Lefty World
August 1
A Blessing, a Curse, or Neither?
For the past year or so, Eunice has been dragging me on Sundays to a church that I find offensive. It is an independent Baptist Church, founded by a Baptist pastor. I am definitely not a Christian, or a follower of any particular religion, but most of all, I am not a Baptist. I am not alone in my feelings; I recall a caller to the Thom Hartmann show, for instance, refer to the Baptist Church as the world's largest cult, and I would not disagree with that. In fact, you may see my comparison of religions in general and cults in the archives under "This is the Way We Wash our Brains." The Baptist Church is, in my opinion, the most cult-like of the Christian Denominations, at least. (Religion and spirituality will be major future topics in this blog, by the way.)
When I first went to this church, I could not help but notice that the pastor was quite bombastic, and seemed antithetical to pretty much everything I stand for. Also, I felt that he exhibited a high degree of emotional instability. I am sure his followers considered it to be passion, but there was a dangerous edge of instability that I could see in him. I remember telling Eunice that one of these days, he was probably going to "go off the deep end" and snap, either becoming mentally ill or asking his followers to do something drastic. I must admit that I was very sacriligious during services in his church, but I needed to be in order to distract myself from the vitriolic spittle which he constantly spewed. He became so red during his rants, in fact, that I began to imagine that he was a lobster cooking in a pot. Other times, I would imagine that he was a tea kettle, from which steam would exit, and subsequently, begin to whistle. Still other times, I would imagine that he was an overheating train going up a mountain, whistling and honking on the way. Since he hated cats, I would sometimes imagine that he was surrounded by hissing cats. (I know, that was mean, but his sermons had a streak of meanness to them, so I was just answering him.) Other times, since he seemed to hate psychologists, including Dr. Phil McGraw, the television therapist, I would envision him being given a stern lecture by Dr. Phil. He also showed a hatred of Muslims, and gave frequent messages in favor of conservative politics, including the Bush Administration and its military tactics, although his political messages decreased as time went on.
It was a relatively long time before I noticed that this pastor was left-handed. Eventually, he actually mentioned that he grew up as a left-handed dyslexic, who had trouble reading. Apparently, he eventually overcame his reading difficulties by reading the Bible over and over again. However, he seemed to view his condition, as a left-handed dyslexic, as a sort of curse. Lefties are indeed more likely than righties to be dyslexic, so I somewhat understand his feelings, but I disagree with it. My eldest brother, Craig, was also mildly dyslexic as a child, but it never seemed to bother him. Eventually, he earned a Ph. D. in Biochemistry, and now is a geneticist and nutritionist at U. C. Davis. In fact, my non-religious parents seemed to consider the left-handedness of their three sons to be a blessing, and they were probably correct. All three of us are intellectually gifted, and all three of us have earned Ph.D.s. As mentioned in the post of July 28, left-handed people tend to think differently from right-handed people. In particular, left-handed people tend to have more dominant right brain functions, such as seeing the "big picture," higher visuospatial abilitiy, greater emotional cognizance, more humorous and musical thought. I would postulate that during our evolutinary past, being left-handed was probably a disadvantage; perhaps lefties were less healthy, less verbal, less likely to have children, or may have been persecuted by the dominant righty population. Now, however, in a world of increasing education and specialization, being left-handed offers an advantage in many vocations and in right-brain oriented types of thought. Whether this will actually translate into lefties having more children on the average than righties and increasing their percentage, or not, remains to be seen.
Getting back to the pastor, he ran his church like his own personal fiefdom. In fact, his two son-in-laws, along with a couple other white males (never any females), would sit up on the dais with him. His look-alike brother was an usher. He frequently would give messages to the effect that God puts us in the "right place," and rewards those who stick with it, and don't give up. He would say that God rewards those who don't change jobs, or get divorced, for example. In fact, this theme was the most common one in his sermons. A few weeks ago, however, we went to the church on Sunday, and he was not there. Well, sometimes he went on vacation, but this time, I was getting strange vibes and hints that something had gone wrong, and that the pastor may not be coming back. Since that time, the few times we have been there, the church has been in sort of a desperation mode, without admitting it, auditioning different potential pastors. The most we could get out of any of the regular churchgoers, regarding the pastor, was that he had "resigned"after founding this church 18 years earlier. How ironic! There was absolutely no explanation why he had resigned. I am guessing that he did finally "go off the deep end." He is probably either in a mental institution, or jail. To be perfectly honest, I am relieved that he is no longer there, although I am worried about what happened to him.. (I had a very religious student this spring, who sometimes accidentally called me "pastor," who ended the semester in jail, which is really sad, since she seemed like a nice person in her own oversized personality way. I do not know why she was incarcerated, but I heard that such was the case.)
