A losing battle.

And the word of the week is decontextualisation.
It crops up in a recently published book by Dr Iain McGilchrist called The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and The Making of the Western World.
It’'s a book of two halves.
And it’'s not an easy read.
In the first line of his introduction, Dr McGilchrist writes, “This book tells a story about ourselves and the world, and about how we got to be where we are now”.
Phew!
A pretty broad subject.
However, it’'s not a long-winded trawl through time, taking in evolution, history, discovery, politics, war, science and culture.
Not directly.
There is however a kind of war involved.
But it’s one that rages between our ears.
The one being fought between the two hemispheres of the human brain.
The one in which the right hemisphere – the Master of the book'’s title (so called because human interaction and the perceptiveness it engenders were once uniquely central to our existence) and the left hemisphere – the Emissary (bringing some sense of order to the proceedings) are on opposite sides.
Literally.
Now the differences between the left and right sides of our brains have been discussed aplenty for years.
That the left is home to rationality, organisation and detail, and the right handles more subtle issues like empathy, sensitivity and context.
Simplistic distinctions.
In fact, much too simplistic by half.
However, what Dr McGilchrist sets out to prove is that the two hemispheres, whilst existing apparently cosily side by side, do have “fundamentally different sets of values, and therefore priorities, which means that over the long term they are likely to come into conflict. Although each is crucially important, and delivers valuable aspects of the human condition, and though each needs the other for different purposes, they seem destined to pull apart.”
We can see the results of this disintegration everywhere we look today.
No more so than in the world the geeks are generating for us as their charging decontextualisation advances apace in our business.
Increasingly, most of us are now living our lives without human context.
We sit, staring at screens, tapping at keys.
We fill in boxes in answer to questions and in invitations to comment.
We speak to each other via machines.
And often talk only to machines.
Greetings are sent electronically.
Business is carried out remotely.
And formulaically.
Messages are becoming confined to 140 characters.
More and more games are played indoors, habitually alone.
Bald efficiency is everything in enterprise and entertainment.
Human contact and the understanding that is created by it are being surrendered.
The left hemisphere is winning the battle.
And winning it decisively.
I can hear the cries of disdain.
But the ability to convince the right hemisphere that only functional, mechanistic progress will make the world a better place is another weapon in the left hemisphere’s armoury.
The ever-dominant grey matter subdues its more acquiescent other half as it destroys any subtlety, meaning and context that dares to confront it.
It fights against autonomy and humanity.
It supports literalism and explicitness.
It’'s out to crush an important part of what is essentially itself.
And completely eliminate all human context.
Which anyone with half a brain can see would be catastrophic in what has always been a people business.

iainmcgilchrist.com