The Right (and Left) Stuff

"Our brains are extraordinary. Yet for all the brain’s complexity,its broad topography is simple and symmetrical. Scientists have long known that a neurological Mason-Dixon Line divides the brain into two regions.And until surprisingly recently,the scientific establishment considered the two regions separate but unequal.The left side,the theory went,was the crucial half,the half that made us human. The right side was subsidiary — the remnant,some argued,of an earlier stage of development. The left hemisphere was rational,analytic and logical. The right hemisphere was mute,nonlinear and instinctive — a vestige that nature had designed for a purpose that humans had outgrown.

This view prevailed for much of the next century —until a soft-spoken Caltech professor named Robert W.Sperry reshaped our understanding of our brains and ourselves. In the late 1950s,Sperry studied patients who had epileptic seizures that had required removal of the corpus callosum,the thick bundle of some 300 million nerve fibers that connects the brain’s two hemispheres.In a set of experiments on these “split-brain”patients,Sperry discovered that the established view was flawed.Yes,our brains were divided into two halves. But as he put it,“The so-called subordinate or minor hemisphere,which we had formerly supposed to be illiterate and mentally retarded and thought by some authorities to not even be conscious,was found to be in fact the superior cerebral member when it came to performing certain kinds of mental tasks.”In other words,the right wasn’t inferior to the left. It was just different.

Thanks to Sperry’s pioneering research and the advent of technologies like the fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) that allow researchers to watch the brain in action,the right hemisphere today has achieved a measure of legitimacy. It’s real. It’s important. It helps make us human. No neuroscientist worth his or her Ph.D. ever disputes that. Yet beyond the neuro-science labs and brain-imaging clinics,two misconceptions about the right side of the brain persist."

A Whole New Mind - Introduction

"The last few decades have belonged to a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind — computer programmers who could crank code,lawyers who could craft contracts, MBAs who could crunch numbers. But the future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind — creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers. These people — artists,inventors,designers,storytellers,care-givers,consolers,big-picture thinkers — will now reap society’s richest rewards and share its greatest joys.

There is a seismic — though as yet undetected — shift now under way in much of the advanced world. We are moving from an economy and a society built on the logical,linear computer-like capabilities of the Information Age to an economy and a society built on the inventive, empathic, big-picture capabilities of what’s rising in its place, the Conceptual Age. This summary is for anyone who wants to survive and thrive in this emerging world — people uneasy in their careers or dissatisfied with their lives,entrepreneurs and business leaders eager to stay ahead of the next wave,parents who want to equip their children for the future,and the legions of emotionally astute and creatively adroit people whose distinctive abilities the Information Age has often overlooked and undervalued.

Six Senses
There are six essential aptitudes—“the six senses”—on which professional success and personal satisfaction increasingly will depend:Design,Story,Symphony,Empathy,Play and Meaning. These are fundamentally human abilities that everyone can master.

A change of such magnitude is complex. But the argument at the heart of this summary is simple. For nearly a century,Western society in general,and American society in particular,has been dominated by a form of thinking and an approach to life that is narrowly reductive and deeply analytical. Ours has been the age of the “knowledge worker,”the well-educated manipulator of information and deployer of expertise. But that is changing.Thanks to an array of forces — material abundance that is deepening our non material yearnings, globalization that is shipping white-collar work overseas,and powerful technologies that are eliminating certain kinds of work altogether — we are entering a new age. It is an age animated by a different form of thinking and a new approach to life — one that prizes “high concept”and “high touch”aptitudes. High concept involves the capacity to detect patterns and opportunities,to create artistic and emotional beauty,to craft a satisfying narrative,and to combine seemingly unrelated ideas into something new. High touch involves the ability to empathize with others,to understand the subtleties of human interaction,to find joyin one’s self and to elicit it in others,and to stretch beyond the quotidian in pursuit of purpose and meaning.

Two Hemispheres
There’s something that encapsulates the change —and it’s right inside your head. Our brains are divided into two hemispheres. The left hemisphere is sequential,logical and analytical. The right hemisphere is nonlinear,intuitive and holistic.

We enlist both halves of our brains for even the simplest tasks. But the well-established differences between the two hemispheres of the brain yield a powerful metaphor for interpreting our present and guiding our future. Today,the defining skills of the previous era — the “left brain”capabilities that powered the Information Age — are necessary but no longer sufficient. And the capabilities we once disdained or thought frivolous — the “right brain”qualities of inventiveness,empathy,joyfulness and meaning — increasingly will determine who flourishes and who flounders. For individuals,families and organizations,professional success and personal fulfillment now require a whole new mind."