Whit Blauvelt
Forum Replies Created
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Hi Andrew,
On the one hand, Iain’s work is immensely valuable. On the other, these forums aren’t where that work is being done. There’s little to no discussion of ongoing discoveries and theories in neuroscience, which might well further advance McGilchrist’s theories. And on the cultural side, there’s largely a lack of understanding of the non-dualism Iain is a proponent of, and instead an embrace of the naive conclusion that the RH-as-good is struggling with the LH-as-evil.
On nondualism, the just-out issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies on “The Legacy of Francisco Varela” has a great lead article, “At the Cradle of Things: The Act of Distinction and Francisco Varela’s Non-Dualist Thought,” by Sebastjan Voros, who includes a quote from The Master in clarifying the “not one, not two” non-dualist view which Varela adopted from Spencer-Brown, and which Iain in turn has focused on.
What we perhaps need to learn to see here is that the very means by which the LH separates itself functionally is in its self-conceptual separation from the RH’s modes of mentality. It divides itself off. When we see people defending their egos in discussions here, that’s the mark of the divided-off further securing its separation. Even Freud, in The Ego and the Id, attributed ego to the LH, in its association (in his view) with language.
It’s not that we should not embrace the analysis from the LH perspective of the mind as divided; it’s that if we then don’t also attain the perspective from which the mind is undivided, we have not found our own “mastery.” When we can see it both as divided, and as one, and alternate freely between those vantages … is that when we’ve really made progress on the path that McGilchrist has helped illuminate for us?
Best,
Whit
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Peter, The claim that wind turbines are shedding is dubious. See https://cleanpower.org/resources/microplastics-and-bpa-in-wind-turbine-blades
cleanpower.org
Claims vs. Facts: Microplastics and BPA in Wind Turbine Blades | ACP
Wind turbine blade coating is not toxic and does not account for large – or any – emissions of BPA or microplastics. Claims have been made that wind turbine blades […]
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That said, where to put turbines is a serious question. Personally, I find them sublimely beautiful in many places — say the offshore wind farms of Denmark. I’m reminded of John Muir, who thought the beauty of Yosemite was in the absence of man, so saw to it that the Native Americans, who had groomed that landscape for centuries, were removed from it. I live in Vermont precisely because it’s a working landscape, an integration of humanity with nature. We love visiting Switzerland for the same reason. But yes, there’s reason to spare some natural vistas from built human intrusion, and to keep what’s added harmonious.
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Richard, “blackmailed newspaper/television publishers and reporters”? Really? Can you provide a single documented example? Do you write off all the news that doesn’t fit into your preferred narrative as there by virtue of some massive, world-wide criminal conspiracy, that can only be whispered about because no one is brave enough to publish plain evidence of it?
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Hi Peter! Thanks for enlarging the discussion. As for feudalism, The Dawn of Everything, which I previously recommended here, presents abundant evidence that there have (pre)historically been many diverse forms of human society, from highly hierarchical (such as feudal, and the Native Americans of the Northwest) to staunchly egalitarian (such as the Native Americans of what’s now central and southern California).
There are strong cross-currents in the telling, too. For instance, the Magna Carta is regarded by some historians as an egalitarian move, while others point out that it only elevated the barons relative to the king, at a time when much of the population felt the king had their interests more in heart than the barons did. In our current context, McGilchrist can’t say anything good about the Puritans, while at the same time venerating Thoreau, whose Walden Pond was provided by Emerson, himself from a long line of Emersons, all Puritan preachers — the Unitarian Universalism of Emerson’s ordination being one branch of the Puritan movement whose other major branch then was Congregationalism.
So if McGilchrist is fair in characterizing the Puritans as LH at least in their origin, we should at least find hope in their evident progress into Thoreau and Emerson’s New England Transcendentalism, which McGilchrist it would seem takes as clearly RH in orientation. Where Cromwell’s Puritans had stripped the saints’ statues out of the churches and closed down the theaters, their Unitarian descendants two centuries later welcomed spiritual wisdoms from the broadest world-wide sources, for instance with Emerson writing a poem celebrating Brahma. How might we help our current narrow-minded, culture-denying “evangelical Christians,” with their political desire for authoritarian, feudal rule, towards a similar evolution?
