Knowing which is your dominant side will help you to work on your non-dominant side and balance things out, and although both sides of the brain work together a lot of the time, each of the different hemispheres processes information differently and has a different function.

Remember what we talked about last time:  Most people have a dominant side. While the left side of the brain processes written and verbal information, usually focusing on the details, the right side of the brain interprets information visually, emotionally, and in a more global manner. The right side of the brain focuses on the big picture, while the left brain focuses on the parts. To get the most from your brain, you need to be aware of and use both sides. Since most forms of the education you have received to date were most probably geared to the left side of the brain, it will take a special effort to develop the strengths of the right side of your brain.

Which one are you?  Is the dominant side of your brain the right or the left?  Try these simple checks.

Hands

Try doing something with one hand then the other. Which feels more comfortable?  Of course, you write with either your right or else your left, and will not be able to switch easily or quickly, so don’t even think about it – you might be able to try using your non-dominant hand for activities that require one hand rather than both: -

painting                       using a brush              using a knife to cut something           

drawing                       using a ruler                 using a trowel

using a comb               striking matches          using a cigarette lighter

turning  pages              sharpening a pencil      hitting the buttons of a calculator

Which hand do you do these with?

            Use a paintbrush                                             Hold a cigarette

            Throw a dart                                                   Brush your teeth

            Pick up a cup of tea                                        Wave to a friend

            Pat someone on the back                                Put your hand up for attention

            Point with                                                       Switch off a light

            Hold your chin when thinking                        Tick off when you’re counting

Now some of you might use either hand equally easily to do these things – you might prefer right to left or vice versa – you might not do some of these things anyway.

What matters is knowing if you have a preference - and changing so that you use your non-dominant hand – and being aware that you have changed.

Thumbs

Try this:  Quickly clasp your hands together - intertwining your fingers - which thumb rests on top of the other?

Feet

Go outside and kick a soccer ball around - which foot do you naturally use to kick the ball? 

Side

Which side of the bed do you sleep on – which side of anything do you normally prefer – monitor yourself if you aren’t sure – most of the time you will be unaware that you are choosing one side in preference to the other  –  but that doesn’t mean you aren’t doing.

You will find that like changing the hand that you write with - changing the foot that you kick a ball effectively with is very difficult – some things can’t be changed.

The more you naturally do with your right hand -  the more the left side of your brain dominates - the more you do things with your non-dominant hand - the more you will change sides.

Don’t change for the sake of change though  –  if you think you do something better with your non-dominant hand or foot – use that one in future – if you feel more comfortable using your dominant side – stay with it.

For a short while – maybe a couple of days  –  or the next two or three times you do something – use your non-dominant hand/foot/side – how are you going to shake hands with the left hand – remember where you are and who you are shaking hands with.

From birth we have been conditioned to use right or left for certain things.

Using knives and forks – shaking hands – using scissors and many other right side designed utensils and tools – changing gear and operating the hand-break in your car – using the mouse on your computer.

Does it run in your family?

Who is left-handed in your family – mother and son is a common combination – it is fairly common for everyone to be right-handed – do you think you influence or are influenced by anyone who uses the same hand as you – if you are then how?

How much do we inherit from our parents - left-sidedness is almost certainly handed down. (no pun intended)

Which hand depends on habit – design – peer group pressure – imitation -  a need not to look different (not always the same thing) – and comfort – real or imagined amount to the same –  using your preferred side is comfortable and comforting – you know who you are and where everything is relative to right or left – none of this is meant to impair your judgment – your movement – and nor is it meant to make you feel uncomfortable or too self-conscious about yourself – it is about helping you grow.

This time – a more detailed look at the side you are happy with – but also learning that you may not be using the side you are happiest with – if you change for that reason your non-dominant side will develop – you will start to use both sides of your brain – you will start to develop as a more rounded, more effective person.

Next time – we will look at the results of your efforts to change the dominant side you use to get through your normal day – we will look out for symptoms of change – ways of recognizing that you have changed – and the advantages that will certainly come your way when you master using both sides of your brain.–

The cinema has become, perhaps after television, the most popular form of visual entertainment in the modern world.  Every night, millions of people sit down to watch either a film on TV, a film on video, or else a film on the silver screen, at the cinema.

