## Metadata - Author: [[David Bohm and Dean Rickles]] - Full Title: On Dialogue - Category: #books ## Highlights - “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. ([Location 272](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=272)) - The picture or image that this derivation suggests is of a stream of meaning flowing among and through us and between us. This will make possible a flow of meaning in the whole group, out of which may emerge some new understanding. It's something new, which may not have been in the starting point at all. It's something creative. And this shared meaning is the “glue” or “cement” that holds people and societies together. ([Location 276](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=276)) - Contrast this with 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. ([Location 279](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=279)) - Clearly, a lot of what is called “dialogue” is not dialogue in the way that I am using the word. For example, people at the United Nations have been having what are often considered to be dialogues, but these are very limited. They are more like discussions — or perhaps trade-offs or negotiations — than dialogues. The people who take part are not really open to questioning their fundamental assumptions. ([Location 290](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=290)) - Now, why do we need dialogue? People have difficulty communicating even in small groups. But in a group of thirty or forty or more, many may find it very hard to communicate unless there is a set purpose, or unless somebody is leading it. Why is that? For one thing, everybody has different assumptions and opinions. They are basic assumptions — not merely superficial assumptions — such as assumptions about the meaning of life; about your own self-interest, your country's interest, or your religious interest; about what you really think is important. ([Location 298](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=298)) - 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. ([Location 322](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=322)) - Dialogue is really aimed at going into the whole thought process and changing the way the thought process occurs collectively. We haven't really paid much attention to thought as a process. We have engaged in thoughts, but we have only paid attention to the content, not to the process. Why does thought require attention? Everything requires attention, really. If we ran machines without paying attention to them, they would break down. Our thought, too, is a process, and it requires attention, otherwise it's going to go wrong. ([Location 328](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=328)) - Fragmentation is one of the difficulties of thought, but there is a deeper root, which is that 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 whole ecological problem is due to thought, because we have thought that the world is there for us to exploit, that it is infinite, and so no matter what we did, the pollution would all get dissolved away. ([Location 339](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=339)) - 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. Thought produced the nation, and it says that the nation has an extremely high value, a supreme value, which overrides almost everything else. The same may be said about religion. Therefore, freedom of thought is interfered with, because if the nation has high value it is necessary to continue to think that the nation has high value. Therefore you've got to create a pressure to think that way. You've got to have an impulse, and make sure everybody has got the impulse, to go on thinking that way about his nation, his religion, his family, or whatever it is that he gives high value. He's got to defend it. ([Location 350](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=350)) - In order to deal with this, we have got to look at thought, because the problem is originating in thought. Usually when you have a problem, you say, “I must think about it to solve it.” But what I'm trying to say is that thought is the problem. What, therefore, are we going to do? We could consider two kinds of thought — individual and collective. Individually I can think of various things, but a great deal of thought is what we do together. In fact, most of it comes from the collective background. Language is collective. Most of our basic assumptions come from our society, including all our assumptions about how society works, about what sort of person we are supposed to be, and about relationships, institutions, and so on. Therefore we need to pay attention to thought both individually and collectively. ([Location 360](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=360)) - This is part of what I consider dialogue — for people to realize what is on each other's minds without coming to any conclusions or judgments. ([Location 544](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=544)) - I am saying that a genuine culture could arise in which opinions and assumptions are not defended incoherently. And that kind of culture is necessary for the society to work, and ultimately for the society to survive. ([Location 695](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=695)) - 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. ([Location 704](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=704)) - Everybody may or may not have a different opinion — it is not that important. It isn't necessary that everybody be convinced to have the same view. This sharing of mind, of consciousness, is more important than the content of the opinions. And you may see that these opinions are limited anyway. You may find that the answer is not in the opinions at all, but somewhere else. Truth does not emerge from opinions; it must emerge from something else — perhaps from a more free movement of the tacit mind. ([Location 807](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=807)) - As we ourselves stay with the frustrations of