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Shifting Hemispheres
I remember seeing a cartoon some years ago—probably in the New Yorker—in which a worried geezer points to his head and laments to his spouse, "Helen—just as I've always feared—my hemispheres are drifting apart."
Daniel Pink's new book, A Whole New Mind, posits that we're experiencing a kind of collective cerebral hemispheric shift in which the Information Age is morphing into the Conceptual Age, an era in which ideas, rather than products and services become the mainstay of the economy. This, says Pink, represents a shift from a primarily left brain based culture to one animated with more right brain input—in his words: Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play, and Meaning. He terms these the "six senses" of the Conceptual Age.
Interestingly, polio vaccine discoverer Jonas Salk anticipated such a cognitive change in the foundations of cultures, saying the future well-being of humankind depended on it. In an essay written shortly before his death, Salk said much of where we are in civilization we owe to "ego values"—essentially, left brain values. But, he said, our future well-being now depends on shifting toward "being values"—essentially, right brain values. Salk's "ego values" vs. "being values" construct includes intellect vs. intuition, reason vs. feeling, objective vs. subjective, competition vs. collaboration and win-lose vs. win-win.
Parenthetically, given women's steadily rising prominence in government, business, and other typically male-dominated professions, it's worth reflecting on ego values, which emanate from masculine worldviews steeped in an ethos of conquest and control, and on being values, which emanate from feminine worldviews that project an ethos of seduction and cooperation.
Pink believes companies in the U.S. must adapt to the more feminine right brain values to optimize their future prospects. He bases his argument on what he terms the "three As": Automation, Asia and Affluence." Automation has turned many left brain tasks into processes that can be managed more economically in Asia. An over-abundance of consumer goods has depreciated the excitement factor of acquisitiveness, which according to Pink turns people toward experiential sources of excitement.
A Whole New Mind is a worthwhile read because it captures on a surface level the essence of what is arguably the biggest cultural shift in modern times. However, my rationale for why this is happening differs from Pink's take as well as that of most writers who try to explain what's behind the cultural changes we're seeing on a scale that arguably has never been seen in the past.
Hardly anyone, including Pink, seems aware that when the majority of adults became middle aged and older, the foundations of culture dramatically change. With people 40 and older numbering over 130 million, and 18-39-year-olds numbering only about 86 million, our society (and all societies in the developed world) is dominated by people well past the years of starting careers, families, and their ascents up the social ladder. Inevitably this means big changes in how society works—socially, culturally, and economically.
Had the median age not risen to levels that placed most adults in midlife or later age brackets, Dan Pink's book would lack relevance, regardless of his three As. The cognitive shifts in culture that he speaks accurately and eloquently to would not be happening.
I went out on a limb over 15 years ago in proposing in my book Serving the Ageless Market that beginning in midlife certain cognitive functions tend to reflect increasing influence by the brain's right hemisphere. Recent brain research supports this hypothesis. Given the progressive drift toward the right hemisphere in later life, the majority status of people in the second half of life makes it inevitable that society would now be projecting stronger right brain bias in culture than existed when youth ruled markets.
Pink also fails to draw the dots between the world he sees emerging and the Internet. In a later post I will offer a view that not only addresses that deficit, but that connects the dots between the Internet's role in accelerating the influence of the aging of society in driving cognitive shifts in the foundations of culture.
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Note from tp.com: See David's thread on the Age of Transcendence where he discusses the new era he says we're entering.
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Thank you, David, for posting as a guest blogger. Welcome!
David Wolfe is the coauthor of Ageless Marketing, and one of our Cool Friends. You can read his interview here:
http://www.tompeters.com/cool_friends/content.php?note=007414.php
Posted by cathy at April 12, 2005 12:31 PM
Women aren't ego-driven? That's the biggest myth of the decade. In addition, I can't see how space will be conquered, AIDS defeated, or any of the other frontiers crossed in the new century by this mind-set.
Posted by Mike at April 12, 2005 1:52 PM
Mike,
Hey, Mike... let's loosen up a bit here. Appears to me that the black-and-white absolutist left brain is working overtime. My piece did not talk about women not being ego-driven nor about all men being ego-driven. I can be cooperative withour being a woman and a woman can be competitive without being a man.
