Think! (14 page)

We can now summarise the reasons why world thinking is so poor. There is a certain amount of overlap between the reasons, but each reason needs to be considered in its own right if we are to make progress. Some of the reasons can also be grouped together.

Our huge success in science and technology makes us very proud of our thinking, complacent. Surely a thinking system that can produce such spectacular successes cannot be deficient? Unfortunately, the inanimate world of objects and effects is quite different from the animate world of people. In the inanimate world, properties are known, predictable and constant. This is not so when dealing with people.

People are unpredictable. There are also interactive loops, so behaviour of a certain type can itself change people's
reactions. The nearest equivalent in science is the quark in physics, which changes its behaviour when observed.

Speaking French fluently in France does not mean that you would have an easy time in England.

We need to understand that different universes require different thinking.

Most universities do not have a faculty of thinking. There is no Thinking classification in bookshops or most libraries. Thinking is the most fundamental of all human behaviour, but it does not get direct attention.

We walk and we talk and we breathe. It is assumed that thinking is as natural as these activities and does not merit any direct attention.

If no one is paying direct attention to thinking, how can things improve?

There is an astonishing degree of complacency in our habits and methods of thinking. This needs to change.

Philosophers

It has always been assumed that it was the business of
philosophers and psychologists to look after human thinking. So no one else was concerned with thinking. Thinking was left to philosophers and logicians.

Philosophers had no option but to play word games. They would divide the world into perceptions and concepts and then explain how these interacted and fitted together. But these words and invented concepts adhered to the rules of logic – otherwise they would be seen as fantasy. The focus is on description and explanation. There is very little operational design. Operational tools mean thinking for action not description. And the huge importance of perception was not just neglected but ignored. Logic was enough.

From time to time philosophers do say useful things, but they do not set about designing better methods of thinking because they are too happy with the ones they have. And, because it was assumed, both in universities and elsewhere, that is was the territory of philosophers to deal with human thinking, no one else bothered. As a result virtually no progress was made for 2,400 years.

For example, we still believe that argument is a good way to explore a subject. Yet it is lengthy, crude, primitive and ineffective. There are much better ways, as described elsewhere in this book.

Psychologists

Psychology was in a hurry to prove that it was a real science like all the others. This meant measurement.
Measurement is objective. Measurement is the basis of all sciences; measurement is the difference between science and myth.

So psychology became obsessed with measurement, with various tests and scales. That obsession remains – from IQ tests to Myers-Briggs personality judgements. The outcome of these measurements is to put people into categories and boxes – introvert or extrovert; intuitive or judgemental – and thereafter they imprison themselves in the indicated box.

Once again, this has been descriptive, with very little design of operational thinking tools.

So, though all this thinking is excellent, it has very little to do with operational thinking.

A lack of understanding of how the brain works means that philosophers have been restricted to word games and psychologists to measurement.

Today we have an understanding of how the brain might work as a self-organising information system that creates asymmetric patterns. This is set out in my book
The Mechanism of Mind.
The concepts cannot be proved directly, but they provide the basis for designing thinking tools. These tools then have to prove their effectiveness when used. For example, one tool of lateral thinking –
the random word tool – generated 21,000 new ideas in an afternoon.

For the first time in human history, we have a logical explanation for idea creativity. We can then develop tools that can be used for deliberate creativity instead of having to wait for chance or sheer talent.

The Greek Gang of Three (GG3) designed and set the software for our thinking today. They were, of course, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. They did too excellent a job and we have been trapped by this excellence ever since.

Socrates was concerned with argument and questions. Plato was concerned with the truth. Aristotle created boxes, categories and recognition identification from which came our 'box logic'.

This was such an excellent system, at least compared with anything else around (in Europe), that it was eagerly taken up by scholars and thinkers. It remains our basic thinking software to this day. This type of thinking is indeed related to how the brain forms patterns. You identify the patterns and then apply standard behaviour for that pattern.

We need new thinking software for our brains.

This is one of the most important points. We have ignored perception because we believed that logic was all. We now know that no amount of excellent logic can determine our starting perceptions (Goedel). If these perceptions are inadequate, then our outcome will be faulty – no matter how excellent the logic. We also know, from the research of David Perkins, that in ordinary life, 90 per cent of errors are errors of perception and not errors of logic at all.

Yet we persist in putting all the emphasis on logic and do nothing about perception. We can do a great deal about perception, as explained in this book, even with programmes as simple as the CoRT programme, which is now widely used in schools throughout the world.

It is not that religion has been anti-thinking. The problem is that religion has emphasised one type of thinking. This has effectively locked intellectual culture into the logic, truth and argument mode.

In religion there is no place for perception. That is given by doctrine, which has to be accepted through an act of faith. Once you have accepted this doctrine, then you can perceive the world through this framework.

In earlier days, disruptive thinkers were branded as heretics and even burned as such. Even Galileo, whose thinking was prompted by scientific observation and theory, fell foul of the Church.

Orthodoxy was what mattered – and this limits thinking. It is not so much the limitation on the contents of thinking that matters, but limitation on the actual methods of thinking, which had to remain stuck in the GG3 mode. We need to use new methods of thinking.

