Yes, that is very much in line with the central argument of Iain McGilchrist, especially in his books The Master and His Emissary and The Matter with Things.

McGilchrist’s Core Thesis

McGilchrist argues that the two cerebral hemispheres attend to the world in fundamentally different ways:

• The left hemisphere tends to focus on what is narrow, abstract, predictable, and controllable.
• The right hemisphere is more open to context, relationships, embodied experience, and living reality.

He is careful to say this is not a simplistic “logic vs emotion” distinction. Both hemispheres are essential, but they serve different modes of engaging with the world.

His concern is that modern Western society increasingly privileges the left hemisphere’s mode of attention.

What Happens When the Left Hemisphere Dominates?

According to McGilchrist, when this mode becomes culturally dominant, several things happen:

1. Reality Becomes a Resource

Instead of encountering the world as something intrinsically meaningful, we treat it as raw material to be measured, exploited, and optimized.

2. People Become Functions

Human beings are reduced to categories, data points, and economic roles.

3. Moral Outrage Diminishes

If everything is viewed as an abstract system, there is less spontaneous emotional response to injustice.

4. Constant Instrumental Thinking

Attention is directed toward calculation, control, productivity, and self-preservation.

This resembles what you describe as “feeding the reptilian brain”: remaining trapped in cycles of threat detection, acquisition, and competition.

Compassion and the Right Hemisphere

McGilchrist associates compassion with right-hemisphere capacities:

• Seeing others as whole persons
• Sensitivity to nuance and context
• Emotional resonance
• Recognition of interconnectedness
• Appreciation of beauty and sacredness

Compassion arises not from applying a rule, but from directly perceiving another being as real.

Why We May Not Feel Properly “Heated” by Injustice

McGilchrist suggests that excessive abstraction can dull moral responsiveness.

When suffering is encountered as a statistic or concept rather than as lived reality, outrage and compassion are weakened. One can become informed and analytical without being deeply moved.

In his view, healthy moral passion depends on right-hemisphere engagement with the concrete reality of what is happening.

The “Lizard Brain” Question

The term “reptilian brain” usually refers to older neural systems involved in survival and threat responses.

McGilchrist does not frame the issue as being dominated by primitive brain structures. Rather, he argues that the left hemisphere often allies with control-oriented, defensive tendencies and becomes disconnected from the broader, relational perspective of the right hemisphere.

So the problem is not simply instinct, but a narrowed style of consciousness that reinforces self-protection and manipulation.

Can This Be Changed?

McGilchrist is emphatically not deterministic. He believes individuals and cultures can restore balance.

Through practices that strengthen the kind of attention that supports empathy and wisdom.

Your Summary in McGilchrist’s Terms

A McGilchrist-inspired reformulation of your thought would be:

Our culture and social order increasingly favors a mode of attention that abstracts and controls rather than participates and relates. As a result, we become less compassionate, less morally alive to injustice, and more absorbed in self-preserving calculation.

That captures a substantial part of his diagnosis.

Important Nuance

McGilchrist does not argue that the left hemisphere is bad. Its capacities are indispensable. The problem arises when the “emissary” usurps the “master”: when the map is mistaken for reality, and abstraction displaces lived experience.

Related Thinkers

His work resonates with themes from:

• Martin Buber (“I–Thou” relationships)
• Hannah Arendt (thoughtlessness and bureaucracy)
• Max Weber (instrumental rationality)
• Simone Weil (attention as love)
• Charles Taylor (the buffered self)

Bottom Line

Yes. McGilchrist would likely agree that when one mode of attention becomes dominant, we can lose the capacity to encounter the world compassionately and to feel injustice in a vivid, personal way. We become increasingly focused on control, efficiency, and self-interest, while our sense of connection and moral immediacy diminishes.