Climate change, a sinking economy and the threat of epidemics hang glumly over everyone's heads and we need to be able to think clearly to come up with practical solutions. According to the modern gurus of thought, we must dramatically rewrite the software we use for the human brain if we want to effectively confront the global issues plaguing us.
Edward de Bono, in his latest book, Think! Before It's Too Late, argues that our thinking is simply no good.
Shored up with gusto, provocation and packing quite a punch, his book argues that, while the ways in which we think are all good and well in some areas such as technology or science, they are irrelevant to many other major issues, such as climate change or war.
His point is that there is much that can be done to improve the way in which humankind thinks.'This is not a nice book' writes De Bono. 'It is not intended to be a nice book. You cannot shift complacency with niceness [and] we are completely complacent about the quality of our human thinking.'
De Bono states that human thinking is in need of a radical rethink. And nothing has been done about human thinking - bar in the field of mathematics - for more than two millennia.
The ways in which we think were developed 2,400 years ago by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and they focused on argument, truth and logic. Thanks to the Renaissance, these ways of thinking seeped into Europe and into the heart of its administration, culture and education.