It is precisely because they are meaningless that they are so immensely useful in thinking.
They act as link words to keep thought moving from one idea to another.
If there were no such words then thinking would come to a dead end when there was no direct step to another specific idea.
The various uses are listed below:
- Porridge words allow one to set up vague questions when one has not enough information to ask a specific question.
- Porridge words offer usable explanations when one cannot provide any more detail.
- Porridge words act as cross-links for movement from one idea to another.
- Porridge words can act as black boxes to enable one to leap-frog over an area of ignorance and carry on.
- Porridge words prevent too early a commitment to a specific idea and so keep options open as long as possible.
The paradox is that porridge words arise from ignorance and yet they become immensely useful thinking tools in their own right.
The curious thing is that over the centuries intellectual tradition in the West (but not in the East) has been directed against porridge words and in favour of precise ideas.
The sharp-brained intellectuals have set up ideas which have as much fixity and rigidity as the responses of sharp-brained animals.
It is not often realized that it is the blurry-brained creative people who have established new general ideas and then gone on to make them more specific.
The sharp-brained outlook can never establish new ideas because it does not mess around, never makes mistakes, and is completely trapped by existing ideas.
It is curious that we so encourage the sharp-brained attitude when the advantage of the human brain depends on the blurry quality which makes for creativity.
Sharp brains are indeed essential but only for refining, developing and using the ideas thrown up by blurry-brained thinking.
And computers are of course very sharp-brained creatures which can do this work for us.
Just as black boxes allow us to use a mechanism without really knowing how it works so porridge words allow us to make definite statements or ask definite questions when we do not really know what we are talking about.
The sharp-brained animals establish a few quick and efficient reaction patterns and then become trapped by these.
It is not often realized that it is the blurry-brained creative people who have established new general ideas and then gone on to make them more specific.
The sharp-brained outlook can never establish new ideas because it does not mess around, never makes mistakes, and is completely trapped by existing ideas.
Practical Thinking by Edward de Bono
Practical Thinking by Edward de Bono
