The left hand in a right-handed world
TOM ONIRO
Correspondent
| Friday December 5, 2008 00:00
Such are business entities owned and run by traders from a certain successful business community of Asian origin spread all over Africa.
In these premises, once a customer enters, he or she is welcomed by a very stern look. If a customer inquires about something, the answer is usually a very reluctantly direct 'Yes', or 'No'. No time for customer care or courteous explanations.
Say, it is buying and selling time now: If a customer flashes, for example, a P50 note, and the commodity is, for instance, P30, strictly the P50 will be received with the left hand and again certainly, the balance or change, in this case P20 will be returned with the left hand. And yet these are merchants who are not left-handed. Neither are they 'formatted to be left-aligned'.
Compare and contrast this with, for example, a Motswana salesperson or even the manager, who will be pleasant to meet you, and serve the customer with a smile. More importantly, the money produced by the customer is received strictly with the right hand, accompanied by the most humbling respect that makes even a fly appear harmless.
But why? Watchers and people familiar with the above-mentioned Asian community claim that it is a curse. That whatever an African gets from them is always destined for waste - no prosperity, no success on the part of the black man but only misery and poverty - hence the intended use of the left hand. Besides, a black man is always a suspect to these traders.
But the left and right hands are really complementary sides. However, the treatment meted out to the left is often far from complementary. It is very confusing, and sometimes difficult being left-handed in a right-handed world. The word 'right' by itself, besides denoting a 'side' also has a connotation of correctness; thus making anything 'not right' to be 'wrong'.
The Autograph Magazine online says that in the early days, no left-handed cardinal could be selected as pope because the left hand was viewed superstitiously as being evil.
Young students who wrote with their left hands were required to learn how to write with their right hand. 'Today, left-handers face challenges that right-handers do not; from scissors to can openers, corkscrews to coffee mugs and knives, the list goes on,' says the Autograph.
The Bible does not have many good things to say about the left hand. Matthew 25:31-34 says that: '...he will divide them into two groups...He will put the righteous people on his right (hand side) and the others on his left (hand side). Then the King will say to the people on his right (hand side), 'Come, you that are blessed by my Father! Come and possess the Kingdom which has been prepared for you ever since the creation of the world.'' Matthew 25: 41 says that those on the left (hand side of Jesus) will be chased away. '..he will say to those on his left (hand side), 'Away from me, you that are under God's curse! Away to eternal fire which has been prepared for the Devil and his angels!''
The words meaning 'left' in, for instance, French and Latin are 'gauche' and 'sinister', which is as bad as it can get. The words 'right' are an exemplary choice: from the French 'droit', where the English word 'adroit', and Latin for right is 'dexter' - from which words such as dexterous are derived, all with very positive connotations.Left-handed people face a daily battle with a world designed for right-handers, the New Scientist online claims. 'It seems that left-handed people face a similar struggle in the mental sphere: behavioural research suggests (that) they are prone to inhibition and anxiety. When about to do something, left-handers tend to dither. Right-handers tend to jump in a bit,' the New Scientist says.
On tests of behavioural inhibition, the study by New Scientist found out that 46 left-handed men and women scored higher than 66 right-handers. Women, too, tended to rack up higher scores on the tests of reticence-the tendency not to communicate very much or not reveal everything.
The New Scientist uncovered these predilections by giving subjects a behavioural test that gauges both personal restraint and impulsiveness; qualities which seem to emanate from opposite hemispheres of the human brains.
Compared to right-handers, left-handed people and women are likelier to agree with statements such as: 'I worry about making mistakes'' and 'Criticism or scolding hurts me quite a bit''. All groups responded similarly to statements such as ''I often act on the spur of the moment'' and ''I crave excitement and new sensations''. The results could be due to wiring differences in the brains of left-handers and right-handers, the New Scientist quotes Wright as having said.
Research suggests that the right half of the brain of left-handers is dominant. It is this side that seems to control negative aspects of emotion. In right-handers, the left brain dominates.
Separately, the left hemisphere of the brain is said to be the rational side. This side of the brain responds to verbal instructions; solves problems by logically and sequentially looking at the parts of things, tends to look at differences in things, is more planned and structured. It is said 85 to 90 percent of the world population is right-handed and males are three times more likely to be left-handed than females.
Live Science says that how one uses his or her hands is probably determined by a complex interaction between genes and the environment. The journal explains that left-handers are more likely to have a left-handed relative, though researchers are yet to find the gene or set of genes that pick one hand over the other. Most scientists, however, agree that handedness exists on a continuum as the idea helps explain why some people bowl with their left but hold a spoon in their right.
In a new study, says Live Science, researchers measured the width of elbows in living people and in skeletons from medieval British farming community. The researchers assumed the 9:1 ratio of handedness would match the ratio of bigger right to left elbows.
The prediction held true in the modern-day group, but not for the medieval bones.
Left-handed people have been oppressed in many societies. Human beings have shown the ability to learn to use their non-preferred hand after injuries, when required to perform manual labour, or in the face of cultural pressure. Yet preference for a particular hand appears to take root in the womb, or even earlier, Live Science says. 'Some researchers suggest pre-natal levels of testosterone determine hand preference. Brain damage from trauma in the delivery room is another explanation. 'Proud lefties cringe at the thought of it,' said David Wolman, author of A Left Hand Turn Around the World. 'The genetic model has wider support among the laterality community than the brain damage at birth or levels of hormones in the womb,' Wolman said. 'At the end of the day, everyone seems to go back to the gene.'
One genetic model called the right shift theory and developed by psychologist Marian Annett at the University of Leicester, suggests that a single gene increases the likelihood of being right-handed. 'The essence of my right shift theory is that there is a gene that helps to develop speech in the left hemisphere of the brain and increases the possibility of right-handedness,' Annett told Live Science. Whatever made evolutionary jog made humans' left brain dominant for speech also made us right-side dominant, Annett argues.
'Since our closest relatives - chimpanzees -can't talk, the gene must have arisen in recent evolutionary history. One study found most chimps prefer to fish for termites with their left hand. But other recent research shows most chimpanzees favour their right hand when throwing overhead,' Live Science quotes Annett.
In the late 1890s, left-handed people got the nickname of southpaw, because most baseball fields were laid out with the pitcher facing west and the batter facing east so that the sun does not harm the batter's eye. When a left-handed pitcher threw a ball, it was with his arm on the south side so left-handed people started to be called southpaws. Some experts say this is actually a term used in wrestling, and as such may have originated from there. Left-handed people have always been disadvantage by those who design machines, tools and facilities. Musical instruments, hand tools, and even public drinking fountains are often designed without a thought to those who might approach them differently. That ever-present and essential tool, the computer mouse, is often made to fit the right hand only. In ancient Japan, a man could divorce his wife for being left-handed.
To be continued.....