In Two Minds. (Left and Right Handed Thinking)

Most everyday items are ergonomically designed by and for right-handed people. For example, scissors will not cut if you use your left hand because your fingers push the scissor-blades apart not together or when you go out for a meal in a nice restaurant the cutlery and glasses are laid out for right handed people, There's no joy in using standard computer mice, old style can openers, guitars, corkscrews, vegetable peelers, fountain pens, sporting equipment, camcorders... the list goes on. There are specialist stores that cater for 'lefties' but these are few and far between and items are generally more expensive when compared to their 'rightie' counterparts. We now take it for granted but in Europe less than a hundred years ago they used to tie children's left arm to their side so they were forced to write with their right hand, it was abuse, plain and simple. There's no longer any abuse of this nature in European or American schools but left-handers are still forced to live in a right-handed world and that doesn't look like changing any day soon.

This is bad enough for lefties by itself but there is another, more significant underlying difference. Handedness is generally the outward manifestation of brain hemisphere dominance. The dominant hemisphere is usually the opposite side to the hand a person uses to write with, so left-handed people are, on the whole, dominated by the right-hemisphere (or right half) of their brain and vice versa. Type 'brain split test' into any internet search engine and you'll find a slew of online tests that will, with varying degrees of accuracy, tell you what the % split is.