How Does Querdenker Translate?

 In the actual sense....it translates to 'Lateral Thinker'.

It was a word created in the late 1960s, and was supposed to mean that you took a subject or thought....putting your own personal prospective into the final outcome.  It meant if you saw 'X'....you might not identify it as 'X'....it might be 'Y' in your vision or view.

In your mind, if you process this....it means there are no yes or no questions/solutions.  Everything has the potential to be read in a different way.

So for several decades....lateral thinsers just sat around and was openly discussed in universities around the world.  If you brought up the phrase with some German butcher or carpenter....prior to 2020....they had no idea what you were talking about.

Covid, and demonstrations within Germany in this 2020/2021 era countering Covid mandates....opened the door for the use of lateral thinking or querdenker....to be used by politicians and journalists.  In their mind, they used the word to be some negative 'slang' term against the demonstration crowds.

Yes, it was a catch-phrase, and was supposed to 'key' you in immediately that these anti-mandate people weren't thinking like a logical minded person.  

Is it still used today?  Well....Covid and the mandates have kinda drifted off (disappeared might be the appropriate phrase to use)....but there are new antigovernmental protests....some related to the recession....some to heating/energy costs....some related to the Russia-Ukraine conflict (being pro-Russia for example).  

So when you view a discussion group of German journalists, or politicians....with the use of querdenker thrown around....it's simply a moment where the person wants to identify the opposing folks in a 'slam'.  

And yes, the intellectual crowd themselves....could be the querdenker, if you think about this long enough.  

Finally, just a note of the true problem here.....if you feed x-amount of information into a topic, there should be a understanding of the problem.  If you feed only x-amount of information into a problem to ensure only one outcome can come out at the end....then the solution or answer isn't really a pure answer.