Cinemagoers walk away from film theatres satisfied with what they have seen, or disappointed, with some taking a sort of neutral view of the film’s quality.  All, however, have been in communication with the messages put forward by the film.

Unlike printed text, which uses the word, or music, which utilizes sound, the medium of film uses several different ‘tracks’ to reach its audience.  These are image, music, dialogue, noise, and written material. (Bellour) 2000

These five are mixed by the film’s producers to form a ‘language’, though this is not the language of the word, the sentence or the text, but the language of the sign.  All five are projected out to the audience, and each of the five constitutes a sign, a signifier, for something else.  The language of film is the language of semiotics, the language of the sign.

The term ‘signifier’ is used to denote the physical form of the sign.  In a film, this could be a smile, a red traffic signal, dramatic music, a shout, or the words of a letter someone is reading.  Each signifies something, represents something else.

A smile might signify happiness, joy or love, but it might also signify a triumph of some sort for the person smiling.  Everyone knows that a red traffic light means ‘STOP’.  Dramatic music could mean that something important is about to happen.  A shout usually signifies danger or pain of some sort, but that might depend on the context in which the shout is heard.  Finally, the words of a letter someone is reading on screen use the semantics of language, English, French, or Arabic, for example, in ways that we are familiar with.  The word ‘dog’, for example, in the English language, represents the canine species so familiar to pet lovers, and that despite the fact that there is absolutely nothing ‘dog-like’ in the letters of the word D-O-G.  The word is also a signifier.

These examples of signifiers and the things they signify, the signified, using real items, the referents, point to several important features of the language of the sign.  For the signifiers to represent something to on an audience, they must be sufficiently universal to be fully and quickly understood by everyone watching.  A green light that stops the traffic would puzzle everyone.

However, it is worth noting that film makers can use these ‘universals’ to some effect.  If a person who has just lost a race smiles into the camera rather than frowns, the audience may be alerted to the fact that something out of the ordinary is happening; that the person intended losing the race, for a reason that might become apparent later in the film. In a letter,  the word ‘DOG’ might turn out to be code for ‘SPY’, for example, and this points to yet another facet of the sign, that the context in which it appears helps determines its meaning.

A shout heard at a local football match might mean only that a goal has been scored, in a  battle,  that someone has been mortally injured.   Within different contexts, however, a universality must apply.  If it does not, that particular use of the signifier would appear either inappropriate, or misleading.

Finding meaning from apparently meaningless events is a very human trait, and the effect discovered by Lev Kuleshov in the 1920s in the former Soviet Union, and after whom it is named, is that two shots shown in quick succession in a film, one after the other, are not interpreted separately in the viewer’s mind.  They are interpreted as being causally related.  A + B  = C, in which A and B are the two shots, and C is a new value that is not originally included in the two shots. (Uhde) 1995.

So, for example, if the first shot is of one showing bombs dropping from a plane, and the second shows a village in flames, the audience will assume that the bombs hit the village and destroyed it.

This accords with that peculiar characteristic of humans; their quest for meaning in otherwise meaningless items.  This has its equivalent in language too.  Two sentences that appear one after the other will invariably be treated as being causally connected, even though there may be nothing to suggest that.

A:   The bombs fell from the plane.

B:   The village was completely destroyed..

C:    It would be assumed here that the village was destroyed by the same bombs that dropped from the plane.  What works on film sometimes works with language too.

In today's films, this is used to great effect, and is reminiscent of film director, Alfred Hitchcock's advice to would be film-makers; "Don't tell, show."  This seems to suggest that the five  'tracks' of film language are more powerful when used together than merely the spoken word on film.  Even Shakespeare commented that,  'the eye is more learned than the ear,' suggesting that we do indeed learn more from being shown than being told.

In the well known series of James Bond films, for instance, the utter ruthlessness of the villain, be he a megalomaniac or a drugs baron, is depicted not so much by words about him, but rather by scenes showing an unsuspecting former confidant of his coming to a grizzly end in a tank full of piranhas or something equally distasteful and spectacular.

That he is devious in the extreme is shown in the early sequences by the friendly and urbane hospitality he shows to the hero of the hour -007.

The scenes in which he shows his true colours, come as no surprise to an audience expecting some exotic, high-tec form of brutality from Bond's adversary.

Those of us who have seen all those films know exactly what to expect and are never disappointed.  In a sense, the 'language' of the film extends a communication to us over several films, and to that extent, James Bond films may be said to be formulaic and predictable.  Giving the public what they want, however, works at the box office; sequels sell.

In terms of what the audience bring to the film-theatre, I suppose by far the most important is expectation, the anticipation that what they are about to see on film is the same as what they expect.  Trailers, adverts and the almost innate knowledge of the modern cinemagoer regarding the stars as well as the producers coalesce to ensure that all the industry's blockbusters make money.

More unconsciously, audiences bring what has been called the 'willing suspension of disbelief' to the performance and while this is more in evidence and more necessary for audiences watching live performances on stage, it is still a vital part of an audience's participation in the cinema.  Some film theorists point to the fact that a three-dimensional image, with depth and field, is projected onto a two-dimensional screen and yet still perceived as being three-dimensional, as evidence that an audience is willing to suspend some of their disbelief.  The technology of the film industry giants is so extraordinary though as to render this statement quite meaningless. 

In the film 'The Lord of the Rings' for example, the appearance of enormous mammoths in the midst of thousands of fearsome looking orcs does not really require much suspension of disbelief; everyone watching this wonderful film is well aware that such creatures do not exist anywhere on the planet.  Where disbelief must be suspended initially is in entering Tolkien's world of dragons, dwarfs and hobbits.  The total universe of Middle Earth is more subtly projected. An inability to be fully engrossed in this world may interfere with any enjoyment gained from watching the film, or may prevent that person from seeing the film in the first place.

Art is not nature, art holds a mirror up to nature, or so we are told, but it is the holding and in the choosing what part of nature is mirrored that makes film so fascinating and meaningful.  The people watching the film in the splendid isolation of the darkened cinema enjoy a form of entertainment in which this one-way communication operates, only bringing to the scene what they can: their participation in the culture in which they dwell, and their wish to know that they are not alone in this world.

It is this identification with the characters in the film that hinders their critical appraisal of it.  Bertolt Brecht knew it and took steps to avoid it, but Hollywood revels in it.  More identification with the leading character/s sells more tickets.  Leave the critical theorizing to Media-studies courses at university.   ‘Not a dry eye in the house’ is what every successful film director aims for.

Suspense, letting the audience know something that the person on screen does not know, is one of the many devices used by skilful directors.  The screams heard when the woman is stabbed in the shower in the Hitchcock classic; ‘Psycho’ were probably nothing to do with the amount of pain being inflicted by the knife.  Audiences cannot really imagine that.  The screams were caused by the shock of the situation; the extreme levels of identification with the victim, the feeling of the powerlessness of either the victim on-screen, or the audience off, unable to stop the attack.

Why then do people go willingly to see a film they know, even hope, will terrify them?  They are experiencing something out of their total range of experience, and doing it in comfort too.  They are alone, even in a packed cinema.  Cinema is not a community event, it is an individualized one.  In the cinema, the audience is held enthralled, in a way that is rarely possible watching the TV or a video on TV.  The film on the big screen cannot be stopped.  The drama unfolds with or without your presence, and few people leave in the middle of a film.  That’s entertainment! –

There have been many calculations of the age of the world, ranging from Archbishop James Armagh confident announcement in the 17^th Century that the world was created in 4004BC, to the more likely calculation by modern astronomers that he was wrong by some 5000 million years.  (Lewis, 2000)

The human race, of course, has existed for a mere blink of an eye, compared to that length of time.  Sumeria, the first great river civilization, began in about 3,500 BC, when the people of what has now come to be known as the ‘Fertile Crescent’, between the two great rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, developed an agricultural system capable of supporting relatively large scale population levels. (Lewis, 2000)

From that time to the present, man has learned to adapt Earth to his needs, rather than the other way around.  People still live in harmony with Mother Earth in a few places while the majority of us live in environments that are entirely man made.  In that sense, the lives most of lead are pre-ordained, but we can still opt to live life in our own way, albeit within very narrow parameters.

We have found out, sometimes to our cost, that those parameters, those limits, can only be widened at a very great cost to the very thing that supports us. 