Perhaps the curse of being a left-handed dyslexic contributed to the pasor's problems. Perhaps doubts about the veracity of what he was preaching had creeped into his mind. I had always felt that he, and other faithful Baptists, had an extraordinary ability to ignore the truth, even when it virtually slapped them in the face. Perhaps at some point, doubts enter the minds of the formerly faithful, and the more faithful the person is, the harder these doubts are for the person to take. Sometimes faith can be a curse, other times, a blessing, and sometimes, neither; in my opinion that depends mainly on what one has faith in. In the case of being left-handed, being a lefty can also be viewed as a curse, or as a blessing, or neither; it depends mostly on a person's attitude.
July 31
I have one website update note: I sent an email last saturday to a website development specialist who works for the school where I teach, inquiring about how to create a message board, but have yet to receive a reply. (I cannot see anything about message boards in my Dreamweaver program which I use for website construction.) Perhaps he is on vacation, but if he does not reply soon, there are 2 other website development employees under him that I will also send emails to.
Goddess in Her Lefteousness
Words are very powerful. Words represent ideas, and ultimately, it is ideas and ideals which change the world. That was a topic of some of my earliest posts. I was thinking about doing this topic earlier, but waited for a more opportune time. Now is that time. In my previous post, I briefly mentioned about an anti-lefty language bias. The words "right" -- as in correct -- and "sinister" -- as in evil and left-sided -- show an explicit bias toward right-handedness in the English language. I know that sinister is from a Latin word, so this bias also exists in Latin-based languages such as Italian and Spanish. In contrast, my Chinese wife, Eunice, says that Chinese language has no handedness bias. (Fron my limited knowledge of Chinese, I was not aware of any, but I asked her.) Other languages, I do not know well enough to determine whether or not there are any such language biases. Imagine if I said that I was "correct-handed," while 90% of the population is "wrong-handed." That is basically what this language bias does. Yet it is so insidious, such a basic aspect of the language we learn beginning in infancy, that most people take it for granted. Basically, it is free propaganda for righties. If you repeat something often enough, and starting early enough in childhood, people will take it for granted, and tend to assume that it is true.
There is another, even stronger and more damaging language bias, that against females, and in favor of males. Why do we refer to those whose genders we do not know as "he?" Perhaps it is because it is men who made rules such as this. Even worse, why is God in monotheistic religions referred to as "He," as though God were a man, or at least, was known to be of the male gender. Once again, I see the work of egocentric men in evidence here. In fact, this religious gender bias has been hypothesized to be one of the most pervasive causes of war. (I know I heard mention of this twice on the Thom Hartmann show, but unfortunately, I forget the author's name.) This religious gender bias bothers me so much, that when I am compelled to go to a gender-biased church, I mentally reword any reference to a masculine God to be gender neutral, or even feminine, just to counterbalance the masculine bias. I must admit that this sort of oppostional thinking in the interest of fairness is a big part of my personality. In any case, my conception of God/Goddess includes that God/Goddess can be any gender or all genders. In fact, the notion of God as a creator of the universe makes more sense if God were a Goddess, a female entity which could give birth to the universe, as opposed to a masculine entity. I made mention of that idea in a poem I recently posted on my and my wife's "Dollyverse" website, called "Flower Dreaming."
Of course, I don't expect everyone to understand me when I say "Goddess in her Lefteousness" or write about such things in rhyming poems with altered spellings and childlike innocence. But perhaps if I stick with it long enough, it will begin to sink in. I have seen too many T.V. fishing shows in which a person catches a large bass, and says something like "he's a big one." Anyone who knows anything about bass biology (American bass such as the Largemouth, Smallmouth, and Spotted varieties) knows that all of the big ones are females. How do animals manage to reproduce, if all of them are "hes?" In its early days, particularly, even psychology had a distinct masculine bias. Emotion was a seldom studied topic for many years, despite it huge importance in psychology. Early psychologists, almost all of whom were (white) males, apparently thought of emotion as a feminine domain. When they did start to study emotion, they incorrectly theorized that it was primitive, and irrational, the way they thought females were, with its origins either in our internal organs, or in the most primitive part of our brains. Even the most famous psychologist, the early theorist Sigmund Freud, whose theory has now been largely discredited, and who probably set back the progress of psychology many years, had some ludicrous, masculine-biased ideas. For one, he thought that all girls wanted to be boys. For another, he thought that girls thought they had been born as boys, but had been castrated for misbehavior, turning them into girls. Meanwhile, boys continued to have "castration anxiety" which resulted in boys developing a stronger superego (moral sense). If so, how would Freud explain why the great majority of prison inmates are men, or why, when there is a war, it inevitably seems to have been started by men, not women? In fact, most of Freud's patients in his clinical psychiatry practice were women (who had "hysteria", and all or nearly all of them eventually divulged to Freud that they had been molested, generally by a family member. At first, Freud believed them, but after consulting with his colleagues, who to a person denied that any molestation could be taking place, at least not in upper crust Vienna, Austrian society, Freud changed his mind, and decided that all of the accounts of molestation which he had heard from his clients were merely fantasies about their fathers. It was such gender biased theories such as Freud's which set psychology back many years, in various ways, but most of all, in its efforts to fight the insidious effects of sexual molestation.
