4_purpose_and_responsibility_transcription

Iain McGilchrist:[00:00:00] We always make the mistake in the West, which is never made in the East, of thinking that some things are just good and some things are just bad. There is nothing that is always good and nothing that is always bad and there is nothing of which it cannot be said that if you take it far enough, it will become bad in itself.

Oliver Trace:[00:00:19] I often recount an interview I watched with Philip Seymour Hoffman on Happiness, and he's a brilliant storyteller and he says, The thing is, everything that I've ever done that makes me happy I've had too much of and it's made me miserable. Drugs being the main point, and ultimately that was his downfall. But he also tells a story of his children. He said there was a moment where I was on a boat with my two kids and they were playing and I sensed in that moment, this is happiness. But then they got older and they started to recognise all my flaws, and even they became a source of my misery.

Iain McGilchrist:[00:01:04] I mean, a very simple point that I've made a number of times is that, in fact, to be fulfilled, you need a degree of resistance. That's, I think, a very important deep point about everything, not just about human life, because actually it applies in a physical sense to everything that exists, that it can only exist and act through the existence of a degree of resistance.

Oliver Trace:[00:01:29] It's instantly reminding me of the myth of Sisyphus, where he's asked to... well, I say asked.

Iain McGilchrist:[00:01:37] Tasked.

Oliver Trace:[00:01:38] He's tasked. I can't remember how the story goes, what he's done to offend the gods, but the response is that he has to push a boulder uphill. And once it gets to the top, it then rolls back down again, over and over and over and over again. And Albert Camus uses that example to ask the question, which he believes is the fundamental philosophical question, Should we or should we not take our own life? When you have the boulder to push uphill, at least you know what it is that you're doing. And when the boulder disappears, that's when you become lost.

Iain McGilchrist:[00:02:13] I like that and I think that's true. And I think one way of illuminating that would be to point out that during wars, suicide rates plummet.

Oliver Trace:[00:02:24] That is interesting.

Iain McGilchrist:[00:02:25] And that the peak point for suicide is not in the winter. It's in around late April, early May, when the world is actually at its most benign.

Oliver Trace:[00:02:35] Because there's not there's...

Iain McGilchrist:[00:02:38] I think in that latter case, it may be something to do with the contrast between how you feel inside and how you sense the spirit of the world around you is moving. I don't know. I'm speculating, but I think in the case of war, it's very clear that what happens is that people have a clear sense of purpose and what they're doing and surviving. You know, people don't kill themselves on Everest expeditions by committing suicide. They kill themselves by falling off a precipice.

Oliver Trace:[00:03:09] I think that purpose is a crucial word.

Iain McGilchrist:[00:03:13] It's an amazingly important word.

Oliver Trace:[00:03:15] It's a crucial word. And it's a crucial issue. You know, there's a reasons why Jordan Peterson is blowing up in the way that he is at the moment. And for me, I would say if it had to be tied down to one word, it would be purpose. Many people are listening to what he's saying about responsibility, which is, of course, tied to resistance and tied to purpose and realising that, yes, we need to find a reason to exist. He likes the line that Nietzsche espouses, which is he who has a why can bear almost any how. Almost, being the key word. Because there are some existences that are so miserable that it becomes untenable.

Iain McGilchrist:[00:04:01] Incidentally, I like the word responsibility because, of course, it suggests what I believe is always going on when two things have contact, which is there is a response seen between the two. One of them responds to the other and sets up a reverberative relationship. And out of that comes responsibility.

Oliver Trace:[00:04:23] That is interesting. I often tell the story of walking the dog. Are you walking the dog or is the dog walking you? Are you responsible for the dog or is the dog responsible for you? And it's a very I mean, suddenly, like in my own family, when the dog is not present, the walks are not happening.

Iain McGilchrist:[00:04:44] I think in lots of ways, dogs are very responsive creatures and, of course, capable of moral responsibility. There's an amazing clip on YouTube of a dog diving onto a highway amidst traffic to drag with its teeth off an injured dog to the side so that it will survive. I mean, everybody who's owned a dog will have a similar story of how amazingly thoughtful and... they are extraordinary beings. We mustn't talk too much about dogs.

