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4:23

(In »Living religion versus deadly alienation«)

What happens, historically speaking – if we continue to borrow McGilchrist’s cerebral hemisphere metaphors for a little while longer – is that the Enlightenment and the capitalist-industrialist society that it results in, constantly give priority to the left hemisphere over the right one in its increasingly marked and extreme mathematisation of existence. By initially delimiting, then separating and measuring everything in the name of science, mankind also subsequently starts to objectify, instrumentalise, conquer, colonise, plunder and consume every thinkable resource in her environment, including himself and her fellow humans. But the mathematisation of existence not only leads to a ruthless and ultimately also self-destructive exploitation of the Earth’s finite resources. The exploited identity also generates a particularly trenchant alienation, and with it the lack of a context-creating religion. The right cerebral hemisphere, which experiences wholeness and builds meaning, remained, according to the view that McGilchrist puts forward, underdeveloped for several centuries, which had considerable consequences at all levels in society.