Just a few years ago, your book 'The Master & His Emissary' had an incredible impact on my life. Perhaps you won't mind a little backstory about this. At age 53 I left a cruelly oppressive place. And so I had to decide how to make a living. I had a good offer for a well-paid medical secretary job, or, I could try to build myself a small business of teaching art to adults. I followed my heart and chose the art. I realized that I would likely never be able to retire with that career choice. The art business grew slowly but steadily, and I was always able to pay for rent and groceries. However, I was prone to bouts of severe depression because of my past. (No one knew. I hid it well.) Then there came a time when I looked at some folks close to me who work with the homeless or on behalf of others who are downtrodden. Meanwhile, I thought to myself, I teach adults to paint and draw - tough job but someone has to do it. I deeply questioned the value of what I do. Then I came across your book. It told me that when I encourage people to be more creative, creativity can influence and increase their empathy for others! Your writing lifted my spirits with profound encouragement at a dark time for me. To me, it was a gift from God. And so here I am, 20 years later still teaching art and loving it, and so grateful. I am also grateful for the chance to say thank you - with all my heart. Thank you. I will not forget what your writing meant to me.
Reading Metaphors We Live By, and truly internalizing its arguments, led to a radical re-perception of reality for me, one that I would say largely (if not totally) overlaps with your way of seeing the world, Dr. McGilchrist. It actually freaks me out sometimes—although in a most delightful way—how so much of what you write (especially in the second volume of TMwT) resonates with deeply intuitive truths I would say I “gained” from this radical transformation of vision which occurred from my reading of Lakoff & Johnson (alongside other writers, such as Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, and Barfield).
So pleased to see you focus on chapter 12 of TMWT for your first foray on Substack, rather than “McGilchrist 101”. The chapter introduced me to the notion that cognition operates at every level of life and that this seemingly religious proposition has a profound practical significance - that life seems to be “purpose” (rather than “turtles”) all the way down. Perhaps you may have given the sacred a way back into our cultural life. We desperately need it, God knows.
It’s so wonderful that you are writing here on SubStack! Now I can digest more easily all of the mind blowing insights that you have brought to so many through your books. It was only because I came across you and your work on YouTube, that I discovered Substack (in order to support Perspectiva). I love your initial question, “what does my particular take on reality exclude from my vision?” and also your advice to stop believing that what other people at other times and in other places thought was due to their ignorance. I’m in awe of the miracles of life that have nothing to do with machines. How would you describe a musical instrument? A non-electronic one, of course! To me, musical instruments are sacred objects.
Thank you Dr McGilchrist. I read the Master and his Emissary about 10 years ago. And for the last 2 to 3 years I’ve been reading The Matter With Things each day at breakfast time.
It actually felt sad to come to the end of it, wishing there was more. I heartily recommend it to everyone.
What a pleasant surprise you'll be writing more. And what a lovely start. Past McGilchrist 101, I find I'm always looking for and finding Applied McGilchrist in the world. (Alas, I was an engineer once, but I'm feeling much better lately.)
If I may be so bold as to gently suggest changing a word that jumped out at me, I would change a polite 'may' into something much firmer, or even just drop it altogether.' As in: "...confining ourselves to just one way of looking at things [___] obscure[s] others from our sight altogether."
Also Ted Goia mentioned your work with the highest praise in his column earlier this week.
All the best and look forward to more Applied McGilchrist.
Great to see you hear, Iain! I haven’t read The Matter with Things yet, but the Master and His Emissary is the best non-fiction book I’ve read so far this century. It literally changed the way I think, and write. Thank you. I look forward to your articles.
I can hear your voice while reading your writing…your wisdom helped me enormously. Understanding most people are only using half a brain put everything into perspective for me. Much appreciated, thank you. I look forward to reading more and hearing your voice in my head.
I am a retired surgeon, instrumental in starting a healing center in a full service hospital in 1996 that,among other things, offered acupuncture, meditation classes and healing touch. I had many experiences, involving spontaneous and documented cures, profound synchronicities, and NDEs. While reading The Matter with Things two years ago, I read something profound and put the book in my lap, looked up and said out load ‘I don’t think I will ever need to read another book’. I immediately heard a crashing sound up on the second floor of my house. I ran to find that all my book shelves had broken and collapsed to the floor.
