Luiza Raducanu and Sandu Maria Magdalena

First video: Why the West Rules For Now, Ian Morris, 2010,
Stanford University
Second video: The divided brain and the making of the western
world, 2010, Iain McGilchrist
Both of this videos are making a comparison. The first one compares
the East and the West social development levels in the world, the
connections and conflicts between this two areas, and the second
one does a kind of the same comparison but beetwen the brain
hemispeheres.
The first video is about Professors Morris new book (Why the West
Rules- For Now), in which he is trying to explain how historical
trends shaped Western domination in recent history and what would
happen if you project them forward in the future.
Small groups of nations have dominated the planet (Europe and North
America), and there are two theories regarding this fact:

The long term locking theories

The short term accidental theories

The long term theory is the classical one, about the XVIII-th century, when
ancient Greece and Rome were unique civilizations who made Europe a
better place for living than any other places. Ancient Greeks were scientific
people, more rational and interested in freedom and because of them, Europe
had superior civilizations than others.
The short-term theory states that Greeks and Romans had nothing special
and that we should be looking on recent times, because everything happens
with an accident that changes the world. They say that there are many
similarities between West and East and that including the industrial revolution
was an accident and, therefore, West dominates the world with dumb luck.

The second video is about the nature of existence, same as the first
one, but this one explains it in relation to the brain: reality is just in
our heads and we made it all up.
Reality is changed by the attention we put on it. Things change when they
are put in the center light or when they are pulled out of context. Context is

very important. For example, in works of Arts or in Physics, Philosophy.

Professors Morris remark regarding this fact is that these people who claim
those theories could be compared with those in The elephant and the blind
men, a story that teaches us that theres a middle ground, and here in our
case the problem is that these people are not on the same page because
they argue on social development (the ability of a society to get things done )
to impose their will. Also, if the long term supporters are right, then western
social development should be different from other parts of the world for a
long period and if the short-term supporters are right then East and West
should be very much the same until very recently when the West pulls out
dramatically. This is a quantitative argument asking where is more social
development? so, Prof. Morris came out with a numerical index that help us
measure the level of social development globally between East and West.
Some people think that this numbers are not enough to measure the shape of
reality. The basic idea of this measurement, stands in 4 diferent things:
energy capture, levels of organization, levels of information technology and
war making capacity.
On his Graphic, the lines representing Eastern and Western social
development level, rise but not consistently. Also, West has not been ahead
all the time.
Prof. Morris ended up on 3 esential matters:
1. Biology - we are clever chimpanzee , trying to make the world a better
place
2. Sociology - explains how society deals with change
3. Geography - tells us why same groups of people, have different kinds of
society with different evolutions. It is like a two way street : it determined
how society developed, and at the same time, the way society developed
explained what geography means. What is a huge advantage for humanity
becomes a huge disadvantage in the future.
He goes back in time at the end of the last Ice Age. He reaches the first point
were people are starting to domesticate plants and animals. Those are the
ones who experience rapid growth population , the ability to get things done,
and more social development because agriculture begans earlier in those
places. 2000 years earlier, it all began were the wild species are distributed.
The reason that he choose West and East is that we need a 2 way comparison
and also since the end of the Ice Age the societies in the world with the
highest social development are originated from one of this areas. Another
similarity beetwen Professors Morris presentation and the second video is

