There Is A Great Deal Of Ruin In The Western World. This Is Why
- Andy McIlvain
- Jun 22
- 2 min read
Video from Thinking Class John Gillam
There Is A Great Deal Of Ruin In The Western World. This Is Why
"Something has gone wrong with the Western mind. Not recently and not with any particular government or policy but rather at a deep structural level, over centuries. @DrIainMcGilchrist spent his career as a psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and literary scholar trying to make sense of it. His argument is not that the brain has caused the crisis; it is that the brain makes the crisis legible. When the right hemisphere is in its proper place, providing broad oversight of the whole, both hemispheres work together. When the narrow, self-referential left hemisphere takes charge - as it has in our time - the guiding vision of the whole is lost. And once you are locked into that narrow picture, it is very hard to break out, and usually, it takes either centuries or a cataclysm. Which way modern man?
In this conversation we think out loud about:
The difference between the actions and thoughts produced by the left and right hemispheres of the brain
The most visible symptoms of civilisational decay in Britain and the West
The key inflection points in history that set the West on a road to ruin, having previously defined the path to greatness
What the Romantics were longing for in the industrial era — and why nostalgia is not a bad thing but necessary
Why we need more new Romantics to show us how to live more fully human lives in the machine age
What the industrialisation of man has done to our souls
What the world we have built is doing to our minds and why mental health diagnoses are so prevalent amongst the young
The mistake made by the West in becoming post-Christian
Why Iain would rather die than sever his relationship with the faith — What Iain has not changed his mind on." from the video introduction
Comments