Having had the honour and privilege of interviewing the learned Maltese scholar of international fame, for the benefit of the general readership of this regular Sunday newspaper, I submit two brief excerpts from each of the interviews.

Edward De Bono was born and bred in Malta of Maltese parentage and educated at St Edward College and the Royal University of Malta. After graduating in Medicine he proceeded to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship followed by stints at London, Cambridge and Harvard universities.

He is remembered worldwide for his vast works on Lateral and Creative Thinking all of which he developed after applying his knowledge of Medicine and combining it with the potentialities of computers.

Here are two questions I put to Professor De Bono, one from each of our two interviews, both of which were held separately at his Malta summer retreat at Marnisi, limits of Marsaxlokk; the first session was in 1993 and the second in 1998.

Unfortunately at the time, it never occurred to me to take a commemorative photograph with the celebrated don!

I express my deep gratitutde towards this scholar of the highest profile – twice nominated for the Nobel Prize, who resided in the heart of London at Piccadilly in William Gladstone’s old lodgings whose former residents included such renowned personages as Graham Greene, Lord Byron and Aldous Huxley – for availing his precious time and attention to my questioning on no less than two separate occasions, to the benefit of the interested literati of Malta and elsewhere.   

Excerpt from the interview of 1993

RB: Your thinking methods versus philosophy! Many philosophers seem to think philosophy is the final answer.

EDB: That is unfortunately not true. Philosophy is all about analysis, judgement, the meaning of words, discriminating the meaning of words. That has value. But in terms of teaching thinking it's simply not true. At best philosophy teaches one very limited sort of thinking, which is critical thinking, judgement thinking, the thinking designed by the Greeks 2400 years ago. That thinking was all about "what is this?" It fell in the category called "does not think". Take this example: A child is brought to the doctor with a rash and the doctor has to decide what it is. So the doctor thinks of possibilities: a burn? food allergy? measles? Once the doctor judges, then he knows how to treat it. That is our basic notion of thinking – judgements, categories, definitions, tragedies, principles. We look at something and judge. Is it this or is it not? It can't be both. That is fine in a stable world; but in a changing world, that is totally insufficient. It lacks constructive energy, design energy, creative energy. In a changing world we need to be able to design the way forward. Now for design, instead of a doctor you look for an architect. The architect does not pull out of his drawer and say there's a hundred and one designs for us. And he doesn't say to his client, "I think you'd better have the design on page 71." Why doesn't he do that? Simply because there would no longer be any need for architects. The contractor would have the book with 101 designs and the client would buy the book. So the type of thinking we have, the philosophy type, is concerned with "What is this? What is?" That's fine. Nothing wrong with it. But it is not sufficient. We need another sort of thinking which is "What can be? What can we construct? What can we build? What can we design? How can we report?" Just deciding what is, is only one part of thinking. That is what philosophy has concerned itself with. I'm much more interested in the constructive aspect of thinking. How do you settle disputes by not saying "he's right, she's wrong"? But by saying "how can we design a way forward", which gives both sides their values. Irrespective of whatever. We need more constructive thinking!

From the interview of 1998

RB: Let's go on to Lateral Thinking, the aspect which catapulted you before the eyes of the world. Briefly what do you understand by Lateral Thinking?

EDB: It's not something that's easy to explain. If you just say it's to do with new ideas, it's to do with changing ideas, it's to do with getting out of the same hole and looking elsewhere; that's a general description. The technical description would be that in any patterning system, you get what's called asymmetrics. These are side-tracks which you cannnot get to from the main track unless you make a jump. You move sideways. You move laterally. The closest model would be humour. Similar things to those that happen in humour happen in Lateral Thinking. In humour you make a jump, then in hindsight it's very obvious. The same thing happens in Lateral Thinking. But there's a whole lot of specific techniques which I developed: techniques of provocation, techniques of random entry, which are important deliberate ways of generating new ideas, etc.

RB: Humour has always seemed to me to be a form of self-defense. We seem to laugh when we're embarassed. Would that be close to the truth?

EDB: No. There's different levels in humour. You can look at the use of humour. It can have various uses. It could be, as you suggest, a form of self-defense. The nervousness, when you laugh, when you're embarrassed; that raises the threshold for humour. Because any sort of nervousness makes it easier to laugh. Humour really is very significant. It's probably the most significant behaviour of the human brain, because it tells us more about the human brain than anything else. Humour indicates a type of self-organising-information-system. Humour is very key.

While these two brief excerpts represent my gratitutde and respect towards Edward De Bono, my other intention here is that of wetting the reader’s appetite towards a deeper appreciation of De Bono’s legacy to a better understanding of ourselves and therefrom attaining a more balanced and peaceful co-existence in this muddled world of ours.  

May all those individuals throughout mankind who administer humanity, specifically political leaders, teachers at all levels, and religious leaders, as well as all others who through their high profiles have a powerful force of influence over the masses – learn to exert a continuing exercise of self-correction through De Bono’s (and those wise concepts of other true thinkers from yesteryear) lifetime efforts in planning for a better world.