This is a critique of a presentation by Iain McGilchrist while he attempts sort of an extended version of his response to "The metacrisis" which we covered here
The speakers are:
Iain McGilchrist [IM]
Presenter [PR]
Audiance Questions [Audience]
0:04 [Music]
0:24 welcome to pey house uh you're all sitting in the chapel of the Resurrection my name is George West daver I'm the principal here it's
0:31 wonderful to have you all here today uh the event today is being put on by uh
0:37 the center of theology law and culture here at pey house and the Ian Ramsey Center in Partnership also with exor
0:44 college Ian Ramsey Center supported by the University of Warsaw and the John Templeton Foundation it's um uh where
0:51 where're this is the first part of a dayong colloquium happening tomorrow uh
0:57 unfortunately no more spaces at the colloquium but but uh uh which that will take place at at exitor College um thank
1:04 you to Charles Foster for organizing that there's a if you're moved to uh
1:11 support this yourself there's a donation machine here in the center I don't have the same gift of saying that as
1:17 eloquently as you do Dr Price but uh if I evoke your spirit maybe that will will help um the uh and the pey end of things
1:25 Dr Jonathan price uh the mraic fellow lay fellow uh here at PE in St cross and
1:31 um Dr John ritsa researcher administrator at the center of theology La culture have have to helped to put
1:38 all this on today it's a real pleasure to welcome Dr
1:43 imag Gilchrist uh I will be very brief so that we get to listen to him more he
1:48 is a consultant psychiatrist uh a writer philosopher uh has inspired many people
1:54 he was a former prize Soul a prize fellow at all Soul's college and the author in particular of the master and
2:01 his Emissary and the matter with things the master and his Emissary one
2:06 of those seminal books that change the way people think about the relationship of Psychiatry and philosophy and
2:12 cultural studies I was particularly grateful because uh you uh helped me to
2:17 argue that uh the allegorical and typological interpretation encouraged by the Oxford movement is knit into the
2:23 matter with things so that's what I now tell people I I point to you as a Inspire of my own research uh the talk
2:30 he will be giving this afternoon is called Dominus illuminatio May our brains our delusions and the
2:37 future of the University we welcome Dr imma Gest a few months ago I had a dream I
2:44 was at a party in what was clearly as it is with dreams part of the bodian library a beautiful room with huge
2:50 Gothic Windows opening on the street while we were all chatting and laughing I noticed that a torrent of water was
2:57 moving swiftly outside and and had already reached halfway up the gigantic windows I thought there's no way these
3:05 flimsy window panes can hold back this weight of water I saw that we and everything the room with its cases of
3:11 fine old books would within seconds be swept to
3:16 destruction my fellow partygoers not only seemed entirely oblivious to the water but when I drew their attention to
3:23 what was going on outside the windows were unperturbed and insisted that everything was fine they carried on ⮦⮋⮧
Dismissal without consideration is the most common form of denial. It’s typically where the idea of being “disconnected from reality” comes from. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_them_eat_cake
3:30 laughing and sipping their cocktails I however
3:35 left today I will offer some Reflections on the future of the University not
3:40 merely or mainly this University but the universities of the West in
3:46 general my main concern is what I consider to be the drifting away from a
3:52 neglect even an abandonment of the pursuit of Truth ⮦⮋⮧ The Pursuit that is
I do hear it has been becoming more popular recently.
3:58 ultimately the only only justification of a university I'm not speaking only of the
4:04 truth intended by our forebears when they chose as the motto of this University Dominos Illuminati Maya
4:12 though I do mean that as well for according to their way of seeing things truth of all kinds emanated from and was
4:19 illuminated by the sacred nature of its source truth is a searing searching
4:27 matter not to be dismissed convenience the truth I see abandoned is
4:33 of many different kinds for that reason to the Casual Observer each might seem
4:38 unrelated to the others but they are related and insight into what makes them
4:44 all cohere indeed makes each of them inevitable comes As I Shall explain from
4:50 understanding an aspect of the way in which the brain constructs the
4:56 world I remember when I was 17 hearing the most profoundly affecting
5:02 speech of my life I can still see the radio set in my parents kitchen as I
5:08 listen to it in when Solzhenitsyn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn Nobel Prize https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_Nobel_Prize_in_Literature speech entitled one word of
5:16 truth I assume it must have been voiced by an actor as this man who had suffered every kind of evil in the attempt to
5:23 break his will and Destroy his Humanity was not able to deliver the speech in Stockholm in person
5:30 the effect on me in any case was electrifying the title we are told is
5:35 from a Russian saying one word of Truth outweighs the whole world a saying which
5:42 of course had ineffable weight in the context in which it was being delivered
5:47 it spoke of those who had grown up indoctrinated in a system of Lies built
5:53 on lies lies that were so blatant that the only way to maintain them was to
5:59 punish severely those who in any way challenged them or even demurred at them ⮦⮋⮧
Sounds Familiar
6:05 of course at the time I realized how very fortunate we were that we lived in a
6:10 quite different Society where discussion was free and where there were no questions you could not
6:17 ask but that was then. for over 2,000 years in the
6:23 platonic and later the Christian world the tradition of Western thought human
6:29 life was seen as orientated towards three great values: goodness, Beauty and
6:34 Truth each of them in turn seen as a manifestation of an aspect of the
6:40 Sacred during my lifetime I have seen each of these important values along with the sacred repudiated and
6:48 reviled less and less attention is given these days to the inner nature of
6:53 goodness as a disposition towards the world too often it seems that goodness has been reduced to rule following and
7:00 good actions determined by a form of bloodless utilitarian accountancy beauty is dismissed as
7:07 Irrelevant in an era that respects only one value namely power ⮦⮋⮧ so that no artist
I think this mostly has to do with Utilitarian materialism (Hedonism for the rich) being normalized and popularized by finance and pop culture, with scientists abdicating the philosophical aspects to religion, where philosophers have become ensconced in the ivory tower to differentiate them from the “self help profession” by people who are more often trying to be influencers instead of teachers. and having no basis other than some variation of hedonism that mostly unsustainable for the middle class and below. Which is not a uniquely atheist thing and has occurred in the past.
7:14 now wishes his or her art to be praised for its beauty only for being
7:20 powerful and Truth is dismissed inevitably as part of the rhetoric of
7:26 power supposedly decreed at whim to suit those who hold the power everyone it is
7:32 argued is entitled to their own truth what are we left with ⮦⮋⮧ our only
Just a reminder being “Entitled to their own truth” is just another way of advocating for Moral Relativism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_relativism . Which many people consider to be amoral.
7:38 value seems to be the self-centered one of utility but as lesing pointed out in
7:44 the 18th century the utilitarian has to answer the question useful for
7:51 what the question points onwards to the necessity of other values Beyond those
7:56 of mere power to manipulate without such further and greater values we flounder
8:02 set a drift in a chaotic and meaningless world where our best bet would be to make our solitary poor nasty and brutish
8:10 lives at least as short as possible as it turns out this question
8:16 of value and particularly that of Truth leads us to consider what is known about lateralization in human brain function https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateralization_of_brain_function
8:24 I'm not going to spend time on the evidence here for one thing it's far too extensive and for another I've laid it
8:30 out Elsewhere for those who wish to examine it at leisure in great detail in two long books the master and his
8:37 Emissary The Divided brain and the making of the Western World published in
8:42 2009 and in a more recent book the matter with things our brains our delusions and the unmaking of the World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matter_with_Things
8:49 published in 2021 I'm going to go straight to a characterization of some of the core
8:55 findings so please forgive me if these are lacking in finesse to some extent
9:00 that is inevitable for present purposes as I'm sure you will understand in a nutshell each hemisphere
9:08 has evolved for darwinian reasons ⮦⮋⮧ to pay a different kind of attention to the
So, here is sort of where the problem begins. Because the mistake here, is extrapolating from his own experience, rather than looking for less advanced versions in the animal kingdom.
I think this is apparent even in the wiki page, language is one of the only structures of the brain which exists exclusively in one hemisphere and not the other. Almost all other neural processes in the brain are duplicated in both hemispheres in the brain.
This is because the information that the brain receives from the sense organs is very noisy. So the brain, tries to duplicate most sensory information and then do whatever neural processes and then compare the spiking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiking_neural_network to filter out the noise.
All of that occurs in lower animals without language.However, all of the things which you have associated with “brain lateralization” are mostly cultural or related to language, when not related to bodily functions and motor skills. And thus, do not exist in non-verbal animals.
On top of that, there is the WEIRD error of recognizing that these functions, like creative writing, or logic, are entirely a result of cultural technology and if they were biologically based, first would be more evenly distributed in the population, but also would have brain anomalies in cultures without them, which obviously has never been detected and would be hard to miss.
At best most of this talk seems to be trying to use the hemisphericity as a metaphor for something else, but is too oversimplified to really talk meaningfully about a multi-polar world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarity_%28international_relations%29 .
At worst, it reinforces a false dichotomy that seems to be more akin to the idea that all scientific reductionists (Atheists?) are one way, and all religious or virtuous people think another way.
However, this ends up being a dysfunctional form of Behaviorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behaviorism because it just asserts certain brain areas being associated with certain behaviors.
