In our last article, the argument was made that mindful practices as we experience them in the West may lead to an over focus on the self (Varela et al, 2016). The result is a zeroing in on procedural and propositional knowing at the expense of perspectival and participatory knowing. Put another way, we develop propositions about who we are, and this can keep us stable, but can also keep us fixed. This is achieved at the expense of who we can become in connection with the perspectives of other people.
McGilchrist (2019) in his outstanding work on the divided brain provides another perspective we could potentially link to the mindfulness argument. Very crudely put, the left hemisphere of the brain grasps after material things in service of the self, and the right hemisphere seeks to connect with others through participation and adaption. McGilchrist (ibid) argues that the modern human being (particularly in the West) may be in a right hemisphere deficit as we seek to increasingly grasp after things in service of the self at the expense of enriching ourselves in connection with others.
The grasping includes grasping to categorize the external world through language. This means placing objects and people into categories. Naturally, this approach has many benefits, it allows experiences to endure through time and be recalled. However, if it becomes the only mode of experience, we lose nuance of context, and these categories become static. As discussed previously on this site, the environment around us changes constantly (Varela et al, 2016), and ideally so should our categories to remain fitted to the external world. The bridge between categorization and the external environment is empathy (Thompson, 2014).
In other words, remaining fixed in a mode of categorization means we systemize our existence at the expense of empathizing. This brings us to the work of Baron Cohen (2009) who in his research into autism discusses the empathizing-systemizing theory. Once again, crudely put, autism seems to present as a systemizing of the external world, and an absence of empathy, to develop a theory of mind.
The outcome of these points is that we can develop a theory of the self which is categorizing the world into things which are useful and things which are not. We can also do this with ideas, ideas we like and agree with and ideas we do not like and disagree with. This systemizing mode is a world constructed entirely of procedures and propositions.
Problems arise when we cannot extend empathy to develop and adapt systemizing. If we encounter another person with differing views and experience this encounter only though systemizing, we may be tempted to categorize this person as goodbad depending on the views they present. This closes off the opportunity to gain insight into the other person’s perspective and so develop our participatory knowing.
Participatory knowing is about fitting optimally to a variety of situations and changing and emerging situations (Vervaeke and Ferraro, 2012). To achieve this, we require a variety of perspectives. Perspectives are gained from empathizing with others, to learn how other people see the world and adapting our models based on this learning (depending on the relevance). If we only systemize then we can only fit to a small niche of contexts. If we step outside of these contexts, then we experience distress and anxiety. Our worlds will get smaller and smaller, and we will only be able to exist in discrete, highly managed niches.
With the above in mind, mindfulness could be used to gain insight into the self but could also be used to develop empathy.
Reading
Baron-Cohen S. (2009). Autism: the empathizing-systemizing (E-S) theory. Ann N Y Acad Sci 1156:68-80
McGilchrist, I. (2018). Ways of attending: How our divided brain constructs the world. Oxon, UK: Routledge
Thompson, E (2014) Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind. Harvard University Press
Varela, F.J. Thompson, E. Rosch, E (2016) The Embodied Mind Cognitive Science and Human Experience. MIT Press
Vervaeke, J., Ferraro, L. (2013). Relevance, meaning and the cognitive science of wisdom. In Ferrari, M., Weststrate, N.M. (Eds.), The scientific study of personal wisdom (pp. 325–341).
