The world of politics
exists as a field of several divisions in functional practice. There
are cultural, class, ethnic, religious, ideological, national, state,
local and, quite possibly, others that are beyond my counting. While
the identification of these divisions and their facets would make for an
interesting research topic (in order to better understand the empirical
arrangements of our social and ecological worlds), the question that
this paper seeks to address is where do all of these divisions come
from?
We could begin by searching out the origins of these divisions within our social world. Unfortunately, that would only yield us unsatisfactory answers as to what these divisions are and where they originate from. We'd get lost in a sea of, what is, ultimately subjectivity in spite of our best efforts to make it uniform. Even the scientific notation system; the official system of measurement that is used by the scientific community is, at the heart of it, only the arbitrarily chosen means of divying up the universe such that we can better understand it. Likewise, the divisions that exist within our social world: national, ethnic, religious, ideological, etc, are ultimately at their core, arbitrarily created things that have no inherent meaning in the cosmos. The answer as to where these divisions come from, I believe, lies much closer to our individual selves. I believe that the origin of these divisions is in our brain, and that we are removed from the actuality of the universe for our own ability to survive and interact with the world around us.
This paper presupposes that there is an objective reality out there, beyond our conceptions and perceptions of reality. This paper believes that our brains and sensory organs are what mediate this objective world into the world that our minds live in, such that we are again, always disconnected from this common, objective reality in some way, shape and form. This paper asserts that it is through empirical study that we get better in touch with this objective reality that is our world beyond our minds' conceptions and perceptions, in order to distinguish repeatable patterns as to how things work outside of our minds' subjective conceptions and perceptions.
But where then do these senses of divisions come from, in a universe that is, from what we can tell, uniformly quantum foam and sub-atomic particles? How then does this relate to political science and the ordered divisions that we perceive in our social world that is, on the deepest levels, uniform? The answer comes from within our brain, and that it does so for the evolutionary advantage. However, when this perception of difference becomes too great, it ultimately is what leads to a significant number of our problems within the world, when it comes to relating to others and relating to the environment in which we live.
To begin this discussion, I will first talk about the brain and the essential division that exists between the world generated by the left hemisphere and the world generated by the right hemisphere. Then I will talk about how this relates to the production of divisions within our social world, which ultimately leads me to answering the first question of “where do these divisions come from?” in the first place.
The right hemisphere is responsible for generating the big picture sense of the world. It is what perceives the whole that is the world, rather than all the parts, and it interprets those wholes as images frozen in the present. Our sense of time and division doesn't exist within the right hemisphere's generated world. That would require linear division, which is the purview of the left hemispherei The left hemisphere is where our sense of the ourselves in the world is generated. It is where the “ego centers” are located that separate our selves from the rest of the world that's around us. It works in detailed parts, rather than taking in the whole, constructing its sense of the world by building on the parts that it perceives into an amalgamation of the whole that's actually present. It sees petal, stamen, leaves, stem, stigma and anther, rather than perceiving the flower that is in front of it.ii It is that sense of “self” that is produced by the left hemisphere, which distinguishes us as a piece separate from others, and others as pieces apart from ourselves; distinct and separate from our own ways of being. Between these two hemispheres, a seemless perception of our world emerges, such that we can hardly distinguish ourselves between which hemisphere is doing what at any given moment in time. And it is that perception that we use to make our way within the cosmos as we know it, for better and for worse as well.
Now, there is considerable variance in the way that our brains are mapped, such that no two are exactly the same way.iii Many things factor into brain development, including genetics and environmental stimuli of all sorts. But our brains' neural pathways work like paths created in the snow. Once one path has been established by one person, others tend to follow that same path, however round about it may be, because it's the path of least resistance. Only if another path was created in the snow with repetition from others will it change its own direction of neural cascade and produce a different result. These changes can happen on the micro level and, eventually, lead up to major macro level differences in perception, action, attitude and behavior.iv But what is important, is that the smallest of neural pathways can lead to the biggest effect on the macro level, and thus produce one result over another in terms of our actions, attitudes, behaviors and perceptions.
