Does it look like the Bloggers' Parliament has come to a halt? Not in our minds, it seems.

I don't know about the others, but I've been struggling to find a way forward for this "apparently good" idea.

I've come, once again, to this conclusion: new ideas are not as important as new thinking.

Yeah, sure, we want the ideas. We want to find or come up with solutions for hunger, conflicts, sustainability, and all those hard-pressing problems.

If we had a thousand new ideas, big and small, we'd be better off.

But, guess what?, the World will probably continue rotating for quite a while. If there's still a number of us on its curved surface, things are going to keep on changing: the number of people, the kind and intensity of conflicts, the amount and type of waste to take care of, the technology bringing more promises and more trouble, more information, more decisions ...

We need new thinking.

We need thinking that is constructive, cooperative, and creative:

- We need to learn how to move forward in crisis (and non-crisis) situations. That's the "constructive" part.

- We need to remember or find ways to make the best of the minds of any group of people. That's the "cooperative" part.

- We need to be able to come up with new ideas, ideas that were not in our minds before, and not just when inspiration strikes, but also when we want to or need to. That's the "creative" part.

So I really think the process is more important than the new ideas themselves.

Of course, focusing on the will to find new ideas may be a good way to feel the need for new thinking.

So please join the Bloggers' Parliament if you want to. Join us in thinking about 4 specific topics or more. Join us in the process of finding some aims for our thinking, gathering some information, doing some creative thinking, and exploring and working with those ideas until we find something that may be of value.

New thinking, like free software, is perhaps more a process than it is a product.

Those of you who may have read Edward de Bono's books may recognize a few of his ideas here. So be it. :-)