Hi. I’m Michael C. Patterson. Welcome to the Mental Flourishing series, in which we are cultivating the ability to flourish as we age.
In the previous episode I introduced the idea that the two hemisphere of our brains have largely incompatible ways of relating to the world. The right hemisphere can be characterized as our sensual mind and the left hemisphere as our conceptual mind. We get confused, conflicted and alienated when our conceptual mind dominates and makes us lose our connection with our sensory mind.
To put this in terms of aging, we suffer when we buy into ageist concepts about ourselves and others. When that happens we start treating ourselves and others as symbols of age rather than as real human beings. We inflict ourselves with limitations that are unnecessary and unhelpful. If you think you can move well, you won’t move well. So, lose the concepts and find out what you body is really capable of doing.
In this episode I want to share a story that illustrates the relationship between our two hemispheres and how the conceptual mind comes to dominate in an unhelpful way. This is my version of the an analogy used by scholar Iain McGilchrist in his book The Master and His Emissary. .
In this wonderful book, McGilchrist borrows a story from the philosopher Nietzche. As is true with any good story, the details change a bit with each retelling, as the teller takes the liberty to embellish according to his or her tastes. In that spirit, I have modified the story a bit and changed The Master and His Emissary into The Empress and Her Deputy. You, no doubt, will embellish the story with your own retelling.
So, here’s my version -
THE EMPRESS AND HER DEPUTY
There once was a wise leader who led a small, but prosperous domain. She was known for her selfless devotion to her people and for her tireless stewardship of the land. The people and the land flourished under her guidance and the bounds of the domain grew. [Growth of the neocortex and the frontal lobes.]
As it grew, it became clear to the Empress that the domain was becoming too large for her to lead by herself. She was losing touch with her people and lost track of far-flung regions of the land. To solve this dilemma she worked out two strategies. First, she delegated much of the work of running the domain to a team of trusted deputies. Second, she spent more time among the citizens of her domain, often working side-by-side, sharing meals, birthing babies, burying the dead and so on.
She developed a communication system that would enable the far flung deputies to share their resources and to participate in the activities of the entire domain. She also gave her cleverest deputy the job of coordinating the activities of the deputies and of summarizing the important aspects of what was going in her realm. In this way she could make sure that the deputies were taking actions that served the best interests of her people and the land that supported them all.
Her Chief Deputy was very clever and developed and designed a bureaucratic system to insure that the lesser deputies knew what to do and when to do it. As the domain grew, so did the Deputy’s bureaucracy. He monitored the performance of these systems on a daily basis and, in so doing, felt that he understood, better than anyone - better than the Empress herself - the workings of the domain.
Eventually, the Chief Deputy came to mistake this bureaucratic mapping of the domain for the domain itself and he saw his numbers and charts and graphs more meaningful and important than the people themselves. In this way, he came to see himself as the real leader of the land.
The Deputy’s power grew and he eventually usurped the position of the Empress, making himself the final arbiter of all decisions. He limited communication with The Empress, stopped taking her advice and, instead, used his charts and graphs to guide him. As is so often the case, his rule became tyrannical and dictator. He systematically stripped away the people’s rights and concentrated all power and wealth in his own hands. The land was ruthlessly exploited and soon was robbed of its natural fertility. In short, the domain fell into ruin and eventually perished. ]
End of story. No happy ending. It is a cautionary tale.
As I hope is clear, the Empress represents the sensory mind, our RH and the Deputy represents the LH, the conceptual mind. Our mind works well when the conceptual mind serves the sensory mind, not the other way around. McGilchrist’s analysis of the ills of modern society is that our culture and our individual psyches have become dominated by LH modes of thinking. We give greater credence to ideas than to reality. Too often we believe what we are told to believe rather than finding out for ourselves. We get sucked into concepts about the way we would like things to be and lose our ability to cope with things as they really are.
Thanks for joining me on this journey of discovery, our quest for the keys to flourishing as we age.