Product Description: In this trailblazing book, Edward de Bono shows why our most crucial problems cannot be solved by traditional Western thought with its rigid insistence on facts. Genuinely revolutionary--a synthesis of neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy--this work is bound to change the way we think.
PO: Edward de Bono is a Rascal Sage (and I mean it as a comliment!) Edward de Bono is a pattern-interrupting Savant Provocateur!
As a preview, here's an interruption of a pattern (of expectations) for you: de Bono - throughout the book - promises to go into some detail to explain the term "hodics" (which he conceptually previews as a shift in inquiry from "is" to "to"). As you reach the last page of the book, you finally see a paragraph long C-level section in which dE (or De?) Bono excuses himself from his own mandate: he explains that he - "upon reflection" - decided not to "burden" the reader with too much about "hodics." End of story. The modern-day Diogenes of Synope has left the building, with the unabashed spontaneity of a Zen master that just cut a whole cat in half (just to make a point about the dangers of dichotomous thinking)!
Don't get me wrong: the book more than meets its lofty mandate (to herald a renaissance, no less!) - it's panoramic, it's thought provoking, it's original, it's "meta" in more way than one.
Reading De Bono is a kind of fun you get from watching Rubick's cubing on You Tube. There's the circularity all right. There are brilliant revelations as pseudo-chaos of pattern interruptions suddenly comes into crystal clear focus. The result is a contagious desire to try out the water logic yourself, to discover this amazing thought style that allows one to maneuvre around the unnecessary rapids of the false dichotomies and the situation-independent absolutes.
I love de Bono's pushy paradigm-shifting. I enjoyed his "Lateral Thinking" and I really liked this work on "Water Logic." He is right. We are wrong. No "ifs, ands or buts" about it - just a neologistic pattern-interruption word-cue "po."
In sum, the "I am right you are wrong" is a must for psychologists, comedians, marketing/advertizing folks, politicians, scientists, preachers, and poets. All these seemingly unrelated vocational and avocational "factions" stand to improve the understanding of their respective perception-manipulating skills and arts.
Pavel Somov, Ph.D.
LATERAL THINKING IS RIGHT-BRAIN PROCESSING Lateral thinking is right-brain processing. de Bono didnt invent anything new.
I'm a de Bono fan going back to 1968 and his book NEW THINK. But since 1972, or so, all de Bono does is repackage NEW THINK and sell it to new converts and acolytes.
Out of the Box Thinking from the Man who invented it. A Rhodes scholar, medical doctor, university professor, worldwide consultant and inventor of "lateral thinking," the actually precursor of what we have come to label as "out-of-the-box-thinking," renaissance man Edward de Bono, tells us in this book, how creative thinking is done and how it is to be put to good use in solving the most intractable problems facing mankind.
As in most of his other books, he uses his medical training to first explain the mechanics of brain functioning -- showing how perception is the natural and simple behavior of self-organizing neural networks in the brain and how the way these networks organize affect the way we think (or fail to think), plan, organize and solve (or fail to solve) both large and small problems.
What is different about this book, is that here he takes on as a challenge the problem of how to help erase a kind of mental laziness from the problem-solving context that results in an almost complete reliance on absolutes, that is in a complete reliance on black and white thinking; on binary logic, as in what can only be called the "dichotomy trap."
Although he does not single out the U.S. as the Western World's most egregious practitioner of this kind of "last resort thought process," it is safe to say that anyone who observes U.S. politics and approaches to social and political problem-solving, even for a minute, cannot come away without feeling that we Americans are the world champions of "black and white thinking." Almost every aspect of our lives are sliced and diced into finely grated black and white categories: our race problem, our politics, our religion, and economics just to name the most obvious of them -- all suffer from binary thinking in absolutes of only black and whites - seldom in grays. As a nation, we seem satisfied with our utter lack of reliance on anything near creative thinking to solve the problems that face us as a nation.
de Bono shows us the route to a new paradigm of thinking: as he sees that with global problems crowding in on us, failing to change and failing to begin to adopt new more creative ways of thinking and solving these deep and intractable problems, increasingly is ceasing to be a discretionary option. Sooner, rather than later we will have no option but to give up our almost total reliance on absolutes, and begin to deal in "grays." That is what this book attempts to do: teach us that the brain is more comfortable thinking in "grays," and that many of the solutions to the problems facing us as a nation and as a world, lie in this realm of creative thought. In is a somewhat vain but very sober attempt to shake us out of our comfort zone. The same thing that de Bono has been doing in the corporate boardrooms for the better part of a half century.
Five stars.
Interesting read Interesting read. For a more detailed perspective on the creative process, I suggest The Act of Creation by Arthur Koestler.
Understanding Thinking and Breaking Paradigms This book opened a lot of doors in my mind that I've been trying to get through for a long time.
This book is a great mix of topics that helped me gain a different understanding (several mental models are proposed in the book that offer a mental paradigm shift) of the relationship of emotion to thought to psychology, philosophy, belief, truth, etc. and helped me gain a historical and cultural understanding of the belief structures I have working in my life.
In this book, De Bono proposes that critical thinking is powerful, but less than perfect, if it is the only thinking we use. He proposes that Critical/Rational thinking as developed by Socrates/Plato has provided the means for our technological success today, but has also blocked our progress as humans because it is only one kind of thinking (black or white, right or wrong). There are other ways of thinking and when they are used in conjunction with rational thought we have a better chance at improving our human interaction and the world we live in.
I have a true, good friend who recommended this book. I had asked him for his opinion on why I feel the need to "evangelize" other people. "Why do I feel this need to convince other people that my beliefs are correct and that theirs are somehow flawed if they don't match mine exactly?" I've observed how this practice has had poor effects in my own life and also how similar practices have not had good effects in the world e.g. War, Politics, Religion, etc. On a technical level we've made all kinds of progress, yet on a social level we are still acting like cavemen!
So, anyway, this year I've been studying motivation, behavior, psychology, belief, various religions, etc. attempting to understand myself and how/why I interact with other people in the way I do even though I know my confrontational approach is less than Ideal. This book gave me some breakthrough thinking on this subject and I'm still sorting through the debris of my former beliefs on human motivation as a result. This is why I feel like I will give this book 5 stars in a few months after I've had a chance to study it more. Right now, I'm wondering if I've been logically tricked...
One thing is for sure, I didn't "get" De Bono's 6 Hats until reading this book. I bought "SIX THINKING HATS" at the same time I bought "I'M RIGHT, YOU'RE WRONG" and it seems like these two books together offer practical approaches to revolutionize our thinking patterns and improve our human interactions.
Do these ideas result in practical change and improvement for myself and world I live in? I will need to report on this later. As a intellectually stimulating book I give it 5 stars. For pragmatism, I give it 3 because I haven't tested it yet. So, for today, I give it 4 stars overall.
Note: This was not an easy book to read. It seemed like de Bono took forever to get to his points. In fact, at one point, I skipped a few chapters and then found I had to go back and make them up. His teaching seems so simple in hindsight! But de Bono is building a logical argument throughout the book and while it seems like he is taking too long to get to his points, the points are WORTH IT! This is NOT a book on practical tools. He has written other books about practical tools (of which he reminds you quite often). This book provides a foundation on which to develop practical solutions.
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