Daniel Pink's "A Whole New Mind"

In reading Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind, his discussion about the left-brain dominance of right-brain thinking reminds me of one of my problems with the critical thinking classes I've taken. While I strongly believe that critical thinking should be required and taught much earlier than college (maybe as a yearly spiral from 5th grade onward), especially now that he advocates STORY as a organizational tactic (to gain customers, p. 105-107, but more on this next), I do have a problem with the whole argumentation and debate thing.

I feel that sometimes it robs us of truth and meaning because winning can easily become more important than understanding, compassion, and empathy.

On another note, my sister has a collection of TIME Magazines dating back from the 1930s (about 2-3 per decade). I love print advertisements, so I like to leaf through her magazines looking at the ads. What's astonishing is that the earlier ads looked like articles and were text heavy. They told a story and were geared toward emotionally hooking consumers. Fast forward to the Dot Com Boom, and ads were just an image and a URL. Now, though, when I leaf through magazines, I'm finding a return to STORY again. I see many ads that look like articles, are text heavy, and are designed to emotionally engage consumers. Again.