Masters of the Right-Hemisphere Universe
In a left-hemispheric culture, the right-hemispherics are freaks
In this left-brained madhouse we call western civilization, the right-brained are the outcasts, the oddballs, the glorious lunatics who refuse to salute the spreadsheet and the algorithm.
They’re the ones who don’t fit in the cubicle, who won’t bow to the soul-crushing hum of the globalist machine.
Their rebellion is as varied as the weeds busting through the cracks of a parking lot, shaped by whatever patch of dirt they sprouted from. The only thread binding them is a mutiny against the left hemisphere.
Let’s play the left-brain’s game for a minute and organize these freaks on the shelf like pickled specimens:
First, you’ve got the scientific weirdos, the eggheads who know the universe is bigger than their slide rules can measure. These are the ones who squint at the stars and suspect there’s more to life than Newton’s clockwork. Einstein ended up jawing with priests about the Eucharist, chasing mysteries his equations couldn’t touch. Michael Polanyi, with his talk of “personal knowledge,” and William James, that Ivy League mystic who wouldn’t dismiss the ineffable just because it didn’t fit in a test tube, belong here too. And of course Dr. Iain McGilchrist, the prophet of The Hemisphere Hypothesis.
Then there’s the reckless bunch, the cultural Molotov-cocktail throwers who hack at modernity’s sacred cows with gleeful abandon. They might not know exactly what they’re fighting, but they’re fighting it.
Jack Kerouac, that road-raging poet, was their 20th-century king. Today, I tip my hat to the reprobates at 4Chan. I’ve never ventured into that digital sewer, but their middle-finger antics make me chuckle from a safe distance.
Next, the self-destructive crew, the ones who torch their own lives in a desperate bid to escape the left hemisphere’s straitjacket. Their bodies litter the landscape like rusted-out cars, some scrawling their misery into “addiction literature”: half suicide note, half poetry. Charles Bukowski, that booze-soaked bard of the barstool, ranks high on the list here.
Then you’ve got the deranged, the ones who pushed so hard against the left hemisphere’s walls that their minds cracked like cheap drywall. Nietzsche, screaming about gods and supermen until the abyss swallowed him whole, is the OG.
There’s the occult weirdos, too, the ones who flirt with the irrational like kids poking a hornet’s nest. I suppose George Gurdjieff and his sidekick P.D. Ouspensky lead this pack, though Gurdjieff would’ve spat at being called an occultist. This beast has more stripes than a zebra, ranging from Carl Jung to the cosmic hippies of Haight-Ashbury.1
Then there’s the acid group. Aldous Huxley led off with The Doors of Perception, but if you want a prolonged glimpse at this approach, read about Ken Kesey’s antics in Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
Don’t overlook the Far East crowd. Taoists, Zen Buddhists, the whole Eastern enchilada: they’ve got a right-brain vibe that’s like a cool breeze in the smog of our hyper-rational West. Their way of seeing doesn’t just challenge the left hemisphere; it laughs at it, then wanders off to contemplate a koi pond.
You’ve got the experimenters, too, the ones who’ll try anything to bust out of the left-hemisphere’s cubicle farm. Joe Rogan, with his sensory deprivation tank, DMT, and extreme physical tests, likely fits here.
Then there’s the political misfits, the ones who spit in the eye of the left hemisphere’s obsession with large-scale efficiency. Bill Kauffman’s Look Homeward, America is a great place to learn about these folks. Henry Thoreau, that cranky Yankee, set the mold; Dorothy Day perfected it in the Bowery; and Wendell Berry carries the torch from Kentucky today.
And finally, the saintly freaks, the ones who seem dropped from the heavens to show us how to survive this left-brained dystopia. St. Therese of Lisieux is the gold standard, but the 20th century’s littered with ‘em: saints who radiate right-brain wisdom like a lighthouse in a fog. All saints are right-hemispherics, but not all right-hemispherics are saints.
These mini-profiles will hoist a glass to all right-hemispherics, saint or sinner. Some of the non-saints might turn your stomach: Bukowski’s demented pages or Nietzsche’s mad ravings aren’t for everyone. But you don’t need to be a pill-popping Beat or a lotus-sitting monk to see the left hemisphere’s got us by the throat, choking the life out of everything that makes us human. These freaks, in all their messy glory, are the ones reminding us there’s another way to see the world.
Re: The Occultists. In general, these folks are worth checking out, but their left-hemispheric occultist cousins (the ones who solicit the dark powers to enhance their control) are particularly problematical since they tend to screw up and let demons slip into the room.