The Unseen Thinking Drift
How Western Thought Is Reshaping the Way We See Truth, Faith and Ourselves
Consider This:
What if your thinking is the result of
centuries of conditioning
you’ve never questioned?
In the last article, Your Faith and the Two Sides of Your Brain, we looked at how the brain focuses attention in two different ways—one intuitively, utilizing identity, trust, relationship and context, and the other rationally, utilizing analysis, clarity and control.
That distinction matters more than it might seem, because this difference in focus isn’t just personal—it’s cultural. And because it’s cultural, we’re being conditioned. We’ve been formed to think this way, together; over time, across generations and through the development of Western society itself.
If that’s true, then the way we think isn’t neutral and objective (though, ironically, it increasingly feels like it is). Remember the nature and impact of paradigms: Our thoughts shape what we see, what we trust—literally, our very perception of reality.
That leads to a question most of us don’t stop long enough to consider: What if the way we’ve been conditioned to think is quietly pulling us away from the kind of life—and the kind of faith—God intended for us? And what if that drift has been happening for, say ... 1,800+ years?
This article is about making that drift visible.
What Feels Normal
If the idea of “cultural drift” feels abstract, it becomes clearer when you look at how we actually move through everyday life. Consider, for example …
How we engage with information. We scroll, react and form opinions quickly. We rarely pause long enough to sit with something, turn it over or consider what we might be missing. Reflection feels inefficient and unnecessary, and slowing down feels unproductive. When we do engage, it often becomes polarized—less about understanding what’s true and more about taking a position.
How we engage with attention. We expect immediacy. We grow uncomfortable with ambiguity and patience. We prefer microwaving our thoughts instead of crock-potting them. We embrace the clear, explicit and definitive—even when reality isn’t.
In the process, we aren’t just consuming information; we’re being shaped by the way we consume it. Consider that, historically, commodities were things like land, energy and goods. Today, the most valuable commodity is your attention. Entire systems are designed to own it, shape it and exploit it.1
This isn’t just about distraction; it’s about formation.
A Pattern Beneath the Surface
These patterns aren’t random. They point to something deeper—a consistent way of approaching the world that has become normal for us.
In the framework from Your Faith and the Two Sides of Your Brain, this is what happens when the left hemisphere begins to take the lead on our thinking. It’s exceptionally good at narrowing focus, isolating details, creating categories and producing certainty. It gives us precision, language, systems and control. It allows us to analyze, define and act with confidence.
But without the right hemisphere’s input, the left hemisphere tends to reduce what it encounters into parts. It prefers certainty over mystery, answers over comprehending and efficiency over depth. When that mode of thinking becomes dominant at a cultural level, it begins to shape not just how we see—but what we see.
What It Produces
A culture formed this way will ...
Value what can be measured over what can be experienced,
Trust data more than intuition,
Prefer quick conclusions over slow understanding,
Substitute debate for dialogue, and
Engage in relationships transactionally.
At first, this feels like progress because it produces results, efficiency and clarity. But over time it creates unintended consequences—that come with significant downstream costs:
We’ve become remarkably efficient—and increasingly fragmented.
We’re more connected than any generation in history, yet more isolated.
We have access to more information than ever before, yet struggle to make sense of it.
We can communicate instantly across the globe, yet find it difficult to truly understand one another.
Our pace has increased, but our depth has evaporated.
At the same time, a subtle but persistent desire begins to surface: the desire to control. We want control over our outcomes, our environments and our futures. And this desire is reinforced constantly by the systems we live in.
Fear—sometimes overt, often subtle—is used to motivate action. There is always something to be concerned about, something to prepare for, something to guard against.
The proposed solution to fear is almost always the same: Take control. Buy this, learn that, take these steps, protect yourself. Over time, this becomes instinctive, and we begin to trust what we can control.
Which, incidentally, is a principal expression of idolatry:
“They bow down to the work of their hands,
to what their own fingers have made”
(Isa. 2.8).
Selah ...
A Long Time in the Making
This didn’t develop overnight. According to neuroscientist and philosopher Iain McGilchrist, Western culture is exhibiting a long-term shift toward left-hemisphere dominance in how we process reality.
He traces this pattern across major movements in Western history—the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and into modern and postmodern thought. These are part of a larger trajectory in which the analytical, controlling mode of thought increasingly takes precedence.2
Importantly, McGilchrist outlines what a society would begin to look like if this pattern continued. Here’s a sobering (and long) list of patterns he highlights.3
Knowledge would be reduced to information, while wisdom would be sidelined as too vague or impractical.
We would engage with the “bits” of knowledge that can be grasped and elevated in importance, and the big picture would become the sum of the “bits.”
Empirical data would be trusted more than lived experience, intuition or common sense.
Credentials, systems and formal structures would replace knowledge gained through experience.
The world would become increasingly virtualized, with representations of reality substituting for reality itself.
