‘‘Connected with this major deficiency is the inability to entertain opposites at the same time. The idea of flexible-rigidity would be unacceptable, since this would straddle two opposite established patterns. Yet flexible-rigidity is perhaps an ideal state. Enough rigidity to give context, meaning and security. Enough flexibility to give change, improvement, adventure and hope. Another useful pair of opposites would be tough-humility; in a sense this is what early Christianity was about. A further pair of opposites is ordered-freedom, which simply implies enough order for people to be able to be free. Controlled-chaos means that by design chaos is allowed, in order that material may come together in unexpected ways which can then be harvested and developed further. All these pairs of opposites make sense, yet the tendency of the special memory-surface would be to keep them apart on the basis that what is flexible cannot be rigid, that humility cannot be tough, that order cannot produce freedom, that chaos cannot be controlled. In short that each pole was deliberately established as being distinct from the opposite pole.’’
- Edward de Bono