Because minute differences in a person's brain can yield to such big differences, it's possible that some people are more dominant with their left hemisphere, and some are more dominant with their right hemisphere. Dominance in this case, means that one is used primarily over the other, which then influences the view of the world that you receive. I'd imagine this would exist on a continuum, with each individual person lying on a specific spot along the gradient between extreme right hemisphere dominance and extreme left hemisphere dominance, each with their own unique sets of apparent pros and cons, and each one producing its own unique, individual at the end. Furthermore, from what we know of neural plasticity and the ability for the brain to make new connections later on in life, I do not think that these positions are, necessarily, stuck there for life.
So, how do these two modes of thinking, the holistic and the divided, factor into making our world and shaping our interactions with others, and our own senses of selves in the process? As I said earlier, it's the left hemisphere which deals with the divisions within our world. It is where the ego centers lie that distinguish us from others as a separate individual, while the right hemisphere experiences the whole that is our world.v All the divisions that we perceive are then, therefore, products of our left hemisphere and our left hemisphere's way of thinking. Otherwise, we would experience the cosmos as the unified whole that it is, and we ourselves would fade into the background of the cosmic energy, being both everywhere and nowhere (as the Buddhists would say).vi
This was precisely the experience that Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor described after having her stroke on the left-hemisphere of her brain, essentially shutting down most of its functions in her mind's perception. Specifically, the stroke affected her motor cortex, her sensory cortex, her Broca's area (where speech is created), her Wernicke's area (place where speech is understood), her orientation association cortex (where physical boundaries are perceived and sense of time/space is produced), and her sensory cortex (where her ability to sense the world is housed).vii
“My entire self concept shifted as I longer perceive myself as a single, a solid, an entity with boundaries that separated me from the entities around me. I understood that at the most elementary level, I am a fluid....Everything around us, about us, among us, within us, and between us is made up of atoms and molecules vibrating in space. Although the ego center of our language center prefers defining our self as an individual and solid...we are made up of trillions of cells, gallons of water and ultimately everything about us exists in a constant and dynamic state of activity. My left hemisphere had been trained to perceive myself as a solid, separate from others. Now released from that restrictive circuitry, my right hemisphere relished in its attachment to the eternal flow. I was no longer isolated and alone. My soul was as big as the universe and frolicked with glee in a boundless sea. (Taylor, pg 71)
This is hardly in keeping with what we currently know and think about in political science and in government practice. Everything is studied on the division level, and nothing is seen on the bigger scale beyond the parts. What's more, these divisions are not only studied in the external sense, but are experience in the internal sense, within the participants of the political/sociological action. A mujahideen does not merely think of himself as a Muslim. He experiences himself as a Muslim. It's part of his sense of self-identity. And it's the prominent sense of identity if he actively believes in the call of international jihad against the West and, what is, all non-Islamic cultures impeding on Islam. The division is not one that is merely studied on the external level. It's one that is experienced on the internal level as well.
That is precisely why I think that all the divisions that exist in the world, all of our feelings of division in the world, ultimately stem from our left hemispheres. It's not so much that we perceive differences in the world around us. We can recognize another as being physically separated from us with happiness and recognition of self within the other (which is how bonds are formed between and amongst people)viii. It's that we internalize these divisions deeply within our sub-conscious, and allow them to take over in place of the truth that, we are, in fact, on the deepest levels of things apart of a whole which is our complete and unblemished cosmos.ix It's that ego sense of self, what the Hindu's refer to as the source of all evil in our world, that is caused by the left hemisphere, particularly when it is too extreme in its presence and overly influential in the mind's perceptions of the world.x This over-wrought sense of self, sense of ego, seems to cause a lot of the problems with living together, and living within the context of the social and ecological world in which we're also apart of inseparably. It allows us to think in terms of exclusion, which permits all kinds of exploitative and degenerating actions against the human and environmental world that the right hemisphere would simply overrule, if it were more prominent in our thinking patterns. We perceive the differences, the isolation of our own self from it that is also us, and we're enabled to do horrendous things to other people and to the ecological world in the name of that smaller sense of self which is, ultimately, destroyed in the process along wth the rest.
