On Dialogue (Routledge Great Minds)

by David Bohm

the very attempt to improve communication leads frequently to yet more confusion, and the consequent sense of frustration inclines people ever further toward aggression and violence, rather than toward mutual understanding and trust.

one meaning of “to communicate” is “to make something common,” i.e., to convey information or knowledge from one person to another in as accurate a way as possible.

in a dialogue, each person does not attempt to make common certain ideas or items of information that are already known to him. Rather, it may be said that the two people are making something in common, i.e., creating something new together.

when one comes to do something (and not merely to talk about it or think about it), one tends to believe that one already is listening to the other person in a proper way. It seems then that the main trouble is that the other person is the one who is prejudiced and not listening.

“Dialogue” comes from the Greek word dialogos. Logos means “the word,” or in our case we would think of the “meaning of the word.” And dia means “through” — it doesn't mean “two.” A dialogue can be among any number of people, not just two. Even one person can have a sense of dialogue within himself if the spirit of the dialogue is present.

the word “discussion,” which has the same root as “percussion” and “concussion.” It really means to break things up. It emphasizes the idea of analysis, where there may be many points of view, and where everybody is presenting a different one — analyzing and breaking up. That obviously has its value, but it is limited, and it will not get us very far beyond our various points of view. Discussion is almost like a ping-pong game, where people are batting the ideas back and forth and the object of the game is to win or to get points for yourself. Possibly you will take up somebody else's ideas to back up your own — you may agree with some and disagree with others — but the basic point is to win the game. That's very frequently the case in a discussion.

In a dialogue, however, nobody is trying to win. Everybody wins if anybody wins.

An opinion is an assumption.

dialogue has to go into all the pressures that are behind our assumptions. It goes into the process of thought behind the assumptions, not just the assumptions themselves.

It is important to see that the different opinions that you have are the result of past thought: all your experiences, what other people have said, and what not. That is all programmed into your memory. You may then identify with those opinions and react to defend them. But it doesn't make sense to do this. If the opinion is right, it doesn't need such a reaction. And if it is wrong, why should you defend it? If you are identified with it, however, you do defend it. It is as if you yourself are under attack when your opinion is challenged. Opinions thus tend to be experienced as “truths,” even though they may only be your own assumptions and your own background. You got them from your teacher, your family, or by reading, or in yet some other way. Then for one reason or another you are identified with them, and you defend them.

We haven't really paid much attention to thought as a process.

it is thought which divides everything up. Every division we make is a result of how we think.

thought is very active, but the process of thought thinks that it is doing nothing — that it is just telling you the way things are. Almost everything around us has been determined by thought — all the buildings, factories, farms, roads, schools, nations, science, technology, religion — whatever you care to mention.

The point is: thought produces results, but thought says it didn't do it. And that is a problem. The trouble is that some of those results that thought produces are considered to be very important and valuable.

if people were to think together in a coherent way, it would have tremendous power. That's the suggestion.

“Tacit” means that which is unspoken, which cannot be described — like the knowledge required to ride a bicycle. It is the actual knowledge, and it may be coherent or not. I am proposing that thought is actually a subtle tacit process.

A basic notion for a dialogue would be for people to sit in a circle. Such a geometric arrangement doesn't favor anybody;

the whole of society has been organized to believe that we can't function without leaders. But maybe we can.

people have to get to know each other and trust each other and establish that relationship of sharing.

In the dialogue group we are not going to decide what to do about anything. This is crucial. Otherwise we are not free. We must have an empty space where we are not obliged to do anything, nor to come to any conclusions, nor to say anything or not say anything. It's open and free. It's an empty space.

“The cup has to be empty to hold something.”

quote

in a dialogue we are not going to have any agenda, we are not going to try to accomplish any useful thing. As soon as we try to accomplish a useful purpose or goal, we will have an assumption behind it as to what is useful, and that assumption is going to limit us. Different people will think different things are useful. And that's going to cause trouble.

A great deal of what nowadays is typically considered to be dialogue tends to focus on negotiation;

The point is not to establish a fixed dialogue group forever, but rather one that lasts long enough to make a change.

dialogue is not going to be always entertaining, nor is it doing anything visibly useful. So you may tend to drop it as soon as it gets difficult. But I suggest that it is very important to go on with it — to stay with it through the frustration. When you think something is important you will do that.

the whole group now becomes a mirror for each person.

what I consider dialogue — for people to realize what is on each other's minds without coming to any conclusions or judgments. Assumptions will come up. And if you hear somebody else who has an assumption that seems outrageous to you, the natural response might be to get angry, or get excited, or to react in some other way. But suppose you suspend that activity. You may not even have known that you had an assumption. It was only because he came up with the opposite one that you find out that you have one. You may uncover other assumptions, but we are all suspending them and looking at them all, seeing what they mean.

the word necessary has a Latin root, necesse, meaning “don't yield.” It really means “what cannot be turned aside.”

Necessity creates powerful impulses. Once you feel that something is necessary, it creates an impulse to do it or not to do it, whatever it may be. It may be very strong and you feel compelled, propelled. Necessity is one of the most powerful forces — it overrides all the instincts eventually.

if two things are absolutely necessary you cannot use the usual way of negotiation. That is the weak point about negotiation.

As long as that absolute necessity remains, nothing can change it, because in a way each person says that they have a valid reason to stick to what they've got, and they have a valid reason to hate the other person for getting in the way of what is absolutely necessary:

You think because you have an intention to think. It comes from the idea that it is necessary to think, that there's a problem. If you watch, you'll see an intention to think, an impulse to think. Then comes the thought, and the thought may give rise to a feeling, which might give rise to another intention to think, and so on. You're not aware of that, so the thought appears as if it were coming by itself, and the feeling appears to be coming by itself, and so on.

The point of suspension is to help make proprioception possible, to create a mirror so that you can see the results of your thought. You have it inside yourself because your body acts as a mirror and you can see tensions arising in the body. Also other people are a mirror, the group is a mirror. You have to see your intention. You get an impulse to say something and you see it there, the result, at almost the same time.

The object of a dialogue is not to analyze things, or to win an argument, or to exchange opinions. Rather, it is to suspend your opinions and to look at the opinions — to listen to everybody's opinions, to suspend them, and to see what all that means.

If each of us in this room is suspending, then we are all doing the same thing. We are all looking at everything together. The content of our consciousness is essentially the same. Accordingly, a different kind of consciousness is possible among us, a participatory consciousness

There's no point in being persuaded or convinced. That's not really coherent or rational. If something is right, you don't need to be persuaded. If somebody has to persuade you, then there is probably some doubt about it.

I think that something like this is necessary for society to function properly and for society to survive. Otherwise it will all fall apart. This shared meaning is really the cement that holds society together, and you could say that the present society has some very poor-quality cement. If you make a building with very low-quality cement, it cracks and falls apart. We really need the right cement, the right glue. And that is shared meaning.

In science, or anywhere, you usually have to go through a period where you are not getting anywhere while you are exploring. It can, nevertheless, be very discouraging.

But there is a great deal of violence in the opinions that we are defending. They are not merely opinions, they are not merely assumptions; they are assumptions with which we are identified — which we are therefore defending, because it is as if we are defending ourselves. The natural self-defense impulse, which we got in the jungle, has been transferred from the jungle animals to these opinions. In other words, we say that there are some dangerous opinions out there — just as there might be dangerous tigers.

we have to begin at the grass roots, as it were, not to begin at the top of the heap with the United Nations or with the President.

What blocks sensitivity is the defense of your assumptions and opinions. But if you are defending your opinions, you don't judge yourself and say, “I shouldn't be defending.” Rather, the fact is that you are defending, and you then need to be sensitive to that — to all the feelings in that, all the subtle nuances. We are not aiming for the type of group that condemns and judges, and so forth — we can all realize that that would get in the way. So this group is not going to judge or condemn. It is simply going to look at all the opinions and assumptions and let them surface.

if you are defending your opinions, you are not serious. Likewise, if you are trying to avoid something unpleasant inside of yourself, that is also not being serious.

most of our thought in its general form is not individual. It originates in the whole culture and it pervades us. We pick it up as children from parents, from friends, from school, from newspapers, from books, and so on. We make a small change in it; we select certain parts of it which we like, and we may reject other parts. But still, it all comes from that pool. This deep structure of thought, which is the source, the constant source — timeless — is always there.

the key point — is that this representation is not only present in thought or in imagination, but it fuses with the actual perception or experience. In other words, the representation fuses with the “presentation,” so that what is “presented” (as perception) is already in large part a re-presentation. So it “presents again.” You then get what we might call a “net presentation,” which is the result of the senses, of thought, and possibly some insight. It all comes together in one net presentation. The way you experience something, therefore, depends on how you represent it — or mis-represent it.

But the lack of awareness of this process is crucial. If someone says, “People of this category are bad,” and you accept that, then the representation of thought enters the presentation of perception. Once you've accepted that, it goes into implicit, tacit thought. The next moment, when you see a person of that kind, it comes up as a presentation. The “badness” is perceived as inhering in him. It is not that you say, “I know that somebody has told me that these people are bad, and they may be bad or they may be good. I'd better look and see.” But rather, what they “are” is apparently right “there.” From there on, you think about that as if it were entirely an independent fact — independent of thought.

The Latin root of the word “fact” means “what has been made,” as in “manufacture.”