The Divided Brain - Part II

Okay, so the US Democrats are hell bent on impeaching President Trump.  Australia is burning while Prime Minister Scott Morrison does a good imitation of Nero fiddling around while Rome burned. This is happening while the US and Australian stock markets are going up, up, up which makes one wonder if there is any correlation at all between what is happening in the real world and that of any stock market anywhere is reporting.  And to step up the chaos, President Trump has just recently signed a bill guaranteeing the rights of American students to pray in public schools during school hours whenever the students feel the need.  

 

This will consolidate already existing religious tensions. I’ve been against the impeachment of Trump on two grounds, one, in my opinion there are no clear charges of a crime worthy of impeachment and secondly, if Trump is removed from office Mike Pence would immediately become president. Pence is a true believer in the second coming (of Christ returning to earth) and a staunch warmonger. Margaret Atwood in her novel The Handmaid’s Tale, may have dreamed up (or forecast) a political scenario more possible than she realized.

 

In my opinion Donald Trump could be described as a religion pimp in that he trades on the communal bodies of religious people for political gain. I don’t think he cares about religion himself, only how to use it, how to weaponize it in order to manipulate religious people of all faiths. Trump sends death and devastation to those Muslims he doesn’t like, such as the long suffering Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank while extending loving arms to the princes in the land  of the Wahhabis in  Saudi Arabia. Wahhabism is the most extreme form of Islam, the form that stones adulterous women to death, cuts off hands for stealing, beheads and even crucifies people for a multitude of acts deemed to insult the prophet, and of course kills people and chops them up for acts considered to be treasonous. So I’ve changed my mind, I think Trump should be impeached and not for the unprovable misdemeanors he has been accused of, but for a real crime…that of deliberately creating disorder and possible rioting in the American public school systems.  

 

I think our world leaders, but especially the ones I know, or know of, are mostly thinking with only one side of their brains.  Which brings me again to Dr. Ian McGilchrist, the author of The Master and His Emissary. McGilchrist is a world authority in neuroscience. His book begins with elementary stuff that you probably studied in school and have long forgotten. But you probably do remember that the brain is divided into two parts, a right side and a left side, and that the sides are asymmetrical. Gilchrist instructs us that the two sides work together even though each side is  constructed to better handle certain functions than the other, that is, one side is best handling word problems for instance, or language, the other images, but the two divided sides also stand in opposition to each other.  And it is in this tension between the two different sides of the brain that our decisions are made and of course this is also where our creativity is fostered. Where humans make and remake ourselves, and in so doing, also make our collective decisions that in turn makes and remakes civilizations. But what does this tension actually consist of?  And how do the two different sides talk to each other? Next time.

 

January 23rd, 2020

Art by Sandusky

The Mutants

 

I know that you, like me, have wondered when you have time, why the world is becoming such a stinking mess.  It’s not just climate change that threatens all of human and animal habitat although this concern gets more serious every day. It isn’t even the increasing financial ruination being brought to us by corporate rule that now seems to have more power than the governments who protect them instead of us.  

 

 With every passing month we have less of what we need to live as a civil society.  Workers need higher wages, we all need more public and affordable housing, affordable child care, the cessation of criminal interest rates on credit cards, forgiveness for student debt, and less propaganda about inflation.  Every person entrusted with grocery buying knows that groceries seem to rise in a disgustingly regular fashion, if not daily, at least weekly.  Epidemics of dementia of all kinds stalk the elderly, cancer has become so common that some health scientists predict that one person in two in the western world will contact cancer before they die.  And this is occurring at the same time that only a handful of people, relatively speaking; own most of the wealth of the Western World. 

 

The elites (corporations, bankers, billionaires, media heads, military industrial complex, lobbyists for eternal wars) tell us one way or another that this is how the world works.  It’s just the way humans develop in a free economy.  You know, it is freedom that does this.  It’s Democracy. Shut up and count your blessings. The economic winners get to write the rules.   

 

I have been reading a book that explains, at least to my satisfaction, some of the reasons why we, the people, have allowed the social psychopaths of the elites to rise to the top of an increasingly economically miserable heap which the elites themselves have created.  The name of the book I am finding that points to the wealth and power inequality on earth that is killing us is: The Master and His Emissary:The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. The subject is about the human brain and how it works written by Dr. Iain McGilchrist.  McGilchrist has trained both as a literary scholar and as a medical doctor (psychiatry and neuroimaging researcher). 

 

In order to wrap our heads around the really insane proposition that the sneakiest, craftiest and cruelest people among us must be our leaders, we need to know how this happened in the first place. McGilchrist tells us that it is because the human animal has a divided brain.  However, while divided, both sides of the human brain talk to each other regularly. Except in psychopaths.  I think that our elites – our socially acceptable psychopaths - use only one side of their brain. One side of their brain has mutated and has reduced communication with the other side.  In my opinion they are, in effect, mutants. More next time.

Was Chrystia Freeland “kicked upstairs”?

Was Chrystia Freeland “kicked upstairs”?

Yes, I do think our new Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland was recently “kicked upstairs”.  As I understand it, being “kicked upstairs” is a political phrase used when a minister is making a mess of his or her present portfolio but instead of being outright sacked is presented as being given a promotion.  And certainly Freeland was a rotten Foreign Affairs minister.  As long as Trudeau stays healthy and has excellent bodyguards I don’t think Freeland can continue to damage Canada in her new post as Deputy Prime Minister. At least not to the extent that she was dragging Canada down to meet and even surpass the American contempt for the Palestinian people and the sickening elevation of the Trump-Netanyahu Jewish state over all other considerations.

Perhaps the past election showing Trudeau’s drop of popularity in Canada and with other nations was a “woke” moment for him.  How could he maintain Canada’s reputation as a fair and balanced nation with a Foreign Affairs minister like Freeland who refused to even speak to Russian diplomats?  What kind of a Foreign Affairs Minister was she when Russia had to withdraw her diplomats from Canada because of utter lack of communication with Freeland?  So thank you, Mister Prime Minister, for doing what you had to do to get Madam Freeland out of the Foreign Affairs office.  But what is our new foreign minister like?

So far, so good.  A new page has been turned. Another reason for ousting Freeland from foreign affairs was that Trudeau wants a seat on the United Nations Security Council. He would never have had a chance for that seat with Freeland representing Canada.  But Francois–Phillippe Champagne? Ah, a more reasonable choice for Foreign Affairs.  No Russia baiting or Israeli Old Testament bible thumping here. The Centre for International Governance Innovation constructs Champagne as “not an intellectual, but an operator, someone who delivers… He (Champagne) stood out in Ottawa for his good grasp of his files, his interpersonal skills with Cabinet colleagues and his diligence in the House”.  That’s a relief. May the gods that be deliver us all from politicians like Chrystia Freeland who think they are - or act as if they are - indeed intellectuals, when actually they are ideologues. In contrast Champagne is a graduate in international law.  He was initially appointed Minister of International Trade with the important responsibility of steering Free Trade agreements with Europe, Asia-Pacific and many other countries. 

Time will tell, but I am just so happy that Trudeau, by kicking  Chrystia Freedland upstairs, has thus prevented her from further tearing apart Canada’s good reputation for being fair minded and reasonable.