Davis Aurini - The Bicameral Mind

June 16, 2020 - Davis Aurini

18:01

The Bicameral Mind

My theory on how the split between left/right mimics the sort of brain damage which splits the brain's hemispheres. Originally uploaded February, 2017

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	One of the things that's really been troubling me lately is the polarization that we're seeing in politics.
	The way that I will meet people and get along with them, great, absolutely famously, until politics comes out after I've known them for a couple of weeks.
	then it's like we're almost immediately in separate armed camps.
	And you know, the bicameral mind, this phrase just keeps popping up in my head.
	There's an interesting effect that happens when you sever the corpus callosum, the nerve bundle that connects the two hemispheres of the brain.
	CPG Gray did a video on this, which I'll link to below.
	And I also found a video of, you know, the first-hand scientific evidence for you, just a little mini documentary four minutes long.
	It points to an interesting fact, a weird fact, that we actually have two different brains in our head.
	The left and the right hemispheres are actually two different brains.
	And so here's what happens when you sever the nerve bundle tying the two of them together.
	The person doesn't notice any major differences.
	But all of a sudden, the left brain, the masculine side of the brain that has the verbal, the communication center in it, controls the right hand.
	And the right side of the brain, the artistic side, the feminine side of the brain, controls the left hand.
	And so you can do these experiments with these people where you can flash a word on the left and the right brain won't be able to read it.
	You can flash an image on the right, the left brain won't be able to tell you the image.
	But then if you flash different images, you know, and get the person to close their eyes and to draw the image with their left hand, they'll have seen this.
	They'll think they saw this, but their right brain saw that, and they will draw that.
	And in fact, oftentimes their two brains will even get into arguments.
	They'll disagree on what they want to wear.
	They'll disagree on what they want to eat, where they want to, etc.
	Like minor disagreements, not vicious, but you'll actually have your left hand disagree and you think, oh, I want this.
	No, I want this.
	And you know, come to think of it myself.
	I'm pretty sure it's my right brain that's addicted to smoking.
	Because I'll often say, it's like, I'm running out of cigarettes and I don't want to go to the store.
	I'd better stop smoking.
	And the next thing I know, my left hand has picked up the cigarette pack, says, No, I want another cigarette.
	All of this suggests that, yes, you actually do, from day one, have two minds in your head.
	And they work in tandem.
	And only the left brain is verbal.
	So that's you that's listening.
	Well, there's you that thinks you're listening and are maybe writing a comment right now.
	That's left brain.
	Your right brain is also listening, although it's paying a lot more attention to my mannerisms, to the aesthetics, to all of that.
	You know, people have often commented that animals are better at reading people than people are.
	Or at least they're better at detecting monsters.
	And again, the dominant right hand in our species, that's actually very unique.
	Most species are, it's a 50-50 split between left-handedness and right-handedness in any of the species we can actually test.
	In chimps, it's 50-50.
	They do have a dominant hand, but only our species is 90% dominant right, dominant left brain.
	And the way that monsters tend to work is that they use their words to distract you.
	Whether it's a psychopath putting on affectations, or if it's a borderline coming up with a rationalization of why you abused them, it distracts your left brain while your right brain is having an absolute panic attack.
	Your right brain is screaming out, this person's a monster.
	You know, if you're around one of them, you might notice yourself going into a bit of a feud.
	And that's because your right brain sees exactly what is going on.
	They see the person, but your left brain is so busy trying to process their words that you can't read the body language.
	Animals, they aren't distracted by words, they just read the body language.
	And so when a monster walks in, they know it's a monster.
	So what does all this have to do with politics?
	Well, the remarkable thing over the centuries is just how consistent the left and the right are.
	Now, a casual perusal of history will suggest otherwise.
	You know, I've heard from many people that the left and right frequently swap positions.
	And when you put it that simply, yes, they do.
	It's like saying you have a couple of twins that can never agree, and they swap positions, because one twin is hungry and the other twin wants to play, and then when the other twin is hungry, the other twin wants to play.
	Misses the point.
	Go back to Gladstone and Disraeli.
	And you've still got this consistent leftist elitism and emotivism and pretense and this right cynicism and realism and, if we're going to be completely honest with ourselves, a penchant towards totalitarianism.