that we are comparing two sifferent emispheres because the other video
explains us how It has been discovered that the main function of the corpus
callosum is to inhibit the other hemisphere. Animals and birds also have
divided brain. For example, while a bird is feeding with seed found on the
background of a grit it has to focus very narrowly and clearly on that seed but
it is also vigillent about dangers like predators that may come. So it seems
that birds and animals use their left hemisphere for this narrow-focused
attention and they keep their right hemisphere vigillent broadly for whatever
might be and they also use the right hemisphere for making connections with
the world.
Geography gived the headstart in social develop, population expands, people
adopt agriculture, and it spread were the geography conditions allowed it
untill irigation systems were created. Once people figured it out, they
discovered that changing geography is changind development. First
Mesopotamia, then Egypt, become the new core areas in the West, and so
cities and states are developed and people realised they needed different
things. The rise of ancient empires changes the meaning of geography once
again. They grow and make the world shrinking and the Indian Ocean
becomes the most important commercial region. Society pulls different
cultures with migrations, merging the Eas and the West. This empires
collapse and become smaller states. Chinese empire has survived because of
politics, the organisation and man power allowed them to make great
contructions, like the Grand Canal, and the next years China becomes the
centre of the world. Now is when they make two breakthroughs : ocean going
ships so they could cross the oceans, and guns. This transformed the
meaning of geography, again. But the advantage of the Western Europe is
that geographically, they are closer to the american continent than the
chinese people. This plus for the europeans made it easier for them to
expand in America. They created a new meaning of geography with their
colonies and new kinds of economies which lead to the triangular trade
opening new kinds of markets. Becoming wealthy, they could built machines
and discover new kinds of energy. The industrial revolution, the scientific
revolution - british had it first because there were the new incentives
operating intensively. That is how steam power allowed them to concure
India, all being driven by the transformation of Geography.
Again, we can see a sort of similarity in this two different theories, because
Morris explains how social development and geography and economic growth
made connections between different parts of the globe and we also learns
from the other video that the two hemispheres are connected by a bridge of
tissue called the corpus callosum which is commonly thought of as the thing
that communicates between the hemispheres. It does. Although a lot of the
communication is activating in its original sensethe nerves are stimulating
something to happenwhat theyre often stimulating to happen is in fact an
inhibition. So their ultimate aim in a majority of cases is not to make
something happen in the other hemisphere, but to stop something from

happening there. And by filtering like this, things come into existence.

Just like proffesor Morris explains how different theories have

changed in time, and how human development made the world
shrink but then it divided it more and more, .......................explains how
the division of the brain is something neuroscientists dont like to talk about
anymore. It enjoyed a sort of popularity in the 60s and 70s after the first
split brain operation and it led to ideas that had been proved false. Its not
true that one part of the brain does reason and the other does emotion, both
are involved in both. Its not true that language is found in the left emisphere
and vision imagery is only in the right emisphere, lots of it is in the left and so
in a fit of despair, people have given up talking about it because this organ
which is all about making connections is profoundly divided and it got more
divided in the course of human evolution, so the ratio of corpus callosum to
the volume of the hemispheres has got smaller over evolution.
Prof. Morris tells us that neither the long or the short term theories
are complete. We need a combination of this two. In the same
manner, the theory of the brain hemispheres claims that those two
ways have somehow to be combined. And yet, if you do look very narrowly at
something and bring it into sharp focus in the middle of your vision, its very
different from the contextual penumbra of other experiencesintuitivelybased, body-based, ancient and gathered from a synthesis of all your
experience which you also bring to bear on the whole picture. So those two
things, the rather narrow here and now moment has to be there but the rest
has to be there too.

Also, just like professor Morris tells us that we need to take the
advantages of the environment and prioritise our needs and how
West is very similar to East, the other video explains that the theory
that the two hemispheres of our brainhave differences comes from a simple
Darwinian point. In order to survive we need to be able to do two things at
once. We need to be able to be busily focused on something that weve
prioritized is of interest to us already like the bird needing to lock on the seed
against the background of the gravel or needing to focus on picking up a twig
to build a nest. Its got that kind of attention which is about manipulating the
environment and using it. At the same time, if its going to survive, the bird
also needs a wide open attention, looking out essentially for predators, not
just in that threatening way, but also for its fellow creatures; indeed, for its
mate.

