In Watching The English, Fox (2005) writes that:
At the most basic level, an underlying rule in all English conversation is the proscription of ‘earnestness’. … [The] English are probably more acutely sensitive than any other nation to the distinction between ‘serious’ and ‘solemn’, between ‘sincerity’ and ‘earnestness’.
… [The] Importance of Not Being Earnest rule is really quite simple. Seriousness is acceptable, solemnity is prohibited. Sincerity is allowed, earnestness is strictly forbidden. Pomposity and self-importance are outlawed. Serious matters can be spoken of seriously, but one must never take oneself too seriously. [p. 62]
A serial violator of the Importance of Not Being Earnest Rule is Damien Walter, producer and host of the Science Fiction podcast, which states its mission as being to explore “the best in SF storytelling [and to ask] what happens when logos meets mythos, reason meets imagination and science … meets fiction”. English former Guardian journalist Damien Walter (alternately Damien G Walter) is very earnest. Which might explain why he doesn’t live in England anymore.
In the latest podcast, the very earnest Englishman Damien G Walter interviews the very earnest Scotsman Iain McGilchrist, talking broadly around McGilchrist’s somewhat mythic framing of the left-right divide. McGilchrist’s left-right divide isn’t a divide between the political Left and Right, but a divide between the two hemispheres of the brain.
McGilchrist professes that his left-right hemispheric divide isn’t mere pop science, attributing certain temperaments or qualities, like reason and creativity, to one or the other hemisphere. Instead his argument seems marginally more subtle that that, something like:
The left hemisphere’s domain is the centre. It’s the part of the brain that takes charge when you choose to focus on an object, grasp it, manipulate it, name it, take it apart and put it back together, use or abuse it as a tool.
The right hemisphere’s domain is the periphery. It’s what notices and contextualizes all around you, and so provides the context through which one can relate to and negotiate with the totality of the world.
McGilchrist’s broader thesis appears to be that broadly left-hemispheric thinking has become somewhat over-dominant in modern culture, leading to an overly atomistic and instrumentalist way of thinking. Everything is thought about, to some extent, in terms of how it can be used, grasped, broken down and thought about as machines and systems. Walter makes the intriguing observation that this may help explain a tendency towards literal-mindedness in much commentary and critique of modern sci-fi and fantasy, which appears blind or indifferent to underlying mythos and symbolism that stories are drawing from. I think there’s much compelling about this literal-mindedness observation, even if I’m somewhat more ambivalent about the left-right hemispheric distinction drawn by McGilchrist more generally, especially in terms of the trends or tendencies he’s proposing.
Since starting this blog in late November, I’ve discovered most of my posts tend to focus either on statistics or stories. These dual preoccupations don’t completely map onto the left-right hemispheric distinction - for example there’s a lot of contextualisation (right-thinking) involved in finding meaning in statistical outputs; and there is value in thinking about stories in a somewhat mechanical, graspable-component-like way - but it’s not a bad first approximation. I find stories valuable to think about, especially where they bring an intense quality of emotional engagement and I want to know why. Sometimes I even risk treating the exploration and interpretation of stories with the earnestness they deserve (even when writing about Robocop).