“But the right hemisphere will empathise with, identify with, and imitate only living beings, not mechanisms…” — Iain McGilchrist

The meaning of this is staggering. Since the RH is, effectively, the real foundation of our mind (to which the LH plays gadgeteer/agent), the importance of its early and ongoing development cannot be overstated. This development is, as it must remain, relational — and -only- living beings are ‘interesting’ enough to drive it. If the LH rules our world, it will reduce it to manipulables and abstractions in every case.

For those insightful enough to recognize the ecocognitive implications, it is obvious that each organismal form and relationship carries implicit in its structure new potential developmental opportunities for the RH. The living world, is, in effect, an anciently evolved and precariously conserved library of developmental invitations for our minds — until the LH starts burning them down, and turning them into representations such as little numbers in the computers of banks. Or spending them to conduct wars.