I read "Master and His Emissary" and "Matter With Things" (some chapters re-read a few times) three years ago and that was a major point in my intellectual development - I transitioned from being narrow-driven, oriented on Kahneman-Thaler biases literature, focused on local solutions to... hard to say to whom but I definitely always strive now to see things in a wider context.
It's not that I discarded altogether my old beliefs - I just expanded my thinking to always ask "what's the bigger context here?".
Also, on metaphor I recently read the George Orwell Essay Politics and the English Language. I especially loved his suggestion: "When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualising, you probably hunt about till you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one’s meanings as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose – not simply accept – the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impression one’s words are likely to make on another person."
Thanks for mentioning that passage. And welcome to the Orwellian world of PATEL! I stumble across the furniture in my Orwell drawing room often as I try to make sense of what’s going out there on the other side of the windows. It has the best views in the house.
“Where is the in-form-ation? Where is the overall form or shape of the being stored, as a whole, in service of which any mechanisms we might detect and measure would be acting?”
I'll let my “left” brain do the service, because I have no idea at all when it comes to measuring and storing. The right answer is that no one needs information except machines made up of “bad” left and “good” right parts that perform various tasks while measuring their way through what others metaphorically call life.
Fabulous, Dr. McGilchrist. Thank you for your clarity and lucid style of communicating such profound ideas. In part this is all a matter of how ‘reality’ gets created and maintained by means of metaphors and other mental activities. If I may, I’d like to recommend to you and your readers a wonderful book, Physics As Metaphor by Mark Johnson. Partly inspired by Owen Barfield’s Saving The Appearances, it enables us to comprehend, just as you are doing so well, the extent to which metaphor is our way of creating and maintaining a world. Johnson was a brilliant physicist, who defined metaphor as “an act of consciousness that borders on the very creation of things.” Metaphors enable us to create immense beauty. But metaphors of domination and greed also enable people to ruthlessly kill and destroy. I just ordered your book The Master and His Emissary. I’m looking forward to reading it.
Just a few years ago, your book 'The Master & His Emissary' had an incredible impact on my life. Perhaps you won't mind a little backstory about this. At age 53 I left a cruelly oppressive place. And so I had to decide how to make a living. I had a good offer for a well-paid medical secretary job, or, I could try to build myself a small business of teaching art to adults. I followed my heart and chose the art. I realized that I would likely never be able to retire with that career choice. The art business grew slowly but steadily, and I was always able to pay for rent and groceries. However, I was prone to bouts of severe depression because of my past. (No one knew. I hid it well.) Then there came a time when I looked at some folks close to me who work with the homeless or on behalf of others who are downtrodden. Meanwhile, I thought to myself, I teach adults to paint and draw - tough job but someone has to do it. I deeply questioned the value of what I do. Then I came across your book. It told me that when I encourage people to be more creative, creativity can influence and increase their empathy for others! Your writing lifted my spirits with profound encouragement at a dark time for me. To me, it was a gift from God. And so here I am, 20 years later still teaching art and loving it, and so grateful. I am also grateful for the chance to say thank you - with all my heart. Thank you. I will not forget what your writing meant to me.
Wonderful to read you on here at last, my friend. Guess our next Zoom is about '@ mentions' so that you can mention your fellow writers more easily!
”Metaphors be with you.”
Reading Metaphors We Live By, and truly internalizing its arguments, led to a radical re-perception of reality for me, one that I would say largely (if not totally) overlaps with your way of seeing the world, Dr. McGilchrist. It actually freaks me out sometimes—although in a most delightful way—how so much of what you write (especially in the second volume of TMwT) resonates with deeply intuitive truths I would say I “gained” from this radical transformation of vision which occurred from my reading of Lakoff & Johnson (alongside other writers, such as Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, and Barfield).
So pleased to see you focus on chapter 12 of TMWT for your first foray on Substack, rather than “McGilchrist 101”. The chapter introduced me to the notion that cognition operates at every level of life and that this seemingly religious proposition has a profound practical significance - that life seems to be “purpose” (rather than “turtles”) all the way down. Perhaps you may have given the sacred a way back into our cultural life. We desperately need it, God knows.
It’s so wonderful that you are writing here on SubStack! Now I can digest more easily all of the mind blowing insights that you have brought to so many through your books. It was only because I came across you and your work on YouTube, that I discovered Substack (in order to support Perspectiva). I love your initial question, “what does my particular take on reality exclude from my vision?” and also your advice to stop believing that what other people at other times and in other places thought was due to their ignorance. I’m in awe of the miracles of life that have nothing to do with machines. How would you describe a musical instrument? A non-electronic one, of course! To me, musical instruments are sacred objects.
