The Left Hand of Light
Monday, February 5th, 2007Note: An expanded, updated version of this essay has been reprinted at the Huffington Post with the title Southpaws: The Hops in Humanity’s Beer?
Those who are, like me, left-handed and older than forty probably recall being forced to write with our right hand and the frustration of using many “handed” tools, including scissors, rulers and computer mice. We also remember being told that left handers are prone to depression, immune deficiencies, shorter lives, dyslexia and a host of other woes… and no wonder, given the drizzle of harassment! Finally, there is the conflation of left with evil, wrong or inept in practically all religions and languages (sinister, gauche, linkisch…), not to mention most political systems.
The percentage of left handers hovers around 10% regardless of race and culture. The most common explanation for the persistence of the trait was that left-handed warriors had the element of surprise in primitive societies. As a result of this sneakiness, they survived long enough to leave a few like-handed descendants (notice that this explanation is exclusively male-oriented and also implies that the trait is dominant).
From my readings on the topic and my own awareness of what strengths and weaknesses I possess, I hit upon a slightly more flattering explanation for the persistence of the trait. Namely, I decided that left-handed people must be less lateralized in their thinking. This can lead (literally) to crossed wires — and hence to such outcomes as dyslexia and depression. But it can also lead to less mental compartmentalizing, more efficient multi-tasking, enhanced ability to see the big picture and to think across boundaries.
Results from recent tests in several neurobiological disciplines lend support to these speculations. Apparently, left handers do cluster at the extreme ends of the IQ range, the connections between the two sides of their brain are faster than in right handers, they often use both hemispheres for language and they excel at complicated tasks. So left handers may not just be a relic of barbaric times, after all. Instead, they may be the hops that add zest to humanity’s beer.
Here is one link to recent work:
http://people.howstuffworks.com/left-handed.htm