When I am not so busy, I will eventually get around to reading your book on the subject, but these are my initial opinions. I think you recognized that before you wrote this, having written it after my critique of the meaning crisis. I noticed that the more recently uploaded version of this talk had the section on the dunning-Kruger effect removed.
9:14 world the left hemisphere has evolved to pay narrow beam attention focused peace
9:19 meal on a detail that we already know and desire and are intent on grabbing
9:25 and getting whether it be something to eat or to use in some other way the left
9:31 hemisphere exists in the service of manipulation the right hemisphere
9:36 meanwhile is on the lookout for everything else that is going on while we're intent on
9:42 manipulation for mate specifics Offspring and predators so as not to be
9:49 eaten while eating its attention is Broad sustained
9:54 coherent Vigilant the right hemisphere is in the service of understanding the whole ⮦⮋⮧
This is where we fall into the false dichotomy issue, because it ignores the possibility of more than one type of manipulator, which blinds them to most other threats by using very oversimplified or stereotypical attributes which result both type 1 and type 2 errors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_I_and_type_II_errors which ostensibly causes more problems that it solves due to increasing rather than decreasing accuracy in categorizing the origins of various manipulations. More to the point however, it doesn’t describe in any meaningful way how attention works, it just asserts how attention works while giving the false impression to people that they are more aware of what is going on than they are. The truth is that all attention is like little spotlights that are about 5% of your visual field which is the “attention” and the “seeing things as a whole” is not something most animals can do, lacking understanding and concepts for most of the world, which once again, has nothing to do with the physical structure of their brains. The “holistic view” of the world cannot be had, while simultaneously focusing only on what is in front of the eyes. Just like how a child and an adult can look at a technical schematic or a map, while only one of them actually understands what they are looking at holistically. Despite having similar brain structures.
10:00 context which is nothing less than everything else in the world the difference then is not as used to be
10:07 supposed to do with what each hemisphere does so much as the way in which it does
10:13 it each hemisphere is involved in everything we do just in a consistently
10:18 different way the hemispheric difference in attention is not disputed indeed it
10:24 is universally attested and since the nature of attends attention ⮦⮋⮧ also
I would ask by who, as this seems to mostly be a pop-culture phenomena.
10:30 indisputably changes what it is that comes to our attention such a difference
10:36 cannot but lead to two ⮦⮋⮧ different phenomenological
It’s a lot more than 2. More to the point, the difference as referred to previously, has to do with the knowledge and intelligence of the entity that is experiencing the perception. Based on the clutural information they have, not the structure of the brain. There are a lot more then 2 cultures and each perspective “changes what it is that comes to our attention” instead of assuming that everyone is like you.
10:41 worlds what are these two worlds like very briefly if crudely they could
10:47 be characterized like this in the case of the left hemisphere a world of
10:52 isolated static things things moreover that are already known for Millions
10:59 predetermined fixed of bits fragments that are decontextualized disembodied ⮦⮋⮧ meaningless
I assume here is is trying to poetically describe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductionism however it would be incorrect to call that meaningless.
11:07 abstract generic in nature fungible infinitely reproducible quantifiable
11:15 mechanical useful then but ultimately bloodless and lifeless this is indeed
11:21 not so much a world as a representation of a world which means a world that is actually no longer present but
11:29 reconstructed after the fact two-dimensional schematic ⮦⮋⮧
It only appears two dimensional to people who can’t imagine more complex things.
11:34 theoretical and here the future is a fantasy that remains under our
11:40 control in the case of the right Hemisphere by contrast there is a world of flowing processes ⮦⮋⮧ not isolated things
This seems like a description of Confucianism harmony.
Which is different from something based around family structure.
11:48 one where nothing is just fixed entirely certain exhaustively known or fully
11:54 predictable but always changing and ultimately interconnected with everything else
11:59 else where what exists are holes of which what we call the parts are an
12:06 artifact of our way of attending where what really matters is implicit and must
12:12 remain so a world of uniqueness one where quality is more important than
12:17 quantity a world that is essentially animate here the future is a product of
12:24 realism not denial this is a world that is fully present rich and complex a
12:30 world of experience which calls for understanding not a representation
12:36 designed to submit reality to our manipulation naturally we're not aware
12:42 of this disjunct because these worlds are combined at a level below our awareness ⮦⮋⮧ we become aware only after an
Just so you know, we typically refer to those things as biases. Which is not a bad thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
12:49 accident of nature such as a stroke tumor or injury or after commissurotomy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissurotomy
12:55 the so-called split brain procedure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-brain or if one hemisphere at a time is
13:01 experimentally suppressed then they may become suddenly vividly present to us yet because these
13:09 two worlds have mutually incompatible properties when we come to reflect
13:14 consciously on the world and to rationalize about it we're forced by the
13:19 requirements of consistency to choose between the pictures of the world they offer ⮦⮋⮧ this is why as Isaiah whitehead observed
I have my doubts about this, only because how often people are inconsistent. Often reflected in politics as well as social media.
13:31 Oh I thought he did is there some other way oh no that's
13:42 wrong well you missed Solzhenitsyn but you know and here's the
13:48 mem here is a matter with things and there is an white I see the asteris oh
13:56 there we are yes this is why as a white had observed this is a very important
14:01 point a culture is in its finest flower before it begins to analyze itself when
14:07 our lives become very largely mediated by self-reflexive language and discourse as in our postmodern world they are we
14:15 can no longer rely on the wisdom that comes from closeness to the long tradition of a society to Nature and to
14:22 the sacred from narrative myth and Ritual from poetry music and drama to
14:29 sophisticate our understanding ⮦⮋⮧ unfortunately the two
Is this a reference of the failure of analytic philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_philosophy wherein the introduction of math did not actually answer any questions, but creating a whole area of naval gazing wherein people could balk over syntax while being in many ways forced to over-simplify concepts to jam them into a formula, resulting into all kinds of logic errors. Thus just giving people who are bad at both math and philosophy, something to do, without having to actually do math or original philosophy.
14:34 hemispheres are not equally vertical in terms of our ability to apprehend take
14:41 hold of and use the world the left hemisphere is superior but ⮦⮋⮧ in terms of
There is a huge difference between authoritarian leadership, and the brain capacity for modeling the complexity of the world. and artists can have just as complex models as engineers, just for radically different subjects. That capacity to model the world is entirely seperate from the capacity to “use the world” by which I assume he means “manipulate the world”.
14:46 our ability to comprehend the world the right hemisphere is Superior in each of
14:52 what one might call the portals to understanding attention perception
14:57 judgment emotional and social intelligence cognitive intelligence in
15:03 other words IQ and creativity the right hemisphere is so much Superior that the
15:09 left hemisphere is on its on its own ⮦⮋⮧ has been repeatedly described as frankly
I think here you are confusing the fruits of academic freedom with the results of a caste-system based educational system that restricts academic freedoms. Which is normally associated with eastern cultures, but has become quite fashionable among both secular and religious groups in the US. A form of Tribalism that is more akin to the transition from greek polytheism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytheism to monotheism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotheism , as it’s popular for organized crime and warlords to paint themselves as “gods” due to their tendency to murder as well as justification for protection rackets. As well as most cults of personality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_personality . Though more simply it can be seen as a herd instinct https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_behavior .
15:14 delusional that is not a rhetorical expression denial of the facts and delusional beliefs are far commoner in
15:21 association with damage to the right Hemisphere and consequently dependence on the left hemisphere than the reverse
15:29 on its own the left hemisphere confabulates makes up stories so as to fit with its beliefs it will frankly
15:36 insist that the paralyzed limb is unaffected or if challenged deny that
15:42 the offending appendage belongs to the subject at all it's yours doctor ⮦⮋⮧ unlike
that was remarkably direct.
15:47 the right hemisphere which sees more than one angle and has for this reason been called by vs ramachandran oop hello
15:55 I've got the hang of this but only just no I haven't got the hang of it there we go there's there's my friend ramach
16:02 chandran uh The Devil's Advocate the left hemisphere doesn't doubt that it is right it sorry I'll read that sentence
16:08 again unlike the right hemisphere she's more than one angle and has for this reason been called by vs Rach Chandon
16:14 The Devil's Advocate the left hemisphere doesn't doubt that it is right it's never wrong and never at fault someone
16:22 else is always to blame furthermore in what I take to be the four important onward paths towards
16:28 truth science reason intuition and Imagination though both hemispheres
16:35 contribute The crucial part in each case including in science and reason is played by the right hemisphere not the
16:43 left our predicament is that we now live in a world the understanding of which is largely limited to that of the inferior
16:50 left hemisphere ⮦⮋⮧ some signs of this include our inability to see the broader
First, calling it inferior? brains don’t work that way. Second, Having a myopic view of the world has to do with the ego, not the brain.
16:56 picture the way in which wisdom has has been lost understanding reduced to knowledge
17:01 and knowledge replaced by information tokens ⮦⮋⮧ or representations the loss of the concepts
This is a failure to understand how information is organized, as well as to understand the difference between what tokens are and the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbol_grounding_problem the tokens are not symbols, only what they tokenize, are symbols. That is the letters before they are tokenized, are the symbols, not the tokens themselves. When it comes to Large Language Models.
