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The Master and his Emissary ~ THE book of the year (period)
The Master and his Emissary ~ THE book of the year (period)
' Actions and deeds have consequences. Forethought is important. '
A concept that, over centuries, seems to have lost meaning in a Western world of armchair quarterback, revisionist historians who continually fail to heed the most prophetic facts uttered by Sammy Langhorne.
" A historian who would convey the truth must lie. Often he must enlarge the truth by diameters, otherwise his reader would not be able to see it. "
- Mark Twain, a Biography
Herodotus says, " Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all: The conscientious historian will correct these defects. "
- Acknowledgments for A Horse's Tale
" ... history can carry on no successful competition with news, in the matter of sharp interest. "
- Mark Twain's Autobiography
" It is not worthwhile to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man's character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible. "
- Mark Twain in Eruption
" History requires a world of time and bitter hard work when your "education" is no further advanced than the cat's; when you are merely stuffing yourself with a mixed-up mess of empty names and random incidents and elusive dates; which no one teaches you how to interpret, and which, uninterpreted, pay you not a farthing's value for your waste of time. "
- Following the Equator
" The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice. "
- Following the Equator
" One of the most admirable things about history is, that almost as a rule we get as much information out of what it does not say as we get out of what it does say. And so, one may truly and axiomatically aver this, to-wit: that history consists of two equal parts; one of these halves is statements of fact, the other half is inference, drawn from the facts. To the experienced student of history there are no difficulties about this; to him the half which is unwritten is as clearly and surely visible, by the help of scientific inference, as if it flashed and flamed in letters of fire before his eyes. When the practised eye of the simple peasant sees the half of a frog projecting above the water, he unerringly infers the half of the frog which he does not see. To the expert student in our great science, history is a frog; half of it is submerged, but he knows it is there, and he knows the shape of it. "
- "The Secret History of Eddypus"
Nature, when pleased with an idea, never tires of applying it. She makes plains; she makes hills; she makes mountains; raises a conspicuous peak at wide intervals; then loftier and rarer ones, continents apart; and finally a supreme one six miles high. She uses this grading process in horses: she turns out myriads of them that are all of one common dull gait; with here and there a faster one; at enormous intervals a conspicuously faster one; and once in a half century a celebrity that does a mile in two minutes. She will repat that horse every fifty years to the end of time.
By the Law of Periodical Repetition, everything which has happened once must happen again and again and again -- and not capriciously, but at regular periods, and each thing in its own period, not another's, and each obeying its own law. The eclipse of the sun, the occultation of Venus, the arrival and departure of the comets, the annual shower of stars -- all these things hint to us that the same Nature which orders the affairs of the earth. Let us not underrate the value of that hint.
- "Passage from the a Lecture" published in Fables of Man (1) http://www.twainquotes.com/History.html
Ever wonder why you suck at investing / trading / poker ?
Ever wonder why your fleeting relationships / government / humanity continue to repeat the same mistakes over and over again, in a humourous refusal to heed Rita Mae Brown's "The definition of insanity is...," ?
The brain does much more than just recollect.
It inter-compares. It synthesizes. It analyzes. It generates abstractions.
The simplest thought, like: the concept of the number 1; has an elaborate logical underpinning.
The brain has it's own language for testing the structure and consistency of the world.But we never see the machinery of logical analysis; only the conclusions.
- Carl Sagan (2)
Iain McGilchrist's "The Master and his Emissary" doesn't solve today's mortgage meltdown, currency crisis, cyber wars, regulatory capture or dearth of leadership (and certainly won't help you 'breed a unicorn that defecates Kruggerands'), but it does provide an actionable blueprint for how not to repeat them (ever again).
In one of the finest pieces of artistic craftsmanship that you'll ever enjoy devouring, McGilchrist's 608 page masterpiece provides an actionable blueprint for the human brain (and a better life) while also proffering up an antidote to the insanity of 'modern' 'logic' / 'rationale', 'thought processes' and 'value systems'.
The Master and his Emissary is THE book of 2009 & 2010. Period.
