” nature, as opposed to the unjustified optimism of the left. McGilchrist puts it beautifully when he says that melancholy is the core element of all feeling, of all music. And to reduce suffering is to reduce feeling overall. Sadness and empathy is highly correlated, and that’s perhaps why artificial stimulants of caffeine make me less empathic, because it makes me less sad.


As for the thesis itself in part 2— I didn’t find it extremely compelling. The book goes into length of specific authors and specific works of art, discussing at length his favorite and his not-so-favorite writers of the Renaissance for quite some time, for example. It might be that I’m not equally as cultured as McGilchrist, but many sections here made me want to go to sleep. I can hardly see how detailed discussions of particular pieces of art bear any relevance to the general hemisphere-dominance of an entire historical period. It just seems a bit far-fetched.

I’ve never been able to swallow the idea that the right-hemisphere is supposed to be the “master,” the dominant hemisphere. They seem so equal from a purely physical perspective, so it never made sense to me one should have a natural dominance over the other. Of course, different roles, but dominance?

I prefer to look at them as partners in crime. McGilchrist makes it seem as if the conscious mind is not significant at all, it’s just at the tip of the iceberg, and the conscious processes and thoughts are at the mercy of the huge machinery of the sub-conscious mind, gathered from the right-hemisphere.

In McGilchrist’s view, the left-hemisphere should only be a loyal servant, an accountant, one that grabs tools, does arithmetic and procedures, and reports back to the right hemisphere. He says that the left hemisphere (conscious intent) falsely believes he’s the originator, but in fact, he’s merely the receiver. But I don’t buy that completely. Maxwell Maltz in Psychocybernetics made the opposite claim that the subconscious machinery is under the control of the conscious mind, because the conscious mind can make intentions through words and imagery, and the subconscious will start to cram to make those ideals a reality. From this perspective, the subconscious is the servant of the conscious mind.

My third and last main criticism of the book is that he overplays the significance of hemisphere dominance bias on the effects of society. McGilchrist discusses East-Asian countries, especially Japan, for a considerable length, and this was a painfully obvious blindspot to him.

If our society can be “saved” by shifting our neurological dominance back to the right-hemisphere, we should have a look at today’s societies where the right-hemisphere is dominant and see what’s going on there. According to McGilchrist, parts of East Asia, especially Japan is right-hemisphered.

Because the Japanese are right-hemisphere dominant, McGilchrist seems to have decided to romanticize their society. He says the Japanese have a strong obligation to belong, and they are able to pay attention to and remember context to a greater degree.

He writes “In general the Japenese place far more emphasis on individual existing things than on generalities, are more intuitive, and less cognitive, when compared with Westerners, and are not so easily swayed by logic or system building.”

While it is interesting that the Japanese do seem to be more right-hemisphered dominant, and their language and philosophy (lack of Plato) reflect this, the problem is that if you take a look at Japanese society, it is the modern dystopia of left-hemisphere excessiveness that McGilchrist goes on such a pain to describe when he talks about what a society that is left-hemisphered dominant will look like.

If anything, modern Japan represents the limits of McGilchrist’s thesis. He presents Japan as if it’s a big garden where everyone is shooting arrows, drinking teas, holding hands, and solving Zen paradoxes together. In reality, Japan is suffering from an epidemic of loneliness, their birth rates are dropping dramatically, one of the lowest in the world, their society has no place for eroticism, romanticism, or even dating, and their society is not sustainable.

And don’t even get me started on China.

While yes, the right-hemispheredness of a strong sense of obligation to belong is great, I believe every quality of the hemisphere has dark sides to it as well. I, for one, don’t look at modern Japan or other parts of East Asia as examples of types of societies the West wants to move in the direction of.

Of course, there are many complex reasons why Japan is what it is today, and my point isn’t to disregard the thesis but to illustrate just how insignificant right-hemisphere dominance is in modern society at large.

McGilchrist does mention that Eastern cultures are now adapting the Western model and is “sadly outdoing the West at its own pernicious game,” but this doesn’t seem right to me. The Japanese, as the studies McGilchrist alludes to, show that they are still more right-hemisphered dominant, despite “outdoing the West in their perniciousness.” Again, it goes to show that the isolating effects of modernity cannot be attributed to one hemisphere. Actually, much of the Japanese mental illness can be directly attributed to right-hemisphered traits.

I am not welcome to McGilchrist's sort of apologetic anti-West sentiments, claiming that the West's "pernicious ways" is somehow a mind virus poisoning the earth. Nor am I enthusiastic about his notion that capitalism is a left-hemisphere trait, and saying capitalism is antagonistic to life. The thing he is overlooking here is that capitalism gives rise to economic wealth, which lifts the rest of the world out of poverty, which ultimately leads to more people on the planet, more overall wealth of experience, and yes Iain, more right-hemispheres in total. I am willing to sweep his anti-Western sentiments under the carpet considering he does seem to show a high regard of Western culture, despite our inherent awfulness, somehow.

So, on the whole, I think McGilchrist is a bit too overly eager to attribute importance to the hemispheres, although, there’s tons of validity in his claims, and is infinitely mysterious and interesting to me how dominance shifts from one hemisphere to another based on the spirits of the time, language and philosophy.

So, while the hemisphere discussions should be put in their place, the book is a philosophical goldmine, and really challenged me, and contextualized many of the “left-hemisphere” views, such as that A = A. Ever since Plato’s “Law of the Excluded Middle”, there had been no room for paradox in philosophy, no room for common sense, no room for ambiguity. Poetry and mysterious writing were seen as hocus pocus or mental illness, and the framework of hemispheres is a really useful lens to look at philosophy, and in particular, think if most philosophers throughout the centuries were on the autistic spectrum. (Nooo, that kant be true?)

The discussion of how language originated from music, and music from the body, was fascinating. The idea that all words are ultimately metaphors of experiences grounded in the body makes sense to me. It’s a great insight. Take the kiki / bouba effect for example, people with no knowledge of a language can guess what goes with which object, exposing the idea that language is merely arbitrary signs.

Something that has haunted me the last six months or so, ever since reading Ken Wilber, was how strongly the sense of “self” depended on society, as our innermost experience of thought is predicated on language, which is dictated by society. As McGilchrist writes, the very structures and content of thought itself are in the body prior to their utterance of language. The language of that society “hands down to you,” is in part an emergence of the body itself. That is somewhat comforting.

In Western philosophy, there has been a repeated theme that rationality and the body are at odds, so to say. However, McGilchrist makes a wonderful case that the structure of reason comes from our embodiment. And this would be antithetical to someone like Kant, who says that reason is what differentiates us from animals. Language, thought and reason are just extensions of the cognitive mechanisms that allow us to perceive, move about, and act in the world.

McGilchrist says there are three ways out of this self-referential feedback loop of the left hemisphere, and into the right hemisphere: the body, art, and the spirit. Other than that, however, he does not provide many practical tips. One reason I think mindfulness has caught fire in the West is because we’ve recognized our left-hemisphere overindulgence, and mindfulness, to me, seems to be the most practical and direct way of addressing the issue. Mindfulness, in this paradigm, is the deliberate balancing act between optimal wide awareness and focused attention.

In conclusion, I don’t agree with everything he has to say, but it is one of my favorite books I’ve read so far because it ties in so much with what I’ve been thinking and working with about the last ten years of my life. The book is so much more than I expected it to be. It's my favorite philosophy book, its framework can be used widely and deeply, and there are countless interesting things here that no review can justify. I love books that change me simply by reading them, few books do that, it was a truly "hemisphere-expanding" reading... Brilliant.