Everyone knows linear thinking is bad. Yet organizing into hierarchies (tree structures) is presented as the pinnacle of rational thought. Dividing things and then dividing them again is a key activity of analytic thinking. But we should recognise that trees are often only the most pragmatic or least-worst structure. Some examples:

• companies have org charts, that get busted by project teams
• biologists argue over morphological taxonomies, while computers slowly build the phylogenetic tree
• political boundaries are drawn without regard to ethnic or natural organization, leading to succession and environmental destruction
• sometimes you’re happy to browse books by subject (albums by genre, etc.), sometimes a keyword search makes you hike all over the stacks

The biggest deceit is that mind maps are a super-flexible notation when they are nothing more than trees laid-out radially. Taking a concept and composing it into facets or aspects is fully exploring a box, not thinking outside it! That children are taught mind mapping as the lateral thinking tool is evidence of the inflexibility of our education system, nothing more.