The master and the emissary
Iain McGilchrist
b. 1953
A psychiatrist-philosopher who watched the left hemisphere steal the world and call the theft clarity.
The Master and His Emissary.
The Matter With Things.
The two hemispheres are not a parlor trick of logic versus art.
They are two kinds of attention: the right present to the living whole, the left useful with maps, parts, tools, names.
Civilization, he says, has let the emissary usurp the master.
Attention is a moral act.
What you attend to grows a world.
Watts would recognize the wave forgetting the ocean.
Korzybski would call it identification.
McGilchrist gives it a nervous system and a history.
On the shelf
The Master and His Emissary / The Matter With Things
Iain McGilchrist
In the library
Iain McGilchrist
The emissary forgets the master
The right hemisphere is present to the living whole — implicit, relational, changing. The left is an emissary: it names, divides, uses, maps. Both are needed. Trouble begins when the emissary usurps the master and takes the map for the world. Attention is not a spotlight we shine on a finished reality. Attention is a moral act. It brings a world into being. What we attend to, we become able to see. What we refuse, goes dark.
The Master and His Emissary
Iain McGilchrist
Attention makes a world
The kind of attention we pay to the world changes the world we pay attention to. A culture that attends only with the left hemisphere will find a world of parts, resources, problems, and enemies — and will be certain it is seeing clearly. A culture that lets the master lead will find a world that is alive, unfinished, and worthy of care. This is not anti-reason. It is reason remembering it serves something it did not invent.
The Matter With Things