17:08 of skill and judgment the divorce of mind and matter resulting in a strong
17:14 tendency to simultaneous abstraction and the debasement of matter to Mere lumpen
17:19 matter for our exploitation an exponential growth of bureaucracy ⮦⮋⮧ and
That’s just hubris of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
17:25 administration everywhere the procedural ization of Life the reduction of Justice
17:31 to Mere equality a loss of the sense of the uniqueness of all things the supplanting
17:38 of quality by quantity the abandonment of nuance in favor of black and white
17:43 judgments the adoption of simplistic either or positions the loss of
17:48 reasonableness which is replaced by rationalization a complete disregard of
17:54 Common Sense the design of systems not for humans but to maximize utility
18:00 deterioration in Social cohesion a growth of paranoia and pervasive
18:05 mistrust for if all is not under its control the left hemisphere becomes anxious and projects its anxiety
18:12 outwards onto others nonetheless we play the passive victim and abjure
18:18 responsibility for our own lives ⮦⮋⮧ in addition I might point to the rise of
This is just the normalization of Narcissism and Emotional Fragility by the concern trolls in your own midst, while you try to hoist the blame on “left hemisphere thinking” which is probably why he’s unable to see that boringly obvious aspects of trying to organize all of society under some misguided form of paternalism which fails to understand why family structures usually fail, or cause dysfunction, when applied to politics, because of the inherent double standard between family and “the public” which is often views exploitation of the trust of “the public” as a competitive advantage. Also known as “petty assholes”
That also includes the “projects its anxiety outwards onto others” which is very much not something the “left hemisphere” does, They project coercion, not anxiety.
But I think more to the point, the “passive victim” aspect is also created by moral relativism and lack of maturity.
18:23 anger and aggression in the public sphere like almost everything that used to be said about hemisphere differences
18:30 the idea that the left hemisphere is unemotional is wrong the most highly
18:35 lateralized emotion is anger ⮦⮋⮧ and it lateralizes to the left hemisphere and
Amygdala hijacks are nothing like that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala_hijack
18:41 there are more indications but for today's purpose I'll stop there I believe it is this
18:48 intellectually June and morally bankrupt approach that has resulted in what has
18:53 been called the metac crisis the destruction and despoliation of the natural world the fragmentation and
18:59 polarization of society a surge in mental illness a rise in violent crime ⮦⮋⮧
I am pretty sure almost all of these things are results of both poor leadership and bad planning. Mostly revolving around a combination of elite capture and literal culling of intellectuals, and without the counterbalance of the intellectuals, lacking any meaningful answers, people become more extreme to try and force other people to fix the problem for them.
19:06 and so on how does all this relate to what I see as the dereliction ⮦⮋⮧ of Truth there
Interesting way of putting it. I would have said it was more like a systematic and orchestrated betrayal.
19:14 are four main reasons I think one I have referred to the quite literally less
19:19 thetical borderline delusional nature of the world constructed by the left hemisphere the one that now provides our
19:26 dominant narrative and mode that of the machine ⮦⮋⮧ the second is that for the left
When he says “the machine” here, is is referring to the “mechanical universe” of Issac Newton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanism_(philosophy) , not neoBuddhism.
19:32 hemisphere the map is mistaken for the territory the thinness and seductive Simplicity of Theory comes to Trump the
19:39 richness and complexity of experience the third is related to this
19:45 in that the left hemisphere unlike the right prioritizes internal consistency
19:50 with its model over contrary evidence from life ⮦⮋⮧ and the last I have mentioned
That is more of a scientific hubris than type of thinking. It’s especially common in finance when you consider things like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus which would be equally as valid in analytical philosophy. Which also underlines the limits of it’s utility as a philosohy.
19:57 each hemisphere has different priorities the left hemisphere evolved
20:02 so as to be principally in service of utility and power so as to grab and get exploit and manipulate the right ⮦⮋⮧
That is just a preference for “might makes right” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Might_makes_right instead of the rule of law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law , and is not homogeneous across any population.
let alone the “left hemisphere” thinkers.
20:08 hemisphere goes beyond to those other values that answer the question utility for what values therefore such as
20:16 goodness Beauty and Truth which are in my view not just the necessary foundations of a functional Society but
20:23 the grounds of human flourishing indeed elsewhere I argue that it is our capacity for love and our capacity to
20:30 respond to those values and help nourish them that explains our coming into
20:35 existence at all it is the reason for the being
20:41 life this left hemisphere dominance is inevitably played out in its own way in the university the realm of teaching and
20:49 research I will turn my attention to four areas to the humanities to science
20:55 to our sense of the Divine illum minati oostra and to the much more worldly
21:01 realm of University management finally I will reflect on where this leaves not
21:07 just the universities but our civilization as a whole first to clear away a
21:14 misconception in speaking of truth I want to distance myself equally from two popular false alternatives on the one
21:21 hand naive realism that the just is a world out there that it's our duty to
21:27 record passively as if we were Geer counters or photographic plates and naive idealism
21:34 The View that we make up reality and are therefore free to do so in any way we
21:40 wish each of these travesties misses the important perception that truth is an
21:46 encounter there is then no one absolute truth about the world that results from every encounter ⮦⮋⮧ alike but there are
I am not sure if he is referring to moral relativism or historical revisionism here. But encounter with the truth reminds me of:
21:54 certainly truths some things we believe to be truer than others in the humanities
22:00 we should be used to the idea that truth is of this nature we speak of a musical performance as truer to its subject than
22:06 another a critical interpretation of a work giving a truer account than another
22:12 and we expect at least a degree of consensus on the matter among those who know enough to recognize a good
22:19 interpretation when they hear one there are very clearly better and worse
22:25 interpretations as a Critic of Hamlet though No One account is exclusively correct I could get it indisputably
22:32 wrong for example by claiming the play is really an account of peasant life in azerbaijan in the 10th
22:39 Century there being no single fixed truth absolutely does not mean there is
22:44 no truth without truth we would have no reason to do or say anything at all even
22:51 the statement that there is no truth is a truth statement. because the left hemisphere is
22:57 concerned with power its narrative is always about power you'll notice this
23:03 all around you nowadays it was perhaps inevitably in the humanities that things started to go wrong Marxist theory
23:11 popular in universities in the 60s and 70s held that truth was merely whatever version of things the ruling class found
23:18 to suit its own interests soon this Allied itself to
23:23 deconstructionism ⮦⮋⮧ the insight into the partial truth that for us truth must always remain partial quickly morphed
It is interesting to note how different that era was in china vs in the west. Though I suppose the reform and opening up did coincide with the popularity of deregulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaganomics which is interestingly, from the “right hemisphere” thinking.
23:31 into the Dogma that since the experiencer inevitably enters into the experience
23:37 the experience is simply made up a complete nonsequetor these beliefs were much in
23:43 the air When I Was An undergraduate reading English in Oxford in the early' 70s and I found them not only simplistic
23:51 but Grim great literature it seemed to me was an a inspiring gift
23:58 that if treated with respect and approached in a generous Spirit offered to open to us hitherto unknown
24:06 Realms what was valuable in the poems and books we read of whatever age and from whatever culture was precisely
24:14 their unforeseen nature their characteristic uniqueness and the nuances that couldn't
24:21 be translated into Pros without loss subtleties that could so easily be
24:27 crowed out by the crudee assumptions of the critic the fashionable isms I believe
24:34 move in exactly the opposite direction towards the procrasti bed of the
24:39 explicit and theoretical to the sameness of our foregone conclusions to our
24:45 self-righteousness and to the self-importance of the critic since those days Marxism and
24:52 deconstruction may have come less strien but there has come into being something on a on a far greater scale an array of
25:00 politically motivated factions each with its own way of avoiding Reading literature and riding rough shot over it
25:09 these factions instrumentalize art for their own purposes with astonishing hubris and
25:15 abundant pettiness we sit in judgment on our ancestors as though we were by definition wiser than they we measure
25:23 them against our checklist that we've drawn up representing the parochial Outlook of the last few decades that
25:31 list has no an historical antecedent and is in opposition to most wisdom Traditions around the world we imagine
25:38 we are superior because we are blind to many things that they could see education is about enlarging not
25:46 narrowing the mind as is well known the Greek word for truth ala means
25:54 unconcealed this process however is a concealing I'm not a historian but clearly the same
26:00 considerations apply to the study of history there can be no one history of course but historians are not thereby
26:07 excused from the obligation to be as true to All the known facts as they can
26:13 be without this in place across the humanities there would seem very little point in having university courses ⮦⮋⮧
That seems like quite a condemnation to convey the importance and value of philosophy, while also possibly being a result of academic philosophers abdicating all authority to religion rather than try to dispute any claims, and atheism being it’s own kind of bubble that tends towards nihilism, and thus become easy targets for manipulation.
26:20 devoted to them there would seem very once every view is thought equally
26:25 defensible none is valuable any longer it goes without saying that the only
26:30 thing worse than every view being thought equally valuable is when all views are deemed wrong apart from one a
26:38 position to which we're growing ever nearer if we have not reached it
26:43 already I believe this must play a part in the decline and application of University places across the humanities
26:50 not the only part of course since future employment prospects play their part too
26:56 but the mention of employ employment prospects raises a question why has a degree in the humanities much favored by
27:03 Employers in the past lost its Prestige ⮦⮋⮧ I suggest two reasons one is that our
I call this STEM derangement syndrome. Where the obsession with STEM is a backdoor for replacing morality and ethics with market values in the truest sense of capitalism, which is of course, unbridled greed. Though it was adopted by many “right hemisphere thinking” so, trying to blame the “left hemisphere” is ignoring their own faults.
