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David Bohm's

- Thought as a System

- On Dialogue

These are great books for removing mental fog, confusion, about the nature of our existence. They have great healing value, allowing us to integrate the world around and within us. They can also help in dealing with practical challenges in how we run organisations, develop teams, and in general help people cooperate together. It is a kind of "red pill" to enter the matrix :)



What practical lessons did you take from these books?


I hope to write about this in detail sometime. Just giving myself some time for experience to percolate and synthesize into something worth publishing. Meanwhile, I'll give one instance of how it helps practically.

Say, I manage engineers, and I have a new intern, who is supposed to behave in a particular way, with particular standards. Their words strongly suggest sincerity, but again and again their actions go in the opposite direction. Why does this happen, what's the "problem"?

From Bohms framework, this sort of behavior is way too common, and it is due to the paradoxical nature of our psychological machinery. It's not a problem, it's a paradox. In the mind of the intern, there tends to be competing and opposing needs. One hand, they want higher quality output (verbally asserted). On the other hand, the unspoken parts of the mind demand comfort and energy saving. On top of this "incoherent" intentions/results, the intern will seem like they're lying, since words and actions/results don't match. They say they want quality, but behavior goes another way.

So, I see this entire situation clearly, so I become more patient. I understand it's not a simple situation, there's a lot going on underneath the hood. I can help this intern see their inner contradiction, generate higher awareness, make them work with less inner friction (and eventually less external friction). My process for helping someone out becomes accurate, crisp and helpful due to these additional insights from Bohm.

This is just one instance of Bohms framework helping me out in a practical organizational context.


It's like the anti-fundamental attribution error. I like it!


@atomicnature how do I follow you when you write detail about above books?




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