LEFT OUT

Left-handedness is not about being left-handed. It's about being prone to jeopardy.

Many studies agreed that this variation (deviation?) in perception and orchestrating things is not a human phenomenon; not only, that is. Fish, chickens, monkeys: they all show symptoms of lateralization that helps them survive. And if a specimen is directively-challenged, it has difficulty getting by in a group. The funny thing is that the poor creature is unaware of this handicap and won't get to the bottom of things and find out why it is always a bit of an outcast.

Chickens, by way of illustration, have an inclination to attack whatever approaches them from their left side. Therefore, they approach one another from the right if they have peaceful intentions, such as mating rituals of shaking rumps or friendly clucky conversations. In contrast, those, say, reverse ones do it the other way around and end up pecked and left-out. They tend to fall upon those who want to say "hi", whereas those who want to fight get a warm welcome. They can't tell who's the good guy and don't know why their best of intentions lead to one disaster after another and this cluelessness often results in a peculiar cognitive dissonance. Psychologically put, to minimize the accompanying tension, one has to aquire or invent new beliefs and attitudes, which leads to trial and error practices (breeding frustration) or reconcilation with the hermitic fate (breeding frustration).

An analogy for humanity? Shudder to think.