How the human race has never really learned to think.
The human brain is designed to make stable patterns for dealing with a stable universe. Out traditional habits of thinking which the Greek Gang of Three designed reinforced this behaviour. We recognise standard situations and provide standard answers. One hundred per cent of education is about that.
This thinking has been so excellent in science and technology that we have never thought to doubt its excellence.
The front left wheel of a motor car is excellent. But if you believed that all you needed was a front left wheel you would not make much progress. In the same way, out existing thinking is excellent but not sufficient.
A scientist working with the element 'iron' knows its properties. These properties are constant, permanent and predictable. So you can work with these properties to create technology.
But people are different. Each person is a unique blend of genes and experience and is therefore not so predictable. In addition, if you call a person an idiot that person is no longer the same person you called an idiot. There are loops etc.
That is why we have been so successful in science and technology and so very unsuccessful in human affairs.
We have emphasised logic and not perception and yet ninety per cent of the errors of thinking are errors of perception.
We have emphasised truth and not possibility and yet progress can only arise from possibility. That is why the Chinese progress came to an end: because the scholars believed you could move from certainty to certainty.
We have emphasised judgement rather than design. You cannot judge and argue your way forward - you need to design your way forward.
We have emphasised 'truth' which is a very dangerous joke - especially the belief that there is only one truth. 6 + 2 = 8 that is true. 8 = 6 + 2 that is also true but so is 8 = 7 + 1, 8 = 5 + 3, 8 = 4 + 4. There is belief truth, game truth, experience truth, tested truth etc. etc. We have not put equal emphasis on value.
At the Renaissance, Greek thinking was reintroduced into Europe through the Arabs in Spain. At that time 'thinking' was in the hands of the mediaeval theologians. Their main concern was to prove heretics wrong. So 'truth', argument and attack thinking became the basis of Western thinking. It was thought that 'attack thinking' was enough.
Schools waste two thirds of the talent in society - and universities sterilise the other third.
This book is being sold in an unusual way. It is obtrainable from the publisher at the price of US$ 250.00.
The price is high for several reasons. The first is to underline the fundamental importance of the book. The second is to pay for the heavy promotion that is needed to make the book visible. It will do more good than a seminar that would cost much more. It may do your thinking more good than a university course which would cost a great deal more. Urge your library to get it. Donate it to your library. Get together and make a group purchase etc.
Someone had to say it, sometime.
Order from: www.whysostupid.com
Email: blackhall@eircom.net
Tel: +353 1 278 5090
Edward de Bono nmt
3rd March 2003
London
