The left hemisphere is very different than the right. It comes on line quite late in life. For girls, it comes on line at age 7-8. For boys, 8-9. Our left hemisphere is concerned with narrative and sequential forms of knowing. It is quite separate from the the right hemisphere and the limbic and autonomic brain. When we are using our left hemisphere to realize the sequential order of things, we are quite free from our immersion in the world of the right hemisphere and the deeper structures of the brain.
As a culture, we have tended to valorize the modes of knowing and being that are associated with the left hemisphere. We push kids to read even before their brains have developed the basic tools for the job.
We tend to become more attached to our stories about life than life itself
Some religious traditions have tended to view the body as a source of evil, our desires and passions are, in some of these traditions, not to be trusted.
Narrow understandings of science associate its accomplishments and ways of being as primarily left hemispheric. This is, of course nonsense. All great scientific inquiry and discovery relies as much upon the right hemisphere with its connections to the deeper structures of our brain, as it does on the right.
