Turning Left or Right: The Fragile Sanity of Nations

In many nations today we see a common struggle between the right wing and the left wing of the society. In the United States, the Democrats in fact sit on the left side of the congress hall, and the Republicans sit on the right, as if there is some unconscious alignment in space associated with a left or right political orientation. Is there a scientific explanation for this association of spatial with political orientation? We know that the human brain, and its intelligence, are asymmetric. In general, the left hemisphere is specialized for language and analytic thinking, and the right hemisphere is specialized for imagination and holistic thinking. Could there be some intrinsic social orientation associated with these qualities of intelligence? Some pattern of feeling that pulls us to turn left or right?Most importantly, is there a neuropsychological explanation for the strong emotions that seem to degrade intelligence in the political context? We see the challenges that a nation faces — whether it’s managing the budget, dealing with threats from outsiders, or making decisions on controversial social issues — and for each issue the response seems to devolve into a fight between the left and the right. Almost as if the emotional controversy engages one side of some people’s brains, but the other side of other people’s brains, and the result is that no one can think straight.In this book we will work on a neuropsychological theory that could explain these asymmetries of turning left or right as a result of the emotional struggles of dealing with difficult social issues. We will begin with classical notions of the dialectical struggle between opposing sides, and how it can — in theory — lead to insight and the integration of novel perspectives. At the same time, we will see that the process readily degrades, so that an entire nation can become convulsed in a confused and ignorant struggle, as the left and right orientations whip themselves into a kind of collective mental disorder.There are important clues from recent theoretical work on the emotional basis of orienting left or right, and these may help to explain how people grow up to align themselves with the ideas of others, first in the family, and then in peer relations, and finally in the community and society. This is not an easy theory to develop. Yet once we step through each of the research findings, and the theoretical ideas developed over the years that may help to interpret them, we will find new ways of understanding how people grow up to form their thoughts in the social context. What we discover is that the mechanisms of the brain, including its left and right hemispheres, only function through dealing with the formative social influences of the family and community. As a result, in the real world, all intelligence is political. Read more