"The defining features of the human condition can all be traced to our ability to stand back from the world, from our selves and from the immediacy of experience. This distance (necessary distance), this ability to rise above the world in which we live, has been made possible by the evolution of the frontal lobes." p. 22
"the right frontal lobe brings distance (necessary distance) and delay to espousing ‘my’ position" p. 91
"It is the frontal lobes that bring distance (necessary distance) (in space) and delay (in time)" p. 259
"the separation of the hemispheres [...] enabled us to build on that ‘necessary distance’ from the world and from ourselves, achieved originally by the frontal lobes" p. 262
"I see the starting point as an achievement of ‘necessary distance’, probably through an enhancement of frontal lobe function." p. 296
"The standing back is, if one can put it that way, in itself ‘hemisphere-neutral’, a function of the bilateral frontal lobes. But once again the fact of standing back necessitates a sharpening of the division of labour, a demand for abstraction and generalisation, favouring the left hemisphere; and at the same time it generates a leap forward in the right hemisphere’s relation with the world around it, to which it now stands in a deepened and enriched relationship, through the achievement of what I have called ‘necessary distance’." p. 299
See connection with asymmetry