On Dialogue (Routledge Classics) (Volume 76)

by David Bohm

consider the prevailing tendency toward nationalism. People in each nation apparently understand the need for common human feeling and truthfulness in communications. Yet, when the nation is in danger, so strong is the reaction of fear and aggression that everyone is immediately ready to cease to treat the enemy as human (e.g., each side is ready to use bombs, killing children on the other side, when individually they would be horrified at the notion of child murder). And at home, they accept a censorship, which implies that they agree to take what is false as true, because they believe such self-deception to be necessary for the survival of the nation. Nationalism is thus seen to be rooted in a tremendous paradox. It therefore makes no sense to treat nationalism as a problem. The absurdity of such a procedure becomes evident if one puts forth the question of how one can be ready to annihilate children of another nationality and yet love children of one’s own nationality. Such a question has no answer, and indeed the attempt to find an answer can only lead to further confusion. What is needed is that people be ready to give serious and sustained attention to a paradoxical pattern that has come to dominate their thinking and feeling.