Work would shift toward documenting, measuring and justifying activity rather than actually engaging in meaningful work.
Technology would flourish as a primary means of controlling and manipulating life for our purposes.
The living world would be treated as mechanical—something to be used, optimized and exploited.
Human beings would be valued based on how much, how quickly and how consistently they can produce.
Perception would become more binary, favoring “either-or” thinking over nuance, tension or degrees of meaning.
Morality would increasingly be defined by utility and self-interest rather than by truth or virtue.
Society would become depersonalized, with relationships shifting from cooperation toward competition and exploitation.
Individual identity would give way to group-based identity categories, often placing those groups in opposition to one another.
Suspicion and mistrust would increase—both between individuals and between citizens and governing authorities.
Governments would expand control, justifying it by the need to need to reduce threats.
Compliance would be emphasized over personal responsibility and discernment.
The desire to be “in control” would intensify, along with anxiety about anything that cannot be controlled.
Entertainment and sexuality would become increasingly explicit and objectified, as a preoccupation of society.
Anger and aggression would rise in public discourse, as empathy and understanding diminish.
A general erosion of self-control and personal agency would emerge, alongside increasing passivity.
Feels ... familiar, doesn’t it?
If McGilchrist is right, then what we’re experiencing now isn’t random. It’s the latest phase of a centuries-long shifting—and it has shaped the way we think.
Closer Than We Think
It’s easy to see this as something happening “out there,” in the world; in culture, media or politics. But the far more important question is: How it has shaped us, and the way we approach faith?
We can approach faith as something to analyze, define and manage. Something to understand clearly, categorize accurately and apply effectively. In doing so, we can prioritize clarity over trust, certainty over dependence and information over transformation.
In that framework, faith becomes something we grasp rather than something we live within. It feels normal because it aligns with the way we’ve been conditioned to think.
But “normal” doesn’t mean neutral.
The Assumption Beneath It All
Beneath all of this is a quiet assumption: We’re responsible for securing our own lives.
We assume we must understand enough, control enough and manage enough to be okay, and that if we don’t take control, things will fall apart. This assumption rarely presents itself as a lack of faith; it presents itself as responsibility—which is precisely what makes it difficult to recognize.
It shows up in how quickly we move to create strategy and define expected outcomes; in how we fix, solve and secure. It shapes what we trust, what we fear and how we respond to life’s uncertainties. It centers everything on ourselves—not in an obvious or defiant way, but in a way that assumes we are responsible for making life work.
Consider: How does this mesh with the truth that our creation in God’s image means we are designed to be fully dependent upon him? Or that, in Jesus’ words, we can do nothing on our own (Jn. 15.5)?
Again, selah ...
What Do We Do With This?
The goal here isn’t to reject analysis or clarity. Those are good gifts that are essential for navigating life. The question is whether they’ve taken the lead in ways they were never meant to—and whether they’ve shaped not just how we think, but what we trust.
A few questions can help bring that into focus:
Where do you feel the strongest need for control right now?
When you face uncertainty, what do you instinctively reach for first—a fixing strategy, or trust?
When you encounter an ambiguous or paradoxical issue, how often do you slow down to ponder it instead of settling for a resolved perspective?
In your faith, do you find yourself trying to dictate outcomes, or learning to live within something you don’t fully control?
These questions aren’t meant to be answered quickly. They’re meant to be noticed. Because awareness is the first step in recognizing whether there has, in fact, been a drift.
Where This Leads Next
The last lines of the poem Invictus capture the spirit of our modern Western age. It’s a declaration that feels both empowering and unquestioned:
“I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”
There is strong evidence to confirm the drift in Western thinking, passed down over centuries to successive generations. And while we might not consciously and boldly claim Invictus’ declaration, there are sufficient signs evident in the Western church that the same drift has unconsciously shaped us as well.
If we are honest, humble, courageous and faithful enough to see them.
We’ll start there in the next article. For now, it’s enough to recognize that the way think may be shaping more than we realize—and in ways we never intended.
Peace be with you …
Footnotes:
This is a brilliant and powerful observation by Mark Sayers, from “Discipling the Contemporary Self, Part 2,” The Rebuilders Podcast, February 21, 2023.
See McGilchrist, Iain. The Ways of Attending: How Our Divided Brain Constructs the World (United Kingdom: Routledge, 2018) 27.
See McGilchrist, Iain. The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (United Kingdom: Yale University Press, 2019).
Every 5th week is a "Monk Week" for me. I'm in the middle of one right now and this is great food for "monking."
Reflecting:
- Where do you feel the strongest need for control right now?
- When you face uncertainty, what do you instinctively reach for first—a fixing strategy, or trust?
- When you encounter an ambiguous or paradoxical issue, how often do you slow down to ponder it instead of settling for a resolved perspective?
- In your faith, do you find yourself trying to dictate outcomes, or learning to live within something you don’t fully control?