[Whit Blauvelt]

Don,

It’s not clear who you were responding to. I’m not here for a dialog therapy group. But it’s fine if you are, obviously. I, too, have had Buddhist teachers, as well as Jungians, Theosophists, analytic philosophers, participant-observer sociologists…. My closest friends have been musicians, painters, poets, potters, writers and other crafty sorts. Like Walt Whitman, “I contain multitudes.”

I can’t see that the attitude of “If everyone just understood each other’s perspectives, we’d be fine” is one which is supported by McGilchrist’s hypothesis. If it’s even compatible with it, it’s off in quite other territory in terms of sociological or psychology theory. In the arts, in the crafts, some things are more truly crafted than others. Most of what shows up at local craft fairs, for instance, is dreck. Sturgeon’s Law (“90% of everything is crap”) applies across every human endeavor. We won’t arrive at a deep appreciation of the 10% in which excellence is expressed by denying the truth expressed in its aesthetics.

That truth, aesthetic truth, so beautifully described by the old Scottish philosopher Francis Hutcheson in writing which was a huge influence on Thomas Jefferson, is very much a RH accomplishment. Trying to level all our perspectives, regard each as the equal of all others, is the LH gone rampant. There’s far more beauty, far more truth, in some than others. What McGilchrist is about — what I’d hope we’d be about here — is finding and exploring them.

Whit