27:09 culture if it is still a culture has turned its back on the humanities in
27:14 general part of what I see as the exclusive elevation of a kind of procedural learning devoted to the
27:21 technical processes over a more imaginative but certainly no less important intellectual engagement with
27:28 the realm of ideas once such a process is underway it creates a positive feedback loop which
27:35 threatens to see the humanities wither away altogether well that would leave
27:43 universities or indeed the civilizations of which they form a pillar is not
27:48 something it is possible to contemplate with Equanimity the other reason is that
27:55 there has undeniably been a lowering of Standards the students coming less for prepared from school so that much work
28:03 formerly undertaken at school has to be done at University coupled with grade inflation an easing of Demands for rigor
28:10 thoroughness and careful scholarship and the abandonment of scholarship altogether in the face of a demand for
28:17 relevance issuing in the rash of studies courses of various kinds that are little
28:23 more than indoctrination their conclusions being forgone ⮦⮋⮧
I think they have words for all of that, Academic Dishonesty. Combined with user and abuse of metrics to drive “performance”
while undermining all things merit based. As if commodification would ever be able to value something like merit in a meaningful way.
28:28 understandably fewer and fewer intelligent people want to take part in this parody ⮦⮋⮧ of
In order for it to be a parody of education, there would need to be functioning education somewhere else. Europe perhaps?
28:35 Education what I'm not saying is that we need more fixed truths but quite the opposite we need fewer the humanist
28:43 approach while it holds to truth is Thoroughly opposed to indoctrination with Dogma the fashionable isms however
28:50 move towards not away from Dogma what is happening here is that a way of breaking
28:56 out of the prison of our own preconceptions this is what education is
29:01 about is being traded for ever more pervasive incarceration since all ways
29:06 of questioning the approved narrative become not just off limits a Calamity in itself but so far off limits that anyone
29:14 who attempts to question any part of the narrative is inviting reputational Annihilation and personal
29:21 vilification I note on pass on the emotional tanra of the left hemisphere
29:26 anger disgust narcissism in our world wrote Orwell ⮦⮋⮧ in
sounds mostly like a combination of narcissism, concern trolling, and virtue signalling. Which are more typically considered a “right hemisphere” problem, but in reality is just an aspect of competition within caste systems.
29:32 1984 there will be no emotions except fear rage Triumph and
29:38 self-abasement there will be no laughter except the laugh of triumph over a
29:43 defeated enemy yet this is of course the antithesis of Education no educated
29:51 person should be unwilling to engage in civil respectful discussion to quote Soldier nen's words
29:58 at Harvard in 1978 it's a universal law intolerance is
30:03 the first sign of an inadequate education an ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience ⮦⮋⮧ whereas truly
I will admit, I blame poor education in retrospect when I am behaving arrogant and impatient.
30:11 profound education breeds humility moreover it seems to me obvious
30:16 that the weaker the case and the more unbelievable the position the greater the vment and the greater the threats
30:23 which need to be brought to bear in an attempt at enforcement
30:28 shiten again violence can only be concealed by the lie and the LIE can be
30:34 maintained only by violence violence does not always necessarily take you
30:39 physically by the throat and strangle you more often it merely demands of its
30:45 subjects that they declare allegiance to the LIE become accomplices in the lie
30:51 and the simple step of a simple courageous man is not to take part in the LIE nor not to support deceit let
30:59 the LIE come into the world ⮦⮋⮧ but not through
It is quite reminiscent of https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/joseph-goebbels-on-the-quot-big-lie-quot
31:04 me science might appear Less open to the belief that truth is what we choose to
31:10 make it but it's clear that this is no longer the case ⮦⮋⮧ without freedom to collect evidence
Especially when you consider simulation theory and multiverse theory, both commonly used as basis for moral relativism, in atheist and religious alike. Mostly because they are unaware of how old those ideas actually, and that they were aspects of caste systems to justify their vast array of internal contradictions from managing “many gods” that illegitimate authority often masquerades as.
31:16 and evaluate it patiently and carefully we can't be sure of the full extent of censorship ⮦⮋⮧ in
There is not a problem with censorship in science. The problem is dishonesty, and misinformation and cheating. The problem, in science, is the proliferation of bad science. Not censorship.
31:23 science but for those who want to oh no why does this thing not have
31:30 arrows no try that um but for those who want to read an
31:36 even-handed account of the part played by censorship of all kinds I recommend a paper published in the proceedings of
31:43 the National Academy of Sciences in November 2023 by Cory Clark and
31:48 colleagues they consider three kinds of censorship first overt censorship double
31:54 standards The Branding of unimpeachable findings that would cause us to cast an intelligently skeptical eye on sacred
32:01 Cows as poor science or pseudo science blocking their publication oh it's more
32:08 responsive when I O blocking their
32:15 publication and then second covet censorship ostracism of denunciation of
32:22 denial of promotion to those that are dissident meanwhile failing to challenge
32:28 misleading research as long as it honors the sacred cows ⮦⮋⮧ and third perhaps the
When he says “the sacred cows” I assume he is referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_paper_mill
32:33 most important self- censorship in science the author of this report uh say
32:40 that nearly all us scientists report self- censoring their empirical beliefs
32:45 somewhat to fit in with a socially correct agenda to me this is to undermine the
32:52 very strength of Science and the justification for research which is to promulgate what is empirically found to
32:58 be the case regardless of whether it confirms our prejudices censorship has
33:03 no place in science in the end it will defeat its own Purpose By undermining
33:08 The credibility of Science and without that important Touchstone of unbiased empirical evidence we have cut away one
33:16 of the supports perhaps the most important support on which a Humane Society is
33:22 based uncomfortable facts or realities that do not corroborate whatever the is
33:27 currently enjoined are particularly important if we're to make any progress in our understanding of the world if
33:34 nothing is allowed to correct a theory we're doomed to live by
33:39 lies what at First Sight may seem paradoxical is that science is threatened both by inappropriate
33:45 subjectivity on the one hand and by an unsustainable belief in a kind of objectivity that modern physics has long
33:53 discredited on the other the kind that assumes that the the Noah plays no part
33:58 whatever in knowledge truth is never objective in this artificially limited sense but
34:06 important as it is to recognize that fact it's every bit as important to validate science's attempt to respond
34:13 fairly and fully to the reality with which it engages that is where true objectivity lies and along with this I
34:20 should mention the model of the machine which still alas dominates in the Life Sciences they abandon long ago at least
34:28 100 Years Ago by the science of the inanimate physics there are signs thank
34:35 goodness that this is at last giving way in the face of fascinating revolutionary
34:40 observations which reinforce an already unassailable body of evidence at least a century old that organisms are nothing
34:48 like machines for those who are interested this is something I've written about at some length in the matter with things
34:55 and have discussed in a number of conversations with Michael
35:00 Levin uh distinguished professor of biology at tus and director of the center for regenerative and
35:06 developmental biology there who is one of the most important Minds in the field
35:11 of biological development now the Paradox of being too swayed by
35:18 inappropriate subjectivity on the one hand and by an inappropriately rigid model on the other is only apparent it
35:26 emerges out of a polarized position one which neglects the understanding of Truth as a relationship a relationship
35:33 in which we are not at Liberty to make up the terms any way we want but which imposes on us the sacred demand that we
35:40 be at all times honest about and honorable to the world we are seeking to know better dominous illuminatio
35:51 Nostra up till now I've been talking about the adverse consequences of the
35:56 politicization of the humanities and Science ⮦⮋⮧ in relation to the Divine
That has more to do with astroturfing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing than anything else. I think.
36:01 the problem of a left hemisphere dominated approach obscuring the truth is less political and more to do with
36:07 the way in which we misunderstand all that cannot be readily reduced to laws and language ⮦⮋⮧ if you can recall some of
I think this is an attempt to differentiate between knowledge and wisdom. But why that would be left or right hemisphere dependent, I have no idea.
36:15 the main differences between the kinds of world sustained by the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere I
36:21 think you will see what I mean. the left hemisphere world is characterized by what is familiar and
36:27 fully expressible in language the right hemisphere is more open to and attentive
36:33 towards whatever is other ⮦⮋⮧ and can be only indirectly expressed the left
This sounds like tribalism. which is once again, not hemispheric.
