27 December 2007
Islam's special emphasis on the importance of thinking has a relevance for the whole world and Gulf states could do Islam an immense service if they set up an institute devoted to being a global centre for the study and promotion of thinking.

This proposal for a "Palace of Thinking" came from Edward de Bono, the world's leading authority on creative thinking who conceived the concept of Six Thinking Hats, which he describes as a framework for parallel thinking techniques.

De Bono was in the UAE last month to attend the Festival of Thinkers, organised by the Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT), and then returned recently to brief government officials on his idea for Islam to promote active thinking, which he believes would make it a substantial offering that would benefit the whole world.

"There is a unique opportunity for Islam to identify itself with thinking and make thinking its contribution to the world. No one else is doing this," he told Weekend Review. De Bono pointed out that Islam has much to offer the world and that such an initiative would also "redress Islam's negative image worldwide due to terrorism, and so on".

De Bono suggests setting up a Palace of Thinking as a permanent institute and launching something like the Nobel Prize for thinking -- but much more valuable.

Concrete contribution

"We need concrete ideas such as the HCT's Festival of Thinkers to really make thinking Islam's contribution to the world. It can add an intellectual dimension by focusing on thinking and really making this the world centre, [instead of] just setting up universities," he said.

Islam's particular emphasis on thinking has been overlooked of late but De Bono had several examples of how important thinking has been for the religion. He explained that he had been told by the Saudi Ministry of Education that there are 130 specific references to thinking in the Quran and he also quoted several hadiths (reported sayings) of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) who, De Bono said, had more to say about thinking than any other religious leader.

He quoted three hadiths: 

One hour of thinking is worth more than 70 years of praying;

The ink of a scholar is more holy than the blood of a martyr;

One learned man gives more trouble to the Devil than 1,000 worshippers.

The heart of De Bono's successful technique is to distinguish what perception is -- which means all the information and impressions that a person has when he or she starts thinking about an issue.

De Bono quoted research by David Perkins of Harvard University showing that 90 per cent of errors in thinking are errors of perception, not of logic. "Once you change perception, you change emotions and you change behaviour," De Bono told Weekend Review.

Perception over logic

"So when we have youngsters in school, we teach perception, how they see the world. For example, if you see someone coming towards you, you might think he looks aggressive, but then you think 'What is going on in his mind' and you realise that he is not aggressive at all, and the fights disappear," De Bono said.

The creative thinker passionately believes that the power of thought can be used to improve how people interact and perform in all circumstances and has many examples to prove his point. He insists that tackling an issue from the various angles that his systems of thinking offer allows people to find better ways forward.

"People say thinking is abstract and that in the end human emotions will come through in behaviour. Not true," De Bono said, moving straight on to give a specific example. "In the Karee mine, a platinum mine in South Africa, they had seven different tribes including Zulu, Xhosa and Shangaan.

They used to have 210 fights a month based on traditional hostilities but after some colleagues of mine taught thinking to the totally illiterate miners who had never been to school, the [number of] fights fell to four a month."

Europe suffers from too much logic

"Thinking in human affairs is still very primitive. Our thinking is judgment-based, which works well in science but not when dealing with people," De Bono said.

 "Europe has too much judgment thinking because at the time of the Renaissance, when Greek thinking came to Europe through the Arabs in Spain, the people running the schools and universities were church people.

They did not need Creative thinking, Design thinking or Perceptual thinking. They needed truth, logic and argument so as to support their task of proving the heretics wrong. And that became the core culture of Western thinking.

"Thinking based on judgment works very well in science. If you are a scientist and you are working with iron, the properties of iron are known, constant and permanent. You [can combine] iron with something else, as you have technology [to do it]. Our technological thinking is excellent. We get to the moon, split the atom, etc.

"But when you are dealing with people, it does not work. Because if you call someone an idiot, that person is no longer the same person you called an idiot.  He has been changed by what you said.  There are loops.  But in the physical order, if you say 'this is iron', it remains iron. 

"So our judgment-based thinking has been excellent for technology but useless for human affairs. We have flourished technologically but we have not made much progress in human affairs at all," De Bono said.

The problem with conflicts, Edward de Bono added, is that the believers on each side derive their importance from the continuation of the conflicts. This is the reason conflicts are hard to solve -- since the leaders are not in the least bit interested in solving them.

"What I had suggested in the past, and has happened by accident in Northern Ireland, is to take the leaders and give them some very honoured position. The conflict ended since the leaders had very good reasons to move on from simply leading the conflict."

Radical idea

De Bono had his own radical idea on how to promote a solution for the Israel-Palestine conflict. "You allow each side to vote in the elections of the other side. The Palestinians should vote in the Israeli elections, and the Israelis should vote in the Palestinian elections.

Maybe they should not have a full vote, and use a half vote.  But if this happened, the Israelis would never have elected Hamas and the Palestinians would never have voted for Sharon. 

"The result is that they would elect constructive people on each side and constructive people would come forward because they have a good chance of being elected."

Such a solution is part of De Bono's emphasis on using thinking to design a constructive way forward rather than judging a way forward.

"Judging means deciding that one side is bad and wrong, which gives them little incentive to settle; as opposed to designing the way forward when all parties see some value to the next steps," De Bono said.

"Most negotiations are about compromise which is very different.  Compromise says you want so much and I want so much, so let's have half each.  Design says let's create something entirely new where you can have three quarters and I can also have three quarters," he said.

By Francis Matthew, Editor at Large

© Gulf News 2008