Dr Iain McGilchrist explores how the dominance of the left hemisphere over the right in our brain predisposes our culture to a particular way of being.

Because of the left hemisphere’s tendency to experience in specific and segregated parts rather than in whole and complex patterns, it perceives itself as separate and distinct from nature. The comprehensive insights and awareness of the right hemisphere have been displaced by a narrow thinking that is methodical, pragmatic and rigid. What makes us truly happy is in fact the reciprocal relationship between ourselves and one another, ourselves and the world – something the right hemisphere alone understands, since it is the ground of empathy and interconnectedness, where the left hemisphere is concerned with manipulation and sees the world atomistically.

McGilchrist shows how this manipulative and atomistic way of thinking is fundamentally unbalanced and unhealthy and lies at the root of climate destruction.