(1) Table of Contents
(2) A brief description of
(3) 14 page Introduction ~ attached PDF
Itself worth the price of the book, beware: these 14 'Introductory' pages will take your mind down Timothy Leary lane as its neural synapses shoot inside like Racer X going for Speed and that stupid monkey.
C ON T E N T S
List of Illustrations vi
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction: The Master and His Emissary 1
PART ONE: THE DIVIDED BRAIN 15
Chapter 1 Asymmetry and the Brain 16
Chapter 2 What do the Two Hemispheres ‘Do’? 32
Chapter 3 Language, Truth and Music 94
Chapter 4 The Nature of the Two Worlds 133
Chapter 5 The Primacy of the Right Hemisphere 176
Chapter 6 The Triumph of the Left Hemisphere 209
PART TWO: HOW THE BRAIN HAS SHAPED OUR WORLD 239
Chapter 7 Imitation and the Evolution of Culture 240
Chapter 8 The Ancient World 257
Chapter 9 The Renaissance and the Reformation 298
Chapter 10 The Enlightenment 330
Chapter 11 Romanticism and the Industrial Revolution 352
Chapter 12 The Modern and Post-Modern Worlds 389
Conclusion: The Master Betrayed 428
Notes 463
Bibliography 518
Index 586
A brief description of The Master and his Emissary
" This book argues that the division of the brain into two hemispheres is essential to human existence, making possible incompatible versions of the world, with quite different priorities and values.
Most scientists long ago abandoned the attempt to understand why nature has so carefully segregated the hemispheres, or how to make coherent the large, and expanding, body of evidence about their differences. In fact to talk about the topic is to invite dismissal. Yet no one who knows anything about the area would dispute for an instant that there are significant differences: it's just that no-one seems to know why. And we now know that every type of function - including reason, emotion, language and imagery - is subserved not by one hemisphere alone, but by both.
This book argues that the differences lie not, as has been supposed, in the 'what' - which skills each hemisphere possesses - but in the 'how', the way in which each uses them, and to what end. But, like the brain itself, the relationship between the hemispheres is not symmetrical. The left hemisphere, though unaware of its dependence, could be thought of as an 'emissary' of the right hemisphere, valuable for taking on a role that the right hemisphere - the 'Master' - cannot itself afford to undertake. However it turns out that the emissary has his own will, and secretly believes himself to be superior to the Master. And he has the means to betray him. What he doesn't realize is that in doing so he will also betray himself.
The book begins by looking at the structure and function of the brain, and at the differences between the hemispheres, not only in attention and flexibility, but in attitudes to the implicit, the unique, and the personal, as well as the body, time, depth, music, metaphor, empathy, morality, certainty and the self. It suggests that the drive to language was not principally to do with communication or thought, but manipulation, the main aim of the left hemisphere, which manipulates the right hand. It shows the hemispheres as no mere machines with functions, but underwriting whole, self-consistent, versions of the world. Through an examination of Western philosophy, art and literature, it reveals the uneasy relationship of the hemispheres being played out in the history of ideas, from ancient times until the present. It ends by suggesting that we may be about to witness the final triumph of the left hemisphere – at the expense of us all. " (3)
(1) http://www.twainquotes.com/History.html
(2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SHc67Hep48&feature=fvw
(3) http://www.iainmcgilchrist.com/brief_description.asp
»
Thanks.
You can go down the replies and get of sense of right brainer, left brainers, and egocentrics which over rides both. One example is on comment about "knowing". Knowing is nebulous and a true seeker "knows" that there is no concrete knowing only one question leading to another. Knowing is the ego speaking. The real source of problems is the wanting to know and frustration in seeking to know that lets the mind latch on to something as shallow as income bracket to account for their self worth also in which case there will never be enough. " I make cash wads therefore I am" mentality, and I make more than others therefore Im superior. Thats not knowing... that's the smoke and mirrors that prevents the knowing. That's what crashed the worlds economy too many egos with an inferiority complex.
bingo.
