It's a Jungle In Here

If you want to see the western world’s overwhelming bias for the left hemisphere of the brain (and why Iain McGilchrist calls the left “the least intelligent” of the two hemispheres), look no further than the prevailing model for how lives are changed.

That model is described in a recent article in Aeon magazine: Can you rewire your brain? The author, Peter Lukacs, a retired neurologist, refutes the assertion in thousands of popular books that changing your life requires rewiring your brains. The assumption is that your brain is a circuit board. If you reconnect, replace, or redirect your brain’s wiring (often with the assistance of an app), you will learn new habits and skills with mechanical precision. Your life will be changed.

Lukacs says No. So does Iain MacGilchrist, who notes the left hemisphere of the brain has a bias for the mechanical. That’s not a problem when there was harmony between the right and left hemisphere. But we haven’t heard that harmony for 500 years.

MacGilchrist describes the cultural history of the western world over the last 500 years as “a slide into the territory of the left hemisphere.” It’s so steep that 95 percent of the western world’s population now biases the left hemisphere. As a result, the mechanical view of rewiring the brain is quite popular and sounds alluring. But neuroimaging indicates it’s not how the brain actually works.

Unlike electrical wiring which follows rigid, fixed paths, the brain’s connectivity is dynamic and constantly changing. It’s called brain plasticity, where the brain reorganizes itself throughout life by rejuvenating old neural paths or forming new paths as they are gradually worn or abandoned as they are no longer used. In other words, your brain is more like a jungle than a circuit board.

OK… but so what?

Well, first of all, I know a tiny bit about jungles. There’s a forest of towering trees and creeping vines rimming our backyard. I began exploring this when we moved here six years ago, and I discovered it’s a jungle out there. There were old paths overgrown from disuse. So I began clearing them. I also hacked out new paths. Our grandkids enjoy playing on them, including occasionally going on snipe hunts at night. What fun.

Here’s what I’ve learned from the jungle out there: it’s a never-ending project of trying to tame our backyard jungle wilderness. So is trying to tame the jungle in here, in our brains. It’s a never-ending project of striving to change our lives.

Second, Lukas says that life-change requires heeding the contrarian voice. McGilchrist makes the same point. But he adds that the right hemisphere is that voice. He calls it “prophetic.” It’s critical since our brain loses plasticity as we grow older. The prophetic voice keeps our brains flexible by challenging our assumptions. Lukas writes, “Brains that are challenged tend to retain greater flexibility than those that are not.”

Last but not least, 500 years is a long time (twice as long as the US has been a nation). As a Christian, it’s easy to forget the ancient paths that the Christian Church walked for 1,500 years. Those paths can become overgrown through disuse, which is what happened to the nation of Judah after 500 years of walking on the wrong paths.

The result of the nation of Judah walking the wrong paths wasn’t pretty. The prophet Jeremiah, a contrarian voice if there ever was one, told the nation: “Ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.”

The Judeans responded, “We will not walk in it.” (Jer.6:16)

How tragic. But it’s a lesson for us. We can walk on the wrong paths for so long that returning to the ancient paths, which have become overgrown through disuse, are not alluring. C. S. Lewis called it “chronological snobbery,” the uncritical belief that current ideas and trends are inherently superior to those of the past. But in snubbing our nose to the ancient paths, we forget there’s a jungle in here, in our brains, that is presently being ruled by the least intelligent part of our brain, the left hemisphere.