Hello Jonathan! Together with a number of collaborators (Claudia Dommaschk and John Stokdijk foremost among them), I have been working on how to manifest the "McGilchrist Manoeuvre." To be honest, we are quite in awe of Iain's and your work... If you happen to see this comment and have a moment, maybe you can look at Claudia's article here -- https://immediacyforum.substack.com/p/the-queen-and-her-knight -- and give a quick reply (here at your substack) whether or not you feel we misunderstand/misrepresent your ideas...? Thank you!
I have been interested in McGilchrist's two hemisphere analysis from a complexity governance perspective for a long time. It resonates very well with the two complexity governance strategies derived from Ross Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety. Stafford Beer, the late management cybernetician, used Ashby's Law to argue that there are two ways to deal with the excess complexity of the environment and achieve requisite variety (i.e. adaptability): either to "attenuate" the incoming complexity or to "amplify" the governor's capacity. Max Boisot and Bill McKelvey have more recently used the terms "complexity reduction" and "complexity absorption" in a similar vein. I think these two complexity governance approaches may also be working in our brain, the right hemisphere being responsible for the "complexity absorption" and the left for the "complexity reduction". Interestingly, both Ross Ashby and Stafford Beer used the brain metaphor when they developed their theories.
I think the two complexity governance approaches are inter-linked by experiental learning processes in a cyclical fashion that David Kolb describes in his book Experiental Learning (2015). We gather new information in our practices, reflect our experiences, and codify and abstract generalizations from them. These generalizations are then used in planning our new activities, which then generate further experiences, and so on. Both practical experimentation (complexity absorption) and the subsequent abstract generalizations that help us to reduce the complexity of the incoming information are important for achieving requisite cognitive variety necessary for adaptive behavior. The McGilchrist Manoeuvre may correspond to this experiental learning and complexity governance process in the brain.
The really interesting thing is that the underlying drivers of the current Metacrisis can be analyzed with the above framework of two complexity governance approaches. It seems that we have a growing "complexity gap" in our societies between the increasing complexity and uncertainty of the world and the capacity of our old mental frames and socio-economic structures to deal with it. I am planning to write a book that analyzes the governance crisis created by the growing complexity gap at different levels of the society: individuals, organizations, governments and multinational organizations. I hope Iain McGilchrist's work helps me to integrate the the functioning of the brain and the two hemispheres to my story.
It would be nice to discuss more about this topic with you, if possible.
The McGilchrist Manoeuvre, Keats' Doctrine of Negative Capability and Pinkola Estés' Life/Death/Life motif are surely three of the most elegant and helpful ways of approaching the generative paradoxes of genuine insight. Thank you for expanding on Iain's subtle 'pledge / turn / prestige' here.
Really quite a brilliant reading and comprehension...your final encapsulation articulates a nugget of wisdom that I have intuited for some time now. It's great to have it "said out loud".
Mostly excellent stuff. One minor point: There's a very common misunderstanding in the comment about non duality, which is often thought of in a very left brain way as opposing difference, privileging oneness.
There may have been some "schools" of thought which saw it this way, but this is clearly not what David Loy, in his overview of non duality throughout China, Tibet, India and Japan, understood.
Non duality is ALREADY a paradoxical term, by taking it as an affirmative statement, to say "the non duality of duality and non-duality” is actually to take an integrative statement (not solely right brain) and turn it into a left brain confusion.
Non duality means not two, it doesn't mean "oneness" as opposed to multiplicity.
It is purposely stated as a negative (A-Dvaita, with Dvaita meaning duality and "A" meaning NOT duality) NOT meant to be taken as an epistemological OR ontological statement, but rather, indicating that any resolution of duality (which does NOT mean difference but fundamental ontological division or separation - that is, taking the left brain's perspective as absolute) cannot done by the mind (by the right brain or left brain).
I realize that a majority of folks calling themselves nondualists these days are actually monists, but i you look more carefully at the Sanskrit Advaita (and not Shankara's school, which tends more toward absolute monism than genuine non duality), you'll see how McGilchrist here has eliminated the paradox and turned it into a left brain statement.
By the way, there is the same problem with "“the unity of multiplicity and unity” Nonduality is NOT the unity of the two. It's not anything that can be stated in words.
It can be hinted at (as in "The frog jumps into the pond. Plop!") but when one tries to make it explicit, there's a complete failure. However, many attempts to describe it implicitly fail as well. This is where, also, Iain misunderstands contemplative practice.
he mocks it in his conversation with Jonathan (in his online conversation) as telling someone to sit still and make their mind a blank. No legitimate teacher of contemplation would ever dream of advising someone to do something impossible (though they might - as I often do - make a temporary suggestion to try it in order to experience that it's impossible; which is not to say, sitting effortlessly for hours, fully and lucidly wakeful, without any verbal thought is impossible - it's actually quite easy once it is understood how to make an effortless effort. But there's that paradox again! "I'm going to teach you effortless meditation. Now, here are the steps you have to take, with great effort. And please keep in mind, these steps have nothing to do with meditation. Nor does "meditation" have anything to do with meditating. As the Ashtavakra Gita puts it, "Your problem is that you meditate." And yet, it also advises, urges, "meditate!"
Jonathan, This is great. I'd also wished that pattern could be more widely understood and often quote his ‘the unity of the idea of unity and the idea of division'. As is often the case, giving it a label like the McGilchrist manoeuvre affords a bit more purchase on the idea, further enabled by the helpful list. FWIW, where it has lead me is to see the world as a multi-layered construct. I know it is (anatomically) right and left brain, but I often think of it as bottom and top brain, which then invites rumination as to what is the right (bottom) brain itself the top of...
I dunno Johnsthan...that's pretty damn elucidating! I am so thrilled with this, and so grateful Perspectiva has undertaken this Project.
