THINKING HOW CAN NEW IDEAS SOLVE OLD PROBLEMS WHEN NEW IDEAS ARE A PROBLEM? |
If we want to stop new problems becoming old problems and old problems getting older, we really do need new ideas.
But where will they come from?
Representative bodies, such as democracies and the UN, can’t have new ideas.
First, because there’s a contradiction between representing current thinking and a new idea which, by definition, isn’t current thinking.
And second, for the simple reason that new ideas are high risk for the members of these organisations.
In conflict situations, creative, new proposals can be misconstrued as weakness. Compromise as capitulation. So the will to win smothers the will to resolve.
This limited way of thinking can be traced back to the Greek Gang of Three, some 2,400 years ago.
Aristotle, Plato and Socrates valued analysis, recognition, judgement and truth. They paid much less attention to creativity, design, possibility and value.
They failed to recognise that you can analyze the past but you have to design the future.
The great success of our thinking in science and technology has made us very complacent in spite of our lack of success in the non-linear systems that apply to human affairs.
For example, argument is a crude, primitive way of exploring a subject compared to ‘parallel thinking’ (as devised by Edward de Bono) which takes less than a quarter of the time.
In conflict situations we rely on judgement instead of designing the way forward. This creates a meaningless (but potentially deadly) circle of, “we’re right, you’re wrong”.
Conflict has just two drivers: bullying and ‘sillying’. The latter being when those on either side derive their self-importance from the continuation of the conflict.
Set against these two types is the awful truth that human thinking is remarkably backward. It’s been suggested that, outside the artificial game of mathematics, our software for ordinary thinking has not been developed.
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1. Self-organising systems, like the human brain and human society, tend to get stuck in stable, local equilibria. They need the provocation of a new idea to move them forward to a new stable state, nearer to the global equilibrium. Mathematicians call this process ‘annealing’.
2. Any system with an input spread over time, and the need to make the maximum use of what is available, will always be sub-optimal because the sequence of arrival of information plays too large a part in its disposition. Creative restructuring is essential (de Bono’s Theorem).
3. No system can, from within itself, logically determine its starting points (Goedel’s Theorem). The starting points are arbitrary perceptions and values. There is a need to change these through creative possibilities.
4. All patterning systems (like the human brain) are asymmetric (that gives rise to both humour and creativity). Something which is obvious in hindsight cannot be reached by logic in the first place (see ‘The Mechanism of Mind’ Edward de Bono 1969).
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There are four mathematical reasons why new ideas are essential.
The software is certainly in place to come up with the original ideas that are needed. But do we have the will and the right attitude? More to the point, do we have an outlet for the new ideas we come up with?
THE PROBLEM IS THERE. NOW THERE’S A SOLUTION:
THE WORLD COUNCIL FOR NEW THINKING
The Council has a clear and invaluable function: to encourage, generate, collect, publish and publicize new ideas in any field.
Six Nobel Prize winners have already agreed to join the Council.
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Membership will be expanded to include university chancellors and vice-chancellors, editors of significant publications, entrepreneurs and CEOs of major corporations. Details of membership eligibility can be found on the Council’s website.
The Council will be supplemented by a League of New Thinkers who will also generate new ideas.
In time, members of the League may be invited to join the Council.
The ideas generated by both the Council and the League will be made public. So that awareness of them can encourage support and, ultimately, drive popular pressure for them to be adopted.
SOME EXAMPLES OF NEW THINKING
The one child policy in China has resulted in a deficit of one hundred million women. A different ‘one boy’ policy would have saved millions of lives, and provided a balanced and declining population.
The congestion charge used in London has had only a modest effect on reducing traffic. A ‘pooled permit’ scheme would reduce traffic by up to seventy five per cent.
The Middle East situation could be eased if both Israelis and Palestinians were allowed to vote in each other’s elections. This would create more constructive governments.
Where election candidates are within less than five per cent of each other in votes, each should serve half the term. In the most recent Mexican presidential election, the difference was 0.56 per cent.
In areas of high unemployment, businesses could be incentivised to employ more people if they were allowed to earn a certain amount of tax-free profit per employee.
The USA could declare a date of withdrawal from Iraq and advance this by a week for every week free of sectarian killing – or delay it by a week for every week in which there was any sectarian killing.
There is a need for a positive word to describe ‘a fully justified venture which for reasons beyond your control did not succeed’. The available words such as ‘failure’ and ‘mistake’ are unfair.
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EDWARD DE BONO
Edward de Bono is regarded as the world’s leading authority on creative thinking. He is the originator of lateral thinking, which is deliberate and formal idea-creativity. This is based on an understanding of the brain as a self-organising system that makes asymmetric patterns. He explored this in his book, ‘The Mechanism of Mind’, published in 1969.
He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and has held faculty appointments at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, London and Harvard.
He is the author of seventy books, with translations into thirty-nine languages.
He has been invited to lecture in fifty-nine countries.
His methods are in use in thousands of schools around the world (and some whole countries, such as Venezuela). The Chinese government is carrying out a pilot program and if it is successful they are considering introducing the method into four million schools.
In India, a program for fifty-five thousand schools to teach de Bono’s methods is already under way.
Over the years he has also helped many major corporations, including IBM, Bank of America and Shell, to think creatively.
Do de Bono’s methods work?
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Teaching ‘thinking’ to unemployed teenagers in the UK increased the employment rate five hundred per cent. Teaching ‘thinking’ to very violent teenagers at the Hungerford Guidance Centre in London reduced actual criminal behaviour to one tenth of what it had been.
At a platinum mine in South Africa, there had been two hundred and ten fights every month between the seven tribes working there.
After ‘thinking’ was taught to the illiterate miners, the number of fights dropped to just four. This is significant, because it shows that ‘thinking’ overcomes both emotions and traditional hostilities.
The hope and belief of The World Council For New Thinking is that its work can break down resistance to new ideas. Help design a better future. And help resolve even the most painfully enduring conflicts.
If you recognise the potential of The World Council For New Thinking please contact us:
Telephone: +356 2180 4545
Fax: +356 2180 1033
Email: info@worldcouncilfornewthinking.org
www.worldcouncilfornewthinking.org
Edward de Bono Foundation:
Telephone: +353 1 825 0466
Fax: +353 1 825 0467
Email: debono@iol.ie
www.edwarddebonofoundation.com
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