A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future

The Introduction sets up the goals of the text. Pink is defining the lessons he expects readers to take with them upon finishing the book. Pink’s technical approach involves personalizing the narrative with anecdotes from his life and supporting his argument with scientific studies conducted by prominent thinkers in their fields. The first-person narrative eases the reader into some of the heavier notions—he first tells a story that demonstrates how his brain works, and he then supports this claim with scientific facts.

Pink uses a meta approach to writing this book: The very abilities and qualities he argues will shape the future are seen in his style and execution. A Whole New Mind first presents an overview of ideas in Chapter 1 and then uses data to argue the merit of those ideas in Chapter 2. In this way, Pink demonstrates the value of using both hemispheres. The left-brained approach involves presenting the reader with research, sequentially using logic to overwhelm readers with information that is more difficult to challenge. His right-brained approach deals more with the big picture by offering metaphors for how the human brain represents “the contours of our times” (3). Thus, the Introduction subtly conveys one of the text’s most important themes just through its stylistic approach: balance. Though Pink is making a case for why society should value the right hemisphere just as much as the left, he ultimately portrays the necessity of cerebral and societal balance; just as the two hemispheres work to complement each other, the qualities attributed to right- and left-brained thinkers must be embraced as two halves of one whole rather than two opposite and unrelated parts.

Chapter 1 more directly addresses the importance of balance in the text as Pink lays out the physicality and function of each hemisphere. Describing what exactly his brain looks like—an image most people are familiar with—is an important image for him to convey; he wants readers to think about the physical divide that has informed the conceptual divide. The series of images he presents, those that he saw while undergoing the fMRI, also serve to highlight readers’ own emotional responses. By moving through the process of his experiment with the fMRI, he breaks down just how the brain works; the feelings readers experience as they process an image can be tied to a specific function of one of the brain’s hemispheres.

Chapter 1 also introduces the thematic significance Pink places on defining humanity. The text seeks to make sense of human behavior through both biological and cultural phenomena. Science’s previously held belief that the left hemisphere was solely responsible for the traits that elevate humans above beasts is a result of both—biological in the sense that the left brain is responsible for distinctly humanizing traits (such as language), and cultural in the sense that this prominent theory has neglected the right-brain traits that are also humanizing (such as empathy) and therefore informed cultural bias towards socially esteemed qualities. Pink’s surveying of the history of scientific thought on this subject shows that the preoccupation with which hemisphere is superior is really about the need to understand and define what exactly it means to be human. These themes subscribe to the ideals of the Conceptual Age; as Pink describes the differences between the two hemispheres and their cultural reception, he emphasizes the importance of each rather than working toward the superiority of one. Chapter 1, then, works to anticipate the issues that could appear as he advocates for R-Directed Thinking by stressing how the two hemispheres complement one another—how neither is superior because utilizing the entire brain is the goal.

Chapter 2 introduces the third theme of the text: society’s devaluation of emotionally centered qualities in favor of what have been seen as more marketable traits. Pink argues that Abundance, Asia, and Automation exclusively valued L-Directed Thinking and, ironically, this led to a decrease in the valuing of left-brained traits. This chapter draws a line between Pink’s understanding of knowledge and skill workers and the conceptually driven individuals Pink figures as the pioneers of the new age. The chapter, however, ignores the problematics of the Abundance, Asia, and Automation issues that Pink presents; all three were caused by a highly competitive market that relies upon the exploitation of workers to cut costs and increase profit. The subtext of this chapter is that this economic atmosphere led to the depreciation of emotionally intuitive skills and that workers must adjust to the now-shifting landscape, which will support those once-undervalued skills.