Previously I have briefly described the difference between the left brain and the right brain. The people who are left brain are very highly esteemed in our society.
The left brain, technological, male way of thinking and the primacy of the figure out the problem and then build something to solve it method is very ingrained in our thinking.
And this is only natural. As we say, sure you can’t eat poetry!
Now what I am interested in here is the fact that while society’s technological problems (feeding us, transporting us, heating us, ensuring where we live is safe etc.) have always been solved predominantly by left brain thinking, all our wonderful technological advances are undermined by our disesteem of right brain thinking.
That is, ignoring intuition, love, compassion, feelings etc. in our design.
The most obvious example of ignoring the above in our advances in technology, is, of course, using our brains to develop weapons to go to war. But as I have argued in a post in the Chapter in Power and Control in Society, safety and well-being of our species is almost almost always sacrificed on the hard-nosed logical reality of more and more profit for the few, not only in the development of weapons, but even in products that we use every day, like plastics and cars.
Previously I mentioned how the world ascribes lesser status to what I called women’s work and I’d like to expand on that theme here in the context of how well-meaning organisations respond to spontaneity, emotion and expressiveness in general.
Most people will agree that women find it frustrating to argue with men and vice versa. This is particularly true in long term partnerships – and can cause tension.
However, in most good enough relationships (and the families that might result from same) the tension reaches a kind of equilibrium, acceptance or accommodation, so both male and female ways of looking at the world have more or less equal status. I suspect – but I am not sure – that in long-term same-sex partnerships similar left-brain – right-brain dynamics are at play.
(Just as an aside, anyone who has read the novel Hard Times, by Charles Dickens will have come across a character named Thomas Gradgrind who rules his family with total left-brain logic. Dickens perceptively describes the harm that domination of logic-only decision-making does to Thomas’ relationships with his children and, ultimately, how they turn out to be the exact opposite to what he desires).
However, unlike families, where, as I said above, there is a balance, in almost all workplaces the left brain dominates.
In respect of family support/child protection workplaces, (as I explained already) this is probably because the norms of the corporate world have filtered into community work to the extent that they have. The male way (or left brain) is manifest in HR protocols, health and safety procedures, financial controls, what is acceptable and what is not, company handbooks etc., all of which are formulated around what is logical and rational, not what is intuitive and irrational.
There are some emotional nuances to policies around bullying, dignity at work, respect etc. but even in these areas strategies towards resolution are largely left-brain linear dominated.
This can be seen in the documents directing charities on their behaviour and practice. Here is the sample compliance document issued by the Charities Regulatory Authority. There are pages and pages given over to governance protocols around finance, recruitment, HR, data protection, fundraising, health and safety, employment, insurance, record keeping etc. While there are two or three lines mandating charities to revisit their vision and mission statements, there is nothing about kindness, thoughtfulness, compassion, generosity, gentleness or similar traits.
Now I know that it is a lot easier to regulate matters such as finance or health and safety, but the fact that compassion or kindness is not even mentioned in compliance documents issued by the CRA is revealing.
As with other examples that I give, I’m not passing judgement on all the above. It’s just interesting to ponder on the influence that the bias towards the left-brain has on our work!
Also of interest is that even in organisations where there are a substantial majority of women, women learn to live with the dominant left brain thinking in their workplaces.
Thinking about this, I concluded that if I had to live my life, and do my work, in an environment where decision making was based predominantly on intuition and emotion with logic and rationality totally discounted I would find it very difficult. In fact, I’d be thinking that I’d get nothing done.
And in order to live our lives, things have to get done.
(Actually – another aside – this reminds me of the pure left-wing taking on right-wing values to get into power and govern which I have mentioned previously).
I also described the different way that the Irish language and the English language describes feelings. Perhaps there is a difference between the two languages stemming from the cultural difference between the Irish and English, and the Irish language had more feminine influence in its development than the English.
Referring to my earlier description of tá fearg orm (there is anger upon me) I will argue that a woman’s anger can be upon her while a man always tries to own, and rationalise his anger.
In fact he will feel a little silly afterwards if he is angry and doesn’t have any explanation, whereas a woman often won’t. This has implications for the workplace which as I stated above has been male dominated over many centuries.
In the next post I will discuss how the dominance of left-brain thinking in workplaces impacts on our Focus Group.