dialogue, the meaning of what we are doing may be much more than will appear at first sight. In fact, we could say that instead of being part of the problem, we become part of the solution. In other words, our very movement has the quality of the solution; it is part of it. However small it is, it has the quality of the solution and not the quality of the problem. However big the larger movement is, it has the quality of the problem, not of the solution. Accordingly, the major point is to start something which has the quality of the solution. ([Location 834](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=834)) - Dialogue may not be concerned directly with truth — it may arrive at truth, but it is concerned with meaning. If the meaning is incoherent you will never arrive at truth. You may think, “My meaning is coherent and somebody else's isn't,” but then we'll never have meaning shared. You will have the “truth” for yourself or for your own group, whatever consolation that is. But we will continue to have conflict. ([Location 855](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=855)) - In a way, science has become the religion of the modern age. It plays the role which religion used to play of giving us truth; hence different scientists cannot come together any more than different religions can, once they have different notions of truth. ([Location 865](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=865)) - 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. And I think that there could then be a change. ([Location 916](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=916)) - We don't know how it is going to come out, but there is a certain movement toward something more open. I don't say that it is going to solve the whole thing; I am saying that if it slows down the destruction, that's important, because unless the destruction is slowed down to give time for something new to emerge, it will be too late. ([Location 1016](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=1016)) - There may be no pat political answer to the world's problems. However, the important point is not the answer — just as in a dialogue, the important point is not the particular opinions — but rather the softening up, the opening up of the mind, and looking at all the opinions. If there is some sort of spread of that attitude, I think it can slow down the destruction. ([Location 1019](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=1019)) - So we've said that it is crucial to be able to share our judgments, to share our assumptions, to listen to each other's assumptions. In the case of Einstein and Bohr it didn't lead to violence that they did not; but in general, if somebody doesn't listen to your basic assumptions you feel it as an act of violence, and then you are inclined to be violent yourself. Therefore, this is crucial both individually and collectively. Dialogue is the collective way of opening up judgments and assumptions. ([Location 1022](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=1022)) - Why have we accepted this state of affairs which is so destructive and so dangerous and so conducive to unhappiness? It seems we're mesmerized in some way. We go on with this insanity and nobody seems to know what to do or say. ([Location 1058](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=1058)) - I am suggesting that underneath it there's something we don't understand about how thought works. In the beginning of the process of civilization, thought was regarded as a very valuable thing. And it still is. Thought has done all the things which we are proud of. It has built our cities (we shouldn't be so proud of them, I suppose). It has created science and technology, and has been very creative in medicine. Practically all of what has been called nature has been arranged by thought. Yet thought also goes wrong somehow, and produces destruction. This arises from a certain way of thinking, i.e., fragmentation. This is to break things up into bits, as if they were independent. It's not merely making divisions, but it is breaking things up which are not really separate. ([Location 1061](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=1061)) - We may not know what that means, to pay attention to thought. Neither our culture, nor indeed hardly any culture, is able to give much help on that, and yet that is crucial. Everything depends on thought — if thought goes wrong, we're going to do everything wrong. But we are so used to taking it for granted that we don't pay any attention to it. ([Location 1089](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=1089)) - The real crisis is not in these events which are confronting us, like wars and crime and drugs and economic chaos and pollution; it's really in the thought which is making it — all the time. Each person can do something about that thought, because he's in it. But one of the troubles we get into is to say, “It's they who are thinking all that, and I am thinking right.” I say that's a mistake. I say thought pervades us. It's similar to a virus — somehow this is a disease of thought, of knowledge, of information, spreading all over the world. The more computers, radio, and television we have, the faster it spreads. So the kind of thought that's going on all around us begins to take over in every one of us, without our even noticing it. It's spreading like a virus and each one of us is nourishing that virus. ([Location 1097](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=1097)) - There is a whole pool of knowledge for the whole human race, like different computers that share a pool of knowledge. This pool of thought has been developing for many thousands of years, and it is full of all sorts of content. This knowledge, or thought, knows all of that content, but it doesn't know what it is doing. This knowledge knows itself wrongly: it knows itself as doing nothing. It therefore says, “I am not responsible for any of these problems. I'm just here for you to use.” ([Location 1120](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=1120)) - As