Oliver Trace:[00:05:14] I was just going to say that I doubt that the dog was considering the principles behind the morality.

Iain McGilchrist:[00:05:19] Not principles but it was behaving morally.

Oliver Trace:[00:05:20] Yes, it was. Yeah, it was instinct.

Iain McGilchrist:[00:05:22] Without principles, with instinct. And if being grateful, being generous and being forgiving and being warm are parts of being a good and moral being, dogs give us a pretty good hiding at that one. You know, the more one sees of man, the more one admires his dog. And I think that has as much to say about dogs as it has to say about humans.

Oliver Trace:[00:05:53] Which is similar to when you say, when you personify a rock, the fact that we can personify the rock has as much to say about humans as it does to say about the rock.

Iain McGilchrist:[00:06:06] Or even the other way around. When we call a man like a rock that is obviously describing the man, but it's also humanising the rock.

Oliver Trace:[00:06:14] So it's saying something about both sides.

Iain McGilchrist:[00:06:17] It's this responsive relationship that always exists when two things are brought together, as I was saying.

Oliver Trace:[00:06:22] And to go back to the virtual reality idea, it's almost like that relationship has been lost when you start saying that virtual reality is becoming so much like us that it's going to become us. In fact, what's happening is that we're only looking at ourselves, and we're only seeing how we are similar to virtual reality, not how we're different.

Iain McGilchrist:[00:06:42] Yes and also in that reality, we are having a relationship with ourselves, not with another being. And it seems to me that relationships with other beings, living beings, is at the core of what it means to be human.

Oliver Trace:[00:06:56] And I forgot to mention this at the time, although it did come into my head that this idea that virtual reality might eventually become the same reality as us seems to be tied to the idea of a circle and the number pi because of course, pi is the relationship between the circumference of a circle and the diameter. And when we look at a circle, we instinctively feel it to be perfect. But if we want to try and replicate that circle with mathematics, we know pi to be an infinite number. If we apply that logic to the idea of virtual reality, however close virtual reality may come to reality, it's never, ever going to be reality.

Iain McGilchrist:[00:07:39] Wow, how interesting, because I'm just writing about that very thing in similar words, not actually about virtual reality, but about the importance of Pi and the circle in the book I'm currently working on. And it goes, in my mind, back to an early perception which I talk about in Against Criticism that with certain kinds of thinking you can only make tangents to a living curve and a circle can be approximated ever more closely by straight lines, but it can never actually be achieved. This was a point actually, I didn't know this at the time, that it was made both graphically and in words by Nicholas of Cusa, who was, I think, one of the most important, if not the most important philosopher of the 15th century. German philosopher, who wrote a marvellous treatise called De Doctor Ignorantia about learned ignorance.

Oliver Trace:[00:08:37] Learned ignorance which relates to the circle. And perhaps we could have a conversation for a moment about the circle. Because if forced to choose a shape, which we weren't in the desert island discs, I'm confident we both choose a circle.

Iain McGilchrist:[00:08:52] Oh no really, I wouldn't.

Oliver Trace:[00:08:54] Would you choose a sphere?

Iain McGilchrist:[00:08:55] No. No, I wouldn't no.

Oliver Trace:[00:08:58] Which shape would you choose?

Iain McGilchrist:[00:09:01] I would choose, first of all, a shape that was in motion, a flowing motion, and I would choose... I would choose an endlessly morphing shape that was acting under the influence of something like a force field. There's an area... sorry, I've just been...

Oliver Trace:[00:09:25] I feel like you've broken out of the question there. I feel you've ducked it, because as soon as it's as soon as it's flowing, the shape can become, in theory, anything.

Iain McGilchrist:[00:09:36] Well no it can't become anything because it can't possibly become a cube. Actually, it can't possibly become a sphere.

Oliver Trace:[00:09:47] I take your point.

Iain McGilchrist:[00:09:48] If it's flowing, it's always to some degree changing and therefore always to some degree from a platonic point of view, imperfect, not a perfect, solid, a perfect shape.

Oliver Trace:[00:09:59] Which I think you're talking about the nature of being. Would that be a fair assumption? Your imagination of what being... what shape being might behold.

