The Only Constant Is Change (a thread) Today I finally grasped the significance of this, after the reading & thinking I've been doing around Iain McGilchrist's @divided_brain hemisphere model 🧠
The only constant is change, and what the left hemisphere wants
18 tweets · June 2019 · 66 likes · 0 retweets · read on Twitter
(Here's a soundtrack for this The Only Constant Is Change thread—a song with this title by one of my all-time favorite artists, @BT. I'll come back to the lyrics a bit below) youtube.com/watch?v=xwiZFy…
The left hemisphere really wants a static, unchanging world. Physically, this means wanting things to stay still so they can be grabbed, manipulated, used, eaten. Ontologically/psychologically/epistemologically, this means a static foundation that it can build on.
And yet... perceptions of stasis are illusory.
Which brings us to today, when I was talking with @gmws82 about this, and linked him that BT song, and then stared at the title with a beginner's mind: The Only Constant Is Change
And suddenly I got a wave of emotion come up, as I really took in this phrase, originally from Heraclitus, that "The Only Constant Is Change" ...before I'd kind of waved it away or something?
Now... okay, so the LHemisphere wants a constant that it can trust, and it'll make up all sorts of constants that don't exist in order to have something. But in fact, there's ONLY ONE CONSTANT and it's CHANGE. But there is one! There aren't zero constants. There's one!
There are different ways to relate to "The Only Constant Is Change," even as LH🧠. How my LH had responded before was, "Fuck off—I wanted a constant and the only constant you can offer me is change? That's the worst constant EVER.🙄 Fine, I'll just keep my static illusions." 😡🖕
The other way—this new way I've found—feels actually satisfying. My LH is like "Oh, wait, I can stop pretending that my illusion-constants are real, because there is an actual constant?!" And yes, it's change. But I have my trusty right hemisphere that is *made* for change.
I looked up BT's lyrics today, and they're deeply relevant: Make it clear, integrate this love and fear Still hopelessly hopeful Wounded child seeking wonderful As closed as I am Born a craftsman of shifting sands ⬅ What lies I learned Lessened my 'bility to be present
In explaining to another friend why I'm so excited about Iain McGilchrist's brain hemiphere model, I said > "it finally gave my left hemisphere a model to explain that there is more to thinking that it knows and that furthermore, it doesn't have to handle everything.
> There's been this huge sense of relief from my left hemisphere as it realizes that it was never made for handling unknowns, complexities, and uncertainties, and that I do contain a part that is made for that and will activate automatically if my left hemisphere just. lets. go.
> (This is a really strong metaphor btw—grasping is a core left-hemisphere function and related to how it understands everything, so "let go" is almost literally saying "relax your left hemisphere")"
The phrase "The Only Constant Is Change" now feels to me like almost a mantra that my Left Hemisphere can use to remember this. 🙏
I have noted that the LH learning to trust the RH feels like surrendering to God, since RH is incomprehensible to LH. It seems that there's a sense in which that's not just a feeling, but basically just *true*. (The RH works in mysterious ways, from LH's perspective!)
McGilchrist resonates: > "It’s a fool who says anything positive about the nature of God, but I’m not convinced that God is omniscient and omnipotent, either. I think God is in the process, is becoming. God is not only just becoming, but IS becoming, you see what I mean."
And this shift from God as Being to God as Becoming connects with the (fictional? ...? ...?!?) religion Earthseed, from Octavia Butler's novels. In our conversation today, after I'd laid out a much shorter version of the above thread, @gmws82 shared this page with me:
