One Lucky Soul: Not Right: The Ancient Demonisation of the Left Side

The Ancient Demonisation of the Left Side by Omar Cherif, One Lucky Soul

Have you ever wondered why the directional right hand and the concept of correctness share the same word? Why does the left side get a bad rep across centuries, cultures, languages, and sacred texts and manuals? Where does this superstitious belief originate from? 

The topic had been in mind for decades. Time to compile the memories and research into this following article. This is for all the lefties out there who ever felt left out in a right-sided world.  

As a right-handed schoolboy in Egypt, I remember hearing about certain parents or teachers who tied their kids’ left hands behind their back to force them to use the right one. Aouch — think of someone doing it to your main hand and messing with your inherent neurobiology! Why they did it? Likely because they thought it’s the “right” way to write. Fortunately, this regressive practice wasn’t emanating from our circles; in fact, at Les Jésuites each class of, say, 30 contained several left-handed desks.   

Enter breaking my left arm one summer as a 9-year old in the South of France. Six Nails for My Double-Fractured Arm in Sainte-Maxime tells the entire tale.

  “A remarkable thing I remember about this whole rigmarole was something a friend of my parents the prominent orthopaedist, Dr. Samir Fanous, had told me when we met by coincidence on the plane back from France to Cairo. After he had a chat with my parents who informed him about what had recently transpired he said:  

‘You know the plate and nails will make your bone and arm stronger; because at this early age bones are still young and haven’t yet fully developed.’ Not too sure if he actually said the second sentence though, or if it was implied, or if my young mind understood it later.  

I nodded while standing there in the aisle in my white socks, listening to him comforting me. But to be honest, down deep inside I truly thought that he’s just saying something nice to this kid who just had a surgery to make him feel better.   In my mind I was like Yeah Right!

Surprisingly, two or three years later I began noticing that I use my left hand a lot more than usual. I use it to open jars among other activities that I used to normally do with my right hand. In basketball during my teens, it was easier for me to play with my left hand, which was an added skill I practised on — using Michal Jordan and Magic Johnson VHS videos.

Years later I researched what Dr. Fanous had said during that flight and it actually is true. Now that I roll and drum — rather perfectly — with my left, I can safely say that I have become ambidextrous. And the surgery along the plate and nails are most probably the reason.”   

Today, whenever the son of a friend or any other youngster I care about breaks his arms or legs, I am compelled to share the above with them as an act of encouragement.

During those teenager years following the surgery, a friend and teammate in our basketball team, Victor, was left-handed and he was an amazing player; to have a left-handed or two among your team is always an elemental and strategic decision. Then came a left-handed girlfriend, with whom I also played basketball as well as pool.

It became apparent that all the lefties I knew are not cursed or glitched. They actually have a unique edge, despite navigating a physical reality chiefly engineered for right-handers. So what is the deal behind this enmity, antagonism, and discrimination against the left?

Fast-forward to today when I have gathered enough information about the captivating topic to write about it. To get to the bottom of why the right side came to be preferred to the left one in the human world, let us pull back the curtain on the etymological and historical bahareez — ultimate essence — of how the world rigged the vocabulary against the left side.  

Dunkin’ Doughnut, rightly so — Gezira Club, circa 1993

Now as a fact to begin with: Approximately 90% of all humans are right-handed. And my childhood memory about tying kids’ hands to force them into conformity? It turns out it is not an exclusively Egyptian form of abuse.

  In a 2007 study in Taiwan, 59.3 percent of children studied had been forced to convert from left-handedness to right-handedness. The study took into account the economic status of the children’s families and found that children whose parents had less education were more likely to be forced to convert. Even among children whose parents had higher levels of education, the conversion rate was a staggering 45.7 percent.

 Interestingly, however, cats, rats, and mice that were studied show handedness seems to be equally split between right-and left-pawedness.  

When you then look at religions demanding you step into a room exclusively with your right foot, ( إدخل برجلك اليمين ) “Edkhol breglak el yemeen” or when the person on the right is invited to enter or exit first while saying “yemeen”, right — as the right preferred “Islamic” way — any inquisitive mind is naturally compelled to ask questions.  

Also across different languages, the word “left” is used as a direct, literal insult — gauche in French and ( شمال ) shemal in Arabic. French words like “droit”, law, as well as “adroit” and “maladroit” carry the same bias.   

The bias behind “the devil’s hand” has equally made it to the English language in phrases and idioms — all of which suggest a negative view of left-handedness. As detailed in the paper Left Handedness, The Bible and The Quran: Implications for Parents and Teachers, from Research & Reviews: Journal of Educational Studies, everyday terminology across English associate the left hand with negative concepts.  

A “left-handed compliment” is an insult; “two left feet” is being clumsy or awkward, especially while dancing; “the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing” describes poor communication and coordination within an organisation.  

Moving into the domestic realm, a “left-handed marriage” is an adulterous sexual liaison; a “left-handed honeymoon” means travelling with someone else’s husband; a “left-handed wife” is actually a mistress. 

Even more terminology like “left-wing”, and “out in left field”, as well as French (gauche), German (Linkish), Russian (Levja), and Latin (Sinistra) consistently carry negative connotations.

In contrast, English phrases and idioms involving the right side carry positive connotations while implying correctness.

• “Right as rain”: Standing perfectly healthy, fine, or recovered after a chaotic storm. 

• “By rights”: If things were fair and just, this is what should happen.

• “In one’s own right”: Being successful, qualified, or famous based on your own individual merits and abilities.

• “To be within your rights”: Having the legal or moral justification to do or claim something.

• “To be in the right”: Being morally or legally correct in an argument or situation.

• “To make all the right noises”: Saying what people expect or want to hear, often insincerely to gain approval.

• “To set someone right”: To stop someone believing something that is not true, or to correct someone by telling them the truth; also to make someone feel better.

• “Not right in the head”: Crazy, foolish, or mentally unsound.

The last idiom is an interesting exception that follows the pattern. This semantic twist is a clear nod to how deeply our language equates the word right with correctness, where a state of mental confusion is simply described by saying a mind is literally lacking in rightness.

 Dictionaries as well frequently equate left-handedness with clumsiness and incorrectness — a perception that largely stems from navigating tools designed for right-handers, whereas right-handed individuals similarly struggle with left-handed tools. You can find the full analysis and discussion of these linguistic patterns in the referenced study above.

As such, we aren’t just looking at random quirks. We are looking at an ancient, cross-cultural, and highly systematic campaign to demonise the left side — using language along with an eclectic variety of exhausted superstitions. Sounds strange when you look at how the words, expressions, and even sentiments survived to modern times. But it all originated from somewhere, from several times and places as we are about to see.

The six nails extracted in 1987 Sainte-Maxime next to the unevil left-hand
scar today in 2026

✵ 1. The Global Linguistic Defamation Campaign  

The lexicon of human history is heavily weighted against the left side — cutting deep through epochs, continents, and tongues — showing that the collective subconscious has used the left as a generational shorthand for broken, clumsy, forbidden, and evil for thousands of years.

The Latin Betrayal (Sinister): In ancient Latin, the literal, basic word for the left hand or left side was “sinister”. Because Roman soothsayers believed that bad omens and dark spirits always appeared from the left (west) side during rituals, the directional word sinister slowly morphed into our modern English definition: Threatening, ominous, and inherently evil. Meanwhile, their Latin word for right was “dexter”, which natively evolved into dexterity — meaning skilful, blessed, and graceful.  

The French Slur (Gauche): In French, the word for left is “gauche”. Because right-handed majorities looked awkward trying to use their left hands, the culture used gauche to define someone who is socially clumsy, crude, tactless, and completely lacking in grace. Ironically, the same can be said about a right-handed person throwing a ball or trying to use a hammer or scissors.   

The Old English Weakness (Lyft): The actual modern English word “left” originates from the old Anglo-Saxon word “lyft”, which literally translated to weak, foolish, or broken.  

The Egyptian Street Slang (Shemal): In Egyptian Arabic, when you want to describe someone who is untrustworthy, corrupt, shady, or running a illicit operation, you don’t use a complex legal manual. You look at them and say, “el bet deeh shemal” (this girl is left) or “mashya shemal” (walking left). The direction itself is weaponised as a moral failure.    

Because roughly 90% of humans are born right-handed, the prehistoric masses did what the herd always does: it took the minority 10% configuration, got terrified by the unfamiliar movement, and manufactured an institutionalised manual of superstitions to demonise it. The very semantics of human language seem to have likewise been weaponised to ensure the left side remained synonymous with failure — perhaps emerging from a primal, evolutionary reflex.

To understand the sheer absurdity of this statistical tyranny, one only needs to look at what happens when a naturally conditioned right-hander is forced to step off their automated script. Try asking a lifetime righty to shoot a basketball, throw a stone, or swing a hammer using exclusively their left hand. The entire illusion of their majority dominance instantly collapses into pure, uncoordinated comedy. We look ridiculously awkward — outright effeminate, as a hilarious viral video once pointed out. The shoulder buckles, the wrist goes limp, and the body movement looks like a data glitch.  

Yet for centuries, millions of left-handed children were violently, ignorantly forced to endure this agonising awkwardness in reverse — their natural, creative main hand literally bound behind their desks to appease a campaign of primitive, ancestral indoctrination by a simplistic and perhaps paranoid herd.

To anchor the timeline closer to home, the left-handed uncle I consulted for this enticing piece shared that they tried this [de]programming on him as a child in 1940s Cairo, but eventually gave up. 

A doctor of engineering with a sharp scientific mind, he fought the whole war until 1973 before moving to the U.S to take charge of automotive thermosciences. Looking back at my findings, his response cut straight to the bone: 

“Never had a problem with being a lefty, and actually I was kind of proud of it. Initially, they tried to make me use my right hand, but gave up quickly. The religious part is just fucked up.”

Spoken like a true southpaw.

─── ✵ ────── ✵ ────── ✵ ───

✵ 2. The Religious Script Matrix   

When the primeval majorities started codifying and organising their tribal religions, they baked this right-handed dominance straight into their cosmic blueprints, creating a rigid moral binary.

The Judeo-Christian Judgment Line

The right hand is mentioned positively 100 times in the Bible, while the left hand is mentioned only 25 times, all negatively. In the book of Exodus 15:6, Psalm 118;16 of the New International Version (NIV) the Bible presents the right hand as the hand of strength. Sitting at someone’s right hand is considered a position of honour. The right hand is consequently valued over the left hand in the Bible.  

In the Book of Genesis, Eve is written as emerging from Adam’s left side, instantly pinning the direction to inferiority and weakness in the mystical texts. By the time you reach the Book of Matthew, the division is total: on the Day of Judgement, God divides humanity like a shepherd separating sheep from goats. The blessed sheep sit on his right hand to inherit heaven, while the cursed goats are banished to his left hand straight into the eternal fire of the devil. Indeed, during the Middle Ages left-handed people were routinely targeted and accused of practising witchcraft — simply because the devil was assumed to be a southpaw!

Medieval Jewish Philosopher Maimonides listed 100 blemishes a Jewish priest could not have, and being left-handed was one of them. According to tradition, an itchy left-hand indicated you will lose money. An itchy right-hand indicates you will receive money.

The Middle Eastern Practical Origin

In Islam and ancient Middle Eastern traditions, the demarcation between the hands was reinforced by a practical survival baseline.   

Long before toilet paper or modern sanitisation existed, the left hand was strictly reserved for cleaning oneself after using the bathroom, while the right hand was exclusively reserved for eating, greeting, and shaking hands. Because the left hand was literally handling the waste, the culture naturally labelled it as “unclean”; it was a social, behavioural script that eventually hardened into religious laws — regarding which foot to step with or which hand to eat and handle sacred books with — lasting in the collective subconscious to this day.   

“It is haram to eat with your left hand, the devil will be sitting next to you,” was another belief heard left and right as a young boy. Not that I believed it myself, but I instantly thought of my left-handed friends among all others and realised the flaw in the logic.

So an All-Knowing, All-Powerful God creates left-handed people and gay people and all sorts of colourful people only to then begin demonising these minorities — deeming them evil. What nonsensical codswallop is that. The more you mature, the more these man-made superstitions stand exposed as mere centuries-old stories, opinions, and religious views that cannot be taken seriously, certainly not literally.  

To get to a truer meaning behind the religious scriptures and spiritual truths, they often must be understood metaphorically, as parables and fables. The secret lies in the allegories and analogies. This brings us back to what a metaphorical truth is: How the implications of a story can be accurate whether or not the details had physically occurred. 

Echoing with the words of Egyptian-born Hypatia of Alexandria (350–370 – 415 AD), the Hellenistic Neoplatonist mathematician, astronomer, inventor, and philosopher:

“Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them. In fact, men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth — often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.” 

Just like many seers before and after her, the brilliant Hypatia was brutally murdered by a religious mob. Simply because her free thinking was a threat to the established paradigm of the time. 

I think this whole left and right polarity could have very well been the metaphorical narrative used in ancient times to embody the duality and totality of man: Microcosm and Macrocosm, Mind and Heart, Matter and Spirit, Pain and Pleasure, Right and Left, “Good” and “Bad”, “Right” and “Wrong”; they are everywhere. Here, it was never a literal truth about one side being better or more correct than the other. Think about it. Our entire language is dualistic in nature and we do learn by means of opposites.

While these outdated societal norms and biases may be crucial blueprints of human history — as historical artifacts shaped by human perspective — our morals, laws, and scientific understandings ought to evolve with time.

Engraving by Isidore-S. Helman after Charles Monnet depicting the French National Constituent Assembly in Versailles, 4 August, 1789 - Not Right: The Ancient Demonisation of the Left Side by Omar Cherif, One Lucky Soul

The split in action: The National Assembly inside the Menus-Plaisirs hall at Versailles — where biological hand traits were permanently projected onto the global political canvas. 

✵ 3. Origin of the Political “Right” and “Left”: The Seating Chart of 1789 

Did you know that the actual political labels of “Left” and “Right” were born entirely by a spatial accident in Versailles assembly hall during the French Revolution of 1789?

The French didn’t choose the seating arrangement based on modern network television scripts. They chose them because human brains are structurally wired to project our deep biological hand traits directly onto our environments.   During the Estates-General, later transforming into the National Assembly, the deputies seated themselves based on their political affiliations.

The defenders of the absolute hierarchy sat on the right hand of the Assembly’s President — housing the supporters of the traditional monarchy, the aristocracy, and the established church.  The smashers of the status quo gathered on the left — uniting the champions of the revolution, systemic social change, and a direct limit to royal power. 

Natively, the French called the Left the “party of movement” and the Right the “party of order”. It was a fluid, philosophical description of human behavioural mechanics.  

The terms evolved seamlessly with time. Newspapers and journalists in 19th-century France began utilising “left” and “right” as rapid shorthand labels for progressive and conservative views. The terminology then spread across borders throughout the early 20th century, cementing itself as the standard way to map the global political spectrum. 

Today, the core configuration of both definitions inside the political realm has hardened into a rigid binary:  

Right: The domain of tradition, social hierarchy, state authority, and free markets with limited government intervention.  

Left: The domain of social equality, structural reform, collective progress, and an active government role in society. 

Centuries later, this universal biological projection remains weaponised by ruling establishments worldwide to keep the population polarised and fractured into tribes easier to control. Divide and Conquer.   

Such a divisive machine of modern indoctrination forces citizens to identify with the mere presentation of a political ideology — the label — while turning global governance into a corporate team sport between Republicans and Democrats, Red versus Blue. Naturally extremes are reached on both sides of the spectrum.

For a more in-depth analysis, check my piece from last July, A Superpower on the Couch: Reflections from the Ten-Year North American Trip.

A Dialectic With Myself: Practical Yin Yang Approach to Coincidentia Oppositorum is an earlier psychophilosophical piece dealing with the topic. “The problem with black-and-white thinking is that you never get to see the rainbow.”

The Intertwining of Pain and Pleasure is yet another exposé about the peculiarly mysterious relationship between the two states  ― neurobiologically, psychologically, and philosophically.

Suntimental Sinai Sunrise with the local woof pack — Dahab, June 2026

✵ 4. The Solar Alignment: Facing The Sunrise  

There is an ancient, non-local astrological pattern behind the right-left duality.

In ancient Indo-European traditions — long before the birth of modern theology and secular politics — when a priest or shaman stood up to pray, they always aligned their physical body facing the rising sun in the East. 

When you stand facing the East, your right hand typically points toward the warm, bright, and life-giving South, while your left hand points toward the cold, dark, and frozen North.  The right became natively associated with light, life, and correctness; the left became the dark path of the shadow, the sunset, and the unconditioned unknown.

 It seems subsequent religions simply inherited this primitive solar sentiment, integrating the old framework straight into their own dogmas using their own tailored reasons.

─── ✵ ────── ✵ ────── ✵ ───

✵ 5. The Sokhna “Hermit Phase” and the Hand-Switching Djembe Experiments 

Following five years of playing religiously at the Venice Beach Drum Circle every week and at Full Lunacy once a month, I resided by a different beach in El Ein el Sokhna by the Red Sea for an entire two and a half years.

This time I was alone almost in the entire area. Naturally, I was missing the whole vibe of sharing the tunes — and energy, time, essence — with others. This solitary existence was reflected on my drumming.   I then had all the time in the world to experiment on the djembe. Different hand positions, a variety of fingers positions, taking advantage of “Rhythmical Space”, or the silence between the beats, often involving split seconds. Sometimes even play with Chopin or Baroque music in the background. I would also record myself to watch later and analyse. It was when Unshackled by the Red Sea — Free-Form Djembe Jam: The Lysergic Recordings [video] came to being.

Right hand-left brain for the orderly base beat and left hand-right brain for the chaos
— Captured in the Zone by Oliver Rossberg, Venice Beach Drum Circle

  
One realisation from that solitary time involved the left and right hemispheres of the brain: You see, the left side controls the right hand and it is the one into analysis, logic, and facts; one that guards the traditional status quo — the ancient root of the political right. As it turned out on the hide, my right hand was usually the one playing the repetitive, orderly base beats. 

On the other hand, the right hemisphere of the brain is the creative, intuitive, artistic side rooted in imagination. This translated directly to my left hand — which was far more playful and unconditioned with its slaps and tones, constantly trying to push past the boundaries of the restrictive status quo, much like the original, revolutionary political left — breaking through the “shoulds”, “musts”, and “can’ts”.

 For months, I would make it a habit to stop my hands whenever I know it is about to play a repetitive beat coming from muscle memory, instantly choosing to play a rather distinctively different sound, sometimes by switching hands mid playing. Then take it from there. This attempt to hack my own brain was an effort to break the subconscious habit of playing from memory.

Playing from the past, you see, is simpler and more “safe and comfortable” — the path of least resistance. Conversely, forcing yourself to delve into unknown beats and tunes allows you to improvise on the spot, honing your skills while enriching you with an added level of sensitivity. A certain Random Precision is birthed out of the moment to add a method to the madness, an order to the chaos. It likewise keeps your music fresh and always, always new, sometimes outright weird.   

To be able to observe the two sides of the brain communicating, one needs to rise above their dialogue. With practice, you can learn how to reconcile the binary duality of the left with the right — thoughts with emotions, mind and heart, order and chaos, preservation and liberation — while creating balanced melodies played by both hands. The outcome may then seem or sound like it is more than one player.   

The novelty was probably my way to entertain myself amidst the solitude and to deal with missing playing with others. I remain grateful for those two+ years because they turned out to be highly educational. Creativity is already therapeutic, but digging into your own inner neurobiology to understand why you do what you do — in both hands — remains illuminating.     

“There is some confusion as to what magic actually is. I think this can be cleared up if you just look at the very earliest descriptions of magic. Magic in its earliest form is often referred to as ‘the art’. I believe this is completely literal. I believe that magic is art, and that art, whether that be music, writing, sculpture, or any other form, is literally magic. Art is, like magic, the science of manipulating symbols, words or images, to achieve changes in consciousness... Indeed to cast a spell is simply spell, to manipulate words, to change peoples consciousness, and this is why I believe that an artist or writer is the closest thing in the contemporary world to a shaman.”  
— Alan Moore    

─── ✵ ────── ✵ ────── ✵ ───

✵ 6. The Psychology of Left-Handedness    

To finalise the article, let us see what science has to say.   A breakthrough study published in the prestigious journal Scientific Reports completely flips the historical “devil’s hand” superstition on its head.

 Scientists in Italy analysed over 1,100 individuals to decode the precise psychological makeup of handedness. What they discovered is a devastating evolutionary blueprint that validates your entire “outsider edge” philosophy.  

Another interesting discovery regarding Self-Developmental Drive: Lefties showed an intensely high personal development-oriented competitiveness — meaning they actively use challenges to upgrade their internal motherboard and evolve their consciousness.   

Low Anxiety Avoidance: While right-handed individuals showed a strong, statistically significant tendency to avoid competition due to anxiety, left-handers face conflict head-on. They don’t shy away from the friction.

  The High-Velocity Mental Profile: The data shows that strongly lateralised left-handers — pure southpaws — possess a radically different, high-velocity psychological cadence compared to the right-handed majority.

Hyper-Competitive Orientation: Lefties scored significantly higher on “hypercompetitiveness”. This isn’t just wanting to do well; it is a profound, relentless internal drive to outperform, win, and break past established boundaries.   Remembering Victor, the teenage ex, and my 80-year-old uncle, I can safely concur.

The Evolutionary “Fighting Hypothesis”: The researchers used game theory and the Evolutionarily Stable Strategy (ESS) to explain why left-handedness (a mere 10% minority) has stubbornly persisted throughout human evolution instead of being wiped out by the majority.

The Surprise Edge: Because right-handers are deeply accustomed to facing their own familiar patterns, they get completely disarmed when encountering the unexpected. In hand-to-hand, boxing, or antagonistic sports (like fencing), a left-hander delivers a high-velocity “surprise effect”. The same can be said about left-handed baseball pitchers today, as well as in tennis and ping pong; the trait may also be encouraged in combat soldiers to give them a strategic advantage in fighting against right-handed opponents who are unaccustomed to fighting ‘Lefties’.  

Our right-handed brain simply cannot react or predict the movement fast enough. I can totally relate when remembering myself playing ping pong against left-handed players — It is certainly noticeable as the angles are different.    

The Frustration Fuel: The scientists noted that lefties spend their entire existence navigating a physical world engineered exclusively for right-handers. Not just that, but they are often discriminated against by social, educational and religious institutions. Social customs and even language alienated and antagonised the left-hander as being “glitchy”, “different”, and even “bad”.  

This continuous structural friction breeds a healthy, baseline frustration that acts as premium fuel, pushing them to compete harder, think more strategically, and maintain a high-alert antenna just to survive the layout. I guess knowing that you are a minority can do that.   

Some scholars actually regard left-handers as the last unorganised minorities in society, because they have no collective power and no real sense of common identity.   

The Victory Mindset   

Here lies the most brilliant alchemical punchline: When the researchers put the volunteers through the Pegboard Task — a classic lab test measuring literal physical hand dexterity — there was absolutely no difference in physical skill between lefties and righties. So we can put that to rest.   

This means the left-handed edge is not some mechanical physical advantage — it is a purely psychological mindset. Their advantage simply lies in their sharper appetite for challenge, their comfort with conflict, and their unconditioned, unpredictable strategy. 

A lighthearted fact I just came across to bid you farewell with: International Left-Handers Day is held annually every August 13th, mere few weeks ago. The coolest part? The 13th was chosen to poke fun at superstitions surrounding left-handedness — like Triskaidekaphobia and, when you add Friday to the fear, Paraskevidekatriaphobia.

Well played, lefties, well played.  

Because beneath the historical biases, the scientific data, and the playful superstitions lies a much grander, universal equation. 

Order and Chaos: Preservation and Liberation. Yin and Yang. Left and Right. Both sides are equal elements in one wholesome dance under the waterfall. Nothing can truly transcend or grow without unity.

——————————————————————————————