Parallel Thinking

Parallel Thinking

1. The standard traditional Western thinking style was set by the famous Greek Gang of Three: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.

   • The traditional style of thinking set by this Gang of Three may not be fully adequate to cope with the demands of the increasing complexity of a rapidly changing world.

2. Perception is always a matter of choice, even if the choice has been made for us by our experience or education or by the emotion of the moment.

3. Plato suggests that society is to be ruled by a special class called Guardians.

   • Ordinary people are to have no say in government whatsoever but of course the enlightened Rulers have been properly educated to look after the interests of ordinary people.
   • Families and private wealth are distractions and are to be abolished.
   • The State is to come first, and people have to fit in with the interests and needs of the State.
   • There is to be censorship in the arts and in the material allowed into education.

4. Plato and Critias were in agreement that uncontrolled democracy was the ruin of the State

5. Socratic method

   • It's an endless search for the truth through asking questions

6. We usually believe that if you are right at one point then all you have to do is to move forward. This is not so.

7. parallel approach

   • Introduce a new idea ‘in parallel’ or alongside the old idea. This allow both to coexist.
   • This simple strategy is almost impossible in practice because we have been taught to want the ‘one truth’.

8. As we go through life we cannot see the truth, we only see shadows or reflections of it.

   • However, it is a fundamental belief that somewhere there is this deep truth, and we have to search for it.

9. Socrates saw virtue as being the consequence of discovering knowledge and held that it was knowledge that students could be taught to discover.

   • Out of all this come the benefits of the "endless search and inquiry" that has given Western civilization its apparent progress in general and some progress in science and technology.

10. Under parallel thinking comes the whole area of creative thinking.

    • solutions can be generated either by the simple intention to be creative or through the formal creative methods of lateral thinking.
    • In structured parallel thinking the new idea possibilities would be put forward under the green hat.
      • Where the thinking is unstructured they may emerge at any time.

11. With parallel thinking the design stage is very important, because without it the parallel-possibility stage has only a small va