Edward de Bono, the most famous living thinker on the planet, ran an ad in Private Eye inviting buyers of his latest book to write him a letter about it for the chance to win one of 10 prizes of up to £1,000.
The great man decreed that he would only award the prizes if the entries were good enough, and that the amount of the prize depended on whether entrants agreed with him or not - £500 if they didn't, as he believed it was easier to disagree, and £1,000 if they did agree with his arguments in the book.
Had it been a scientific experiment, the offer of double the money for agreeing might have been seen as an inducement that could have affected the outcome, but no doubt Professor de Bono had thought of that.
The book, Why So Stupid? How The Human Race Hasn't Really Learned To Think, was a paperback at a hardback price, but the likes of Professor de Bono can command such figures.
Helped perhaps by the fact that the competition closed in two weeks and virtually every book store I tried to buy the book from was quoting three weeks for delivery, I managed to track one down and entered.
Astonishingly, I won £1,000.
For what it's worth, here's what I wrote that persuaded Professor de Bono to reach for his chequebook, although many of the references will be meaningless unless you've read it:
Edward de Bono
PO Box 5075
London
W1A 0WW
22 May 2006
Dear Professor de Bono
If human beings weren’t so stupid, and more of them had taken the trouble to read your books and benefit from your wisdom, you might easily have been able to give this book an alternative title:
? // The Human Race Has Never Really Learned To Think.
If they did read it, they’d agree with me that you’ve answered the question represented by your new punctuation mark (I call it a “bono”) in a compelling and convincing manner.
I confess that, at 45, I had never read any of your work before. Having read this book, I’m now aware of just how much I’ve lost through that inexcusable omission.
I value your book as my personal Enlightenment, with my life now divided into the period before I read it, and the period since. This second phase of my life is intellectually exciting!
I would need 75,000 words to do your book justice, not the 750 I’m allowed, so I can hardly scratch the surface.
It would have helped me at school where, in English Literature, the teacher wanted me to parrot back the opinions of literary critics regarded as authorities, and emphatically did not want to know what I, as the student, thought of the work.
Reading your book, I was shocked to learn what an opportunity the world missed when the Sophists were crushed; I had never heard anyone refer to recognition thinking before but realise now how limiting and damaging it has been; and your references to heretics often being right is borne out by history (and illustrated through humour in The Emperor’s New Clothes).
There is ample evidence to support your view on Scotland’s third box, the “Not Proven” verdict, and your observation that argument is no guarantee of justice (P99) as the better advocate may win regardless of whether he is right. This happens far too often, and I’ve witnessed it.
If ever there was an example of thinking outside the box, the Spitfire designer R G Mitchell was it. Before his aircraft could save Britain’s skin in The Battle Of Britain, he had his own battle with the Air Ministry. His initial design was rejected because it didn’t meet the Ministry’s specifications - ie, it didn’t fit in the box their limited imagination had envisaged. He persuaded the Ministry to let him design the Spitfire first, then write the specifications retrospectively to suit it. He thought outside the box, so the Ministry hastily constructed a new box to fit around his finished design!
And another:
People were dying regularly on a dual carriageway in cross-over collisions that would have been prevented by crash barriers on the central reservation.
But the Department Of Transport (DoT) said the cost of installing barriers was too high. I multiplied the DoT’s published cost of a fatal road accident by the number of accidents and demonstrated that the next fatal crash would make the cost of those accidents higher than the cost of the barriers that would have prevented them.
The moment my revelation was publicised, the Department announced they were going to install the barriers. There has not been a fatal accident on that stretch of road since.
Why was the Department so stupid? It had not learned to think, and was only looking at the cost of barriers without considering the cost of the accidents the barriers would have prevented.
Your suggestion for improving exam marking with answers being right, wrong or interesting, is breakthrough thinking at its best.
And hats off to you for your Six Hats method. If nations adopted it, it would truly change the world. And I actually shouted “Wow!” (embarrassing in the office canteen!) when I read your suggestion for solving the Chinese population crisis. Stunning thinking, Professor de Bono.
Reading your book, I felt that someone had taken off a blindfold I hadn’t even been aware of.
I was excited by your definition of crazytivity, delighted by the humour running through your book (particularly your reference to yourself as “the infamous Maltese thinker”), and educated by your clear-as-daylight analysis of what’s been holding the human race back throughout its history.
And I couldn’t help noticing the irony that most of use our grey matter, our little grey cells, to think only in
black-and-white.
Thanks to you, Professor de Bono, this humble member of the human race has realised just how stupid he was and has finally learned to think.
Bless you!
JON McKNIGHT
Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!