Consider the oil industry. There is a business that's set up on a model that is a) going to run out of it's accessible supply of what it sells, b) is causing massive damage to our global ecology through the emission of carbon-dioxide gas and c) creating massive political and economic complications that would otherwise not exist for our species, if we were on a renewable and clean source of energy. All of this is fed from their small sense of self and their prioritization of abstract concepts, such as finance; both of which, are products of the left hemisphere's way of thinking. However, because of the effects on the planet, the effects on the lives of the people who live and help produce their wealth and the limited supply that's remaining in the world that's accessible to them, the industry itself is set up to fail. Much like how our bodies are each and all set up to, eventually, fail upon our death. It's inevitable. It's unavoidable. And they have the opportunity to be reborn as clean energy companies, using renewable resources. Yet their small sense of self. Their abstract identity of self. And that small sense of self that's in constant need of higher profit, is what's ultimately going to be their undoing through maintaining their grasp on oil: the ticking time bomb of energy. That rigid sense of self. That failure to grasp the bigger picture of what's happening around them and to them. All seems to be caused by either an excess function of the left hemisphere, or a deficit function in the right hemisphere. Or even possibly combinations of the two interchangeably of the two. That much I don't know. And it would take research into the workings of these individuals' brains in order to find out what's actually happening within them.
But I would like to emphasize that this problem of the hemispheres is not likely a permanent one for people living their lives, and it certainly, I think, should not act as a hindrance for them to live their lives to the fullest that they possibly can. The brain is an incredibly malleable thing, given the willingness to do something about it and the supports that are in place to help make it a reality. As we've witnessed in the case of Dr. Taylor, it may take eight years or more for one to recover from such a case of mental illness. And from what I could tell, psychiatry has not diagnosed the condition of excessive left hemisphere or deficit of the right hemisphere yet as a psychological problems that need to be researched and have treatment methods developed for them. But the biological fact of the matter, is that our neurons retain plasticity throughout adult life and that, given the willingness of the individual to pursue treatment, and the appropriateness of the environment they find themselves in, it is possible for them to overcome this detached sense of being with the rest of the universe, and come to realize the fullest extent of themselves and the world around them. Therefore, their lives need not be miserably affected by such a psychological condition, nor do our own lives around them actually need to suffer for their unfortunate, if undiagnosed problem. They can get treatment. And we can all live together in this universe that we call home, without anyone being harmed in order to accomplish it.
In conclusion, we divide our world into a myriad of different political, economic and social parts. Even that last division is a division of academic theory, and not anything that's based in the inherent properties of the universe itself. It is that measurement of the universe, that division of it, that is the product of the left brain's way of thinking. And it manifests itself in all aspects of our society, political or otherwise, externally from the perspective of study and internally from the perspective of the individual experiencing that division. And it is from that sense of division, from that rigid and technically false sense of self; that sense of being distinct and separate from what essentially is, everything else in the universe, that we get hatred, violence, and exploitation unto self-destructive ends. It's where disrespect arguably comes from. It's where wars begin. It's where we see ourselves as not being a whole, but being an assemblage of parts without a whole present. It's where walls are built; it's how walls are built. And it all comes down to either an excess of function in the left hemisphere, or a deficit amount of function in the right hemisphere or both combined.
What I am proposing in this paper is that a lot of the issues that are caused by other individuals onto other individuals stems from the ways that their respective brains function. And that it is in the division of the hemispheres where these issues arise. Whether this is actually the case, would need to be tested scientifically by trained psychologists and brain scientists. But I propose it to you, the reader, as a field of study that's relevant to all of the social and environmental sciences. And I further propose that there are groundbreaking discoveries with life changing implications to be had in this field of social brain science.
Everything we perceive originates from the brain. Sensory information goes in through the various sense organs, and then is re translated by the brain into a perception that we have of the social and ecological environment around us and within us. It creates our world and leaves it open for destruction. If we are ever going to get control o this world, ever, in any realistic sense of it, we must first get control of our own brains and our own brain's functions. Some things aren't going to be different because our brains are different. But how we react to and handle those things could spell either the survival of the species or the obliteration of it. And it all comes down to the brain; where all of this actually and definitively takes place.
