On Dialogue (Routledge Classics) (Volume 76)

by David Bohm

If everybody has a different opinion, it will be merely a struggle of opinions. And the one who is the strongest will win. It may not necessarily be the right one; it may be that none of them are right. Therefore, we won’t be doing the right thing when we try to get together.

They talk about unity and oneness and love, and all that, but the other assumptions are more powerful;

assumptions or opinions are like computer programs in people’s minds. Those programs take over against the best of intentions – they produce their own intentions.

If five or six people get together, they can usually adjust to each other so that they don’t say the things that upset each other – they get a “cozy adjustment.” People can easily be very polite to each other and avoid the issues that may cause trouble.

soon. In a group of less than about twenty it may not, because people get to know each other and know the rough edges that they have to avoid. They can take it all into account;

a group of forty or fifty it is too much.

In that size group, you begin to get what may be called a “microculture.”

collectively shared meaning is very powerful. The collective thought is more powerful than the individual thought.

Everybody does his own thing to those thoughts – he makes a contribution. But very few change them very much.

light waves build up strength because they are all going in the same direction. This beam can do all sorts of things that ordinary light cannot.

ordinary thought in society is incoherent

conflicting and c...

But if people were to think together in a coherent way, it would h...

– a group which has sustained dialogue for quite a while in which people ...

It would be coherent not only at the level we recognize, but at the tacit level, at the level for which we have only a vague feeling. That would be more important.

unspoken,

cannot be described

It is the actual k...

thought is actually a subtle ta...

what we can say explicitly is only a very sm...

Thought is emerging from the tacit ground, and any fundamental change in thought will come from the tacit ground. So if we are communicating at the ta...

We have to share our consciousness and to be able to think together,

If we begin to confront what’s going on in a dialogue group, we sort of have the nucleus of what’s going on in all society.

In the dialogue people should talk directly to one another, one to one, across the circle. Then the time would come, if we got to know each other a bit and could trust each other, when you could speak very directly to the whole group,

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.

We are not trying to accumulate anything.

Our purpose is really to communicate coherently in truth, if you want to call that a purpose.

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.

Negotiation involves finding a common way of proceeding.

it is necessary to share meaning.

I hold it back, I reflect it back. You may also think of it as suspended in front of you so that you can look at it – sort of reflected back as if you were in front of a mirror. In this way I can see things that I wouldn’t have seen if I had simply carried out that anger, or if I had suppressed it

the whole group now becomes a mirror for each person.

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.

If temperatures do rise, then those who are not completely caught up in their particular opinions should come in to defuse the situation a bit so that people could look at it.

keep it at a level where the opinions come out, but where you can look at them.

you can notice the similarity of the difficulties within a group to the conflicts and incoherent thoughts within an individual.

we feel frustrated. Each necessity is absolute, and we have a conflict of absolute necessities.

That is the weak point about negotiation. When two different nations come up and each one says, “I’m sovereign, and what I say has to go: it’s absolutely necessary,” then there is no answer unless they can change that.

if people will stay with it, which will change their whole attitude. At a certain moment we may have the insight that each one of us is doing the same thing – sticking to the absolute necessity of his idea – and that nothing can happen if we do that. If so, it may raise the question “Is it absolutely necessary? So much is being destroyed just because we have this notion of it being absolutely necessary.”

freedom makes possible a creative perception of new orders of necessity. If you can’t do that, you’re not really free.

the thought of what is necessary will make an impulse, and people who are in international conflict will say our impulse is to go to war and get rid of these people who are in our way, as if that were freedom. But it isn’t. They’re being driven by that thought. So doing what you like is seldom freedom, because what you like is determined by what you think and that is often a pattern which is fixed.

this is one of the key points, then – to realize when you come to an assumption, that there is an assumption of absolute necessity which you’re getting into, and that’s why everything is sticking.

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.

At some stage we would share our opinions without hostility, and we would then be able to think together; whereas when we defend an opinion we can’t.

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 we can see what all of our opinions mean, then we are sharing a common content, even if we don’t agree entirely.

We can just simply share the appreciation of the meanings; and out of this whole thing, truth emerges unannounced – not that we have chosen it.

The individual might hold a separate opinion, but that opinion would then be absorbed into the group, too.

So there is both a collective mind and an individual mind, and like a stream, the flow moves between them. The opinions, therefore, don’t matter so much. Eventually we may be somewhere between all these opinions, and we start to move beyond them in another direction – a tangential direction – into something new and creative.