Hello Jonathan! Together with a number of collaborators (Claudia Dommaschk and John Stokdijk foremost among them), I have been working on how to manifest the "McGilchrist Manoeuvre." To be honest, we are quite in awe of Iain's and your work... If you happen to see this comment and have a moment, maybe you can look at Claudia's article here -- https://immediacyforum.substack.com/p/the-queen-and-her-knight -- and give a quick reply (here at your substack) whether or not you feel we misunderstand/misrepresent your ideas...? Thank you!
Hi Jonathan,
I have been interested in McGilchrist's two hemisphere analysis from a complexity governance perspective for a long time. It resonates very well with the two complexity governance strategies derived from Ross Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety. Stafford Beer, the late management cybernetician, used Ashby's Law to argue that there are two ways to deal with the excess complexity of the environment and achieve requisite variety (i.e. adaptability): either to "attenuate" the incoming complexity or to "amplify" the governor's capacity. Max Boisot and Bill McKelvey have more recently used the terms "complexity reduction" and "complexity absorption" in a similar vein. I think these two complexity governance approaches may also be working in our brain, the right hemisphere being responsible for the "complexity absorption" and the left for the "complexity reduction". Interestingly, both Ross Ashby and Stafford Beer used the brain metaphor when they developed their theories.
I think the two complexity governance approaches are inter-linked by experiental learning processes in a cyclical fashion that David Kolb describes in his book Experiental Learning (2015). We gather new information in our practices, reflect our experiences, and codify and abstract generalizations from them. These generalizations are then used in planning our new activities, which then generate further experiences, and so on. Both practical experimentation (complexity absorption) and the subsequent abstract generalizations that help us to reduce the complexity of the incoming information are important for achieving requisite cognitive variety necessary for adaptive behavior. The McGilchrist Manoeuvre may correspond to this experiental learning and complexity governance process in the brain.
The really interesting thing is that the underlying drivers of the current Metacrisis can be analyzed with the above framework of two complexity governance approaches. It seems that we have a growing "complexity gap" in our societies between the increasing complexity and uncertainty of the world and the capacity of our old mental frames and socio-economic structures to deal with it. I am planning to write a book that analyzes the governance crisis created by the growing complexity gap at different levels of the society: individuals, organizations, governments and multinational organizations. I hope Iain McGilchrist's work helps me to integrate the the functioning of the brain and the two hemispheres to my story.
It would be nice to discuss more about this topic with you, if possible.
Br, Timo Hämäläinen
The McGilchrist Manoeuvre, Keats' Doctrine of Negative Capability and Pinkola Estés' Life/Death/Life motif are surely three of the most elegant and helpful ways of approaching the generative paradoxes of genuine insight. Thank you for expanding on Iain's subtle 'pledge / turn / prestige' here.
Really quite a brilliant reading and comprehension...your final encapsulation articulates a nugget of wisdom that I have intuited for some time now. It's great to have it "said out loud".
Mostly excellent stuff. One minor point: There's a very common misunderstanding in the comment about non duality, which is often thought of in a very left brain way as opposing difference, privileging oneness.
There may have been some "schools" of thought which saw it this way, but this is clearly not what David Loy, in his overview of non duality throughout China, Tibet, India and Japan, understood.
Non duality is ALREADY a paradoxical term, by taking it as an affirmative statement, to say "the non duality of duality and non-duality” is actually to take an integrative statement (not solely right brain) and turn it into a left brain confusion.
Non duality means not two, it doesn't mean "oneness" as opposed to multiplicity.
It is purposely stated as a negative (A-Dvaita, with Dvaita meaning duality and "A" meaning NOT duality) NOT meant to be taken as an epistemological OR ontological statement, but rather, indicating that any resolution of duality (which does NOT mean difference but fundamental ontological division or separation - that is, taking the left brain's perspective as absolute) cannot done by the mind (by the right brain or left brain).
I realize that a majority of folks calling themselves nondualists these days are actually monists, but i you look more carefully at the Sanskrit Advaita (and not Shankara's school, which tends more toward absolute monism than genuine non duality), you'll see how McGilchrist here has eliminated the paradox and turned it into a left brain statement.
By the way, there is the same problem with "“the unity of multiplicity and unity” Nonduality is NOT the unity of the two. It's not anything that can be stated in words.
It can be hinted at (as in "The frog jumps into the pond. Plop!") but when one tries to make it explicit, there's a complete failure. However, many attempts to describe it implicitly fail as well. This is where, also, Iain misunderstands contemplative practice.
he mocks it in his conversation with Jonathan (in his online conversation) as telling someone to sit still and make their mind a blank. No legitimate teacher of contemplation would ever dream of advising someone to do something impossible (though they might - as I often do - make a temporary suggestion to try it in order to experience that it's impossible; which is not to say, sitting effortlessly for hours, fully and lucidly wakeful, without any verbal thought is impossible - it's actually quite easy once it is understood how to make an effortless effort. But there's that paradox again! "I'm going to teach you effortless meditation. Now, here are the steps you have to take, with great effort. And please keep in mind, these steps have nothing to do with meditation. Nor does "meditation" have anything to do with meditating. As the Ashtavakra Gita puts it, "Your problem is that you meditate." And yet, it also advises, urges, "meditate!"
Jonathan, This is great. I'd also wished that pattern could be more widely understood and often quote his ‘the unity of the idea of unity and the idea of division'. As is often the case, giving it a label like the McGilchrist manoeuvre affords a bit more purchase on the idea, further enabled by the helpful list. FWIW, where it has lead me is to see the world as a multi-layered construct. I know it is (anatomically) right and left brain, but I often think of it as bottom and top brain, which then invites rumination as to what is the right (bottom) brain itself the top of...