Revenge of the Right Brain

[Dover]

Revenge of the Right Brain

Logical and precise, left-brain thinking gave us the Information Age. Now comes the Conceptual Age - ruled by artistry, empathy, and emotion.

By Daniel H. PinkPage 1 of 2 next »

When I was a kid - growing up in a middle-class family, in the middle of America, in the middle of the 1970s - parents dished out a familiar plate of advice to their children: Get good grades, go to college, and pursue a profession that offers a decent standard of living and perhaps a dollop of prestige. If you were good at math and science, become a doctor. If you were better at English and history, become a lawyer. If blood grossed you out and your verbal skills needed work, become an accountant. Later, as computers appeared on desktops and CEOs on magazine covers, the youngsters who were really good at math and science chose high tech, while others flocked to business school, thinking that success was spelled MBA.

Tax attorneys. Radiologists. Financial analysts. Software engineers. Management guru Peter Drucker gave this cadre of professionals an enduring, if somewhat wonky, name: knowledge workers. These are, he wrote, "people who get paid for putting to work what one learns in school rather than for their physical strength or manual skill." What distinguished members of this group and enabled them to reap society's greatest rewards, was their "ability to acquire and to apply theoretical and analytic knowledge." And any of us could join their ranks. All we had to do was study hard and play by the rules of the meritocratic regime. That was the path to professional success and personal fulfillment.

But a funny thing happened while we were pressing our noses to the grindstone: The world changed. The future no longer belongs to people who can reason with computer-like logic, speed, and precision. It belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind. Today - amid the uncertainties of an economy that has gone from boom to bust to blah - there's a metaphor that explains what's going on. And it's right inside our heads...cont'd

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.02/brain.html?tw=wn_tophead_5

[mhr]

1. One Of Those Articles That Told Me Everything And Nothing

Fluff filler for the technical masses.

[Dover]

2. Understandable why some who stake their very existence on left brain

superiority might feel threatened by this "fluff" piece.

To some of you, this shift - from an economy built on the logical, sequential abilities of the Information Age to an economy built on the inventive, empathic abilities of the Conceptual Age - sounds delightful. "You had me at hello!" I can hear the painters and nurses exulting. But to others, this sounds like a crock. "Prove it!" I hear the programmers and lawyers demanding....

..snip..

We've progressed from a society of farmers to a society of factory workers to a society of knowledge workers. And now we're progressing yet again - to a society of creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers.

[Desertrose]

3. Thanks, Dover...I really liked this article...made some serious sense

That was all I was taught growing up...get that college degree- the answer to all your prayers...I went to an art college...never got my degree from there ...

Funny thing is, all my friends who went, got the degree or whatever, have not really fared all that much better or ended up not using it anyhow. I think my generation (baby boomer) was sold a bill of goods...well, maybe we made out OK, but now for my kids ( 20's) I see the same thing only to a much greater degree.....many kids with the letters after their names working for under $10 an hour. The ones who are making it big are definitely the more creative & inventive ones.


I gotta say as a creative & artistic person...this article sure gave me hope :)

:hug:Thanks Dover
DR

[Dover]

5. Yep...we were taught to mold ourselves to fit a particular academic

criteria that we just hoped was a good fit but was often determined more by an assortment of motivations such as income, location, potential for promotion, parental pressure, etc.

But never were we taught how to know ourselves in such a way that allowed a more natural unfoldment where we could be making more enlightened choices that really WOULD be a good 'fit'. And any right brain-type activities were simply extra-curricular at best, bohemian at worst. This country has no reverence for beauty and hence does not cherish its artists and poets the way other countries do. In fact, to say you are an 'artist' is to invite pity.

Of course it's no surprise to me that you, DR, blazed your own individual trail :') and are now well positioned as a pioneer in this new Conceptual phase. There is a new entrepreneurial class on the move, who have either lost their careers due to budget cuts or who desperately need to be 'meaningfully' employed.


The writing is on the wall for this new phase for those who can read.
But as the author says, it's really not such a big step as one would think for those who haven't been exercising this part of themselves.
I have an aunt who is a scientist through and through. I just saw her for the first time in several years and she had begun using the I-Ching to meditate on certain issues and was having dreams about death (the death of a cycle in her life) that indicated that she was preparing for a big change in her life. Her dreams showed her that this 'death' would, in fact, be an expansion of who she is.

[enki23]

4. more "right brain/left brain" bullshit. yay.

when will people relize that it's almost completely bullshit, along with the popular misconception that you use only 10% (sometimes reported as other, generally low percentages) of your brain?