It has been estimated that in 30 years time, 55% of the world’s population will face severe water shortages, that most coastal regions will be clogged with pollution from massive urban growth, intensive farming, and other related factors, and that emissions of carbon dioxide will rise, doubling air pollution and accelerating global warming even further.  Ward (2002)

Any fight with Nature can only ever have one winner – the same winner – Earth, and  we would do well to learn that lesson before continuing to fight.  As Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the UN Environment Program (UNEP) says,  “The choices made today are critical for the forests, oceans, rivers, mountains, and other life support systems upon which the current and future generations depend.”  Ward (ibid)

There is  room for the improvement of man’s time on Earth, only if it does not involve compromising the natural environment.  Advances in science and technology do not have to devastate our planet.  It is usually our commercial interests in them that force environmental pressure to its limit.

Ecologist Mark Clayton reports that people inhabiting some areas on the Earth’s surface are consuming more than their local ecosystem can produce, finding support from ecosystems in other areas. As Clayton puts it, “These areas are being subsidized by other ecosystems.  They’re on a form of life support.”  Such areas are nearing or have reached what is termed their ‘ecological budget deficit’.  A World Wildlife Fund Living Planet Report recently stated that each human being, on average, has a need for the material that can produced by 2.28 hectares of land per person, while Earth only has a bio-capacity of 1.9 hectares per person, leaving a 0.38 hectare deficit.  This problem is most acute in the highly populated countries of South East Asia.  Clayton (2004)   

It seems more and more these days that what is thought of as ‘the good life’ is linked to how much money we earn and how many things we own and consume, and it is in consuming, especially in consuming without need or necessity, that we threaten the ecosystems that support us.

However, fulfillment in life does not come merely from consuming, from devouring mindlessly, but by thinking and creating, by relating and being, by acting and by doing, by finding interests that absorb our time and our energy, by loving and moving, not by exploiting and destroying. 

One writer maintained that having an interest or interests in one’s life was the way to living it in a healthy and fulfilling way.  He penned these wise words.                       

‘Interest is the key to life,

                  Interest is the clue.

                  Interest is the drum and fife,

                  And any God will do!’

                                                                              Source?

This is not meant as sacrilege; we all find God in our own separate and different ways.  What is important is that we actually do find God in our lives, to temper the practical side of our lives with the spiritual one, to make our lives whole.

William Wordsworth, living in what later was to become the most powerful, most affluent nation on Earth, saw that a concentration in one’s life on acquiring and having was not the way to happiness.  His poem, ‘The world is too much with us’ makes this point quickly.

                  ‘The world is too much with us,

                  Buying and selling, we lay waste our powers,

                  Little we see in Nature that is ours.’

                                                                              William Wordsworth

The World is indeed too much with us, as the Lakeland poet pointed out hundreds of years ago.  Unfortunately, it is still true for many today.  Here are the opinions of some other people who concur.

                  ‘It is good for man to try out new changes,

                  To explore all his capacities

                  Not to go down the dinosaur’s way,

                  And it is also good for him to know,

                  That his needs and nature are no more changed in fact,

                  In ten thousand years, than the beaks of eagles.’

                                                                              Robinson Jeffers

Here the American poet, Robinson Jeffers is saying that although modernity presents us all

with new challenges, which we should confront, man remains a creature that depends for its existence on values such as love and sincerity, dedication and devotion, intellectual pursuit and thoughtfulness.

French author and Nobel Prize winner, Anatole France observed that man finds relaxation in the labour of his own choosing and devising, that having hobbies or interests that involve physical and mental activity have their own intrinsic rewards.  One only needs to see the joy Olympic athletes find in their real dedication to sport to realize the truth of this statement.

‘Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labour by taking up another.’

                                                                              Anatole France

Lastly, philosopher, Bertrand Russell’s comment below makes the point that few of us fill our spare time with activities that are worthwhile and worthy of our time and attention.

‘To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.’

                                                                      Bertrand Russell

No one is suggesting that money does not play an important part of our lives: money is necessary, of course; one cannot live without having some of it.  However, knowing how much is enough and not coveting it above everything else is quite another thing.

Similarly, a focus on acquiring things rather than on doing things with one’s life means that most people’s potential creativity and flair is rarely realized or  tested.