a theory, you could say that our “new brain,” with the forebrain and the cortex which allows for complex thought, developed rather rapidly; and therefore it did not come into a harmonious relationship with what was there before. The older functions of the brain, such as emotions and so on, could respond to the immediate fact of the animal's environment: run, fight, or freeze. Then came the activity of this new cortex, which could project images of all kinds which were very realistic; but the “old brain” had never learned very well how to tell the difference between an image and reality, because it had no need to. It had never been surrounded by a structure that would produce a lot of images. It was like a dog that would never have to imagine another dog when it wasn't looking at it. ([Location 1159](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=1159)) - The thing to notice is that the major environment of the old brain is now, not nature, but the new brain, because nature is now filtered through the new brain. Civilization tends to make this worse — that's clear. As civilization develops, you have to have a bigger society with rules, authority, police, jails, armies. You build up a tremendous amount of stress. And the further civilization goes, by and large, the greater the stress. It has been that way for millennia, and we haven't solved the problem of what to do about it. ([Location 1170](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=1170)) - We could consider a representation which is current in our society, such as, “You have to take care of yourself first, you have to watch out — people are dangerous — you can't trust them,” and so on. This will produce a response, not only outwardly but also inwardly. The entire neurochemistry develops accordingly, as does the tension in the body. Now, it's true that the world is dangerous, but we are looking at this wrongly. It's dangerous not because people are intrinsically dangerous, but because of mis-representation that has generally been accepted. We have to see the right reason. Therefore, we don't approach such people as intrinsically dangerous, but as people who are the victims of mis-representation. ([Location 1273](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=1273)) - Changing this representation then opens the way to further change. We don't say it's going to be easy, or hard — we don't know — but it opens up the way, it opens up a big perspective. If we could learn to see thought actually producing presentations from representations, we would no longer be fooled by it — it would be like seeing the trick of a magician. As long as you don't see what the magician is doing, it seems like magic. But if you had a direct insight into the trick, it could change everything. ([Location 1279](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=1279)) - Many worlds are possible — it all depends on representation, especially the collective representation. To make a “world” takes more than one person, and therefore the collective representation is the key. It's not enough merely for one person to change his representation. That's fine, but we're saying that the real change is the change of collective representations. ([Location 1283](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=1283)) - The very “wrong” things which he should be looking at are in the one who is looking, because that is the safest place to hide them. Hide them in the looker, and the looker will never find them. ([Location 1473](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=1473)) - The general difficulty that one has — in both listening and looking — is that if there is listening through a “listener,” then we are not listening. ([Location 1479](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=1479)) - Is it possible for thought similarly to observe itself, to see what it is doing, perhaps by awakening some other sense of what thought is, possibly through attention? In that way, thought may become proprioceptive. It will know what it is doing and it will not create a mess. ([Location 1527](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=1527)) - I want to emphasize again that with anger, violence, fear — with all those things, there can be suspension. If we suspend anger, then we are going to see that anger has certain thoughts and assumptions that keep it going. If you accept those assumptions, you will go on being angry. ([Location 1531](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=1531)) - if we have a desire for coherence we can go about it wrongly and simply try to impose coherence, rather than discovering the incoherence and dropping it. ([Location 1582](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=1582)) - there seems to be something in the structure of thought in civilization which tends to claim that we are going to get to know everything, and control it all. But we should ask: is it in the nature of thought to be able to know everything — since thought is abstraction, which inherently implies limitation? Or put differently: is the whole field of thought — experience, knowledge, tacit thought — is that field limited? A great deal of our culture would say that it is not limited. The assumption is that no matter what happens, by approaching it through thought, knowledge, and skill of application, we can deal with it. Now, I say that this assumption will go into implicit, tacit thought — and then it means that no matter what happens, you're going to think. That assumption is very dynamically active — it's a universal assumption, an assumption about “all.” It is extremely powerful, with extremely great value, and it will “work.” It will tend to take precedence over almost anything. You will find, therefore, that you are automatically thinking about everything, because the assumption is at work that thinking is not only possible, and at least potentially relevant, but that it's the only way. ([Location 1853](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DS83CFG&location=1853))