Iain McGilchrist:[00:10:09] Well, yes, because being, I believe, as you possibly know, is becoming. That whatever it is that is, is not really being but becoming.

Oliver Trace:[00:10:21] Yeah, and so as soon as you start saying circle, you start saying sphere...

Iain McGilchrist:[00:10:26] You've pinned it down.

Oliver Trace:[00:10:26] You're tying it to something fixed which is not living. So I suppose I should have prefixed my question by saying, if we are to talk of the mechanical world, which shape would you...

Iain McGilchrist:[00:10:36] Well I might well be with you on a sphere.

Oliver Trace:[00:10:37] Then you might well be with me. But if we're, if we're going to break out of that, then...

Iain McGilchrist:[00:10:41] Then I think I would be with you on a sphere on that one, probably.

Oliver Trace:[00:10:43] But I'm just, to the point of the circle, when you were talking about the ignorance and the knowledge, Mark Vernon raised an idea to me, not in person, but through his writing, which is an Eastern idea related to the circle and knowing and not knowing whereby everything inside of the circle is what we know and everything outside of the circle is what we don't know. And what's brilliant about it, in my view, is that in fact, as the circle becomes bigger, we know more, but the circumference of the circle also becomes larger and therefore we know more of what we don't know. 

Iain McGilchrist:[00:11:23] I think that's absolutely brilliant.

Oliver Trace:[00:11:24] I thought it was absolutely excellent. And it of course relates to the idea of the hemispheres where you speak of the Hall of Mirrors. For me, we're standing on the edge of this circle and we're only looking inside and therefore never learning anything new any more about what we already know.

Iain McGilchrist:[00:11:43] And it relates to something very deep again about the difference between the hemispheres that the right is essentially interested in exploring the unknown. The left is essentially interested in controlling the known. Now it seems to me that technology doesn't have to be, but usually is about having more power over things that we are already familiar with. Rather than saying we need to shock ourselves by becoming aware of how very little we know and how very little we can control and how very little we should try to control. But it's all about control in physics. The great thing is that people are constantly up against the discovery that we have to just accept that all the things we thought were right are just not right. And the great physicists distinguish themselves from the lesser physicists, in my view, by having constantly said, The more I see of this, the less I realise that we have any way of knowing.

Oliver Trace:[00:12:52] Yes, the uncertainty principle, so to speak. The only certainty is that there are no certainties. I'd like to talk a little bit more about...

Iain McGilchrist:[00:13:01] Even that could be an uncertainty.

Oliver Trace:[00:13:04] Yes, there's a lot of uncertainties around. But I'd like to talk a little bit about this idea of the known and the unknown. There's a passage, and it seems to me to be a paradox that exists in all of us; on the one hand, we want change and on the other hand, we want things to stay the same. But how can you have both of these at the same time? And Nietzsche speaks and I can't remember the passage verbatim, but he speaks about how he's standing on the edge of the cliff and he's reaching up to the stars ready to fly. Simultaneously, he is holding the ground, desperate not to leave. If we then attach that to relationships and marriage. There is this constant battle, well, I shouldn't say battle, perhaps that's more revealing of me than it is of everyone, but there is this sense that... And Kierkegaard talks about it, he says that, Damned if you do, damned if you don't, because if you go into a marriage, you are secure in the known, but you're not free. If you're not in marriage, you're free, but you're not secure, so you can't have both. The question I have is that throughout your book you argue that the right hemisphere tends to prefer the unknown and that the left hemisphere tends to prefer the known. If you applied that to a relationship, it seems to me that it would imply that the right hemisphere would argue if someone weren't quite sure whether or not they should remain with their partner to say, go on out into the unknown, hatch onto the ship, you don't know who you might see! Whereas the left hemisphere would say, Well, let's control what you have got. Better the devil you know than the devil you don't. What would be your response to that?

