How Whole Brain Thinking Can Save the Future
How Whole Brain Thinking Can Save the Future is a practical inquiry into the “operating systems” of the left and right brain hemispheres and their surprising influence over lifestyle, politics, business, religion, and sexual orientation.
Book Spotlight – How Whole Brain Thinking Can Save the Future
Written by James Olson
The Split-Brain’s Remarkable Effect on Consciousness and Culture
In 1982 a Nobel Prize was awarded for Roger Sperry’s discovery that each brain hemisphere was independently conscious and exhibited contrasting functions. The public became fascinated, and popular ideas about the left- and right-brain-dominant personality types entered the parlance. Yet, this important discussion eventually tapered off.
Captivated by the brain’s complexity and supported by improved technologies, researchers turned to narrower concerns, focusing on the brain’s various parts—its so- called “modules.” But in light of the extreme polarization we are experiencing in our culture, many of today’s scientists and thinkers are returning once again to consider the split-brain phenomenon, and one result is a startling new synthesis proposed by integral philosopher James Olson, in his book How Whole Brain Thinking Can Save the Future: Why Left Hemisphere Dominance Has Brought Humanity to the Brink of Disaster and How We Can Think Our Way to Peace and Healing (Origin Press, January 2017).
Rather than explore what the hemispheres do (language, math, etc.), Olson looks at how they do things—the mind’s management process. Working as a holistic and interdisciplinary science reporter, he pursues a special focus on understanding the persona of the two hemispheres—the focus of their attention and their typical response. Keeping in mind their natural unity as a complementary team, he looks at how each uniquely affects our behavior—including the consequences when the brain’s two views fail to harmonize.
Characteristics of Olson’s holistic brain/mind/consciousness model include:
- Each of the hemispheres houses an “operating system,” a management system serving to coordinate the interaction of the two sides of the brain.
- As a result of three types of genetic dominance—complete, incomplete, and codominance—four types of brain operating systems are produced.
- Olson’s model explains masculine tending straight women, gay men, and lesbians, as well as feminine tending straight men, gay men, and lesbians—and more.
Does your brain manage you—or do you manage your brain?
If we are to better understand and manage our lifestyle, our culture, its politics, and our relationship with the opposite sex, rather than let the brain’s inherited tendencies manage us, it is vital we appreciate the interaction of our brain’s two hemispheres. Olson shows that this is possible, through what he calls “conscious creative mind management”—cognitive control of perspective through attention—so we can become effective managers.
Olson’s treatment of the subject is integrative and pragmatic. After developing a rich conceptual toolbox in the first half of the book, he then turns to more practical and often provocative matters in the second half—covering the drug war, the military-industrial-congressional complex, and religious leadership—even abortion.
As he investigates the effects of the brain’s operating systems on personal and cultural relationships, Olson highlights the often-tragic distortions that can result from the simple lack of harmony between the hemispheres, and explains how to minimize them.
Olson also pursues a special focus on understanding how each side of the brain acts to inform consciousness and guide our behavior, including its profound effect on gender and sexual orientation. He demonstrates how our dominant hemisphere plays a much larger role in determining sexual preferences than we have previously explored, noting that various cultures are well ahead of us in recognizing the correlation between sexuality and gender based on brain hemisphere dominance.
A new frontier beyond “brain science” reductionism
Perhaps the book’s most immediately useful treatment of contemporary life—besides an improved understanding of self and the opposite sex—lies in the way How Whole Brain Thinking Can Save the Future addresses the social polarization that is tearing so many cultures apart. If politicians and pundits employed a whole-brain perspective, Olson shows, this would allow them to see the complementary nature of the two seemingly disparate sides and ultimately achieve unity.
Olson’s discourse shows that the product of the harmonization of the two hemispheres is peace—in all domains. How Whole Brain Thinking Can Save the Future reminds us that we have the freedom to adjust our perception—and our creativity—by consciously shifting our attention, as the occasion demands.
For more information or to purchase How Whole Brain Thinking Can Save the Future, click the book cover or visit thewholebrainpath.com
About the Author
James Olson is an integral philosopher whose studies have included religion, art, psychology and neuroscience. He has attended the University of Vienna; Oklahoma University, where he received a Bachelor of Business Administration; and the Kansas City Art Institute. Following the unifying guidelines of philosophy and drawing on his broad education, Olson has made it his mission to help bring the planet’s masculine (dualistic left-brain) and feminine (holistic right-brain) energies into greater harmony, through his advocacy of whole-brain thinking. Olson’s first book, The Whole-Brain Path to Peace earned several national book awards, including Foreword Reviews 2011 Philosophy Book of the Year. thewholebrainpath.com