	It's almost as if something severed the connecting tissues between the two halves of our civilization.
	Take the marital couple, the man and woman have very distinct roles in a marriage and the man's role is that of leadership.
	Now, maybe you can find one out of ten healthy married couples maybe where the woman leads, but generally speaking, ninety percent of the time you find the husband leading.
	And yet that doesn't mean that the husband ignores the wife.
	It doesn't mean that he treats her like a slave, like a, an object, like an appendage, like an organ.
	The wife is fifty percent of that couple, the same way that we have two brains and we have the dominant left brain, but the right brain is absolutely crucial, and so the left in politics.
	You know one thing, they tried to establish in the British system and we still have this in Canada to up until today.
	You know they they call the minority party the honorable opposition, almost like the wife that's.
	You know she's not the leader, but she's there to question the leader in an honorable way, to test him to make sure he's thought through everything.
	Are you sure?
	Have you thought about the kids, honey?
	Do we have any bug juice?
	Do we have any sunscreen?
	That sort of stuff.
	And so this split that we have, this polarization, this political polarization...
	And don't get me wrong, part of me wants to jump on board with uh, you know uh, throw them all, give them all helicopter rides.
	You know, let's throw them all to the Muslims that they brought over.
	Part of me wants to jump on board with that.
	You know uh, shout 1488 from the rooftops and uh, go on some, some holy crusade to destroy all the enemies.
	But if these people are our enemies, They're part of us.
	And if they're our enemies, so are we.
	You know, every so often I look through some feminist literature, looking for a cogent argument, a coherent argument, some appreciation of truth.
	even if it's coming from a really weird perspective.
	and I don't find it, which I think again goes to the, the marital analogy.
	If your woman's angry, she's often not angry about what she says she's actually angry about.
	She's usually angry about something else, but she's got good cause to be angry.
	There's something you've been ignoring.
	And, you know, the left brain has the verbal center and wants everything to be verbal.
	It's very, very hard to understand the right brain.
	But that doesn't mean you get to ignore it.
	If you ignore your right brain, you are going to go insane.
	You do need to balance those two halves.
	You do need to make sure that both of them are functioning.
	And, you know, some people say that politics is a distraction, that it's a sports ball for smart people.
	And, you know, that could there's revelations coming right now about just how broken and corrupt the American government is.
	And not just the American government, but all Western governments, and George Soros is largely behind it.
	There's a guy claiming to be an FBI agent posting on 4chan several months back, and I'll link to that down below as well.
	Very much worth watching, where he's saying, like, listen, if we expose Hillary Clinton for the operative that she is, this will not just mean civil war in the United States, it will mean war internationally.
	And the civil war in the United States, you don't think that the international players are going to get involved in that?
	Support one side against the other?
	It really seems to me like for centuries now, we have had a split brain of a civilization where the left and the right just cannot communicate.
	We've had a broken marriage of a civilization.
	And, you know, the solution is certainly not to pay any attention to what the left is saying they want right now.
	I mean, they are having an absolute conniption screaming that Donald Trump is a Nazi and an absolute breakdown.
	And you know what?
	Yeah, sure.
	It'd be a lot of fun to run around feeling victorious, patting ourselves on the back, triggering leftists, etc.
	But, you know, that doesn't strike me as a solution.
	strikes me as part of the problem.
	We've got a very sick soul in the West.
	And I don't completely know what the cause is or how to heal it.
	But I'll say this much: you yourself, you need to have both halves of your brain healthy and in communication.
	You need to be able to appreciate others.
	C.S. Lewis once pointed out: you know, if you could actually see what another human being is, a being of light, or potentially the most terrible of demons, you wouldn't treat them so lightly.
	They wouldn't just be a store clerk.
	They just wouldn't just be somebody you're walking past.
	These are actually amazing, amazing things that are around you.
	And yes, many of them have given themselves over to a reprobate mind, but self-righteousness sure as hell is not the solution to this problem.
	We need to heal this divide.
	Maybe we need a king.
	Maybe the king is that connection between the two halves of the brain.
	I'm not entirely sure, but healing yourself, well, it's a damn good first step.
	Thanks for listening, folks.

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