Words, words, words …
Even words can “provoke”. Indeed, if you pay attention, it is always words that provoke discussions, trigger quarrels and various problems, and even wars. Not surprisingly, in the beginning, was the “Word”, with all the consequences of the case. Carlo Levi wrote that words are stones. I think words are like events, they make things, and they change things. They transform both who says them and who listens to them, transmit energy, satisfy understanding and emotions, and amplify them.
In a book published in 1977, Edward de Bono, the father of creative thinking and the inventor of lateral thinking, among the 265 chosen words that have their own creative force, invented one that I didn’t know until today: it’s a short word, just a monosyllable: “PO”. It must be said that all the words de Bono talks about are English words that in almost half a century have spread and transferred to all languages. The Maltese scholar analyzes them in a very synthetic way. They come from various fields such as economics, technology, and science. All are seen as powerful tools of expression provided they are used with precision.
The word I’m going to talk about here doesn’t seem to have had much success, not unlike “lateral thinking” which has become part of the Oxford English Dictionary, the bible of the English language. The Maltese writer states that just as the word “NO” is the operative word of logical thinking, in the same way the word “PO” is of lateral thinking. It comes from words like “hypothesis”, “possible”, “to suppose”, “and poetry”.
With “hypothesis” we put forward the proposal of an idea in order to make an experiment; with “possible” something we think can be done; with “to suppose” we put forward the idea of a situation in order to see the effects that will derive from it; with “poetry” we put images and words together to produce an effect that can only be apparent, after having put the images together. In every such case and situation, there is a “provocative” use of ideas. Here is the use of the word “PO”.
In lateral thinking, there may be no reason to say something until it is said. In logical thinking, this is not possible: the reason to say something must precede the statement. But in the world of perceptions, we may have to use a provocation to create a pattern of behavior. When we have used provocation, using a new way of looking at things, the new model will become clear.
“PO” serves as a marker to show that the idea is being used as a provocation, not as a logical description based on experience. For example: to solve the pollution of a river we could say “PO”, ie the factory should receive the energy from its own polluting current. Not a logical statement at all, but a provocative one. The provocation comes from the idea that factories, and industries should, by law, be fed by the same current of the river they pollute so that they could realize what they discharge into the river.
The word “PO” is then used as a tool for de-molding, putting together provoking ideas, to see what happens. It means breaking the model in use, the pattern employed. In a discussion, in a debate, the word “PO” proposed by one side means that one supports the possibility of accepting that proposal from a different point of view and not completely rejecting the other position. Other ways out: for the solution of a problem, which otherwise ends up as a “bottleneck” in a classic “deadlock”, the “dead point”.
Words
Always arriving winds of words
Pour like Atlantic gales over these ears,
These reefs, these foils and fenders, these shrinking
And sea-scalded edges of the brain-land.
Rebutted and rebounding, on they post
Past my remembrance, falling unplanned.
But some day out of darkness they’ll come forth,
Arrowed and narrowed into my tongue’s tip,
And speak for me — their most astonished host.
W. R. Rodgers (1909–1969)