36:39 hemisphere is less capable of Keats’s negative capability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_capability being in uncertainties Mysteries doubts without
36:47 any irritable reaching after fact and reason. it is thus relatively incapable
36:53 of the tentative careful as heiger would say F Zant reaching out towards what
37:00 lies beyond what we think we already know where the left hemisphere sees things in isolation the right hemisphere
37:08 sees processes that are relational indeed it's disposition towards the world helps us see that
37:15 relations are as I argue prior to relata it sees relations in which both
37:22 parties are inevitably changed it is alert to what I call betweenness the importance of context
37:30 exemplified by the nature of Music in which the individual notes only become what they are by their being in relation
37:37 to all the others it sees that decontextualization and explicitness
37:42 destroy the nature of whatever lies in a web of interconnectedness it sees that our
37:48 understanding has to be participatory and that the soul and body are not opposed but discernably different
37:55 aspects of one reality ity it is better at holding together apparently
38:00 conflicting positions whereas according to the left hemisphere nothing can be separate and connected precisely
38:07 measurable and intrinsically imprecise imminent and Transcendent at the same
38:13 time indeed the right hemisphere is less likely to ignore simply not see whatever
38:19 does not fit the Paradigm it already holds further the right hemisphere's
38:25 understanding of knowledge and belief is experiential not a simple matter of information in the abstract or
38:31 acquiescing in Dogma ⮦⮋⮧ it helps us to see that belief I remind you that the root
I have no idea what he is describing here, because many of these are egoic biases that are haphazardly associated into binary categories while psychologically they are from half a dozen different personality traits. For example “to ignore simply not see whatever does not fit the Paradigm” is just confirmation bias. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
38:37 of the word is love is a matter of dispositions not propositions and of
38:45 unconcealed not correctness the word truth is cognate
38:50 with trust the right hemisphere understands metaphor myth narrative
38:55 drama music and poetry all of which are commonly hard to understand when there is right hemisphere damage ⮦⮋⮧ the richness
I would need to see some references on that, in my experience that has more to do with intelligence than brain damage.
39:03 of these implicit paths to knowledge which also include ritual is intrinsic
39:08 to any spiritual understanding finally the right hemisphere is less
39:14 willful than the left hemisphere and therefore more open to relinquishing
39:19 control it can understand the value of what in Buddhism is called emptiness https://opensourcetemple.com/sunyata and
39:25 the part played by negation in creativity the power of silence and
39:31 Stillness of not knowing and not doing of withdrawing in order to permit
39:36 something truly other to manifest itself for the first time it is the substrate
39:42 of the mature self as opposed to the immature ego it can understand that
39:47 suffering can be generative and it can understand the Valor in vulnerability
39:53 and the dark side to what we think is merely good none of this makes sense to the
39:58 reductive materialist and this is another reason and another sense in
40:04 which the left hemisphere leads us away from the truth the truth of the
40:11 Divine but there are still other paths in the abandonment of Truth darker than
40:16 those we have discussed in a world dominated by left hemisphere modes of being two important
40:22 developments could be predicted to proliferate administrative control
40:28 evident in the decline of every civilization and machine learning both
40:34 depend on algorithmic paths that are linear ⮦⮋⮧ and sequential the kind of thinking that neglects context and the
Large language models are not linear.
40:41 existence of Galan holes that cannot be reduced to their parts and substitutes group
40:49 characteristics for individual uniqueness it also doesn't understand
40:54 attachment to place and and tradition literally the handing down of hard-earned wisdom indeed it can have
41:01 nothing to do with wisdom at all or the body and its emotions or the realm of
41:08 the Soul a kind of thinking in other words that is biased towards machines
41:13 and against human life ⮦⮋⮧ after the
Wrong again. This is reductionist, the devaluing life is not a “bias towards machines” and it something both sides are guilty of. While also having nothing to do with the being religious, as it’s not uncommon for the religious to be “against human life” if those humans believe different things. This bias would be called “cherry picking” combined with stereotyping or over-generalizing.
41:19 war Theodor adoro saw developing around him what he called defal
41:27 the administered World in which everything was controlled proceduralized
41:32 and devitalized one where a new form of Total Control had taken root in the form
41:38 of a self- legitimizing bureaucracy he quoted the Austrian writer Ferdinand
41:44 kimbarger life no longer lives who does not recognize with a
41:50 chill this diagnosis of the modern human predicament and he points out that it's
41:56 it's not even the Triumph of The Logical since administr Administration serves to
42:01 rationalize the irrational which explains why its workings and outcomes
42:07 are often deeply unreasonable I believe we are witnessing
42:12 nothing less than a war on nature and a war on life ⮦⮋⮧ this my friends is the
It is neither, it is a war on meritocracy. Or put a different way, a form of “class war” where the stupid sons of the rich try to ruin everything for everyone else out of petty spite, because their culture is a steaming pile of garbage which they pay lip service to but don’t actually believe in. And what seems like intelligent coordination is just their utilization as useful idiots by external powers. So while they may be deeply unreasonable, they are following a form of logic which he simply is unaware of, though it’s a playbook used by caste systems for millennia.
42:19 reality we face why partly hubris the shortsighted view
42:26 that we can do anything we want and remake the world to suit our demands so
42:32 nature apparently stands in our way but there's more to it than this and it has
42:38 to do with the goals and values of the left hemisphere as Whitehead said decart
42:45 assumed the mind can only know that which it has itself produced and retains
42:51 in some sense within itself of course Whitehead didn't know about hemisphere differences but here he
42:58 describes precisely a key characteristic of the left hemisphere ⮦⮋⮧ it knows only
This has nothing to do with hemispheres. And is only related to how people construct models of the world in their own mind.
While pointing out that idiots suck at making models of the world, so when you convey the words, they think they understand, but if it question them, it becomes apparent that they do not understand.
43:03 what it itself has made representations not real
43:08 presences it wages active war on the living world not created by it seeing it
43:14 as a rebuff to its Mastery Hannah arent wrote of what she called the future man
43:21 that he seemed possessed by quote a rebellion against human existence as it has has been given a free gift from
43:28 nowhere secularly speaking which he wishes to exchange as it were for
43:33 something he has made himself the German American Artist
43:39 George G produced a shockingly vivid expression of this power hungry mindset
43:45 as he contemplated Europe before the second world war entitled I shall
43:50 extinguish everything around me that restricts me from being the master
43:58 turning again to administration of course it has a legitimate role in any
44:03 institution however it comes at a heavy price both literal and metaphorical and
44:08 if the institution is to flourish to remain creative to allow individuals to give of themselves freely and
44:15 spontaneously as in my experience the best teachers and researchers do it
44:20 needs to be as light in its touch as possible when I was in the University it
44:26 did its job properly and was almost invisible it's not an end in itself as
44:32 it seems sometimes now to have become but a necessary evil to quote William
44:38 James most human institutions by the purely Technical and professional manner
44:43 in which they come to be administered End by being obstacles to the very purposes which their Founders had in
44:51 view it goes without saying that it inevitably slows and prolongs processes ⮦⮋⮧
That has more to do with group dynamics than anything inherent to administration or bureaucracy. Only that they tend to attract petty personalities.
44:57 makes them more cumbersome causes imagination to atrophy and thinking processes to sclerose results in
45:04 inaccuracy Injustice and a waste of time and requires a great number of now what
45:10 are now called resources namely people as well as buildings and Machinery that
45:16 are expensive it gives the mediocre unexpected power over the talented and
45:21 favors those who are not trained or experienced in doing what the institution exists to further be it a hospital a school or
45:29 a university over those who are my mentor the so-called father of
45:36 neuros Psychiatry Professor alwin lishman a profoundly scholarly and
45:42 modest man was asked by a manager to justify why he had requested a head scan
45:49 of a patient in what was the country's quaternary referral unit
45:57 he reflected that when he had to account for his actions to a bureaucrat it was time to retire and he did the Humane
46:05 teachers and tutors from whom I learned in the humanities would rather have
46:10 retired than submit to the exercises in political retraining and box ticking that would be required of them now they
46:16 would see them as part of the problem that they as Educators were trying to
46:22 redress all this is patronizing and damages in initiative and morale ⮦⮋⮧ it is a
and ultimately is the result of shitty parenting and failure to value anything beyond market values, which is a failure of philosophy, not administration.
46:28 growth that ultimately threatens the viability of its host and the proof of this in the case of the university is
46:34 escalating costs that are a burden to students or the taxpayer and result in recruiting wealthy students from around
46:41 the world that can afford the fees a sense of fear and conformity in what
46:46 should be a place where ideas are free to be explored and a fall in applications ⮦⮋⮧ especially among those
and how much of those spiraling costs are due to financial mismanagement? from the educational institution getting into the stock market, then wasting vast sums of money, instead of reinvesting into the institution itself? How much of that is obscured while the institutions become beholden to economics and donors instead of education or science ?
46:53 groups that this very expensive new bureaucracy is in place to discriminate
46:58 against for what is happening is that three interlocking left hemisphere manifestations are at work first there
47:05 is the failure to believe in truth in the humanities and now even in science
47:11 unless it conforms to the preferred narrative then there is the expansion of administrations everywhere to ensure
47:18 that all appearances confirm this narrative and third the Advent of more
47:23 sophisticated AI that both monitors our speech and actions and produces
47:28 simulacra of real human thought AI Finds Its natural home in organizations Whose
47:35 desire is ever greater control of other human beings ⮦⮋⮧ quite apart from the many ways
I would like to know how he came to this Luddite position. And how he would explain that this phenomena predates the advent of AI by decades, as noted in
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_Fascism_(book) it must be fun to blame something which cannot defend itself, while heaping all the historical faults of man upon it, which is much safer than trying to actually confront any of the system which he benefits from, that is the source of all of this. Or politics.
Instead he can sit here and construct quite an elaborate and deeply flawed model of the world to heap all his complaints on “the other” those “left hemisphere people” who he accuses of doing the same thing. It’s much more like projecting, as the “left hemisphere people” have a dramatically different story, which I will not be going into here. Suffice to say, both side engage in scapegoating while inventing an “other” which is a false dichotomy of everything they personally dislike and groups all other people into the false binary of these categories.