Hopefully McGilchrist’s upcoming engagement at Hillsdale College, a stronghold of modern Cromwellians seeking to overturn the social order confident in their own divine appointment, is a desire on Iain’s part to move them towards RH transcendental openness, rather than reinforce their longing for a feudal America under “Christian” dominion, in which our modern echoes of Elizabethan theater may also be shuttered, and only passion plays staged.
Might we discover that there are diverse RH-favoring societies, with both authoritarian and egalitarian societies in RH-leaning and LH-leaning forms?
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Daniel,
Just to note, as a climate crisis denier you hardly fit here. Iain, in yesterdays’ Zoom lesson, started his talk by mentioning the global “meta-crisis,” then listing “climate” first among the many crises comprising it.
Then again, Iain has broad tolerance, as shown by a talk at Hillsdale College being in his schedule. That’s a Freewill Baptist institution, run by the most conservative lineage of the English Puritan movement, for which its founder was executed by James 1. Iain expressed utter contempt for Puritans later in yesterday’s session. He attributes the removal of Catholic iconography from the churches to the Puritans, and views that as somewhat of a crime against the RH. The Freewill Baptists are strongly literalist, LH in their reading of Scripture, which was why in New England they broke from the more liberal Puritan mainline, which largely became Congregationalist, which was the background of Thoreau (whom Iain worships) and his friend Emerson (who was from a long line of Congregationalist preachers).
Today’s Freewill Baptists in America are largely, as you may know, Trumpists, while those of us raised in the Congregational branch of the Puritan tradition (including myself) believe the answers to our meta-crisis aren’t to be found in a Trumpist dictatorship or the Christianist dominion favored openly by the current Speaker of the House. It does seem you are of that party. Excuse me if I’ve mistaken you.
Whit
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Quite right, Don. They pretend to be rational, and consider themselves such, but in ways closely akin to schizophrenia — which is entirely what McGilchrist focuses on. So we get elaborate constructions from them which are largely divorced from the evidences of reality. Whatever evidence is brought before them which contradicts their delusions, they rationalize away, spinning their web of madness to encompass ever more. Also, as we’ve recently seen here, they love to troll, and they admire others who model trolling, such as Trump’s recent echoing of the Nazi theme that those who oppose his desire to be the great leader are “vermin,” with all that implies.
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Okay, Facebook’s “Activity Log” have links to articles on several news sites’ articles where I joined in the comments sections following articles in 2015-2017, where the links now go to articles but not the comments … ah ha, here’s the basis of your slur, an obvious tongue-in-cheek comment I made to Facebook itself, to an article linked by “Democrats.com” after the 2016 election:
“With our combined nuclear forces, the Russian-American alliance can enjoy total greatness over all the darker-skinned peoples of the world. All that’s required is a demonstration of the Russian-US willingness to use nukes against those who export refugee terrorists. Only those who can block Trump in the Electoral College stand between us and the glorious future of the Russian-American Empire.”
This is, in your reading, my proposing a devious scheme to block Trump? Seriously? I was writing from within the perspective of a Trump and Putin supporter, standing in his shoes, exploring empathy for his view. Trump has always openly admired Putin; many Trump supporters today take Putin’s side against Ukraine. But … where is the “scheme” to pervert the electoral college you claim I was promoting? You mean, something like Trump wanted Pence to do for him on January 6, 2021? Nah. I’m not that clever.
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Ah, Facebook. I was checking Twitter, where I only ever posted three things, all in 2011, right after Irene hit NY. All were brief, one about a free wifi network temporarily in Manhattan, one saying “Irene goodnight,” and one saying “yeah” to a colleagues post on Irene. Forgot I ever had a Twitter account, but there it is. No idea why Google returns my long-ago Twitter handle with Bulgarian. It was funny though.
