I always knew that people were different and some were more rational and others more irrational, or what I would call, artistic. Although I always liked math in school, physics and rational subjects, I also had my artistic side, that I developed even more during college. For that reason, even though I felt these were two different worlds, since I felt part of both, I always believed that they walk together, complementing each other. I remember how good I was in classes like financial management, but in the end I chose to specialize in Marketing and communication, which made my professors wonder why, since I was so successful with numbers. Well, I wanted to explore my artistic side, and that is why later I did graphic design and worked with that for five years.
Throughout my journey called life I met so many people that I could ‘classify’ into one of the two worlds we are talking about. I observed that people that are more rational, tend to think about themselves and their families first. On the other hand people on the other side of the spectrum, have a better understanding of others, think more collectively and how we all are in the world together. That makes me reflect that depending on what kind of person/which side of these two words they are, they influence differently in society, how they vote, how they raise their children, etc. A good example is religion. Usually religious people (left side of the brain) believe in a bigger force, believe in community and helping each other for a better world. When a rational person perceives religion, it is much harder to understand and explain, because religion is not factual, and many times it can be taken in the wrong direction by a rational person like focusing on the money, or the sins, or things that I don’t think is what religion is about. According to Sims “Rationality depends a great deal on truth. But when truth gets muddled by misinformation and disinformation, rationality gets pushed to the margins.”
As we mentioned in class, it seems that the right side (rational) is more present and viewed as more important nowadays. Could it be because living in an irrational world is viewed like a plague of the human condition? And if so, are things getting worse with inflamed biases from the misinformation of social media, the segregation of our religious communities, our politics, and ideology, limiting our ability to think and act rationally; or, is it like most diseases, controllable, a situation of learning to live with irrationality and controlling it through education?
I think it is important that the two worlds communicate and use their best parts to complement each other. According to Dr. Melina Uncapher every complex cognitive function of a human is a result of the engagement of a network of multiple regions of the brain, distributed throughout both hemispheres, acting in coordinated ways. Understanding how our individual brain works and which hemisphere we fit in, makes it easier to understand our choices and also see where we can improve to be a better version of ourselves.
When I got married and moved in with my husband I started to observe how he is more rational and I am more abstract. With that, I started to see how the two worlds interact, where they disagree and where they come together, for instance in a conversation about the covid vaccine my husband’s arguments why people should take the vaccine were different them mine, but in the end we were both on the same side, thinking that everyone should take the vaccine. That said, I believe that even though these two sides use different ways to perceive the world, there is a common ground where the beliefs, the facts and trust intertwine, and I can see a better world if these two work together, because in the end we are all on the same side!
Work Cited
Sims, Bill. A rational or irrational world? Times Gazette. October 5, 2021.
Uncapher, Melina. Exploring the left brain/right brain myth. June 09, 2016.