I suggest that before you say what will not possible with this "new mindset" in this century that you learn a bit more about it. Dan Pink's book is a good start but there are a number of others including several new titles on the subject of the feminine value of intuition. One, Gary Klein's "Sources of Power", was the outgrowth of studies of decision-making under fire which discovered people don't make reasoned, analyzed decisions from their left brains under fire. They rely on their right brains where the mechanisms of intuition a.k.a. gut feelings nmotivate action.
Being a reader of Tom Peters' blog, you certainly favor thinking outside the box. As I tell my audiences, let's not be like so many others who think they're outside the box when they're really only looking out the window.
Posted by David Wolfe at April 12, 2005 4:41 PM
Yes, I am familiar with the hemispherical ideas as well as Mr. Pink's new work. You should make clear the difference between understanding there are two hemishperes of the brain and that they perform different functions and the claim that left brain thinking will dominate the future. That is the part I take issue with. I don't disagree with the facts, just the conjecture that is put forth as some form of gospel. There is no truth about the future--it can be neither predicted nor changed because it has not happened yet.
As for getting outside the box, I LIVE outside the box every day, so don't travel down that road with me. Of course, if I disagree with you or your theories I am stuck in the box, right? And frankly I may not be a reader of Mr. Peter's blog area much longer because it has devolved into little more than a cheerleading enterprise, which I don't really need.
Posted by Mike at April 12, 2005 5:10 PM
Mike,
Please keep in mind that I was doing a book review, reporting mainly on Daniel Pink's book. I injected my own beliefs in by saying I disagreed with Dan Pink on why a shift is taking place in the cognitive foundations of culture.
Pink is not the first to write of this shift. Pierre Levy, a French social philosopher was one of the first persons to write about it. He did so in his book "Collective Intelligence," first published in France in the early 1990s.
Others have supported the idea of a rightward shift in the cognitive foundations of culture without directly putting it in a left brain vs. right brain construct. John Horgan certainly did this in his controversial book, "The End of Science" when he said single-minded, one answer only please science is being replaced by "virtual science" in which answers are often uncertain because of contextual dependencey (reflective of particle physics) and often only one of several "right" answers.
I should say that disagreement with me does not automatically consign a person to a corner in "the box." You came on so strong -- "Women aren't ego-driven? That's the biggest myth of the decade" -- in your first comment that I sensed you to be a person of few doubts and much certainty. That's very much an "inside the box" position. If I erred, please forgive me. If I did not, please understand me.
Posted by David Wolfe at April 12, 2005 7:14 PM
David, that's pretty much why I should never try to engage in decent discussions when I'm in the wrong frame of mind. All my Dale Carnegie training goes right out the window and I turn into the new millenium version of Archie Bunker. Sorry about all that. I still believe there is little actual discussion or debate within this site, however, and the constant cheerleading and genuflecting for all things TP are really getting to me. I'm going away, for a while at least. As for the topic--I believe the new millenium will actually require more focused versions of the last millenium's mind-sets. I do not agree with the idea of "story-telling businesses" or many other of the ideas presented by Mr. Pink and others. But, since the future has not happened yet, it can not really be predicted with any certainty. Not even the requirements of the future can be predicted. There are too many things that could (and probably will) come to pass that will totally negate any of the paradigms we believe will be true. On Christmas day 2004 who would have been able to predict the changes that would take place the next day all over Southeast Asia? One natural event changed paradigms in many ways, in many areas, and for a great many people. And boxes-schmoxes I say, for we all live in bell jars anyway!
Posted by Mike at April 14, 2005 2:33 PM
Let's take a look at the 130 million and their impact on society. Let's think for a minute about how how much help they have had in their emotional transition from being single, to being married to being parents. Let's think for a minute about how secure they are in their own identity and in their choice in jobs and if they are choosing their husband as their primary love companion or are they replacing him with their children? Let's think about the marketing industry and decide whether they are working the process or pushing the product; whether they are a good metaphor for life or not. And, let's think about whether we all realize that we are multi-dimensional beings: intellectual, emotional, spiritual and physical; left and right brained.
I agree with you, but I think D. Pink's book is also trying to point out we need an emotional education; it's time senior managers start to learn more than what we learned in our MBA classes. That is why I have been following your work over the past several months. You are the best. Keep it coming.
Posted by Wendy at April 17, 2005 10:16 AM