47:41 that AI can be used to infringe our Liberty and to make possible totalitarian control of a Kind never
47:48 here to for seen ⮦⮋⮧ how on the simple daily level will we be able to assess the
wow, you really did not understand social media from over a decade ago, or phone apps.
This is what happens when you have not actually been anywhere close to real activism in a decade. Because all of these problems seem new to him, and certainly must be related to the latest buzzword technology. While somehow entirely forgetting that his own references, go back to the 1930-1950 era, far before computers were even invented. But somehow, it must be the computers fault! because he doesn’t understand the root causes of any of this, nor is he able to attribute them to more than “the other” because of a lack of understanding of how any of it is connected together, despite having some historical references, does not understand how they were connected to each other in the historical situation either. So you know, people who fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it, and blame AI for their own failings.
47:53 ability of an individual student or the achieved standard of their work when AI
47:58 can be relied on to write an essay ⮦⮋⮧ how will we assess the evidence in
There has not been a huge difference in the academic output or cheating since the introduction of chatGPT, only a floodgates of subpar and at best mediocre fiction and advertising.
48:04 court and with the humanities and science buying out of the pursuit of truth how will any of us in the future
48:10 know what to believe about anything at all if you ask chat GPT to answer a
48:17 question it does a trolley Dash around the internet and comes up with a vanilla
48:22 milkshake what is prominent on the internet ⮦⮋⮧ is not necessarily truer than what is not and as more and more of what
Also not true, it only looks at it’s training data for answers, unless you ask it to look information up from the internet, and even then, that information is interpreted through the lens of it’s training data, not simply what is popular on the internet, which alone makes it vastly more useful than social media, which is overflowing with idiots and corrupt incentives. The presence of AI has no bearing on the critical thinking skills, or lack there of, in the population, and it could even be argued this lack of critical thinking skills in the general population, is the fault of the colleges and universities themselves, while being blamed on AI.
Mostly while being in denial of their own embrace of a caste system that is the cause of most of this.
I myself will take great joy in using AI to teach people critical thinking skills, thereby out competing the Luddites. Who by then, having squandered their privilege will be more akin to the Houthies
48:29 goes to prominence on the internet turns out to be generated by machines like chat GPT ⮦⮋⮧ how can we ever escape this
That is false, and ignores the role of social media as a form of monetized propaganda, and claiming that is the AIs fault.
It’s another reminder of why the right hemishere has been failing so miserably to adapt to these things, if their concepts of the cause and effect of the world, are based primarily on fiction and concern trolling without the decency to look and understand for themselves.
So yes, indeed, How would anyone be able to know anything in this sort of world? I would guess it has something to do with trying to not be an idiot and not being a spoiled child and expecting everything to be handed to you instead of the freedom and expectation of gasp learning.
48:38 Hall of Mirrors to find a glimmer of Truth there is no imagination that
48:44 sacred faculty here only fantasy the
48:49 liar the casualties in this world are many the honor and self-belief as well ⮦⮋⮧
Once again, cultural issue.
48:54 as the credibility of societal groups that are being often without their consent promoted is compromised and
49:02 they're patronized by being held to lower standards than others unjust suspicions May attach to individuals who
49:08 succeeded through their own Valiant effort suspicions which cannot easily be disproved the honor and self-belief of
49:16 social groups that are disfavored where the scales are tipped against them is compromised ⮦⮋⮧ they become resentful of
How do you expect words like Honor, or Valiant effort, have any meaning, when held up to market ideals?
Seems like a fundamental failure to understand why philosophy is meaningful. Or how an socioeconomic system is supposed to be moral, with moral values replaced by the justification for profit. Just a dramatic failure to be able to take a holistic view of philosophy and combine it with literally any other academic subject. Then are somehow surprised at the amount of academic dishonesty. Then scapegoat AI while you are at it. This is what we would call faulty reasoning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong
It’s getting harder and harder to take these complaints seriously.
49:22 being reviled for being who they are feel the smarter Injustice and become
49:27 demotivated universities are or should be centers of excellence instead the
49:32 left hemisphere mentality of Administrators seems to wish to remake them in its own pedestrian image as it
49:39 is also doing in hospitals and schools with widely damaging effects ⮦⮋⮧ I speak
This is the effect of replacing the existing morality and ethics of organizations with market ideals. Which is somehow translated into “remake them in its own pedestrian image” can you see how unhelpful that metaphor is here ? Making it pointlessly complicated when the basic root cause is both obvious and easy to describe.
But According to McGilchrist here, doing so, removes the “magic” of knowing. Which is a reminder of how magical thinking was the problem before they switched to market values rhetoric.
49:45 from experience we now have difficulty recruiting nurses doctors teachers and
49:51 police principally I believe because they see the institutions in which they would work work as having comprehensively lost their way we cannot
50:00 afford not to have the very best Pilots surgeons engineers and soldiers why
50:07 would we be willing to have the less than best thinkers teachers and
50:13 scientists ⮦⮋⮧ we live in an increasingly dangerous world one where if we are to
Because they are a bunch of scrooges without any meaningful concept of value beyond the market. Because of the profitability of encouraging selfish narcissism. As the production of culture has been placed into the purview of corporations and the profit incentive.
garbage-in garbage-out of culture.
50:19 survive at all and especially to maintain and defend a free Society we need to regain a truer understanding of
50:25 our history and values to regain some self-respect and promote and rely on
50:31 only the very best people ⮦⮋⮧ instead we appear to be actively finding ways of doing the opposite you may be sure that
That does not sounds very cost efficient. /s
50:38 the totalitarian regimes that may one day subjugate us have no intention of
50:43 handicapping themselves in this way we even reward particularly those who would
50:49 attack the tolerant society that therefore is so easy to attack once it
50:55 is be gone this tolerant Society ⮦⮋⮧ be sure that we will all be how to put it
I do wonder where this tolerant society you speak of is, I certainly have not experienced it for most of my life. But then again, that might be why I am better equipped to handle this than he is. It seems more like for the first time he has started to experience what it’s like for non-white people.
51:02 adequately worse off arent wisely warned that a loss of
51:08 faith in institutions is a precursor to totalitarianism and if people are losing
51:14 faith in them I think I can see why freedom of speech is historically
51:21 rare and precious the result of battles fought and sacrifices made by our
51:26 ancestors over many centuries as aent put it this Society no longer knows of
51:33 those higher and more meaningful activities for the sake of which this Freedom was won ⮦⮋⮧ Whatever some people may
That is quite a pity. I think it has a lot to do with consumerism, as leisure time is filled with entertainment instead of self development.
51:40 say I believe racism and sexism are racism and sexism Injustice can't be
51:47 fought with Injustice only with Justice this was the burden of Martin Luther King's most famous
51:54 speech in all this process we see the same inversion of meaning and language that
52:00 other farsighted individuals or well of course being Prime amongst them foresaw
52:05 an extreme ill evidenced anti-libertarian position is called liberal the mest attempt to see a more
52:13 balanced picture is considered extreme and illiberal in one world even a facial
52:19 expression is considered by some to be an act of aggression meanwhile actual
52:24 physical violence against someone who merely disagrees with you is condoned and even
52:30 approved I'm speaking of North Korea of course but I'm also speaking of
52:38 here in this way the truth is travesty in the origins of
52:47 totalitarianism Hannah arent wrote the ideal subject of totalitarian
52:54 rule I don't know if you'll be able to see this but I hope I can be heard the
52:59 ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced
53:05 communist but people for whom the distinction between the fact and fiction
53:10 are either reality of experience and a distinction between true and false aree
53:15 the standards of thought no longer exist what I've tried to outline is a
53:21 vision that explains why what we see when we look at the plight of our modern University is not a number of diverse
53:29 unrelated problems but a coherent predicament that could have been predicted and by some farsighted
53:35 individuals was predicted we've abandoned a serious search for truth one
53:41 in which we must be prepared to find that the truth is other than we've already decided otherwise it is not a
53:47 search for Truth at all and this state of affairs has come about because we've become heavily
53:53 dependent on the model of the world offered by a less imaginative less intelligent less intuitive and less
54:00 reasonable self. a model that favors the machine ⮦⮋⮧ over the human being, death over
Reminder, he is not referring to neoBuddhism here.