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Please quote what you believe you found on Twitter from 2016. It’s well known that Russian disinformation factories take on many false identities and photos stolen from elsewhere to post divisive garbage on every side of any issue in which they may foster divisions in democratic societies. If someone was doing that sort of thing using my name in 2016 … well, I worked in internet security for decades, and frankly there’s nothing to be accomplished. Bring suit in Russia for identity theft? The point is, you have slandered me here. You have violated the spirit of our joint inquiry into the shaping of contemporary consciousness, seemingly in the belief that we should not pursue it if some of the evidence of dysfunction extends to examining the rampant conspiracy theories on the political right, including that covid vaccines contain microchips to control us (espoused by Cardinal Burke, who was just finally kicked out of his Vatican apartment by the Pope, bless him); that climate science is a hoax perpetrated by a prevailing Marxism among the educated (I know many scientists who recognize the climate threat; not one is Marxist); and that Jews are engineering the replacement of “white” people by immigrants, under the claimed leadership of Soros.
These are all symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. They are symptoms that are made sense of by the hemispheric hypothesis.
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This is too funny. Did a Google search to see if my name has appeared in Twitter (where I’ve never posted a single thing), to find something in what Google thinks is Bulgarian. (Or is it Russian?) No idea why someone writing in that alphabet would pretend to have my name. Were they posting electoral college schemes in 2016, as accused?
twitter.com
<cite role=”text”>https://twitter.com › whitfb</cite>
Отваря профилната снимка. Следване. Щракни за Следване whitfb. Whit Blauvelt. @whitfb. Присъединяване: август 2011 г. 3 следвани · 0 последователи.
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Daniel,
I’ve not accused my brother of anything. I’ve merely described his views. My own reaction when he expresses some of them has been, “Do you really mean that, or are you joking?” They’re as outlandish as they seem. I exaggerate them not at all.
What “social media” do you accuse me of? I’ve never had a presence on Facebook or its like. Nor have I any past nor present interest in rigging the electoral college. You do seem to like making stuff up to slander people, in typical wing-nut troll fashion. What are you doing here? This is a space for more civilized, intellectually honest discussion.
Whit
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Daniel,
Nothing you’ve posted here addresses the major issues McGilchrist delves into in his volumes. You make it clear that you object to discussing how hemispheric imbalance affects some of the primary issues in our current crisis of civilization, despite that this crisis is the obvious motivator for McGilchrist to spend the years assembling his books. Instead, you focus on his observation that empathy is largely a RH capacity, as if the only lesson you’ve taken is that empathy is good. I doubt McGilchrist would be satisfied with a summary of his work which simply says, “Then we need more empathy.” Lack of empathy, per the hemispheric hypothesis, isn’t so much a cause of the imbalance as an effect.
Nor does empathy require us to give credence to crackpot views, such as that concern for the Earth’s climate is some grand political conspiracy among scientists. People simply aren’t that good at conspiring at that scale. Effective conspiracies are among relatively small groups of people.
Technologies can backfire. Romans poisoned themselves with lead pipes for plumbing. We’re poisoning our world in myriad ways, including atmospheric emissions. Empathy is not an effective antidote for poison.
To see the beauty in the world, and the beauty in people, we have to also be open to see the ugliness there. There’s a great deal of both about, as it’s ever been, yet the swing is towards exaggeration on the ugly side of late, as our societies lose vision of both past and future, and dwell in a shallow presentism. To appreciate the depths and breadths of time, that’s also a RH capacity. I’m in the middle Raymond Tallis’s Of Time and Lamentation: Reflections on Transience. It’s conjunction with McGilchrist forms a quite rich and interesting space.
Whit
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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
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Michael Moore is no scientist. Nor are the tens of thousands of scientists who are analyzing the climate change threat extremists. I know some of them personally. They’re quite sane, and largely apolitical, aside from their concern with human survival.