The Church

When Greek thinking (GG3) came into Europe at the Renaissance, schools, universities and thinking in general were in the hands of the Church. There was no need for creative thinking or design thinking. There was no need for perceptual thinking because the starting points were items of Church doctrine.

What the Church needed was truth, logic and argument with which to prove heretics wrong. Above all, though, the Church needed 'truth'. Without truth you could not believe. Without truth you could not persuade people to lead a better life. Without truth you could not burn heretics at the stake. The whole of thinking was directed to defending the truth. The starting places were given, defined and accepted. These were now juggled around with logic to prove the other party wrong.

So while logic, truth and argument became a central part of Western thinking culture, other aspects of thinking,
such as design thinking, creative thinking, perceptual thinking and exploratory thinking, were completely ignored. It is interesting to note that Eastern religions often put more emphasis on perception and the way you could look at things. With Church thinking in the West, however, perceptual thinking, design thinking and creative thinking were not needed and so never became part of Western education. Our education system needs to change.

It has been noted that at one time science and technology in China were far ahead of what they were in the rest of the world. In a display of intellectual arrogance, Chinese scholars decided that truth and facts were enough. There was no place for the vagueness of the 'possibility system'. So progress came to a halt.

Even today, universities and other teaching institutions are very uncomfortable with possibility because it lies outside the limits of logic. They acknowledge the importance of the 'hypothesis' in science but only in a grudging way. There is no attempt to explore and make use of the power of possibility.

Possibility is essential for perceptual thinking. You have to consider alternative perceptions.

Possibility is essential for creative thinking.

Possibility is essential for design thinking.

Possibility is essential for exploratory thinking.

Because possibility was totally contrary to the needs of the Church at the Renaissance (a need for truth), it has been largely neglected in education.

Possibilities, hypotheses and alternatives need to be considered for our thinking to improve.

'Critical' comes from the Greek word
kritikos,
which means 'judge'. The emphasis on teaching thinking, in the few places this happens, tends to be on critical thinking. This is excellent – but not enough. Our habits of thinking are all towards judgement. Recognise a standard situation and then you know what to do about it. Just like a doctor diagnosing a standard disease and prescribing the standard treatment.

We put a lot of emphasis on 'analysis', which is the method of breaking down complex situations so that we can identify standard elements – and so know what to do.

In a conflict situation we apply judgement at once. Who is the bad guy? What law or treaty has been violated? How can we put pressure on the bad guy? There is very little attempt to design a way forward.

Design is just as important as analysis but is almost totally neglected in education. Design is putting together what we have in order to deliver the values that we want. It is putting
together fears, hopes, etc., to design a way forward. Design should be an integral part of education at all levels.

Language does not help. Language reinforces our judgement system and fixes our perceptions. We apply a word or label as soon as we can, and then this determines our perception (friend, enemy, and so on).

Language uses fixed boxes, and the identity device of 'is' excludes possibility and alternatives. We may need a softer language of perception where premature judgements can limit our thinking.

This is another very important point. We use argument far too much – because we have never developed another method of exploring a subject.

Argument is part of our critical and judgement mode of thinking. It was heavily emphasised by the Church because that was how you proved heretics to be wrong.

The many faults of argument have been listed in this book. The major fault is the lack of any constructive energy. Where do better ideas come from? How can you design a way forward for both sides?

Argument has its place but it is a very primitive and inefficient way of exploring a subject.

The Six Hats method of parallel thinking is a very powerful alternative to argument when you really want to explore a subject – rather than prove a point. It is now widely used, from top executives to four-year-olds in school. It reduces meeting times to a quarter or even a tenth of their normal length. The subject is thoroughly explored. There is now a lot of experience with the method. It has even started to be used by juries in court.

The relevance of democracy to thinking is its perceived basis in attack and adversarial thinking. The emphasis both during and after elections is on 'destruction' not 'construction'. A government that does nothing is less easily attacked than one that is active.

Being clever in attack does not mean that you could suggest something better. So where is progress to come from?

It is possible that, in time, democracy will evolve into a more constructive mode.

Argument is central to the process of law. Being clever in argument may even seem to be more important than the validity of the case.

There are times when argument is the appropriate mode, but at other times there is room for design. There is a tendency that way with ADR (Alternative Dispute Resolution) and family court mediation.

The traditional view of law courts is that one side is right and the other is wrong. In some cases this is far from reality. There may be some right and some fault on both sides, especially in civil cases.

There is a need for a formal court of design to design the way forward for both parties.

The media in general and the press in particular have an ingrained negative and critical habit of mind. There are at least two possible explanations for this.

The first is that the press sees itself as the conscience and guardian of society. It sees its role as preventing tyranny, abuses and nonsenses being foisted on the public.

The second reason is that the negative mode is very much easier to operate than the positive mode. Many
journalists and editors simply seem incapable of operating the positive mode. There is also the belief that the public are more interested in the negative than the positive. The media and the press should take a lead in developing better thinking habits.