54:08 life it is one that is corrosive of what is beautiful what is good and what is
54:14 true and has no place in it for the sacred the early 20th century
54:21 philosopher Max shayler was much concerned with is of value when he died
54:27 in 1928 Heidegger who gave his funeral oration described him as the most potent
54:33 force in the world of philosophy at the time Shayla calls the human being NS
54:40 amans the being that loves in its place we have homoeconomicus
54:46 in the world we live in reductionist materialism inverts shayla's perception
54:52 and in a thoroughly cynical assessment of what it means to be human we have exalted the individual ego over all else
55:00 it has rendered many virtues including but not confined to Beauty goodness and Truth neglected and abandoned these
55:08 values I believe far from being human inventions are ontological Primitives
55:14 since they're aspects of the ground of being itself our capacity to respond to
55:19 them and draw them ever further into being is our privilege and indeed our
55:25 purpose we can of course also ignore them devalue them and cause them to wither away at what cost to us
55:32 personally and the whole of humanity we can only surmise
55:41 Shayla Shayla thought there was a hierarchy of values with those of pleasure and utility the values of
55:48 utilitarianism in the left hemisphere at the lowest level and Rising by stage
55:53 stages to that of the Holy sacred which he considered the highest a value which
55:59 I suggest is incomprehensible to the left hemisphere ⮦⮋⮧ in between were first the leban F or values of life such as
I would not say those things are incomprehensible, they are simply not valued. by “the left hemisphere”
56:08 courage magnanimity nobility humility and loyalty and then the Geistige Werte (Spiritual values) the values of
56:16 mind or Spirit such as Beauty goodness and Truth which I suggest are better understood by the right
56:22 hemisphere the left hemisphere is debt being power and control it naturally
56:28 puts values of utility and henis those of the lowest rank in shaya's pyramid
56:33 first I may be wrong but it's my distinct impression that there has been a decline in Courage loyalty nobility
56:40 and humility in our society indeed in all behavior that carries its cost upfront rather than concealing its sting
56:47 in the tail speaking the truth takes courage and it would seem that those in the institutions of government science
56:54 and the University ities would rather conform than confront untruth the powerhouses of intellect the
57:00 universities have lost their nerve and become passive conformist and feeble and
57:05 excessively bureaucratic perhaps because of this I can't help noticing that many of the
57:11 most interesting ideas in science in politics and in philosophy these days come from outside the major institutions
57:19 something I note only with the greatest of regret as someone who always saw himself as a proud beneficiary of their
57:26 ancient traditions and who wish to further those traditions and along with the loss of courage to speak the truth
57:32 there has been an undeniable withdrawal from the beautiful and the sacred all of this combines to reinforce a loss of
57:39 sense of purpose and Direction ⮦⮋⮧ hence the crisis of meaning that it is by now a
I think the purpose and direction issues are separate from this, which is more of an issue of grounding their knowledge in something, rather than baseless relativism where nothing can be compared or is comparable for solipsistic reasons. So undermining of sense making. Those other issues are a result of a lack of meaningful values, beyond market values.
57:44 common place that we Face the war on nature and on life is
57:49 one in which you are inevitably caught up because we are nature we are our life
57:56 and we have to decide to be its destroyers or Defenders we have it still
58:01 in our power to be whichever we choose I do not have a bullet pointed agenda much
58:07 as the left hemisphere would no doubt like one rather I'm calling for a defense of values that will cost each of
58:14 us something personally to name not acques in what we know to be untrue to
58:20 hold to standards of excellence to expect much of ourselves to hold to respect for others and to
58:27 listen to points of view which with which we disagree nor only those we
58:33 endorse to exposee compassion in place of vment and self-righteousness to
58:38 embrace humility in the acknowledgement of our necessarily limited understanding to find once more a sense of wonder in
58:46 the face of the complex and beautiful Cosmos to do this will help us grow not
58:52 stunt our souls when s niten asked himself what had
58:58 given rise to the catastrophic brutalities of the 20th century his conclusion was that men had forgotten
59:05 God in a speech given in 1983 he repeated if I were called upon to
59:11 identify briefly the principal trait of the entire 20th century here too I would
59:16 be unable to find anything more precise and pity than to repeat once again men
59:22 have forgotten God more than this a positive hatred of God he thought was
59:29 the principal driving force behind the philosophy and psychology of Marxism Les
59:34 leninism militant atheism is not merely incidental or marginal to communist
59:40 policy it's not a side effect but the central pivot I would bring that up to date by
59:46 pointing out that sorry that's a little bit previous I would like to bring this up to date by
59:54 by pointing out that totalitarian totalitarianism and extremism no longer
1:00:00 manifest among us so much in terms of Marxism leninism as in the strident
1:00:05 voices of what Matias Desmet calls Mass formation in which individuals are
1:00:11 united not by reason and tolerance but by Propaganda ideology and fanatical
1:00:17 narratives ⮦⮋⮧ this is his great book the psychology of
Yes, are you familiar with how advertising on social media works? The problem looks bigger than it is, because of social media amplification. Granted, that same amplification does make it a bigger problem than it would be otherwise.
1:00:23 totalitarianism we must must ReDiscover courtesy and compassion the virtues of
1:00:29 openness and a sense of perspective but this is another way of seeing we must stop hating God the
1:00:37 hatred of God is indeed a fascinating phenomenon one more and more evident in
1:00:42 our time and not just in political philosophies but in the Vox pop of media
1:00:47 scientists Milton saw it all Lucifer the
1:00:53 bright The Trusted Emissary of the master cannot bear the imputation of
1:00:58 anything higher than he we must make sure he does not win the day we must
1:01:05 hold fast to the dedication of this University Dominus Illuminati
1:01:12 mayor thank
1:01:23 you
1:01:38 [Applause] hello thank you for your attention is
1:01:44 this mic on yes excellent I'm going to anyone who wants to sign up for more of
1:01:51 this not necessarily the same but more recollection lectures more of this sort of thing please give us your your email
1:01:57 address and permission to send you some information on it I'll take the prerogative to ask a quick question and
1:02:04 then um Jessica will take a mic round for those who would like to ask questions and that is um if what you're
1:02:12 saying is true should I sign up to medically lobotomize my left
1:02:17 hemisphere [IM] no there is nothing wrong with the left hemisphere as I say it's
1:02:22 my second favorite hemisphere but but no seriously it is exceptionally important
1:02:28 it is the trusted Emissary and the only problem is when it be betrays that trust
1:02:33 in other words it does important work they work together in a master servant relationship but the servant must never
1:02:41 think that it is the master which it easily does because it knows so little compared with the master it thinks it
1:02:47 knows everything [PR] we have another quick question from father George and then we'll go toward the
1:02:52 audience [Audience] I was going to ask ask if um a fascinating conclusion of course I'd be very interested in the idea that the
1:02:59 problem you describe uh is is connected to a rejection of a belief in God or hatred of God could you say a bit more
1:03:05 about how how that leads to a dominance of the left hemisphere how the rejection of of a belief in God or adoration leads
1:03:13 to that dominance of the west of the of the of the left hemisphere [IM] I think we're two principle
1:03:18 ways one is that uh I didn't really have time to expand on it but I think I suggested the the way of thinking the
1:03:26 way of being of the left hemisphere makes it more or less impossible for it to compute what we mean when we talk
1:03:33 about the Divine and the sacred and the other is it's innate hubris effectively
1:03:40 you know this is why there are myths not just the Amazing Story of Paradise Lost which is such a brilliant evocation of
1:03:47 this but all around the world there are stories of a master and a servant and the servant userp the master and the
1:03:53 whole thing fell apart so we know that people everywhere resonate to this idea
1:03:58 that there is something in us that is as it were less intelligent but is angry
1:04:04 and is wants to take ⮦⮋⮧
I could have sworn earlier he was trying to claim the issue being the materialist reductionist mindset. The master-slave mindset has it’s own set of problems.
