Is it true that people are not interested to invest in eforts to improve their thinking skills?
People (at a large scale) are not interested in improving their thinking skills. Or, at least, are not interested in investing to it. Most people in companies, but also in scientific communities feel happy and comfortable with their thinking skills, or they are interested in a "single-click" solution. So is it true that people are not interested to invest efforts to improve their thinking skills?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by jf on -
I do not know what is "EFORT" but my little experience tells me that indeed, people are not interested in investing to improve their thinking.
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Permalink Reply by Kim Jones on -
Well, Gijs - with the Church and Education and Politics (the Holy Trinity of Conformity) all in bed together, is it any wonder that people:
a) Do not know what thinking is
b) Fear anyone who claims to be able to think
c) Take active steps to prevent thinking skills being promoted
d) Take the slow road to change by studying "the lessons of History"
Thinking takes time, I find. Nobody has the time any more to invest effort in something that doesn't pay off in the short term.
The tragedy is, while thinking takes time initially, practising it regularly establishes it as a useful routine and consequently takes less and less time as it becomes established as a habit of mind or, as Edward prefers to call it a skill. Our routines are some of the most important things we ever set up. The cheap and easy routine of spotting error has been established since caveman days and consequently is embedded in the human psyche as a dominating trait. I am starting to believe that real, foundational positivity can only enrich the human psyche if we take radical steps to improve our brain chemistry. Why I like to experiment a little with cannabis for example, because there is a growing body of thought that suggests that humans' ability to think at all was seeded (excuse the pun) by our 5,000 year old relationship with this miraculous plant. Prior to humans ingesting cannabis as a food, spotting negative value was the only form of thinking humans were capable of to aid their survival. Cannabis use plunges the human psyche into a deep abyss of positivity and happiness from which one rarely feels the need to escape. It may seem artificial, but the point is: what you do when you are feeling positive and happy is better for the human race than what you do when you are angry, aggressive and depressed. Burning a little incense as an offering to the gods is a good start to the ritual of serious, creative thinking. Steve Jobs knew this very well. They didn't call him "The Billion Dollar Hippy" for nothing.
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Permalink Reply by jf on
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Yesterday saw on TV a documentary about the history of beer. In this documentary they made too much like a generalization that you are using cannabis. In the documentary even said that humanity was achieved thanks to the beer. We learned to write from the beer ... Anyway, there is a tendency to generalize is the origin of humanity ... I do not come from the monkey or God or aliens ... We come from beer or cannabis .. Really you think that?
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Permalink Reply by Kim Jones on
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What I really think is that the ability to think itself arose by some amazingly contingent factor. It may be beer, it may be cannabis - we are talking about agrarian cultural practices here that arose in pre-history. It turns out there was this sea-squirt in the primeval oceans that excreted a certain chemical that has turned up in our genome and is linked somehow to the Delta 9 Tetrahydrocannabinol molecule that is the psycho-active ingredient of cannabis. We are starting to join up the dots in how we alone have developed the supreme ability to think, yes. I don't want to make some kind of dogma of this, but the fact that humans have an endo-cannabinoid receptor system spread throughout their body that interfaces like a hand in a glove with the THC molecule has to be something else very fishy going on in the universe. There are strong connections between primitive mans' sudden ability to paint representations of his environment in 2D on cave walls, since cannabis-smoking artifacts and remains of the plant have been discovered in the same locations. The ancient Hebrews smoked cannabis ritually in their religious deliberations.
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Permalink Reply by Phil Bachmann on -
My experience says: No, people are not interested.
But they seem to invest a lot of effort in "unthinking": obliterating OPVs.
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Permalink Reply by jf on
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Maybe is not that people are not interested in investing to change your thinking. Perhaps it is right that people are not entirely concenciada that his thought can be changed. Wanting to change the thinking may refer immediately to the idea of "brainwashing." Produces almost horror. It's like letting someone put your hands in your head, do not know if that person has clean hands.
