How Whole Brain Thinking Can Save the Future

When facing a tough dilemma, the wise person tackles the whole problem. They don’t just focus on one part and ignore the rest. That’s a matter of common sense, but such holistic thinking rarely occurs in our most consequential organizations. Although women are catching up in the corridors of power, most people in charge today are highly specialized males whose perception is too often myopic. For example, while they may focus well on the immediate symptoms of a problem, they often miss deeper causes, wider effects, and longer-term consequences. Such people, some of whom are also women, are “left-brain dominant” thinkers who tend to miss the forest for the trees. Sadly, these left-brain dominants fail to use all the mental faculties available to them—in particular the holistic and intuitive perceptions provided by their right brain. And this is why our future is now in great peril.

In this multiple award-winning book, James Olson carefully explores these issues and shows us how to minimize conflict by gaining creative control over our two modes of perception. He goes on to describe the left-brain bias in our civilization, revealing it to be the root cause for centuries of war, racism, sexism, exploitation, and hyper-polarization. Left-brain dominance also explains eons of misunderstanding between the sexes and our inability to understand LGBTQ variants—of which there are as many as 32 fluid variations, as Olson shows. While most of our technological and scientific progress is driven by left-brain thinking, the great advances to come, especially in ethics, politics, the arts, and religion, will require that we consciously harness both sides of our brain to greatly improve our thinking so we can more often reach agreement. Independent scholar Olson concludes by explaining how we can achieve greater internal coordination between these two “operating systems,” thus showing us how and why thinking with our whole brains will lead us to peace, justice, prosperity, and to the ultimate healing of our relationships and our world.