We could begin by searching out the origins of these divisions within our social world. Unfortunately, that would only yield us unsatisfactory answers as to what these divisions are and where they originate from. We'd get lost in a sea of, what is, ultimately subjectivity in spite of our best efforts to make it uniform. Even the scientific notation system; the official system of measurement that is used by the scientific community is, at the heart of it, only the arbitrarily chosen means of divying up the universe such that we can better understand it. Likewise, the divisions that exist within our social world: national, ethnic, religious, ideological, etc, are ultimately at their core, arbitrarily created things that have no inherent meaning in the cosmos. The answer as to where these divisions come from, I believe, lies much closer to our individual selves. I believe that the origin of these divisions is in our brain, and that we are removed from the actuality of the universe for our own ability to survive and interact with the world around us.
This paper presupposes that there is an objective reality out there, beyond our conceptions and perceptions of reality. This paper believes that our brains and sensory organs are what mediate this objective world into the world that our minds live in, such that we are again, always disconnected from this common, objective reality in some way, shape and form. This paper asserts that it is through empirical study that we get better in touch with this objective reality that is our world beyond our minds' conceptions and perceptions, in order to distinguish repeatable patterns as to how things work outside of our minds' subjective conceptions and perceptions.
But where then do these senses of divisions come from, in a universe that is, from what we can tell, uniformly quantum foam and sub-atomic particles? How then does this relate to political science and the ordered divisions that we perceive in our social world that is, on the deepest levels, uniform? The answer comes from within our brain, and that it does so for the evolutionary advantage. However, when this perception of difference becomes too great, it ultimately is what leads to a significant number of our problems within the world, when it comes to relating to others and relating to the environment in which we live.
To begin this discussion, I will first talk about the brain and the essential division that exists between the world generated by the left hemisphere and the world generated by the right hemisphere. Then I will talk about how this relates to the production of divisions within our social world, which ultimately leads me to answering the first question of “where do these divisions come from?” in the first place.
The right hemisphere is responsible for generating the big picture sense of the world. It is what perceives the whole that is the world, rather than all the parts, and it interprets those wholes as images frozen in the present. Our sense of time and division doesn't exist within the right hemisphere's generated world. That would require linear division, which is the purview of the left hemispherei The left hemisphere is where our sense of the ourselves in the world is generated. It is where the “ego centers” are located that separate our selves from the rest of the world that's around us. It works in detailed parts, rather than taking in the whole, constructing its sense of the world by building on the parts that it perceives into an amalgamation of the whole that's actually present. It sees petal, stamen, leaves, stem, stigma and anther, rather than perceiving the flower that is in front of it.ii It is that sense of “self” that is produced by the left hemisphere, which distinguishes us as a piece separate from others, and others as pieces apart from ourselves; distinct and separate from our own ways of being. Between these two hemispheres, a seemless perception of our world emerges, such that we can hardly distinguish ourselves between which hemisphere is doing what at any given moment in time. And it is that perception that we use to make our way within the cosmos as we know it, for better and for worse as well.
Now, there is considerable variance in the way that our brains are mapped, such that no two are exactly the same way.iii Many things factor into brain development, including genetics and environmental stimuli of all sorts. But our brains' neural pathways work like paths created in the snow. Once one path has been established by one person, others tend to follow that same path, however round about it may be, because it's the path of least resistance. Only if another path was created in the snow with repetition from others will it change its own direction of neural cascade and produce a different result. These changes can happen on the micro level and, eventually, lead up to major macro level differences in perception, action, attitude and behavior.iv But what is important, is that the smallest of neural pathways can lead to the biggest effect on the macro level, and thus produce one result over another in terms of our actions, attitudes, behaviors and perceptions.
