response to: Lateral Thinking – Introduction
When discussing the ways in which ideas are updated, De Bono mentions that “(…) the [conflict] method does not work at all when the new information can only be evaluated through the old idea.” I found this really interesting as it reminded me of the importance of ideology in the formation and propagation of knowledge.
Back home, in Brazil, there have been increasing attempts to remove racist, mysoginistic and other bigoted content from traditional books, many of which are read in school. The idea is to rephrase those stories according to the morality of our current time. From my understanding, this sounds a lot like the linear progression inherent to vertical thinking. In my opinion, however, this strategy of simple erasure is fruitless when it comes to educating a new generation in social and political problems that, to quote de Bono, cannot be evaluated objectively. Instead I would suggest a strategy, perhaps similar to that of lateral thinking, where those stories are contextualized. After all, only by evaluating the past can we understand the struggles and ideological shifts of the present.