Iain McGilchrist:[00:15:00] Well, I would want to qualify what you said about the right hemisphere, preferring the unknown. I think it's much better at both spotting the unknown, if you like, being aware of its existence, and it is, as you rightly say, the first to have a take on it, if you like, to be able to sort of take it in in any way. And then as it becomes more familiar in the sense of, I don't need to pay attention to that because I know what it is already, it belongs in this category, it's easily dealt with by the left hemisphere. But in the book, I distinguish between a number of what I call faux-amis or false friends. In other words, things that look like they're the same but actually have a right hemisphere way and a left hemisphere way of being understood. And one of them is familiarity. So there are things that you are familiar with which are kept alive by the fact that you're familiar with them and you never get to the end of that process. So to take the image of your wife, nothing personal because I never met her.

Oliver Trace:[00:16:11] I don't have a wife by the way, just for the record. But the imaginary wife, because for the story it works.

Iain McGilchrist:[00:16:18] Or any of your friends that you're close to or your family. These are familiar. The word family actually is at the root of this whole idea of the familiar. And so there are things that are inauthentic, clichéd, worn out, no longer have any purchase for you because they're over familiar. They're like what we call a cliché. And then there are things that are familiar because they are so present to you. They are so loved by you that they are part of your world all the time. Now, for example, the view from here is something with which I'm very familiar, but it's not something that is ever exhausted. It's not something that is ever not new. And neither would be that relationship you had that was so important. So, since the right hemisphere is more interested in deep emotional empathy and less interested in shallow stimulation, the left hemisphere is more in need of stimulation and less able to sustain a deep emotional sense of attachment. Then I would say, no, it doesn't just cut the way you suggested, that you would just say, Oh, sod it, I'm off.

Oliver Trace:[00:17:35] Well, I'm glad it doesn't, to be honest, because I would say that often it is a good idea to remain. And as you say, if there's a familiarity but a newness at the same time, then it's okay for it to be to be known because it's both known and unknown at the same time.

Iain McGilchrist:[00:17:57] Yes, there's an interesting sidelight on that, which is that there is a condition known as delusional misidentification. And it's best known manifestation is something called Capgras Syndrome. Capgras Syndrome is fascinating and is caused by right hemisphere damage. And what it involves is that somebody who seems very close to you, you suddenly get the idea, this is not really somebody close to me at all. It's somebody who's impersonating the person that I'm very familiar with. They're doing it very, very, very well, but they're not actually that person anymore. And it has a kind of obverse, which is not the opposite of it, but it's actually just another way of thinking of the same problem called Fregoli Syndrome, in which people think that somebody who they're not familiar with is actually somebody with whom they're already very familiar. So, for example, I had a patient who thought her husband was two-timing her because he was supposed to be working in an electrical goods shop, but when she went shopping, she kept finding him in every place that she went with different people. And she thought, What's he up to? Now these both come from not being able to see that the same enduring, flowing entity, is subject to change, but is still the same. We come back to Heraclitus, my favorite philosopher who said that you can never step into the same river twice. Meaning that the same river is there, but the water in it is always changing. And this is true of people. You're still here. You're still here. But what's going on in us is constantly changing.

Oliver Trace:[00:19:48] Let's talk a little bit about this idea of flux versus the idea of something certain. The philosophical problem is brought to light with humour in Del Boy, Only Fools and Horses.

Iain McGilchrist:[00:19:59] You have to fill me in.

Oliver Trace:[00:20:00] Where he goes, I've had this broom for 20 years. I've had 14 handles and 18 heads; it's still the same broom. Del Boy goes, but how can it be the same broom if you've replaced the handle and replaced the head?

Iain McGilchrist:[00:20:13] I mean this is enshrined in a in a well-known paradox called The Ship of Theseus Paradox. And this refers to, you know, the legendary Greek hero Theseus, who made adventures and carried out exploits using a ship. And when he came finally back to Athens, the ship was preserved in the harbor as a monument to him. But over the years, the timber rotted and piece by piece the ship was repaired until at the end of 30 years none of the actual original timbers wer there, although the ship seemed to be there. And the question was, was this still the ship of Theseus. Now, my take on that is that the left hemisphere says no because the parts have changed. But the right hemisphere says yes because the form, the gestalt, is still present. If you doubt that, think about, or if you want a better way of thinking about it, I should probably say, what about the human body? There is nothing in your body now that was there seven years ago, but it's still your body in a way that I think most of us would recognise. It's just that your body changes.