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Free or Unfree?: Are Americans Really Free?

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Just occasionally, a document comes along that is so easy to read, so astonishingly convincing and so worrying in the timeliness of its message that it tends to act like a bucket of cold water on the reader. Those familiar with the works of Edward de Bono will not regard this work as a new book by him - it's more of a pamphlet outlining his core thesis yet again, finally reduced to something so straightforward and comprehensible that nobody could fail to understand it within half an hour. In fact, this little book can be read in under an hour and that is its chief strength. The importance of the message is not diluted by argument, academic scholarship, comparative criticism or any kind of literary device that might flatter the reader with beautiful phrases and tempting, though unproven and speculative assertions. What we have here are the fruits of nearly 40 years of proven thinking about thinking - software for the mind, or an instruction manual on how to use that software. This is not a "good read" in the literary, bookish sense but a manifesto of "what works" when it comes to thinking about thinking. There is no longer any time left to sweeten the message - it has to be stated plainly: Americans have never really understood what "thinking" actually entails.

De Bono clarifies immediately the difference between perception and thinking: perception is data-collection, thinking is what you do with the data. He observes that Americans claim to be the champions of freedom, yet everywhere their thinking is bound up in orthodoxies, naive assumptions and, above all, a fearful lack of practise at seeing the true range of options and alternatives in any given situation. In this sense, Americans, rather smugly, appear to make "free choices" but in reality only choose from the options they already know about. True freedom of choice exists only where perception has fully exposed the range of possible choices and alternatives. There are some humorous anecdotes about how this pans out in real life and the reader finds herself almost inadvertently calling up from memory other examples that illustrate how a "free choice" can often turn out to be the result of choosing only from a limited range, whether from ignorance (inadequate perception) or manipulation of the range of the possible - the chief modus operandum of the media, both print, televisual and internet. Mostly, what humans mobilise is standard "packaged" thinking based on simple recognition of a standard situation for which a standard approach is already available. There is a need for creative thinking (lateral thinking) and the right to challenge assumptions and orthodoxies using the tool of "provocation" which may not seem to make much sense until after the event. Normal, so-called "logical" thinking requires the thinker to be certain of himself at every step of the way, which is tedious, slow and fraught with the possibility that the starting premises were wrong or mistaken, weakening the whole train of thought. Provocation, an illogical procedure, cuts across the asymmetrical and rigid patterns of recognition that hog the limelight in our culture and reveals the "sidetrack" or the quick path to the solution which could not be perceived by logical thought. Anyone familiar with the extraordinary "Six Thinking Hats" technique of parallel thinking of de Bono, knows that the formalisation of techniques of provocation and "thinking outside the square" are incredibly powerful techniques that can be taught to 5 year olds or to Nobel Laureates with equal benefit. Not a newcomer to the field, but the original maestro and undisputed king of "the mind as self-organising information system", Edward de Bono's thinking tools are as sharp-edged as ever. Recent advances in neuro-science have only confirmed his model, a model he proposed as early as 1969 and which was physically investigated in the 70s by physicist Murray Gell Mann and proven to be correct. Perhaps the most important book you will read this year.