The Wisdom Of Intuition - Iain McGilchrist

As we master things, they become less conscious to us. The more we understand and the more we know, the more we can allow that to fall below the level of explicit consciousness.

(wind blowing) Iain McGilchrist, welcome to the show.

Oh, thank you very much, Chris. Delighted to be here.

What is the vision that you've got for your work? Because you've spent, uh, decades, multiple decades researching and writing. I'm interested by what the outcome is that's driven you to do this much work.

Well, the outcome remains to be seen. But what, what has, um, uh, driven me, if you like, uh, and it is almost like feeling that I've been possessed by a demon that's driving me to write (laughs) , um, against my will at times, um, and to complete exhaustion at times. But, uh, I think the, the serious point, and it's an enormous project, these two very long books, but the point is, can be said relatively simply, that all my life, and I mean, you know, certainly all my, um, life since my early teens, I've felt that much of the picture that we are taught about the world or, or not so much taught as it were in school, but just received from pundits and media and so on, is, is completely wrong. This idea that the world is, um, completely unresponsive, a lump of stuff for us to grab when we need it, do what we please with, and that none of this actually has any meaning, so we might as well just get on and be greedy. Um, (laughs) , this seems to me to, um, miss just about every significant (laughs) point, um, that, that I, that I can feel about the business of existence, which is extraordinary mysterious. I mean, first of all, why is there anything? What are we doing here? And it's these questions, who are we actually? And I think at the moment, just as an aside, um, I think there's a very worrying, extremely worrying and very rapid tendency to accentuate something that's been going on all my lifetime, which is the idea of man as a machine. W- what is the natural world, um, and the universe that surrounds it, and what are we doing here in it? I mean, what's the relationship between us and whatever else there is? So these are pretty fundamental questions. You wouldn't expect me to give a (laughs) very short answer, but that's the... What I've hoped to have done, um, is at least to have given people a lot to think about and very good confidence in intuitions they often have themselves, that this way of looking at the world is, uh, intellectually impoverished, morally bankrupt, and spiritually dead. Uh, and that it's not something that they feel is at all, um, like the experience they have of being alive. So it's, it's, it's on that sort of a scale, I'm afraid, which is why the second book that I've just published, The Matter with Things, is, is, as you know, a rather long book.