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Why Am I A Lefty?

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I am one of the ten percent of the population who’s left-handed.  In school, I was told not to use my left hand for writing, but I found it impossible to comply.  I have since learned to survive in a right-handed world.

Why most people are right-handed is still something of a mystery.  A popular theory is that it’s an inherited trait.  It’s true that left-handed parents produce twenty five percent more left-handed children than others.  However, since about ten percent of identical twins have different handedness, it seems there’s more to the explanation than genes alone.

Another theory is that position in the womb, or certain fetal events, may contribute to left-handedness.  Since twins are more prone to fetal injuries than single births, and since the incidence of left-handedness in twins is more than double the average, there may be something in this theory.

Many people find some particular skill easier when they use the opposite hand to their normal handedness.  For example, I learned to pitch a ball like a right-hander, but bat like a left-hander.  This could be because we learn by copying the way other people do things.  In any event, left-handers as a group are less strongly left-handed, than right-handers are right-handed.

So next time your handedness comes up, be thankful you don’t live in the middle ages, when lefties were branded witches or devils.

MOVING BEYOND MATTER
 by Ron Hughes

The matter of hand preference appears to be more of a "wiring" issue than a choice we make.  For reasons that are still unclear to researchers, our brains appear to favour one hand or the other without any conscious input from us.

The issue of handedness has been diffused in our western social context, though in the physical world, the "righties" still have the advantage.  But there is a lot of pressure for us to conform now in other ways.  Some decry the peer pressure which draws young people into harmful habits and so-called "bizarre" behaviour.  But these same people may be blind to their own peer induced conformity to styles, language, and behaviour.

"Political correctness" is an issue these days.  Anyone who dares to challenge the social assumptions of the day may find him or herself alienated from friends and colleagues who accept the party line on specific issues.

And we are often blind to the social influences which shape our thinking.  It is often difficult, though profitable, to be able to step outside of our usual frame of reference to take a look at the assumptions that underlie the attitudes and behaviours that we see as normal.

Pressure to conform often keeps us from considering possible answers.  That means we may miss "the right answer" simply because we were unwilling to look in the direction in which it lay.

In science today, material explanations for everything is seen as eventually possible.  Furthermore, non-material explanations are not acceptable even where no reasonable material one exists.  This puts a great deal of professional pressure on scientists who do see solid evidence for a spiritual dimension at work in our world and in our lives.

Those who see a spiritual element in nature do not pretend to have all of the right answers, but it seems reasonable to hear them out and allow their hypotheses to be tested to the degree that it is possible.  The concept of "God" need not threaten science.  In fact, for hundreds of years, science rested securely on a theological foundation – one which postulated that God had created an orderly universe and was, in part, knowable through it.  Have you made any attempt to know God?