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| P A R T ~ 3: SUSPENDING ASSUMPTIONS david bohm: we have been saying that people in any group will bring to it their assumptions, and as the group continues meeting, those assumptions will come up. then what is called for is to SUSPEND those assumptions, so that you neither carry them out nor suppress them. you dont believe them, nor do you disbelieve them; you dont judge them as good or bad. normally when you are angry you start to react outwardly, and you may just say somethinkg nasty. now suppose i try to suspend that reaction. not only will i now not insult that person outwardly, but i will suspend the insult that i make INSIDE of me. even if i dont insult somebody outwardly, i am insulting him inside. so i will suspend that, too. i hold it back, i reflect it back. you may also thinkg of it as suspended in front of you so that you can look at it - or of reflected back as if you were in front of a mirror. in this way i can see thinkgs that i wouldnt have seen if i had simply carried out that anger, or if i had suppressed it and said, "i am not angry: or "i shouldnt be angry". so the whole group now becomes a mirror for each person. the effect you have on the other person is a mirror, and also the effect the other person has on you. seeing this whole process is very helpful in bringing out whats going on, because you can see that everybody is in the same boat" [david bohm, od 20] THE IMPULSE OF NECESSITY we have been discussing dialogue and T(hought), and the importance of giving attention to the whole process - not merely to the content of all the different opinions and views - and to how we hold it all together. also we are all watching the process of how it affects us, our feelings and states of the body, and how other people are affected. this is really somethinkg of crucial importance, to be listening and watching, observing, to give attention to the actual process of thought and the order in which it happens, and to watch for its incoherence, where its not working properly, and so on. WE ARE NOT TRYING TO CHANGE ANYTHINKG, BUT JUST BE AWARE OF IT. AND YOU CAN NOTICE THE SIMILARITY OF THE DIFFICULTIES WITHIN A GROUP TO THE CONFLICTS AND INCOHERENT THOUGHT WITHIN AN INDIVIDUAL. i thinkg that as we do this we will find that certain kinds of thought play a greater role than other kinds. one of the kinds that is most important is the thought of NECESSITY. what is necessary can not be otherwise; its just to be that way. it is interesting that the word NECESSARY has a latin root, NECESSE, meaning 'dont yield'. it really means, 'what cannot be turned aside'. ordinarily as we go through life, problems come up and they can be turned aside, or if they cant be turned aside then WE turn aside, and that is the way we resolve thinkgs. but then there may arise a necessity, as i said, which cant be turned aside; but we may have our own necesssity which also cant be turned aside. then we feel frustrated. each necessity is absolute, and we have a conflict of absolute necessities. typically, it may come up that your own opinion cannot be turned aside, nor can the other persons, and you feel the other persons opinion working within you, opposing you. so each person is in a state of conflict. 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 people feel somethinkg is necessary, they will even go against the instinct of self-preservation and all sorts of thinkgs. in the dialogue, both individually and collectively - this is important - the conflicts come up around this notion of necessity. all the serious arguments, whether in the family or in dialogue, are about different views of what is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. unless it takes that form, then you can always negotiate it and decide what has first priority, and adjust it. but if two thinkgs are absolutely necessary you cant use the usual way of negotiation. that is the weak point about negotiation. when two different nations come up and each one says, "i am sovereign, and what i say has to go: its absolutely necessary", then there is no answer unless they can change that. the Q is what to do if there is a clash of two absolute necessities. the first thinkg that happens is that we get this emotional charge and we can build up powerful feelings of anger, hate, frustration, as i described before. as long as that absolute necessity remains, nothinkg can change it, because in a way each person says that they have a valid reason to hate the other person for getting in the way of what is absolutely necessary: "he rather obstinately and stupidly refuses to see this", and so on. one may say that its regrettable that we have to kill all these people, but it is absolutely necessary, in the interest of [od 22 > 23] the country, the religion, or whatever it may be. so you see the power of that notion. so in the dialogue we are expecting the notions of absolute necessity to come up, to clash with each other. people avoid that, because they know that there is going to be trouble and they skirt those Q. but if we sustain the dialogue its coming up. the Q is what happens then. we discussed previously that somethinkg can happen, 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 thinkg - sticking to the absolute necessity of his idea - and that nothinkg can happen if we do that. if so, it may raise the Q "is it absolutely necessary. so much is being destroyed just because we have this notion of it being absolutely necessary". now if you can Q it and say : "is it absolutely necessary" then at some point it may loosen up. people may say, "well, maybe its not absolutely necessary". then the whole thinkg becomes easier, and it becomes possible to let that conflict go and to explore new notions of what is necessary, creatively. the dialogue can then enter a creative new area. i thinkg this is crucial. (excerpts from david bohm's book "on dialogue" [od, routledge 1996]. what he says about bohm-dialogue has relevance for optical dialogue. P A R T ~ 5 ... (part 4, go figure, coming soon) |
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