Split the difference

It appears to me they are at their elastic limit. Political poles, in the western world at least, seem to be intent on pulling any vestige of connection to each other free of their moorings.

At times like this I think it is important to note that the political realm isn’t the only in which right left divisions shuffle for dominance. There is another, entirely internal, dominance struggle within our own brains.

The fact that we have two cerebral hemispheres is hardly news, but what is interesting is that the science behind this is relatively untrammelled. There is much over-hyped pop-psychology on how functions differentiate across our right and left hemispheres. But this has for some time become the favourite go-to for tedious management training seminars and marketers claiming we should all be more ‘right brain’ in our thinking. That left does analysis while right does creativity.

Do we need to bolster the connective tissue between the left and the right? Do we need a political corpus callosum?

But the truth is much more nuanced, complex and interesting than that – as the brilliant Dr Iain McGilchrist explores in his book The Master and his Emissary. He has also pointed out that it was almost because of the predilection for marketing to make the left-right brain an ‘angle’ for their own ends that neuroscience all but abandoned the field. The subject, in a sense, became marred.

But this is changing now – neuroscience is becoming interested in brain lateralisation again. And it is yielding some fascinating insights. Keen not fall foul of the same pop-shortcuts that have previously flowed from this science I’ll resist the temptation to summarise here.

But why drag all this down to the level of politics? Because I think there is something very important we can learn from a divided brain. To function fully the brain needs both left and right hemispheres. A delicate blend of both is needed and a large band of connective tissue – the corpus callosum – allows this integration between the hemispheres of the brain. There is communication between the two.

And it is this which is lacking in political discourse. The all-or-nothing, with-us-or-against-us rhetoric is driving political outlooks further from a centre ground. So – do we need to bolster the connective tissue between the left and the right? Do we need a political corpus callosum? Perhaps I’m pushing the neuroanatomy analogy too far… but one lesson, I think, holds.

And that is one of asymmetry rather than uniformity. Its not that politics would work better if only the parties agreed – its clear we need opposites; we need the thetical and the antithetical, we need, in some ways, division. Ultimately, however, we can only operate to our fullest potential when both come together. Evolution is testament to that – we are not the only animals with a divided brain. This solution to existing in the world goes way back. C.elegans, for example, has a nervous system made up of a mere 300 neurons, yet it displays clear asymmetry in its chemosensors. Sea anemones, which evolved hundreds of millions ago display demonstrable asymmetry in their rudimentary nervous systems.

Why? Because asymmetry clearly pays. Our brains have evolved to do different things in different parts of their anatomy and we need both hemispheres to operate effectively in the world. And I’d say that just like we need the left and right hemispheres of our brain, we need the political left and right of our societies.

But to integrate them properly we need to overcome the societal split-brain operation that has been performed by the politicians.

Phil Prime, Managing Editor