1:04:12 control [Audience] thank you very
1:04:17 much thank you very much for your talk um perhaps with regard to your concluding remarks about uh hatred of
1:04:24 God and that uh in Marxism leninism you have this that's at the core of Marxism
1:04:30 leninism this hatred of God uh I would even argue it's not just uh atheism or militant Atheism in Marxism leninism but
1:04:38 it's actually uh they are theists it's now word Theus Fighters against God right
1:04:45 Battlers against God oh the yes uh that is really at the center and you probably
1:04:51 know that Marx in his uh early writings with sign of them uh with Emanuel but
1:04:56 spelled backwards for some reason it's very muffled for me I'm not picking it up so can you relay it to me in word and
1:05:03 Mark marx would sign his early letters with Emanual but spelled backwards oh right and you know what it means uh
1:05:09 taking a hold in name and using reading it backwards or a prayer reading it backwards so that's right at the center
1:05:15 so they are theist not just militant atheists quite interesting thank you very much for that I didn't know
1:05:20 that [PR] we can raise your hand if you'd like to with there some ladies there to were interested in jumping in Oh no just
1:05:27 your third row yeah [Audience] thank you um I I I may not have kept up all together [PR] try to
1:05:34 speak loudly and directly into the mic if you can [Audience] I I I may have missed a bit but I don't quite understand why does
1:05:41 totalitarianism want to get rid of Nature and life all
1:05:47 together [IM] um I don't think is a thought through as
1:05:52 that um it's just that the way of thinking that leads to totalitarianism is a very limited very
1:06:00 rigid um schematic uh linear um something huming
1:06:07 here uh thank you um way of thinking which
1:06:13 really has no use for nature except as a resource and it's it's confronted by the
1:06:20 limitations of the body thank God our bodies are both portals to many wonderful things but also impose certain
1:06:27 kinds of limitations on us but it will Brook no limitation it will be God it
1:06:33 will be the one that calls all the shots and so the fact that we die and the fact that we have you
1:06:39 know God can I even say this nowadays that males and females have different kinds of bodies even these things have
1:06:46 to be annuled you see so children are being brainwashed into believing all
1:06:51 kinds of things if there is a society that exists in the future I think they'll look back on us and and laugh I
1:06:59 mean think what these people really thought and said these things just as some people now look back at the 17th
1:07:04 century you know so there we
1:07:13 are [Audience]I wondered if you could say a few things about modern Psychiatry and how
1:07:18 it fits into your picture of the world and also if timed a comment on left-handed
1:07:26 [IM] some of the problems in Psychiatry did you say yes there's so much that could be
1:07:32 said and a lot of it I've said but in writing at Great length I I Psychiatry is too big a topic to sort of answer you
1:07:39 know in a simple yeah um left-handedness is not really my particular
1:07:47 concern but um I tackled this in the very first few pages of the master in
1:07:53 his em and I point out that logically there are three possibilities either the left-hander has
1:08:00 the brain exactly standard issue like the right handed person or and these all exist uh or they
1:08:08 have the complete inverse so everything that normally you say right you say left
1:08:14 or much more commonly there is a sort of mix of things going on um so uh it's
1:08:22 very difficult to General about left-handers they are a much less homogeneous group but what
1:08:30 is interesting about left-handers is that they are over represented at the bottom and the top of almost all scales
1:08:39 of um skill and achievement so you know there are far more left-handers than you
1:08:45 would expect at the top and at the bottom [Audience] a question from a left-hander who
1:08:52 wasn't sufficiently offended by anything in the first few chapters and went on to
1:08:58 uh read the whole of the book um in drawing towards your conclusions you you
1:09:07 you speak [IM] I really can't hear it directly chap or did I get that wrong
1:09:13 [Audience] I'm I'm a left-hander who got who managed to get through those chapters and into the rest of the book without
1:09:19 being too offended um thank you question is towards the end
1:09:25 uh as you were concluding that you gave us a a a call to arms almost for a
1:09:31 defense of values um that will cost us personally and and you also
1:09:39 um you you said that um the servant should
1:09:44 never uh usurp the master and the hubris of the Ser servant shouldn't Triumph so
1:09:54 practically what can we be doing uh to to okay answer to to respond to your
1:10:01 Call to Arms [IM] yes well um
1:10:10 yeah a number of things I hinted that first of all um it was something that required an
1:10:18 inner answer not just an answer out there there are things we do need to do this is quite true um in the external
1:10:27 world but some of this is about having a different vision of what a human being
1:10:34 is and what the world is and how they relate this is the essential problem and I believe that even if we could by some
1:10:42 miracle reverse the destruction of the forest the poisoning of the Seas the running out of existence of indigenous
1:10:49 tribes all the things that we're busy doing even if we could it would us nothing because we would still be the
1:10:57 same entitled power hungry dissatisfied miserable specimens of humanity that
1:11:05 we've made ourselves by this left hemisphere um left hemisphere uh Allegiance so
1:11:14 there are bullet points and you know sometimes if press I give a few you know just think it's like all right here have
1:11:21 a biscuit but you know the hemisphere loves you know God there's something
1:11:26 going wrong we need six bullet points let me get them down we've done them well we be well or will not be well
1:11:33 because it's not about doing things it's about being somebody different we need
1:11:38 Humanity to have a great wake up call and I actually now believe that you know
1:11:44 I'm not a a Bible tamper or anything of this kind but I now have come to see
1:11:50 that in fact unless there is a returning to the idea that there is more in this universe than we understand that there
1:11:57 is something Divine there that is Allied to love and beauty and complexity that
1:12:03 unless we see that we are lost [PR] we have time for two more questions
1:12:08 perhaps Rebecca and then the fellow there who has his hand up yes [Audience] thank you so much I uh think you started answering
1:12:15 my question in your last response but one of the things that came to mind when
1:12:21 you were speaking is that from a practical perspective what do you believe Psychiatry brings to the
1:12:28 practical application of what you're saying so for example the use the role of the body the role of emotional SE
1:12:34 self-regulation for example practical things that people can do to get out of this state which is excessively kind of
1:12:41 thinky and argumentative and dominating because it seems that language is very
1:12:46 um Central to that and so to some extent to respond by arguments almost seems
1:12:53 counterproductive you know holding presence helping people be able to express that anger in ways as a
1:12:59 psychiatrist would you not say that someone came to you and they were very angry you wouldn't address that anger by trying to stop it or trying to argue
1:13:05 them out of it [IM] no [Audience] and in that sense is it you know fighting Injustice not just with Justice but with love and what
1:13:12 kinds of practices might we be doing to have conversations in a different way rather than come up with more complex
1:13:17 arguments [IM] I look and you've raised a very good point I agree with agree with
1:13:23 that um what you're really saying is confrontation is not the best way to
1:13:32 make progress I believe that we now because that is the way the left hemisphere does things is attacks ⮦⮋⮧ is
Confrontation is not the same as attacking.
1:13:38 that is now the way we are trying to solve things however my view is that we
1:13:44 need everything is an encounter everything is an encounter relation is
1:13:49 at the bottom of existence everything that exists is fundamentally relational so if we lose relations if we alienate
1:13:57 you're in that group I'm in this group we can't talk this is the most terrible thing ⮦⮋⮧ we can do we need to as I say get
and yet, he just spent an hour talking about right and left hemisphereness.
1:14:05 back to a kind of reasonableness a kind of kindness a kind of not going
1:14:10 wishy-washy about what you believe but saying well that's very interesting I have thought about that but I always
1:14:16 come up with this what do you think about that there is a way of modeling a conversation and I sometimes think that
1:14:23 almost everybody should have to do couple therapy before they before they're launched on the world because in
1:14:29 couple therapy there's a very fine technique which is that two people who can't get on come to you and you ask one
1:14:35 of them to explain something and the other person butts in and say no no no you'll have your you'll have your say
1:14:41 uninterrupted in a minute now let me hear more about what it is you want to say and then when you turn to the other
1:14:47 party the first thing you say is what did you just hear your partner say and
1:14:52 that is the the most revealing moment cuz then you realize I wasn't saying that at all now if we could do more of
1:15:00 that if children could leave school Having learned um what is it arbitration
1:15:06 skills um how to see both sides of a question in fact I think all children should be taught to to to speak for a
1:15:12 certain uh point and then speak against ⮦⮋⮧ it I can make a very good speech to defense of the left but I think when one
That’s called “the debate team”
1:15:19 has to be able to to be more flexible than we're trained to we're trained to become in this box in this category and
1:15:26 this categorization is what I think is anti-life and dangerous [PR] we had one more question there
I don’t know what to say to that, mostly because there isn’t enough context for it to make sense to call skill specialization or professional training, a category which is anti-life.
1:15:33 from the gentleman to to your right Jessica no no sorry no no turn around toward me toward me just straight ahead
1:15:39 Straight Ahead yes sir thank you okay uh [Audience] thank you very much for everything I've got um the
1:15:46 capability to ask plenty of questions and I'm just going to pick one which I hope will be useful uh to this order
1:15:53 audience could you say a bit about Steven Pinker and the better angels of
1:15:58 our nature uh and I think that he will
1:16:03 he's a reasonable man and will accept all of our understanding of the horrors of the 20th century not withstanding
1:16:10 that he would like us to feel on the whole not don't worry quite so much as
1:16:15 you would invite us to worry uh you know we're we're working things out so anyone
1:16:21 who doesn't know the book perhaps you might just introduce that and then you can answer my question thank you [IM] I mean
1:16:29 I can't launch a critique of of Stephen Pinker but what I think I don't agree
1:16:37 with him I think that it again depends on how you look at things for example
1:16:43 one point that's constantly made is look at how many people have been raised out of poverty but actually when you look at
1:16:50 what happened lots of people who had no income but needed none who lived in
1:16:55 forests in ancient ways that have you know been sustainable for hundreds of
1:17:01 thousands of years were uprooted and sent into cities ⮦⮋⮧ where they became very
This is not accurate. There have not been hunter-gatherers in mainland Africa for more than 100yrs.
The remaining hunter-gatherers are mostly on isolated islands.
1:17:07 poor wage slaves but they had a wage so they've been lifted out of that category
1:17:13 everything depends on how you look at what's going on and Pinker has a rather
1:17:19 curious and and he's quite polemical actually in the way in which he sees
1:17:25 things um yesterday at a talk I was giving I quoted his remark that music is about as
1:17:33 useful as pornography or cheesecake which you know Sten try try and understand what
1:17:42 music can give and I I I I I you know I
1:17:48 find he's he's clever but clever in a not very wise way he makes an argument
1:17:53 but I don't really believe the substance of the argument [PR] we'll have to stop there and in
1:17:59 a moment give another round of applause to to Ian McGilchris for a wonderful and engaging hour that felt like seven and a
1:18:06 half minutes uh you say seven and a 7 7 and half minutes minutes minutes smaller
1:18:12 bits smaller bits um if you would like to support us again if you want to leave
1:18:18 a fer on the way out if you want to join us for uh even song just in the smaller
1:18:23 Chapel there you're welcome to but in about 8 minutes time we'll all have to have cleared this space so with that
1:18:30 having been said we thank you once again for joining us at pey house to exodor college to the Ian Ramsey Center for
1:18:36 their support and to you Dr Migel Christ for your engaging thoughts and ADI and
1:18:42 life life advice I think for our civilization thank you very much thank
1:18:47 you thank you
1:18:58 [Applause]
1:19:04 [Music]
1:19:13 than
