The prospect of enhanced humanity. This is the terrain David Bohm explores, analyzing the potential of the form of common dialogue. When we come together to talk, or otherwise to act in common, can each one of us be aware of the subtle fear and pleasure sensations that 'block' the ability to listen freely? By unblocking, can we change the way the thought process occurs collectively? Paying attention. Creating something new together.

Mankind is caught in a web of fragmented and contradictory intentions and actions, bent by culture and infected by personal ambition. Dialogue sheds light on this fragmentation, permitting participants to examine prejudices and their power.

Admittedly influenced by J. Krishnamurti, and lacking any experiential or educational exposure to anthropology, Bohm brings scientific principles to bear on the seemingly intractable incoherence of human thought. He aims the dialogue at the nature of consciousness by removing the "aim", the agendas and programs.

Chapters:
1. On Communication. From essays authored in 1970. People are unable to listen freely to each other. We are blocked by fears and prejudices, and attempts to communicate often causes confusion. "Listening" is more than empathic attention to words, but to the misperception within the hearer due to "blocks" or anesthesia caused by fear and pleasure.

2. On Dialogue. May be used as a primer, drawn from meetings held in Ojai, California 1977-1992. To start a dialogue group, have a discussion/seminar about what dialogue is, and why we do it. Can dialogue alone. Shared meaning holds society together, and every participant benefits. Cf. "discussion". No leader, no set purpose, because everyone has different assumptions and opinions and becomes defensive. Fragmentation-separating, seeing different religions, shades--is a result of defensive thought. "Tacit" --unspoken-- Thought is a tacit process. We do almost everything by tacit knowledge, and the bulk of our interpersonal communication is shared at the tacit level [14]. We communicated this way for a million years and have lost it in the last 5000 years of civilization. Circle sit, facilitator, agenda of no agenda or open to trust, Crucial to the "free" thought not to have to make a decision or have a fixed purpose. [17] The negotiation is not the end, but the beginning. [18] "Suspending assumptions" - neither carried out nor suppressed, neither believed nor disbelieved, nor judged, from the inside, mirroring. The "impulse of necessity", driving certain thoughts to play a more important role, often in conflict. Freedom makes possible a creative perception of new orders of necessity. [23]
Proprioception of Thought. Can Thought be proprioceptive? The point of suspension is to help make proprioception possible.
A New Culture. Society is based on shared meanings, and at present "the society at large has a very incoherent set of meanings." [28]. A genuine culture could arise in which opinions and assumptions are not defended incoherently. Survival depends on it -- shared meaning and coherency.
Difficulties in Dialogue. Attempts can be frustrating, and people come to the dialogue with anxiety, needs, pressure, and incoherence.Without a "rule", say that "we can see the sense of it" where the morphology can be addressed: "give space for each person to talk". Procedures that help. If someone wants the group to adopt or start something, it will lead to conflict. It may be frightening to some if there is no leader and no topic and nothing "to do" [31].
The Vision of Dialogue. The solution is to look at the dialogue. Emotional charges and neurophysiological hatred are fueled by assumptions and people stick to them. That sticking is a "level of contact" they share, and the differences are not so important. Thought process as an extension of the body process and body language showing in it. Hate is a close bond with matching bodies and neurochemicals. [31] The reason for dialogue is bonding --fellowship.Open and trusting, so that intelligence can go to work. Hatred can no longer sustain itself. Depleted violence in the opinions we hold. Intelligence no longer blocked by the animal of defensiveness. Sharing of mind, of consciousness is more important than the content of opinions. Truth does not emerge from limited opinions (which prevent us from even perceiving truth) but from the free movement of the tacit mind. Ecological disaster averted by collective consciousness. Stay with the frustrations of dialogue just as you work to provide support for your family. Dialogue has the quality of the solution in the absence of universal love. Dialogue is foreign to the current structure of science and religion. Bohm repeatedly introduces morphological views. There is no "road" to truth, but we can share all roads and see that they are roads, and limited, and so none of them matters more than the sharing. When or if you see others' thought processes, the thought becomes your own thought. And emotional charges, your own charges, held together. Friendship may come. Another will raise a thought you were having. Thinking together lights up the room, listening, shared meaning. That is the vision.
Sensitivity in Dialogue. Dialogue is not common, although it is necessary for coherence in a society. A way of knowing hoe to come in, how not to. The senses provide information you have to sense through the screen of thought. Consciousness must build a form for what it means, which holds it together. Meaning is the glue; it is not static but flowing among us.Only then can we talk coherently and think together. Defending assumptions blocks sensitivity and we get in our own way. Krishnamurti said that "to be" is to be related [40]. Polarized positions are similar, as rigid structures. A great deal of our life is not serious--society teaches you there are incoherent things and nothing you can do about it, so don't stir yourself up uselessly [41]. In dialogue, you have to be serious. As when Freud was asked about the cancer of the mouth, "This cancer may be fatal, but it is not serious." [41].
Limited Dialogue. No place in the dialogue for hierarchy or authority or special purpose. An empty place where we can talk about anything. Academics are trying to use these principles of dialogue to resolve business problems. Within the framework of assuming the company has to survive, can have a limited kind of dialogue.--how are we thinking, where are the problems coming from, what is the way we have to go.[43] As to whether this type of corporate dialogue only furthers a corrupt system, almost everything is involved in this corrupt game. [44] For society to be working right, all those things have got to work efficiently and coherently.[45] There may be no pat answer. But the point is not the answer or the particular opinions. [46] What is important is the spread of mindfulness, this attitude that slows down destruction, listening, less friction and violence, opening up of judgments and assumptions.
Beyond Dialogue. If we are to survive and have a worthwhile life, we have to deal with the ills of society. But that is just the beginning. There is the possibility for a transformation of the nature of consciousness, both individually and collectively. Has to be done collectively with individual participation -- a communion, a wholeness, koinonia.

3. The Nature of Collective Thought.

The problems of the world, a list almost indefinite and catastrophic. Why have we accepted this state of affairs? [48] Nobody knows what to do or say that has worked out. Underneath the it there is something we don't yet understand about how Thought works. Thought has done all the things we are proudest of.Yet it goes wrong somehow, and produces destruction. This arises from fragmentation--breaking up bits as if they were independent. The source of the breakdown of Thought is always Now. That is what we have to look into.
4. The Problem and the Paradox. From essays authored in 1971.
5. The Observer and the Observed.
6. Suspension, the Body, and Proprioception.
7. Participatory Thought and the Unlimited.


The author was an accomplished physicist (Birkbeck College, University of London), died in 1992. ( )

I initially liked the book, because it made me reflect on the way how I communicate and behave. Further on, I was bored by the somewhat uninteresting outline of how dialogues function. Too explicit and hypothetical. ( )