Homage to David Bohm — Metaphysics is an expression of a world view
“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely
rearranging their prejudices.”
David Bohm
I pay homage and give tribute to David Bohm, for he instilled in me the case of being serious. Actually, I am serious about the game (the great game of life) initially because of David Bohm.
Let me turn this around, there is nothing more serious than the great game of life, hence playing is to be serious.
Or being serious implies being a player. Playfulness is the hallmark of intelligence.
And David Bohm was a serious player.
“On the whole, you could say that if you are defending your opinions, you are not serious. Likewise, if you are trying to avoid something unpleasant inside of yourself, that is also not being serious. A great deal of our whole life is not serious. And society teaches you that. It teaches you not to be very serious — that there are all sorts of incoherent things, and there is nothing that can be done about it, and that you will only stir yourself up uselessly by being serious. But in a dialogue, you have to be serious. It is not a dialogue if you are not — not in the way I’m using the word. There is a story about Freud when he had cancer of the mouth. Somebody came up to him and wanted to talk to him about a point in psychology. The person said, “Perhaps I’d better not talk to you, because you’ve got this cancer which is very serious. You may not want to talk about this.” Freud’s answer was, “This cancer may be fatal, but it’s not serious.” And actually, of course, it was just a lot of cells growing. I think a great deal of what goes on in society could be described that way — that it may well be fatal, but it’s not serious.”
David Bohm, On Dialogue
I pay homage and give tribute to David Bohm for two main reasons. The first is that he instigated and inspired me to research my own thought in the process of thinking. In a very real sense Bohm’s idea of proprioception, as the self-awareness mechanism by which consciousness can check the integrity of a thought as a system made me aware of my body in time.
Through this perception, my thought became clearer and more coherent and critically, it initiated a lifelong quest to really think and not re-arrange my prejudices.
“Clarity of perception and thought evidently requires that we be generally aware of how our experience is shaped by the insight (clear or confused) provided by the theories that are implicit or explicit in our general ways of thinking.”
David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order
The second reason to pay homage to this most extraordinary human is that via Bohm I had managed to resolve within myself the contradictions inherent in the concepts of metaphysics concerning that which I had considered ‘the real’. Through Bohm I had realized that whenever I thought and said : I understand, I didn't. It was, and still is to this day a sobering yet enlightening state of affairs in my mind.
“…metaphysics is an expression of a world view” and is “thus to be regarded as an art form, resembling poetry in some ways and mathematics in others, rather than as an attempt to say something true about reality as a whole.”
David Bohm, On Creativity
Bohm was different; Being one of the most prominent scientists of the 20th century (working both with Einstein and Oppenheimer)he nevertheless is almost forgotten, if not outright rejected, by most of the establishment for his relentless pursuit outside of academia in tandem with his immense contributions to physics, neuropsychology and most importantly to the evolution of the philosophy of mind.
I think, however that what convinced me to follow the ideas of Bohm was his insistence on ‘no-final theory’ — basically an attitude of mind that rebels against the idea of a total theory of everything (a la Hawking). Bohm claimed that eventually science and art will merge into a wide ranging perception of many realities. a claim which I fully took to heart and have pursued ever since.
“Thus, in scientific research, a great deal of our thinking is in terms of theories. The word ‘theory’ derives from the Greek ‘theoria’, which has the same root as ‘theatre’, in a word meaning ‘to view’ or ‘to make a spectacle’. Thus, it might be said that a theory is primarily a form of insight, i.e. a way of looking at the world, and not a form of knowledge of how the world is.”
David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order
Finally, I think that through Bohm’s books and his conversations and dialogues I figured out a situation of mind I call ‘unsatisfied happiness’. Basically a way of thinking that is open ended, ambiguous and playful. Content in knowing that there is no end to the process of becoming I came to my own insights about the nature of reality. I carry the joy of understanding, whilst fully realizing that no such state can exist in full and thus there will always be a new and fresh insight to be explored and reveal a new facet of a deeper and hidden reality.
What a relief.
For this relief and pleasure of being I pay homage and give tribute to this fascinating visionary, which thoughts I believe will be revisited many times in the future of humanity.
“There is a difficulty with only one person changing. People call that person a great saint or a great mystic or a great leader, and they say, ‘Well, he’s different from me — I could never do it.’ What’s wrong with most people is that they have this block — they feel they could never make a difference, and therefore, they never face the possibility, because it is too disturbing, too frightening.”
David Bohm
Thank you for reading.
(And have no fear, go make a difference)