Because minute differences in a person's brain can yield to such big differences, it's possible that some people are more dominant with their left hemisphere, and some are more dominant with their right hemisphere. Dominance in this case, means that one is used primarily over the other, which then influences the view of the world that you receive. I'd imagine this would exist on a continuum, with each individual person lying on a specific spot along the gradient between extreme right hemisphere dominance and extreme left hemisphere dominance, each with their own unique sets of apparent pros and cons, and each one producing its own unique, individual at the end. Furthermore, from what we know of neural plasticity and the ability for the brain to make new connections later on in life, I do not think that these positions are, necessarily, stuck there for life.
So, how do these two modes of thinking, the holistic and the divided, factor into making our world and shaping our interactions with others, and our own senses of selves in the process? As I said earlier, it's the left hemisphere which deals with the divisions within our world. It is where the ego centers lie that distinguish us from others as a separate individual, while the right hemisphere experiences the whole that is our world.v All the divisions that we perceive are then, therefore, products of our left hemisphere and our left hemisphere's way of thinking. Otherwise, we would experience the cosmos as the unified whole that it is, and we ourselves would fade into the background of the cosmic energy, being both everywhere and nowhere (as the Buddhists would say).vi
This was precisely the experience that Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor described after having her stroke on the left-hemisphere of her brain, essentially shutting down most of its functions in her mind's perception. Specifically, the stroke affected her motor cortex, her sensory cortex, her Broca's area (where speech is created), her Wernicke's area (place where speech is understood), her orientation association cortex (where physical boundaries are perceived and sense of time/space is produced), and her sensory cortex (where her ability to sense the world is housed).vii
“My entire self concept shifted as I longer perceive myself as a single, a solid, an entity with boundaries that separated me from the entities around me. I understood that at the most elementary level, I am a fluid....Everything around us, about us, among us, within us, and between us is made up of atoms and molecules vibrating in space. Although the ego center of our language center prefers defining our self as an individual and solid...we are made up of trillions of cells, gallons of water and ultimately everything about us exists in a constant and dynamic state of activity. My left hemisphere had been trained to perceive myself as a solid, separate from others. Now released from that restrictive circuitry, my right hemisphere relished in its attachment to the eternal flow. I was no longer isolated and alone. My soul was as big as the universe and frolicked with glee in a boundless sea. (Taylor, pg 71)
This is hardly in keeping with what we currently know and think about in political science and in government practice. Everything is studied on the division level, and nothing is seen on the bigger scale beyond the parts. What's more, these divisions are not only studied in the external sense, but are experience in the internal sense, within the participants of the political/sociological action. A mujahideen does not merely think of himself as a Muslim. He experiences himself as a Muslim. It's part of his sense of self-identity. And it's the prominent sense of identity if he actively believes in the call of international jihad against the West and, what is, all non-Islamic cultures impeding on Islam. The division is not one that is merely studied on the external level. It's one that is experienced on the internal level as well.
That is precisely why I think that all the divisions that exist in the world, all of our feelings of division in the world, ultimately stem from our left hemispheres. It's not so much that we perceive differences in the world around us. We can recognize another as being physically separated from us with happiness and recognition of self within the other (which is how bonds are formed between and amongst people)viii. It's that we internalize these divisions deeply within our sub-conscious, and allow them to take over in place of the truth that, we are, in fact, on the deepest levels of things apart of a whole which is our complete and unblemished cosmos.ix It's that ego sense of self, what the Hindu's refer to as the source of all evil in our world, that is caused by the left hemisphere, particularly when it is too extreme in its presence and overly influential in the mind's perceptions of the world.x This over-wrought sense of self, sense of ego, seems to cause a lot of the problems with living together, and living within the context of the social and ecological world in which we're also apart of inseparably. It allows us to think in terms of exclusion, which permits all kinds of exploitative and degenerating actions against the human and environmental world that the right hemisphere would simply overrule, if it were more prominent in our thinking patterns. We perceive the differences, the isolation of our own self from it that is also us, and we're enabled to do horrendous things to other people and to the ecological world in the name of that smaller sense of self which is, ultimately, destroyed in the process along wth the rest.