When the americans realise how to make industry work, they do it better
than the british, so the american social development line explodes, so
america becomes the best. Then asians are discovering how to do things
better than americans and the Asian Tigers grow.
We have to learn two big lessons - identify the trends and the forces that
shapped history and second , we can project them in the future to the 21-st
century. In year 2103 the East line will cross the West line.
He uses different studies to make us understand where technology may take
us. He explains that in 2103 the computer will be able to simulate a
functional human brain; by 2025 we will be able to download and reproduce
electronically everything that a brains does; by 2094 we will have such
power, we will be able to upload all human intelligence in the world onto one
machine. This is singularity , when change is so rapid that it will seem almost
instantenious. Every brain will be networked to any ohter brain, so West and
East will not matter anymore. Geography will change so much that we will
lose all meaning all together, this is one prediction. The second one is that
there could be a force that may disrupt the trends that we are looking at, one
of them could be explosions on a global scale, and again, little things like
West and East will not matter anymore. 21 century is going to be a great
race. So this topic - will the west stay on top of the world? - is not as
important as - will humanity break through on a new existence or will
disaster gonna strike as all?
Regarding evolution in time, different caracteristics of people and
the conflicts inside their brains is explained in the other video as
well, but this is inside humans heads and not outside them. The right
hemisphere of the brain gives sustained, broad, vigilance, alertness, while the
left hemisphere gives narrow, sharply, focused, attention to detail and people
who lose their right hemispheres have a pathological narrowing of the
window of attention. So extreme can this phenomenon be that the sufferer
may fail to acknowledge the existence of the left half of the body. But humans
are different. The big thing about humans is their front lobes and the
purpose to that part of the brain is to inhibit the rest of the brain, to stop the
immediate happening so standing back in time and space from the
immediacy of experience and that enables us to do two things: it enables us
to outwitting the other party, being Machiavellian, we can read others people
minds and intentions and if we decide we want and we can deceive them,
but whats really curious it is that it also enables us to empathise because
there is a necessary distance from the world, if you are right up against it you
just bite, but if you can stand back and see that the other individual is an
individual like me who might have interests,values and feelings like mine,
then you can make a bond. Theres a sort of a necessary distance, like it is in
reading, if you are too close you cant see anytinhg, if you are too far you
cant read it.
An aspect of being a conscious being is that you are aware that you can

become powerful by manipulation. Other creatures, of course, are competing

and manipulating, but theyre probably not aware of the fact that this is a
way of becoming powerfulthat it seems to work well for a lot of the things
that one does as one grows a civilization. One needs to build structures by
putting brick upon brick, or stone on stone. One needs to create drainage and
irrigation and so on. One creates these things that seem to make life simpler,
easier and better and make you more powerful. Its enticing, and you can
soon begin to think that everything works like this. Everything in your world
seems to break down into a lot of machines that weve created. While this is
a very interesting way of looking at things, its basically a practical tool for
getting ahead. Its not really a very good instrument for epistemology or for
ontologyfor finding out actually what the world is and how we know about
it. It can lead us to narrow down the way we think about things to a merely
rationalistic set of propositions, a series of algorithms.
One of the interesting elements that comes out in research into the
personalities or the takes of the two hemispheres is that the left
hemisphere thinks it knows it all, and as a result is extremely optimistic. It
overvalues its own ability. It takes us away from the presence of things in all
their rich complexity to a useful representationthat representation is always
much simpler. And an awful lot is lost in it. Thats not necessarily a bad thing.
Sometimes you need to simplify. For example, if youre designing a building
or if youre fighting a campaign, you need a map, a scheme. You dont really
need all the richness of what would be there in the real world. But Im afraid
that that representation moves into a world where we have the ability
constantly to interact with the world only as a representation, over a screen.
But, like the brain itself, the relationship between the hemispheres is not
symmetrical. The left hemisphere, though unaware of its dependence, could
be thought of as an 'emissary' of the right hemisphere, valuable for taking on
a role that the right hemisphere - the 'Master' - cannot itself afford to
undertake.
The structure and function of the brain, and at the differences between the
hemispheres, not only in attention and flexibility, but in attitudes to the
implicit, the unique, and the personal, as well as the body, time, depth,
music, metaphor, empathy, morality, certainty and the self suggests that the
drive to language was not principally to do with communication or thought,
but manipulation, the main aim of the left hemisphere, which manipulates the
right hand. It shows the hemispheres as no mere machines with functions,
but underwriting whole, self-consistent, versions of the world. Through an
examination of Western philosophy, art and literature, it reveals the uneasy
relationship of the hemispheres being played out in the history of ideas, from
ancient times until the present. It ends by suggesting that we may be about
to witness the final triumph of the left hemisphere at the expense of us all.
The right hemisphere is always on the look out for things that might be
different from our expectations, it sees things in context, understands implicit

meaning, metaphor, body language, emotional expression of the face, it

deals with an embodied world in which we stand embodied in relation to a
world that is concrete, it understands individuals not just categories.
Conclusion : In the second video, they discuss the evolution of the
brain and the relationship between the two hemispheres, including
conflicts between them and how one can take control over the other.
This idea seems similar to the domination of East and West. At the
same time, studying different versions of the world since ancient
times and explain the characteristics of each hemisphere. And
Professor Morris follow the same course, only applied study on the
evolution of social development level of humanity comparing East
and West.