Friday, June 18, 2010

Handing The Job To A Half Brain


The right hand brain and the left hand brain not only occupy two different hemispheres of the cerebrum they control very different functions. People with a tendency to think more on the right hand side of brain are sometimes less logical than the left brain people. The left brain people like things to be more concrete. If they choose masonry as a career they will probably not like working with stones. They prefer to believe that civilized people only use blocks and bricks and that's the way things that are cement to be. They like rules and rulers. They usually vote for left wing dictators.

Right hand brain people lean towards the right. They like things that are correct. They enjoy being creative, whether it be writing letters, plays, notes and songs, or righting boats and righting wrongs.

The left hand brains are just left with the dull things to do, like crunching numbers and being authorities about everything. Usually the right hand brain just lets the left one go right ahead thinking it knows it all. It simply gets right to work and fixes things that are left undone. If you see some hand righting something on a wall, it is probably a right brained waller replacing a crooked stone that has slipped out of place and was just left there.

Left to his own devices a left brain waller will order squared metric sized stones to be delivered on pallets and left on the job site, and then he'll build a boxy coursed wall and won't know what to do with all the left-over stones. Right brain people handle things a bit differently. They like to let some randomness and spontaneity influence the way the wall is built. If it looks too regimented it does'nt look right to them. They'll find stone material right from farmers fields or get random loads right from the quarry. Their wall may break a few rules but it wont fall down.

Right brainers like round stones as much as square ones and even like mixing round stones with squarish ones. They like using up left-overs. The left hand brain would rather have all new material. Their walls look brand new. They think old things look bad and out of date and should be torn down so that only new masonry is left.

There is no wrong right way of thinking. There is no left, or right way of thinking. One is intuitive the other mechanical. One is spatial and broad minded, the other is linear. One approaches things with open hands, the other with clenched fists and a critical spirit. One adds character and life to a project, the other worries about everything. One takes risks and the other gets annoyed that it has to adapt to change.