I Think Good Stuff Might Happen to Your Own Brain in the Process

Did you know that your brain is contra-lateral? That means that the right side of your brain controls the left side of your body, and vice versa. So, with that in mind, it’s not hard to believe that people who are right-handed are predominantly left-brained.

Written language in most Western cultures owes much of it’s heritage to the Greeks. The Greeks “perfected” the art of written language, and their art flows from left to right. Do you know what that means? That means that reading and writing Western languages provides an opportunity to exercise the left side of your brain. How? When you read, your eyes move from left to right, as does your head. This is considered right side motion by your body, thus it is controlled primarily from the left side of your brain. Written language flowing from the right pretty much guaranteed a predominantly left-brained society. That translated to a predominantly right-handed society, too. Now you know why 90% of the people you meet are right-handed.

Left-to-right written language is focused primarily on order and sequential processing. This means that the precise order of every letter, every space, and every mark of punctuation has a specific meaning. It reinforces logic and text. Interestingly enough, there are languages that flow from right to left, and these right-to-left languages, such as most Arabic forms, are based on context over text. Vowels are often omitted, yet the placement of vowels in words in these languages is no less vital to differentiating what a word means than it is in left-to-right languages. For example, if we omitted vowels in English, “stmp” could be “stamp,” “stomp,” or “stump,” three entirely different words. In right-to-left languages, the overall context of what is being written provides the information required to understand which word is needed in a given sentence. “Stmp” gains meaning from its context relative to the words around it and the topic of the writing. While this sounds confusing to people who use a left-to-right language, the fact of the matter is that our right-to-left brothers and sisters have an amazingly well-refined ability to understand context, and they focus on the big picture over the details in language as well as in other cognitive pursuits. And, in case it escaped you, right-to-left language requires motion towards the left, thus it is controlled by the right side of the brain. That would encourage development and growth of the right hemisphere of the brain, and, more than likely, result in left-handedness.

We have preconceived notions of what it means to be right-handed vs. left-handed and right-brained vs. left-brained. Some of these ideas are based in fact, some in fiction. You now have information that you can use to come up with new assumptions. When you see someone who is left-handed, you might conclude that they are creative. Why? Because now you know that left-handedness means they have a developed right brain, and we all know that right-brained people are more creative. But do you really think that the brain is that simple? After all, these people still read from left to right. They still live in a society that looks to the left brain to provide the answers. As with all things, assumptions are filled with errors. Regardless, it is clear that Western cultures promote a right-handed, left-brained approach to life, one focused on logic, sequential information processing, and detail-oriented analytic skills. That is the Modern World in a nutshell.

But, the world is changing, evolving. It does not come as a surprise to me that cultural evolution is increasingly influenced from the Eastern cultures of our world, and it has been that way for the better part of the last century. That many of the challenges that face humanity are brewing in this part of the world as a result of conflict between East and West should not be a shock. There has been Western dominance in the world for many, many years, and the Eastern part of our world is simply beginning to counterbalance this spread of dominance.

It is time for a reconciliation, for the many parts of the world to come together, to function as one, just as our brains do for us. Hemisphere dominance cannot continue unabated. The world is unbalanced.

While there is also hemisphere dominance in our brains, diseases and traumas of the brain have showed us the indescribable, breath-taking power of the brain to adapt, to compensate for the injured side. It is a powerful metaphor for the interdependence of our world; as it is in our bodies, so it must be with the world.

There are things that we can do, as individuals, to help bring about this understanding. Written communication is so important to our relationships, and written communication is a key method of influence. Exert your influence over those with whom you come into contact. It is probably worth remembering that there is a need to appeal to the healthy, modern human brains with which we interact. There is a corpus callosum that joins the two brain hemispheres together, allowing for whole, integrated human thought. The corpus callosum is literal, but there is a metaphor in it, as well. YOU can be the structure, the mechanism, that joins the two hemispheres. The world does not need divisiveness to effectively lobotomize the world and keep the parts from acting together as a whole. What is needed is unity, balance, counterbalance, and interdependence.

Build a bridge. Exercise both sides of your brain. Find ways to bring people together.

I think good stuff might happen to your own brain in the process.