Fortunately, psychlology has come a long way since Freud's time. There is a natural progression to things -- a progression to history, and a biological progression of evolution -- and this is a good thing. Psychology nowadays is becoming feminized. There are more women than men who are becoming psychologists, currently. Already, about half of psychologists worldwide are women, so that soon, distinctly more than half will be women. And these women are too well-informed to carry a gender bias around in their heads. The APA (American Psychlogical Association), has made efforts to remove gender bias from language used by psychologists in formal articles. Psychologists of both genders are studying gender-related issues, and learning how to fight back against cultural anti-feminine stereotypes and prejudices. Nearly every class I teach has more women than men as students. And most of my students who choose to major in psychology are women. I view this as a good thing for psychology, although psychology needs some men, also.
However, in churches and informal social groups around the world, we are still being inculcated with masculine biases and right-handed biases as well, for that matter. People all too easily, conveniently, and egotistically in the case of right-handed males, assume that male is superior to female, right-handed to left-handed, despite abundant evidence that this is not the case. I say it is time to do something about these biases. Choose gender-neutral language. Don't make assumptions about gender (but I know, it's so easy to do - but when it starts to bother you, it becomes impossible to contunue doing it). Do not refer to deity as assuming a masculine gender. Use the words "correct" or "good" instead of "right," when referring to correctness. Avoid the word "sinister." And please understand me that I am only fighting the long overdue fight against the strong but subtle effects of language bias when I say "Let us praise Goddess in Her Lefteousness for creating this wonderfull universe and making life possible." Let us change the world for the better with good words.
July 28
Do Lefties Rule?
There is a trait which I share with Barack Obama, John McCain, and approximately 10% of the world's population: all three of us are left-handed. For that matter, so are Bill Clinton, the first George Bush ("the father"), and I believe, Ross Perot. Even Ronald Reagan claimed to be left-handed, but I never saw him do anything that looked left-handed. He definitely wrote right-handed. Perhaps he was one of those right-handed people who trained himself to bat left-handed while playing baseball. While I am on the topic of lefties, both of my brothers are left-handed as well, along with what I am fairly certain is a disproportionately high percentage of scientists, athletes, architects, engineers, artists, musicians and authors. It seems that politicians, at least here in the United States, is another profession to add to the list. On the other hand, a disproportionately high percentage of lefties are retarded, dyslexic, or I believe autistic, as well. Also, lefties tend to suffer medical maladies such as alllergies and asthma at higher rates. (Of this list of mental and physical maladies, I only suffer allergies, although some people do think that I am "retarded." At least that's what Eunice says.) Lefties are also more likely to be homosexual than right-handed people. (My brothers and I, along with the above-mentioned politicians, are all heterosexual, though.)
