The differences in the two hemispheres of the brain are how each one pays attention to the world.
- Right hemisphere: understands stuff, see connections, sees change, knows life is not mechanical
- Left hemisphere: maximally effective at getting stuff (”a dance”), dumb at understanding stuff, but wants to be in control
The left hemisphere is absolutely inferior to right hemisphere, but still important.
One of the best things we can/should do is stop trying to control everything.
Dunning-Kruger effect: the less you know the less you know that you don’t know (and vice versa).
The world as it is … vs … the world as it is simplified.
The older and wiser you get, the more you see how theories and maps aren’t really like the world at all.
Insights: seeing how the world is evolving and manifesting.
The whole world is in process…you must understand connections to get to insights
Gestalt shift: seeing that the whole is more than the sum of the parts.
We need to broaden our education and sense of what is important
It is not just learning procedural knowledge that enables technical outcomes
We need to nourish ourselves
This creates downstream benefits / optionality
“The extremes meet”…a thing and its opposite can both be true
Two things that seem to be opposite must be held in tension
>>> NON-ERGODICITY AND PORTFOLIO CONCENTRATION
See The Matter of Things chapter on Paradox
“The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth.” - Niels Bohr
“If you try to avoid all risk you end up in total mediocrity.” (great quote)
Creativity generally happens with 1-3 people and a lot of freedom.
The great shifters of paradigms (Einstein, Darwin, Freud) worked alone…no university positions, etc.
“Philosophy is trying to free the mind from the bewitchment of language.” - Wittgenstein
The big, beautiful things are not easily represented in language. Poetry subverts language to communicate many layers and aspects of meaning. It frees us from the tyranny of the technical / specific implications of description usually implied by language.
“The metaphysics of quality is also the metaphysics of value.”
Things are always in flow states…but the left hemisphere requires stasis for analysis…it is analytically weak and risky to assume stasis to enable thought. Must deal in flow states, which is the realm of the right hemisphere.
Goodness, truth and beauty are not invented by us, they are discovered. We either discover them or we don’t. The human mind can see, respond to, and create things that are good, true, and beautiful.
It is illogical for a materialist to believe in truth — if comfort is the highest value, the most logical thing to do is to tell people lies that make them feel comfortable.
Baumeister et al. created the philosophy of self-esteem in the 1970s. He later admitted it was a mistake as it does not produce good people.
In the ancient traditions, silence and solitude have always been the accompaniment of wisdom.
“We need to change our hearts and minds, not just what we do.”
“A lot of good and interesting work will come from the fringes, as it always has.”
“Thinking right leads to living right, and living right leads to thinking right.”
“True education is not the opposite of people thinking for themselves, it is the very way in which people learn to think for themselves.”
Some mental disabilities can manifest as imbalances between the hemispheres.
- e.g. some are hyperlogical … left hemisphere overdrive
- e.g. some only think in pictures as opposed to language
We see in straight lines, but straight lines are not how we evolve.
Getting to truth / insight is more like an out of focus picture coming into focus.
Our life is a constant process around a spiral.
- Escapes absolute linearity and circularity
- Seen from the side it is a linear wave, seen from above it is a circle
“The straight line is godless and immoral. The straight line is not a creative line, it is a duplicating line, an imitating line. In it, God and the human spirit are less at home than the comfort-craving brainless intoxicated and unformed masses.” - Friedensreich Hundertwasser, from Mouldiness Manifesto Against Rationalism in Architecture
“On a huge hill,
Cragged, and steep, Truth stands, and he that will
Reach her, about must, and about must go;
And what the hill's suddenness resists, win so.”
- John Donne, from The Hill of Truth