Edward de Bono says something, recently reminded;-"We see the function of thinking, couples to the blood circulation. . That is, as a function spontaneous, beyond our control. And as to Nobody thinks of learning to get better left ventricle..."-
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Permalink Reply by Kim Jones on
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Luis: We may be a tad 'arrogant' to think that 'thinking skill' is defined only by the study of Dr. de Bono's methods. And that comes from a person, me, who has spent the last 9 months very intensely looking at those methods.
You are perhaps right, but what is missing in de Bono for you? What do you really need that badly in thinking that de Bono hasn't turned his attention to in some way? Have you got some better mental software than Ted's Tools? You can teach Lateral Thinking in a silver mine a couple of kilometres underground by relaying a few simple principles in the dark, maybe illuminating the ground with your headtorch. Nowhere down here to plug in your computer, Luis.
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Permalink Reply by Kim Jones on
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We know, for example, that de Bono is defined as much for those aspects of thinking he wishes to de-emphasise as for those he wishes to assert more.
Description and analysis are the main aspects of thinking de Bono wishes to spend less time on. This is because these are the aspects of thinking that no one needs any help with. It's quite as simple as that. De Bono de-emphasises the sorting out of contradictions and other errors of logic because he wishes to make errors of logic on purpose for a good purpose, as Dennis's clever schoolgirl does. He wishes us to think differently, not spend time trying to define what 'thinking is in the whole' because the only output from that mental operation is a description. Nothing changed, nothing created, merely something understood. The one counter-factual or caveat to this may be that we need to understand a situation in it's broad outlines at first in order to have some kind of useful perception of it. Understanding the system leads to insights about how the system can be used for benefit. Description and analysis has it's place: at the start of thinking.
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Permalink Reply by Kim Jones on
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What do all these other thinkers have to offer that de Bono doesn't? Thinking skill can be defined in many ways, of course. I merely invite you to try and excite me about something that can not in some way be related to de Bono thinking methods. What is anyone offering in thinking that is better than de Bono. You have asserted that it is arrogant to define 'thinking skill' as exclusively a de Bono domain. I'm still wondering why you imagine that to not be self-evident. I'm ready right now for some thinking about thinking that is better than something de Bono has not already come up with. Hit me with it.
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Permalink Reply by Kim Jones on
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I'm serious, Luis. De Bono is definitely NOT the whole bag of tricks when it comes to thinking skills. I am definitely ready to see what there is beyond de Bono in the direction of 'better than'. Perhaps the whole of de Bono is EBNE. I imagine Edward would agree. There is going to be someone out there that can actually improve or advance dBT into new territory. That person might be you or me or Mary Bloggs of Blaney. I'm listening. Why would I be offended by any of your suggestions, Luis? I'm just being the normal, crusty, provocative bastard I always am!
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Permalink Reply by Kim Jones on
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Luis: How about Zen? Are there methods of 'not thinking' in Zen that are comparable to Dr. de Bono's methods of seeking clarity and answers to things?
Almost certainly. Feel free to hold forth on Zen. Does dr de Bono seek THE answer to things? My impression is he seeks AN answer. Perhaps THE answer is a myth. We only need the answer that realises a high level of benefits for us to be satisfied with it. Who cares if a Zen Master says it isn't THE answer. Do Zen Masters say things like that?
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Permalink Reply by Kim Jones on
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At this point it might make sense to try and define what this is all about. It's become easy to answer Gij's question:
So is it true that people are not interested to invest efforts to improve their thinking skills?
I say: Probably true but not entirely true. There is a good degree of truth to this. However, to improve thinking may or may not be about choosing a guru to follow. De Bono has been called by some a guru. If following a leader is a negative, as Juan has elsewhere proposed, then we shouldn't get precious about de Bono, no. If we are happy with my proposed answer to Gij's question above, then maybe we should be looking at why people are smug and complacent with status quo thinking rather than looking for what is as good as or better than de Bono or even outside de Bono. Make that the project. There is a need to get people to think at all.
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