Revenge of the Right Brain

[Dover]

Sounds like the influence of Pisces...nonlinear.

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

[smirkymonkey]

1. Great article, thanks!

Maybe there is hope for us "right-brainers" after all!

[NJCher]

2. Singing.....

"Our day will come...."

Oh man, what a find, Dover. You turn up the best articles!! How do you do it?

I have been wondering what will be the next force to take place in the American workplace. This makes a lot of sense.

It is also the type of thing that you have to be "of" the culture to be good at it.


Cher

[Dover]

3. The Conceptual Age sure seems to be blossoming.......

I'm glad that someone in the "left brain" world recognizes it's significance regarding it's place in the scheme of things. I value people who can step back and see the bigger picture. I like what the author said about those who haven't yet moved to the 'right'.....


...To flourish in this age, we'll need to supplement our well-developed high tech abilities with aptitudes that are "high concept" and "high touch." High concept involves the ability to create artistic and emotional beauty, to detect patterns and opportunities, to craft a satisfying narrative, and to come up with inventions the world didn't know it was missing. High touch involves the capacity to empathize, to understand the subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in one's self and to elicit it in others, and to stretch beyond the quotidian in pursuit of purpose and meaning.

Developing these high concept, high touch abilities won't be easy for everyone. For some, the prospect seems unattainable. Fear not (or at least fear less). The sorts of abilities that now matter most are fundamentally human attributes. After all, back on the savannah, our caveperson ancestors weren't plugging numbers into spreadsheets or debugging code. But they were telling stories, demonstrating empathy, and designing innovations. These abilities have always been part of what it means to be human. It's just that after a few generations in the Information Age, many of our high concept, high touch muscles have atrophied. The challenge is to work them back into shape.

[Pallas180]

4. If I read that right

"These abilities have always been part of what it means to be human. It's just that after a few generations in the Information Age, many of our high concept, high touch muscles have atrophied. The challenge is to work them back into shape."

That's not quite true to blame it on the information age.

For generations anyone who exhibited "right brain" abilities has been looked down upon, labeled a kook, and discouraged. For instance, I was left handed or perhaps ambidextrous as a child. My grandfather saw me writing with my left hand, and I clearly remember his calling my mother over and lecturing her to stop me.

Thereafter I was made to write with my right hand. You don't want to see my penmanship. The only way I was able to make my penmanship legible was to slant it backwards as if I was still writing lefty.

Anyone who knows Latin or Italian knows that the direction "left" is called "sinistra". Guess what the root meaning of that is: where we get the word "sinister".

Therefore you know how we of the right brain have been viewed and valued.

[Dover]

5. I think the 'split' began centuries ago....when rational thought became

dominant as was most apparent in science and medicine. And I think it was a necessary developmental phase. Now it seems we are ready to return. But it will never be a true return (going back to the same spot at the beginnin...full circle), but more like a spiral, because of all that we've learned. It's a new and higher balance we seek.