Consider the oil industry. There is a business that's set up on a model that is a) going to run out of it's accessible supply of what it sells, b) is causing massive damage to our global ecology through the emission of carbon-dioxide gas and c) creating massive political and economic complications that would otherwise not exist for our species, if we were on a renewable and clean source of energy. All of this is fed from their small sense of self and their prioritization of abstract concepts, such as finance; both of which, are products of the left hemisphere's way of thinking. However, because of the effects on the planet, the effects on the lives of the people who live and help produce their wealth and the limited supply that's remaining in the world that's accessible to them, the industry itself is set up to fail. Much like how our bodies are each and all set up to, eventually, fail upon our death. It's inevitable. It's unavoidable. And they have the opportunity to be reborn as clean energy companies, using renewable resources. Yet their small sense of self. Their abstract identity of self. And that small sense of self that's in constant need of higher profit, is what's ultimately going to be their undoing through maintaining their grasp on oil: the ticking time bomb of energy. That rigid sense of self. That failure to grasp the bigger picture of what's happening around them and to them. All seems to be caused by either an excess function of the left hemisphere, or a deficit function in the right hemisphere. Or even possibly combinations of the two interchangeably of the two. That much I don't know. And it would take research into the workings of these individuals' brains in order to find out what's actually happening within them.
But I would like to emphasize that this problem of the hemispheres is not likely a permanent one for people living their lives, and it certainly, I think, should not act as a hindrance for them to live their lives to the fullest that they possibly can. The brain is an incredibly malleable thing, given the willingness to do something about it and the supports that are in place to help make it a reality. As we've witnessed in the case of Dr. Taylor, it may take eight years or more for one to recover from such a case of mental illness. And from what I could tell, psychiatry has not diagnosed the condition of excessive left hemisphere or deficit of the right hemisphere yet as a psychological problems that need to be researched and have treatment methods developed for them. But the biological fact of the matter, is that our neurons retain plasticity throughout adult life and that, given the willingness of the individual to pursue treatment, and the appropriateness of the environment they find themselves in, it is possible for them to overcome this detached sense of being with the rest of the universe, and come to realize the fullest extent of themselves and the world around them. Therefore, their lives need not be miserably affected by such a psychological condition, nor do our own lives around them actually need to suffer for their unfortunate, if undiagnosed problem. They can get treatment. And we can all live together in this universe that we call home, without anyone being harmed in order to accomplish it.
In conclusion, we divide our world into a myriad of different political, economic and social parts. Even that last division is a division of academic theory, and not anything that's based in the inherent properties of the universe itself. It is that measurement of the universe, that division of it, that is the product of the left brain's way of thinking. And it manifests itself in all aspects of our society, political or otherwise, externally from the perspective of study and internally from the perspective of the individual experiencing that division. And it is from that sense of division, from that rigid and technically false sense of self; that sense of being distinct and separate from what essentially is, everything else in the universe, that we get hatred, violence, and exploitation unto self-destructive ends. It's where disrespect arguably comes from. It's where wars begin. It's where we see ourselves as not being a whole, but being an assemblage of parts without a whole present. It's where walls are built; it's how walls are built. And it all comes down to either an excess of function in the left hemisphere, or a deficit amount of function in the right hemisphere or both combined.
What I am proposing in this paper is that a lot of the issues that are caused by other individuals onto other individuals stems from the ways that their respective brains function. And that it is in the division of the hemispheres where these issues arise. Whether this is actually the case, would need to be tested scientifically by trained psychologists and brain scientists. But I propose it to you, the reader, as a field of study that's relevant to all of the social and environmental sciences. And I further propose that there are groundbreaking discoveries with life changing implications to be had in this field of social brain science.
Everything we perceive originates from the brain. Sensory information goes in through the various sense organs, and then is re translated by the brain into a perception that we have of the social and ecological environment around us and within us. It creates our world and leaves it open for destruction. If we are ever going to get control o this world, ever, in any realistic sense of it, we must first get control of our own brains and our own brain's functions. Some things aren't going to be different because our brains are different. But how we react to and handle those things could spell either the survival of the species or the obliteration of it. And it all comes down to the brain; where all of this actually and definitively takes place.
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