The world is not a mechanism

"The achievement of imitation – the meta-skill that enables all other skills – may explain the otherwise incomprehensibly rapid expansion of the brain in early hominids, since there would be a sudden take-off in the speed with which we could adapt and change ourselves, and in the range of our abilities. ... Thus from a gene – the symbol of ruthless competition (the 'selfish gene'), and of the relatively atomistic and oppositional values of the left hemisphere – could arise a skill that would enable further evolution to occur not only more rapidly but in a direction of our own choosing – through empathy and co-operation, the values of the right hemisphere. Genes could free us from genes. The great human invention, made possible by imitation, is that we can choose who we become, in a process that can move surprisingly quickly. ... we escape the 'cheerless gloom of necessity'. ... Perhaps we are not the ruthless competitors we have been conditioned to believe ourselves to be by mechanistic models of behavior. Perhaps, even, the world is not a mechanism.". (The Master and His Emissary, Iain McGilchrist, 2009; page 253).