Who’s running your kingdom?

“Vanity of vanities!” says the Preacher. “All is vanity!”

Or meaningless, or futile, or even vaporous, which is probably closest to the literal meaning of the Hebrew. If the Preacher is Solomon, Ecclesiastes is the record of how he used the wisdom God gave him. Wisdom can direct all thought and knowledge heavenward, or it can turn on itself. It sounds as though Solomon had shifted from a study of God’s glory reflected in creation to a study of personal satisfaction: Solomon with a clipboard beside Solomon the builder, lover, aesthete, and scholar, investigating experience while experiencing.

Occasionally he glances up from his notes to observe the cheerful peasant with the hoe, whistling on his way to the field. Maybe that’s what it’s all about, thinks the Preacher: Just do your work, go home, eat your bread, hug your wife, rise up in the morning to do it all again. Don’t trouble yourself thinking how meaningless it is. What’s the point of wisdom if it makes you miserable?

The philosopher and neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist might say that Solomon was confusing the acquisitive nature of his left brain for the broad and thoughtful perspective of his right. The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World is McGilchrist’s magnum opus, first published in 2009. Though writing for a general audience, he addresses some complex themes in 500+ pages and never expected the book to resound as it has.

His basic thesis is that the right brain/left brain presumptions that swept pop culture a few decades ago were profoundly mistaken, but not entirely wrong. There are distinct differences between the two hemispheres of the brain, not so much in what they do, but in how they do it. The left hemisphere is detail-oriented, grasping, utilitarian. The right hemisphere is conceptual, intuitive, imaginative. Supposedly the brain evolved this way so that animals—especially mammals, and most especially humans—could carry out the practical tasks of survival (namely, getting stuff) while scanning the big picture for predators. Both sides are vital, but not equal. For humanity to thrive, the right hemisphere must rule.

McGilchrist explains his title with a simple illustration borrowed from Nietzsche. The Master (right hemisphere) governs his kingdom wisely according to timeless principles, but he can’t attend to all the practical details. For that, he appoints the emissary on his left. All is well until the emissary gets above himself and imagines he’s the one who deserves to be in charge—because who’s really running the kingdom? “And so,” as McGilchrist concludes his Preface, “it came about that the Master was usurped, the people were duped, the domain became a tyranny; and eventually it collapsed in ruins.”

Interesting theory. It sounds remarkably similar to what happened in Israel when Solomon the grasper usurped Solomon the sage. McGilchrist sees domains collapsing today. Of his four pathways to truth—science, reason, intuition, and imagination—the first two belong to the left hemisphere and the last two to the right. Science and reason should be serving, not dictating, but in the university, STEM rules while the humanities shuffle to the back of the bus. In politics, policy is king and philosophy is irrelevant (unless it can be made to serve policy). In governance, bureaucracy masquerades as compassion.

Take for example the recurring socialist dream. When New York Times journalists repeatedly asked Darializa Avila Chevalier about her opposition to prisons, the Democrat congressional candidate retreated to La La Land. Crime and punishment “is a reflection of systems that allowed that circumstance to be possible. And so, you know, I have always focused my attention on how do we create systems where that’s not even the possibility.” The answer, you see, is not a thoughtful examination of human nature and its propensity toward evil. It’s creating “systems” where people don’t even think about committing crimes. Humans reshaped by programs: That’s the thinking of an emissary.

But what, or who, is the Master? McGilchrist is vague about that, leaning on the accumulated wisdom of the ages moderated by intuition and imagination. But that’s the Solomon trap, turning wisdom itself into a kind of emissary for the good and true. All good things are God things, like a trail of breadcrumbs leading to Him. Real wisdom doesn’t examine itself; it sheds light on the path.