lobal society: southbound

At a bedrock level, it is not known exactly why.But through the tools of observation and occasional research what is known is that the extremes tend to be present, the actions are cryptic and its all wrapped in an elliptic logic. The old left-hander retort of all things considered, “being in their right mind” doesn’t wash. The brain and mind are not synonymous….

Not surprisingly, left-handers are prone to word play and puns, which are, after all, only organized versions of dyslexia. Lewis Carroll is said to have been left-handed, and Through the Looking Glass is the most left-handed book ever written. The world behind the mirror is opposite in every way from Alice’s right-handed real world: corkscrews turn the wrong way, queens stand on the wrong side of kings, and of course there is “Jabberwocky,” Carroll’s greatest masterpiece of word play.

—Studies show left-handers increasingly prone to mental illness such as schizophrenia, insomnia, depression, autism among many other pathological mental illnesses and ailments. A British study revealed left-handers’ average lifespan 9 years shorter than their right-handed counterparts. In fact, historically (though less prevalent today) left-handers were stigmatized in various religions such as Islam and Christianity; considered to be of the devil and not on the ‘right’ side of God(where Jesus Christ and His favoured would sit). In many European languages, terms referring to the ‘left’ being clumsy, crooked, ill-omened have been coined, stereotyping the left-hander as the lacking minority. — photo Hy Peskin .Read More:http://charlottebplum.hubpages.com/hub/Musical-Musings-of-the-Psychology-Student image:http://www.nytstore.com/Whitey-Ford–1956_p_5438.html

But the most interesting quirk of left-handers is their maddening habit of thinking in ellipses rather than straight lines. Their train of thought is apt to meander through the whole alphabet on the way from A to B. Left-handed thinking is inelegant, tortuous, and graceless. Tristan Shandy must have been left-handed. With their essential illogic, left-handers come up with odd associations, such as “Did you know that a Camel cigarette is exactly the same length as the width of Spielberg’s latest movie?”

—A popular saying among lefthanders goes like this: “If the right side of the body is controlled by the left side of the brain, and the left side of the body is controlled by the right side of the brain, then lefthanded people are the only ones in their right minds. As attractive as those words may be to the sinistrals of the world, the fact is that the conclusion offered not only fails to follow logically from the given premise but also appears quite dubious from just about every point of view.—Read More:http://onlyhisname.com/Books/LHP/ image:http://onlyhisname.com/Books/LHP/ image:http://www.fanpop.com/spots/sherlock-holmes/images/14711347/title/jeremy-brett-sherlock-holmes-photo

Of course, a mind that makes odd associations can be marvelously inventive, vide da Vinci and Franklin. Leonardo’s friends all knew man would never fly, yet by putting ideas together in his own way, he designed a rig that apparently could have flown. As for Ben Franklin’s rocking chair, if it wasn’t a left-handed conception, why hadn’t it occurred to anyone before to combine those ancient artifacts, the chair and the cradle?

According to Kabbalistic teaching, the shape, the form  of the individual, human body is a reflection of  the contours of the human soul.That is,  the body has left and right sides since the soul is endowed with two distinct powers: the power to give,to be outward and articulate, expressive, demonstrative as well as a power to be inward and restrained, reserved and a general holding back. This, in turn corresponds with the soul and its two sides, even dimensions, which are kindness and discipline which relate to two sides of the body, the right and left sides, of which both are essential. In Kabbalah, the stronger, dominant side, depending on handedness, is said to represent the quality of giving and the opposite side that of holding back and restraint. Ultimately, there is no difference of disadvantage as the objective is to attain the ideal where there is a higher degree of kindness than discipline, as if there is a discipline intrinsic to kindness.

—Thus the concluding statement of the aforementioned saying – “lefthanded people are the only ones in their right minds” – really has no connection whatsoever to the preceding observation that the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body, and the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body. But I have described this pun as pathetic, not only because puns have often been dismissed, with good reason, as the lowest form of humor, but also because in this specific case the weight of evidence sadly belies the position that sinistrals are saner than dextrals.
Quite a number of well‑documented studies have concluded that sinistrality is a significant predictor of delinquency. In plain English, lefthanded people are more likely than righthanded people to become criminals. Other studies have linked a greater tendency towards violence with the lack of hemispheric dominance that is characteristic of lefthanders.—Read More:http://onlyhisname.com/Books/LHP/ image:http://greatlefties.blogspot.ca/2011/10/abbas-and-netanyahu-both-lefties.html

ADDENDUM:

(see link at end)…According to the late Dr. Norman Geschwind, formerly the James Jackson Putnam Professor of Neurology at Harvard University and arguably still the foremost authority on the subject, variations during pregnancy in the level of testosterone (a male sex hormone) can significantly alter the pattern of development of the fetal brain by shifting the locations to which cells migrate. As the male brain matures later than the female brain and as the left hemisphere matures later than the right hemisphere, this then accounts for the greater incidence of sinistrality in men. (As already mentioned, men are twice as likely as women to be lefthanded.) As for the variation in the levels of testosterone, that can be determined by such factors as the amount of stress that the pregnant mother undergoes….

…The fact is that Nature prefers asymmetry. “Right and left handedness are not just a human property but seem to characterize the whole of nature. The fiddler crab has one giant pincer – its ‘fiddle’ – and another puny claw. The right tusk of an elephant is usually larger than its left and is used for digging (thus its left tusk is often known as the ‘servant tusk’). And bats, as they wing their way out of a cave, swing to the left first. The horns of antelope, the shells of snails, and the growth of vines all show Nature’s most elegantly asymmetrical form: the helix. A righthanded helix is threaded like an ordinary screw. The double helix of the DNA molecule is righthanded, as are most shells. Morning‑glory vines, like most vines, spiral to the right, but honeysuckle always twists to the left. And the human umbilical cord is a lefthanded spiral.”

If we now try to draw some conclusions, the following would seem to be quite reasonable: …The dominant left hemisphere is neither arbitrary nor undesirable; rather, it is the evolutionary development preferred by Nature. The anomalous cerebral dominance found in lefthanded people is not a progressive evolutionary mutation but rather a limited aberration that, despite any social or individual advantages to be derived, remains in the balance both an individual and a social handicap.

Recent experiments in physics have revealed that a number of subatomic processes, such as some forms of radioactivity, favor the left. Perhaps, even more fundamentally, our existence is propelled by specific spirals that, in the cosmological theory of Shrii Shrii Anandamurti known as brahmacakra, are called saincara (cosmic extrovertive or centrifugal movement) and pratisaincara. If this be so, then it might well be that in the final stages of pratisaincara, with the evolutionary emergence of the highly developed unit mind of homo sapiens, the left‑shift factor in brain development somehow mirrors a cosmic pattern of intrinsic significance to our very existence. Though the subject is still quite new, still it may be added that an intensive and extensive research of microvita, the root cause of life, is bound to unveil much of the mystery regarding cerebral dominance and laterality.

In the final analysis, perhaps the Greeks were correct. Perhaps aristera, not sinister, is the appropriate term. Maybe left is best. But, if so, then still the advantage remains with righthanded people due to their more developed left hemisphere. Read More:http://onlyhisname.com/Books/LHP/

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