the external world. With very little time to ground ourselves amid the onslaught of external data, we lost confidence in intuition. We came to rely disproportionately on rational thinking.
Technology
Ever so insidiously, technological advances opened up data channels, or means of exchanging information. They began to overfeed our left brains. First, we progressed from travel by foot and riding on the backs of animals to engine-powered vehicles. We were able to cover a lot more ground and, as a result, gather more data to feed our left brains. Then, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we developed the telegraph, telephone, typewriter, calculator, radio, television, audio recorder, video recorder, fax machine, mobile phone, and, of course, the personal computer, and the Internet. Today the velocity and complexity of our lives has become overwhelming. Most of us are literally being flooded with data, which our left brains must process. We simply don’t have time to fully use our right brain and, specifically, its powerful ability to intuit. Intuition as a tool has largely been crowded out of our existence. It still exists, of course. We have each experienced the first impression that proved to be absolutely correct. Yet we just don’t have the time or energy to use or develop our intuition. And because we don’t use it much, we don’t trust it much.
Childhood Conditioning
As technology began to change the shape of industry in the nineteenth century, industry began to change the shape of families and education. As men and women began working away from their homes and farms, the education of children changed from homeschooling to collective education. Schools began to