The De Bono Code Book

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Language has been the biggest help in human progress, Language is now by far the biggest barrier to human progress. If language has indeed been the biggest help to human progress, how can it now be the biggest barrier?

Language has enabled the human species to move ahead of primates even though there is only a tiny difference in genetic DNA. Language has allowed communication and therefore cooperation. Language has allowed the storing of knowledge, so that future generations can benefit from the learning and wisdom of past generations. Language allows the formulation and expression of thoughts. Language allows competent and subtle descriptions.

So how can language now be the biggest barrier to human progress?

Any self-organising system like human thought and human language reaches a stable equilibrium state (sometimes called a local equilibrium). It is very difficult to budge from this state because any change seems inferior. So we are sucked back to the equilibrium state. That is why changes in language are so slow and so difficult.

COMPLEX WORLD

Purely on this system basis it is inevitable that language will reach a complacent 'stable' state and will become more and more inadequate at describing an increasingly complex world.

So language may indeed have been the biggest help towards human progress up to this point in time. It may also be the biggest barrier to further progress. A child's clothes are important and suitable, but the child eventually grows out of them. The clothes remain wonderful, but their value is changed. Trainer wheels on a bicycle are essential until you learn to ride the bicycle - but a hindrance thereafter.

The apparent contradiction can also be resolved in another way. Language as a general concept remains as valuable as it has always been. At the same time, our current language is a barrier to progress. That is why my book (The De Bono Code Book: Going Beyond the Limits of Language) needed to be written.

Language is an encyclopaedia of ignorance. Words and concepts enter language at a state of relative ignorance (relative to our current knowledge. These perceptions are frozen into permanence with a language word. So we are forced to perceive the world in a very old-fashioned way. It is for precisely this reason that language has become a barrier to human progress. For example, the perception of 'profit' has severely limited the social development of business and value creation in society.

Why, them, have we not been able to develop the new concepts and perceptions that are needed? The answer to this question is the key element in the book, which is published by Viking this month.

We have not developed new perceptions or complex perceptions because our ability to describe in words is so superb that we feel we can describe any situation perfectly well with the existing language. This is a dangerous and fatal mistake because description and perception are two different things

As I mentioned in a previous book of mine, some Inuit languages in Canada have one word which says 'I like you very much, but I would not go seal-hunting with you'.

You can look across a table and 'see' someone through that perception. This is totally different from saying after the meeting: 'Joe is a good fellow and I like him, but I would not want to go seal-hunting with him'. Description after the event is not at all the same as perception at the time.

NOT GOOD ENOUGH

As a matter of fact I think this powerful Inuit word is not good enough. Two words are needed:

1. 'I like you very much, but I would not want to go seal-hunting with you because you do not pull your weight (make holes in the ice, lug the seals, etc., etc.)

2. 'I like you very much, but I would not want to go seal-hunting with you, because we would be spending hours together on the ice, and you are very boring company!'

Imagine the following shape: there are three lines; at each of its ends one line joins another line to form an angle; the three angles so formed enable the three lines to enclose an area completely.

Would it not be very much simpler if we had the word 'triangle'? Description is not perception.

Imagine a huge chest with lots of drawers. Each drawer contains one type of word. Whenever we want to describe anything, we open the appropriate drawers and take out the required words. When we have finished, we return the words to the drawers. what has been described has an existence only while we assemble the words to describe it.

Description follows perception. But what guides that perception?

Australia, Thailand, USA, Argentina, Singapore, Hong Kong, Kuwait, Copenhagen, London was the itinerary of a recent trip of mine. The itinerary exists only when the travel agent has put it together. Contrast that with the concept of 'Amsterdam'. That immediately conjures up canals, practical easy-going people, window-shopping for sex, brown cafes, etc.

A concept has its ramifications and suburbs - just like a town. A concept or a word has its own 'locus' (or place) in the nerve networks of the mind. From this locus we move more easily to other places. A description is an itinerary which visits one place after another. In neurological terms the two are totally different.

The brain can only see what it is prepared to see. If the brain contains complex concepts, then we can perceive the world through these concepts. This is perception.

NEW WORDS

So how are we going to create the new words that are going to allow us to see the world in a much richer and much more powerful way? To create the new concepts and perceptions, we use numbers to create codes. This is not much different from using a telephone number.

For example, 10/15 means: 'I am upset and not pleased in a general sense. I am not happy with the way things are going. There is no one person or event about which I am unhappy. It is a general response to what I see happening'. This is a 'mood' code. There are 17 other types of 'B' code listed in the book.

In order to make much fuller use of the capacity of the human brain, there is an absolute need to move to a higher-order language. This might happen gradually over time. But there is no reason why it should not happen sharply - as with my book. For convenience, only part of the full codes are included in the book. Once the coding system has been established, it becomes possible to create new codes for new situations and new concepts. The door is open.

The De Bono Code Book is published by Viking