Chopshop,
I love these posts of yours (perhaps because I'm a southpaw?). Here's another wsj.com link worth investigating
Thanks again for the book reference.
thanks for the kind words, Unscarred.
the 'area' of study is kind of a fetish for me.
great catch on the WSJ intro snippet; missed that one.
few can wrap their noggins round the copernican construct that Cartesian 'logic' truly is ... McGilchrist' masterpiece really is just that damn good.
outside of Mark Douglas' 'Trading in the Zone', can't really think of another title of greater actionable import.
".... The left hemisphere, ever optimistic, is like a sleepwalker whistling a happy tune as it ambles towards the abyss. Let's wake up before we free-fall into the void."
so what is still the number one record in america (you ask) ?
TiK-ToK ~ by Ke$ha
yup, the spelling is correct. and at #2, there's a debut: Taylor Swift's 'Today was a Fairytale'
even LG's synchypnotic roll is being slowed ... "we're just physical creatures of the underworld .... it's time that we rotate, cause it's getting real late."
Couldn't help but comment on AC/DC winning the Grammy for 'Best Hard Rock Perfomance' after putting out their 37th album that sounds exactly the same as the previous 36 efforts, while Alice in Chains (who have always put forth original material, and scored 21 top 40 singles in the process) finish as the bride's maid for the 7th time.
That damn left hemisphere...
unfortunately more recent fMRI research has shown the entire left brain - right brain dichotomy to be fallacious. Functions are distributed globally, not isolated in one hemisphere or area.
Great Ideas and a quote comes to mind: "It is easier to get a camel through the eye a needle than a rich man into the Kingdom of God. Replace "Kingdom of God" with Truth of Quantum Entanglement (Oneness) which dismembers such noble thinker s as Einstein and Maxwell like a rag doll thrown around by a raging dog. The rich man ever striving just for MERE SATISFACTION fails at this one simple quest -- he or she are constantly dis satisfied. The richer they are the more this appears to be the case. They must show off, flaunt, be recognized as "special" and yet the empty Vanity is ultimately still left wanting...
Its only when the hemi's unite under the New Laws of Quantum (Oneness) entanglement that any true peace is found. The nature of the outer will always take on a reflection of what is inside. Humanity at this time is back in Maxwellian theories having no notion of Oneness and the intrinsic Duty to All of Life.
In all your getting, get Wisdom...
Well, the metaphysics is extremely bad (he begs the question against idealism by regarding it as the viewpoint of one hemisphere of the brain, then launches on a tangent which appears to make the assumption that second order morality is necessarily dependent on the answer to the metaphysical realism-idealism question, which he conveniently indicates is "both and neither" - yuk) but the neuroscience-anthropology angle seems potentially interesting. I presume his notion is that environmental factors in the form of cultural norms and received ideas are influencing our hemispheric activity allocation process, in a potentially unhelpful manner (which seems plausible), not that some recent evolution in human neurophysiology is responsible for the effect (which does not).
Let me summarize: everything awesome is old, everything new is old.
Ballsy.
Or, you could read 'this time is different' and 'the myth of rational markets' and get a better understanding of creative destruction in western capitalism.
Otherwise, a horribly unoriginal collection of quotes that probably appeals only to those... Who would read it anyway.
Let me summarize: everything awesome is old, everything new is old.
Ballsy.
Or, you could read 'this time is different' and 'the myth of rational markets' and get a better understanding of creative destruction in western capitalism.
Otherwise, a horribly unoriginal collection of quotes that probably appeals only to those... Who would read it anyway.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqxc7NSX7JA
The Great Way is gateless,
Approached in a thousand ways.
Once past this checkpoint
You stride through the universe.
Clearly the modern world is left brain oriented, real right brained people are ridiculed even though they can have enormous skills and talents. When I lived in Hawaii learned about Polynesians, it seemed the whole genius of Polynesian culture was based on mainly right brain stuff, how they found all the inhabitable islands in the Pacific by observation of wave interactions, birds etc..