As a lefty who is also a psychologist, I pay more attention than most people to the issue of handedness, including its causes and effects. One thing I have noticed about myself is that I am larger on the left side of my body as a whole, not just muscles, but my entire left side, although the difference is subtle. (Don't worry; I don't look like some sort of deformed person.) For example, my left leg, as I found out when I was a child, is about 1/4 inch longer than my right one. My hair even grows noticeably faster on my left side than my right (and I have a lot of it). These facts may be true of other lefties, or the converse true of righties, but these are the sort of things one usually never talks about, and tends to notice only of oneself, not other people. Observations such as these, as well as the fact that handedness tends to run in families, seem to indicate a biological basis for handedness. Although geneticists, many of whom are left-handed themselves, suspect a genetic factor in handedness, such a factor has not been definitively demonstrated. (My eldest brother in fact, is a geneticist, and he once told our familiy about how 7 of the 12 geneticists working in his lab, including himself, were lefties.) On the other hand, brain damage during the formation of the brain as a fetus, and hormonal factors have also been implicated as causes of left-handedness. The brain damage factor could account for the high incidence of retarded persons who are lefties, while the hormonal factor could account for both the observation that males are more likely to be left-handed than females, and the relatively high incidence of homosexuality among lefties. The issue of why right-handedness is so much more common than left-handedness also remains murky, and perhaps, multi-factored. Perhaps it is a genetic quirk. Perhaps it is a conformity issue from long ago, when righties may have even persecuted and ostracized lefties. For reasons such as those mentioned above, right-handed people mght tend to be somewhat more healthy, or more likely to have children. Another possibility is that right-handed people have a verbal and analytical advantage, since they are more attuned to the left (verbal and analytical) side of their brains.
This last possibility relates to notion that left and right-handed people may use their brains differently. There is a brain-body connection, such 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. Thus, right-handed people seem more oriented toward activities in the left hemisphere of the brain, and left-handed people seem to be more oriented toward activities in the right hemisphere of the cerebral cortex (thus the saying that "lefties are the only people in their right minds").. Since functions of the left and right cerebral cortices are different, it can be argued that left and right handed people think differently. In particular, since the right brain is more spatially oriented, more emotional, more musical, better able to see the "big picture," it only stands to reason that left-handed people would thrive better in related fields of endeavor. Certainly, such careers would include artists, musicians, humorists, architects, and engineers. Furthermore, lefties tend to have a larger corpus callosum, the bundle of nerves which connects the two sides of the brain. Thus, lefties may have somewhat better cooperation between the two sides of the brain. Since the left side of the brain tends to be the lingual and analytical side, such within-brain cooperation may be crucial to thought processes involved in science, writing, and politics. Add to that the fact that the right side of the brain is more the "big picture" hemisphere (to be technical, simultaneous processing as opposed to the sequential processing of the right hemisphere), and we may garner some insight into the phenomenon of lefties becoming so prominant in the politics of the United States in recent years. Clearly, both Obama and McCain are "big picture" thinkers, although the picture that McCain sees is quite different from that which Obama sees. In any case, it seems clear to me that the recent abundance of prominent left-handed politicians is not just happenstance.
Actually, I have a hypothesis, although I am not very confident that it is true, about handedness and political affiliation. Basically, I suspect that physical lefties also tend to be political lefties as well. However, the fact that such political righties such as McCain and George H. W. Bush ("the father") are physical lefties, calls this idea into question. On the other hand, one should keep in mind that both McCain and "daddy" Bush were born into prominent Republican families, with the proverbial "silver spoon" adorning their little mouths. There must have been consicerable pressure put upon them while growing up, to "get with the program" and adopt their parents' conservative political views. For the average lefty, however, the tendency to look at the "big picture," and to focus of people's emotions, seems to point in the direction of concern and empathy for the welfare of the public as a whole and that of the less fortunate in particular, which would tend to make lefties sympathetic with progressive political policies. Also, lefties may view themselves as minority of sorts, even though being left-handed rarely results in any sort of problem. (It can though; there is a subtle bias toward right-handedness in this culture -- "that's right," "righteousness," "raise your right hand," "right-hand man," "right hand of God," "sinister intentions," etc. In some cultures, the bias toward right-handedness is far less subtle, for example, slapping lefties for writing with the left hand, only allowing people to eat with the right hand, etc.) Minorities tend to identify with progressive political policies, as well. Of course, it would be easy to design a study to investigate this issue. The dominant, right side of my brain can envision it clearly. For the time being, I will have to leave this issue as speculation, however.
I have one other possibly handedness-related phenomenon to leave you with. It is another one of those facts that I never usually discuss, but I find it relevant here. Right now, the right side of my forehead is tingling. I just "tingled" it to make sure it is working, and sure enough, it is. I do not know if other lefties can do this, or if righties can tingle the left side of their foreheads, but I doubt it, since I have never heard of anyone else doing this. Nonetheless, I can voluntarily make the right side, but not the left side, of my forehead tingle with a warm, ticklish feeling. Apparently, it is something that I can do by creating certain activity in the right side of my brain. I noticed that I could do this as a young teenager. I do not intentiionally "tingle" my right forehead very often, but I did a moment ago just to make sure it still works. I believe it has something to do with being right-brained -- just some brain food for thought.