Perception and Writing

This is about the actual task of writing, and how it's an indication of how we think. In Western languages we read and write left to right, which uses the left side of the brain. Around 550 BCE Greeks developed the alphabet to do this. Remember the left brain is the rational, logical, sequential side, and that's the side we use the most in Western civilization. So we in the West have developed more behaviors guided by that side, our writing, reading, talking, all influencing how we perceive and respond. Linear single file thinking.

I was surprised by this about non-Western writing. Remembering the right brain has more of a gestalt approach, seeing things as a whole. Languages like Arabic and Hebrew are often written in consonants, so the reader has to fill in the vowels. I would have a hard time understanding 'stmp n th bg'. Are you stomping on the bug, or putting stamps in the bag? So the context is all. The languages that do this are written right to left. Your eyes move right to left, controlled by the right hemisphere.

I'll leave it up to you to ponder how this influences the clash of civilizations, cultural misunderstandings, the attainments and historical development of each. I'm thinking, how one group of people came to develop left to right writing and the other right to left. What were the influences on Western human groups that lent itself to left to right; what experiences? How come their human experience was so different from the people that started their writing left to right? Since I'm from the civilization that is left to right, I wonder if a right to left writer/reader would even bother to ask this question.