Thinking Together – an Experiment

Thinking Together – an Experiment is based on the theory and practice of the American quantum physicist David Bohm, who maintains that there is a self-regulating mechanism within a group of people that allows large groups of people to speak without a moderator.

David Bohm claims that you never think alone and that your thinking is always related to the thinking of others. According to him, conversation is the place where you can investigate and readjust the patterns of this collective thinking with each other. As a quantum physicist, he was interested in the chaos and underlying order exhibited by small moving particles. Later in life, he became interested in the chaos and underlying order in our thinking and speaking, and he called for carrying out conversations in which the chaos, frustration and irritations can be seen.

‘People tend to think of common consciousness as ‘shared bliss’. That may come; but if it does, I’m saying that the road to it goes through this. We have to share the consciousness that we actually have. We can’t just impose another one. But if people can share their frustration and share their different contradictory assumptions and share their mutual anger and stick with it – if everyone is angry together – then you have a common consciousness.’ From On Dialogue by David Bohm

People tend to think of common consciousness as ‘shared bliss’. That may come; but if it does, i’m saying that the road to it goes through this. We have to share the consciousness that we actually have. We can’t just impose another one. But if people can share their frustration and share their different contradictory assumptions and share their mutual anger and stick with it – if everyone is angry together – then you have a common consciousness.

Uit ‘On Dialogue’, David Bohm

If we can see what all of our opinions mean, then we are sharing a common content, even if we don’t agree entirely. And if we can see them all, we may then move more creatively in a different direction. 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.

David Bohm 

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