Don't know if its similar to this books insights, but another interesting insight into right side of brain by a brain scientist who had a stroke and left her with only right brain functions for awhile is http://www.mystrokeofinsight.com/
I'm ambidextrous, throw right handed mostly, but decent with my left. I write with my left hand, but paint with my right hand. I can write sentences upside down, backwards, any old way I want and all at the same time. I truly don't think like others around me, not even when I studied engineering, physics, chemisty, etc. Studying investing and money has been the most exciting thing I have ever put my mind to. So many variables, so many possible outcomes. I think which side of your brain dominates, if either, matters. After 15 years, I can say I am a good investor, left and right sided, bull and bear? :-)
that site is new to me; will check it out. thanks for the heads up, moneymutt.
w/o getting too personal: i firmly believe that such traumas help 're-start' the brain ... basically that such events trigger new brain waves / direction of existing, which would otherwise never, ever be tapped into.
i'm not an expert by any means in this field, just a humble student of.
much like trading / investing: to each their own.
this highlight has been long overdue and, fwiw, is simply my own personal opinion of how mind-numbingly important and actionable Mr. McGilchrist's tome is. while certainly not of interest to all, i firmly believe that those who sift through just the attached PDF Introduction will be left in awe of what Iain McGilchrist has compiled / detailed.
This whole article is written like an advertisement. Never gets to the point, but promises huge benefits nonetheless. I would suggest the editors cut crap like this.
+100^10
Right or left all the same to me. I am not the body or the brain. I am the presence, the creative forces channel, the spark , the point of awareness. Call me what you will, i too pretend to be human but have learned i am more than that. This self education can be found in the quiet and sublety of the moment.
Perhaps when we recognize our true selves we will also recognize others and give them, ourselves and this precious moment the respect and love it all deserves.
I can only speak for myself and my own experience. I know for myself beyond any doubt, from my own experience what i am.
Without the human body/brain interface we would have no means, no anchor or vehicle to stay upon this lovely planet.
Surely many will see reality to their own choosing. Still reality , like gravity cares little for what we believe. So the truth is in the KNOWING
and certainty of experience. We each must seize a moment in time to become aware of our parts and balance them to reach a higher plateau of conciousness.
moderating ones thoughts and the thought streams as well as not allowing emotions to sway thought and action is akin to aiming at the mouth with a spoon, almost automatic once trained . But so few train themselves in this manner. Most of us run on automatic feeding of the next desire, bringing us closer to the animalistic side (body)
good luck on your journey
non believer, not religious, no church affiliation just practical experience of awareness.
You can go down the replies and get of sense of right brainer, left brainers, and egocentrics which over rides both. One example is on comment about "knowing". Knowing is nebulous and a true seeker "knows" that there is no concrete knowing only one question leading to another. Knowing is the ego speaking. The real source of problems is the wanting to know and frustration in seeking to know that lets the mind latch on to something as shallow as income bracket to account for their self worth also in which case there will never be enough. " I make cash wads therefore I am" mentality, and I make more than others therefore Im superior. Thats not knowing... that's the smoke and mirrors that prevents the knowing. That's what crashed the worlds economy too many egos with an inferiority complex.
namaste
I just saw an interview with Hank Paulson on CBS Sunday Morning news show. He has a book coming out soon to explain his view of the crisis and the part he played. He comes off as a good decent man who lives on his parents farm. What I could see though is that when he was thrown into the fire he had to use everything he knew and draw on all his experience to connect the dots and come up with answers. Unfortunately for us these experiences were with Goldman Sachs and he is not the personality type to connect those dots in a in a non linear way when the crisis was blown out in all directions like a Jackson Pollock painting. He seems very left brained when it came to his problem solving skills like the weatherman so engrossed with reading charts that he wouldn't know if was raining outside his sphere of focus and understand that rain can kill crops also. Right brained folks tend to see the big picture like when you stand back from a painting that makes no sense up close and you get it without dissecting all the parts till it fits in mathematical formulas they learned at Harvard.
We could have used a right brained person on Paulson's team but then that's not the type that aspires to Wall Street as their highest goal.
Paulson is a cheating, fucking liar whose only goal was to assure the maintenance of Goldman Sucks' Treasure at the expense of everyone else in the world, their fate be damned.
And the only thing I'd believe in a book he writes is his confession that he did it, he's sorry, and he has gone to the Attorney General of the United States to demand clawbacks of every single cent he gave to his friends. And then turn himself in to be sentenced to the maximum extent of the law. (And anyone else he tipped off so that they could benefit too.)