The Role of Direction, Is Right Right?

Directions have been a staple of our society, from maps in malls to turning signals in cars or even in the way we describe things. We depend on our ability to navigate during our day-to-day lives, with signs dotting every corner of the street. The directions of left and right are the basis to human society; every action we take relies on the concept of location. Navigation has been so essential to our lives that the global traffic sign market in 2021 was valued at a whopping $299.65 million and is estimated to grow another $100 million in 2032. However, directions do not only play a part in physically describing where we need to go or what to do. Directions play a major role in the way we represent ourselves and others, as left and right are used to describe more abstract concepts like good and bad. We say that people who know their path in life have a sense of direction and we associate rightness with correctness. Something still isn’t clear about this—how did linguistics originate from turning left and right?

As organisms developed over hundreds of millions of years, adaptations for locomotion were heavily selected by nature, and movement drives further evolution. Almost all animals evolved into a general body plan involving bilateral symmetry, where both halves of an organism are mirror images of each other. The evolution of bilateral symmetry may have been due to the demand for more directed, active movement in search of food. Since bilateral symmetry evolved early in the history of animals, notable variations of this basic body plan gave rise to the ancestors of the modern types of animals today. In fact, more than 99% of all living animal species today exhibit bilateral symmetry because of how it facilitated the development of better movement and more complex organ systems dedicated to movement. 

The clade Bilateria, categorized by bilateral symmetry, would eventually give rise to phylum Chordata, which includes vertebrates and close relatives. Bilateral symmetry introduced the distinction of a head end and tail end. When comparing the body of a bilaterally symmetrical organism with that of an asymmetrical organism, the former would have more balance and coordination. This is due to the head and tail ends indicating where the organism can direct itself towards and the body shapes of these organisms may be more streamlined for movement. Conversely, asymmetrical organisms like sponges or radially symmetrical organisms like starfish tend to be more sessile, meaning that they do not move or move with very little speed and direction. They also don’t have the ability to direct themselves with a specialized part of their body because they have no head-end. 

The development of head-concentrated sensory organs (like eyes) and complex nervous systems would rise from the location of a mouth and a dorsal nerve cord, a primitive structure running along the back of an organism that functions like the nerves in the spinal cord we have. The demand for more mobility would influence the evolution of a brain from an end of the nerve cord and simple eyes were specialized for navigation. Brains developed to be larger for more memory and became tailored towards spatial awareness and critical thinking for hunting and survival. Natural selection directed vertebrates towards more awareness of their surroundings, leading to keen motor skills and intelligence. 

Communication in other species has existed before the time of humans. However, one key aspect separates human language from animal communication. Intelligence in humans is so complex that we have created countless forms of communication, from the simplest sounds and gestures to the linguistic marvels of constructed languages. We string together words with compositionality and our language is referential, meaning that speakers are able to utilize language to refer to specific thoughts and beliefs by using an endless recombination of words. The ability for words to have certain properties (parts of speech) highlights the new innovation in human intelligence. These fundamental words often originate from human observations. An example would be the use of the Latin words dexter, meaning right or right hand and sinister, meaning left or left hand. Although the meanings were originally assigned as basic directions or labels, eventually new cultures would assign more abstract values to these words.   

Despite our evolutionary symmetry, humans have always treated directions with asymmetrical values. Humans have associated the directions of left and right with negative and positive aspects since the time of ancient civilizations, imbuing these beliefs linguistically into words we can trace to modern times. However, the modern day associations of left with evil and right with good originated long after the time of the Roman Empire. In Roman culture, augurs associated signs of birds flying towards the left with omens of success and fortune, as the left also represented the east and sunlight. The Ancient Celts also associated leftness with positivity, believing the left direction to represent femininity and the fertile womb. 

Biases towards rightness and against leftness began with Christianity and the various scriptures associated with the religion. In the Bible, the right hand symbolizes righteousness and honor as Jesus ascends to heaven to sit by the right hand of God. Moreover, in the Book of Matthew, it is explicitly mentioned that the people to the right of God will be sent to heaven and those to the left will be sent to hell and eternal fire. As Christianity became more widespread, the connotations also quickly followed into other societies and practices. This bias originated from the abundance of right-handed people in relation to left-handed people, leading to an association that rightness was skillful, correct, and favored. Moreover, the association of the right direction with these positive traits alongside the consistency of this connection has influenced various basal languages, from Indo-European to Old English. Due to the idea of left and right being opposites, the negative traits are assumed to be in the left direction. An emphasis on rightness being the ideal direction became a part of languages like English and French because of these religious ideas alongside the societal beliefs against minorities (left-handed people).us ideas alongside the societal beliefs against minorities (left-handed people).

In the modern age, linguistic reflections on the left-right bias can be observed in a variety of languages. The words for right and positive traits share the same root in a notable number of languages. In Turkish, the word for common sense is derived from the word for right and in Russian, the word for right shares the same root for the word truth. However, direction has evolved to describe much more than just turning left or right. Ideas of left and right are seen in politics, where the left is more radical and the right is more conservative, perhaps highlighting how rightness is more favored by long-lasting beliefs as opposed to change. Left and right can also be seen in car models, where some countries have the driver on the left while others have the driver on the right. Over time, the bias towards the left direction will shrink and perhaps in the distant future, distinctions between the directions may become something truly wacky and new.