Thank you Dr McGilchrist. I read the Master and his Emissary about 10 years ago. And for the last 2 to 3 years I’ve been reading The Matter With Things each day at breakfast time.
It actually felt sad to come to the end of it, wishing there was more. I heartily recommend it to everyone.
What a pleasant surprise you'll be writing more. And what a lovely start. Past McGilchrist 101, I find I'm always looking for and finding Applied McGilchrist in the world. (Alas, I was an engineer once, but I'm feeling much better lately.)
If I may be so bold as to gently suggest changing a word that jumped out at me, I would change a polite 'may' into something much firmer, or even just drop it altogether.' As in: "...confining ourselves to just one way of looking at things [___] obscure[s] others from our sight altogether."
Also Ted Goia mentioned your work with the highest praise in his column earlier this week.
All the best and look forward to more Applied McGilchrist.
Great to see you hear, Iain! I haven’t read The Matter with Things yet, but the Master and His Emissary is the best non-fiction book I’ve read so far this century. It literally changed the way I think, and write. Thank you. I look forward to your articles.
I can hear your voice while reading your writing…your wisdom helped me enormously. Understanding most people are only using half a brain put everything into perspective for me. Much appreciated, thank you. I look forward to reading more and hearing your voice in my head.
Happy Valentines Day!
I am a retired surgeon, instrumental in starting a healing center in a full service hospital in 1996 that,among other things, offered acupuncture, meditation classes and healing touch. I had many experiences, involving spontaneous and documented cures, profound synchronicities, and NDEs. While reading The Matter with Things two years ago, I read something profound and put the book in my lap, looked up and said out load ‘I don’t think I will ever need to read another book’. I immediately heard a crashing sound up on the second floor of my house. I ran to find that all my book shelves had broken and collapsed to the floor.
Thank you for this koan!
Great to see you here Iain.
I read "Master and His Emissary" and "Matter With Things" (some chapters re-read a few times) three years ago and that was a major point in my intellectual development - I transitioned from being narrow-driven, oriented on Kahneman-Thaler biases literature, focused on local solutions to... hard to say to whom but I definitely always strive now to see things in a wider context.
It's not that I discarded altogether my old beliefs - I just expanded my thinking to always ask "what's the bigger context here?".
Thank you for your work.
Still working through Master & Emissary. Really interesting. Found you via Caroline and her teacher Mark.
Thrilled to have you here Iain, and this is a beautiful first post. I hope you enjoy the platform.
I borrow shamelessly from you in my new blog and I hope you'll steer me right if you ever notice that I'm misrepresenting your research.
Substack is so dynamic at this stage, I love that your voice is here to help shape the meandering rivers of conversation.
Also, on metaphor I recently read the George Orwell Essay Politics and the English Language. I especially loved his suggestion: "When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualising, you probably hunt about till you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one’s meanings as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose – not simply accept – the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impression one’s words are likely to make on another person."
Thanks for mentioning that passage. And welcome to the Orwellian world of PATEL! I stumble across the furniture in my Orwell drawing room often as I try to make sense of what’s going out there on the other side of the windows. It has the best views in the house.
“Where is the in-form-ation? Where is the overall form or shape of the being stored, as a whole, in service of which any mechanisms we might detect and measure would be acting?”
I'll let my “left” brain do the service, because I have no idea at all when it comes to measuring and storing. The right answer is that no one needs information except machines made up of “bad” left and “good” right parts that perform various tasks while measuring their way through what others metaphorically call life.
Fabulous, Dr. McGilchrist. Thank you for your clarity and lucid style of communicating such profound ideas. In part this is all a matter of how ‘reality’ gets created and maintained by means of metaphors and other mental activities. If I may, I’d like to recommend to you and your readers a wonderful book, Physics As Metaphor by Mark Johnson. Partly inspired by Owen Barfield’s Saving The Appearances, it enables us to comprehend, just as you are doing so well, the extent to which metaphor is our way of creating and maintaining a world. Johnson was a brilliant physicist, who defined metaphor as “an act of consciousness that borders on the very creation of things.” Metaphors enable us to create immense beauty. But metaphors of domination and greed also enable people to ruthlessly kill and destroy. I just ordered your book The Master and His Emissary. I’m looking forward to reading it.