As stated above, the key to the good life, a fulfilling, happy life is dependent upon faith and interests, and on the love of others: family and friends.  The traditions that have quickly and easily been almost put asunder in modern life in the West: family values, standards of decency and respect between people, and a faith in God, should have been cherished and nurtured, as they still are in many other, more fortunate societies.

It is usually said that there is no going back for the West; no return to the days before our relative affluence.  In a sense that is true.  We cannot expect people to accept less per se.

For those people though, the realization that spending their lives getting and spending is indicative of a greater malaise: alienation, is vital if society in those nations is to improve the quality of life for those who live within them.  

Using an allegorical example, some unfortunate people try to eat their way out of psychological depression.  They never succeed, however.  More often than not, they compound their psychological problems with sociological and physiological ones: their health suffers, as does the quality of their interpersonal relationships, and life in general as their ability to remain active and healthy becomes impaired.  So it is with those who indulge in what has come to be known as ‘retail therapy’ – ‘shopping to beat the Blues’.   No amount of buying – getting and spending – can compensate for a live wasted in behaving in this way.  In addition, the environment is put under pressure as this false need for goods is transformed into the plundering of our natural resources, and the subsequent creating of waste products that complete the vicious circle of spending to get better.

The signs of the massive amounts of waste produced by our consumer society are seen everywhere.  Not far from my home in England, on the side of the hills and only a mile and a half away from my door, old quarries are being filled in with the waste created by the consumer spending of the hundreds of thousands of people who inhabit the area.   These massive quarries are rapidly being filled up with rubbish from hundreds of thousands of households.  Plastic, tin, and organic material are being buried in huge quantities.  Some of the waste being dumped will inevitably contain things like old rechargeable batteries from phones and computers.  Such products contain substances that are some of the most deadly toxins known to man.  Cadmium, for instance, used in the manufacture of rechargeable batteries, does not disappear without trace into thin air; it leaches down with rainwater into the water table and pollutes drinking water.  The time scale for this to happen is probably unknown.  What is known is that it will happen and when it does the effects will be catastrophic.

Former US President, Jimmy Carter, commissioned a report on global environmental problems and forecasts when he was in office.  ‘The Global 2000 Report to the President’ made chilling reading when it came out before the end of his term in office.  It showed that environmental disaster is almost upon us in many areas of our life.

Today, several years on, many of its pronouncements and forecasts must already have come to fruition: forecasts and extrapolations that might have seemed unlikely at the time of writing will by now already have occurred.  Something has to change if other, similar disasters are to be prevented.  Being aware is a start, but we were made aware by the report itself and yet nothing changed. 

Liberal democratic governments attempt to practice ‘laissez faire’ politics; endeavouring to keep government out of most decision-making, particularly where trade, and certainly where consumer spending is concerned, though some governmental fiscal policies go some way to prevent economies from ‘overheating’.  However, public taste in what people spend their money on never comes under scrutiny apart from for considerations of safety and public decency.  On the contrary, governments invariably encourage people to spend, and the economic growth that stems from consumer spending is taken as a sign that the country is prospering.

In fact, economic growth is probably just as much a sign that the environment is being harmed as it is of anything else.  The environmental side effects of producing consumer durables are probably hardly ever included in economists’ models, and are discounted as exogenous variables; factors to be left out of economic equations.   The customer is never charged for the deleterious side effects on the environment of his purchases at the point of sale, but there is a price to be paid nevertheless.  It is paid by everyone, but is not always visible, and in fact is usually invisible. Groundwater is polluted by industrial waste; a nation’s health is slowly but inevitably compromised and life is threatened. 

It is fortunate that we are at the end of the food chain.  Were we lower down it, we would have felt the impact of such pollution by now, just as many species of plants, animals, birds and fish already have.  We may be at the end of that chain, but we are in it nonetheless and that cannot be altered.  We are pointing a loaded gun at our own heads.

References

Clayton M (2004) Voracious Earth lives beyond its means     In Christian Science Monitor  reported in Gulf News   Friday, September 3^rd.  2004

Lewis J.E. (20000) Eyewitness History 2000   Carroll and Graf  New York

Ward O. (2002)  Planet’s future at stake   Toronto Star Newspapers Ltd.  May 23.