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Edward de Bono

Speaking of de Bono, I will mention that I flew down to Texas and got certified in his Six Thinking Hats method some years back.  The teaching was competent if uninspired, as was the curriculum, but certain elements got me to thinking about thinking, which was IMMENSELY useful.  I recommend to this day everyone read several of his books, such as “Practical Thinking”, “The Six Thinking Hats”, and I think he has a Course on Thinking. Something like that.  Some of his later books, from what I understand, might as well have been entitled, “I need more money”, but his basic ideas, like po, and lateral thinking, are very useful.

My own system I call the Telearchic Cross, and discuss in my essay on Goodness.  Basically, our perception of reality can in my view be manipulated in three principle ways: laterally, as on a continuum; vertically, as in the movement from abstraction to concrete perception through the senses, which includes emotion, and back again, in what I call Perceptual Breathing; and temporally, as in systemic interactions which can only be seen historically.

What I wanted to say is that I foolishly thought, once I got the certification, that Universities–as places filled with thinkers–would be excited to learn about this method.  I contacted the offices of many University Presidents with some persistence.  I learned, slowly, that they have close to ZERO interest in learning how to think.  Their self evaluation is that if they have Ph.D’s, they already KNOW how to think, and have nothing to learn from me or anyone else that is outside their field.

In the Engineering Dept. they know they have a good idea when something works–an engine runs, a light comes on.  In the Philosophy Dept., they don’t.  They could literally jabber utter nonsense and be as RELEVANT.  I think of the “Killing Joke” from Monty Python.  What if there were an Exceptional Idea, that when conveyed, suddenly caused a burst of understanding from everyone? 

Does anyone expect this to happen?  The closest we can hope for is a renewed commitment to reason.

In my considered view, there should be no discipline called “philosophy”.  There ought to be a discipline called something like Psychophilosophy which works empirically to determine what ideas work best to facilitate happiness.  They ought to work in tandem with a new academic discipline called Spiritualist Sciences, which investigates, academically, how the world of the spirit works, how best to communicate with spirits, and how best to optimize our lives, knowing we exist within a larger reality.

I am really pushing the envelope now as far as getting my work done today, but wanted to ramble just a bit more.