ART'S TREE 2: BOOK REVIEW: THOUGHT AS A SYSTEM

Book Review:

Thought as a System

April 2020

Thought as a System is a book by David Bohm.  This essay is a summary of the book's points that are most relevant to the Art Perspective.  

    Bohm's wisdom on the topic of self-awareness is at the level of some of history's greatest rishis.  This is such a good book for garnering new perspectives on the very sophisticated, human thought process.   Bohm’s views on how thought operates is extensive and he utilizes various sciences to complete his vision.  The various scientific perspectives are vital to the Art Perspective's goals.  For example: Relating psychology and mind to science of antennas; understanding the mind through the principles of electricity or energy; how the nature of ‘light (sciences)’ parallels features of our psychology; and of course, the sciences of antennas, electricity and light, each fits into quantum sciences.  

    Bohm was an integral member of the 1920s "quantum movement” and much of his work focused on what the scientific findings of his time meant to the field of humanities and psychology.  Thought as a System serves as a good introduction and recapitulation of Bohm’s ideas about the relationship between quantum phenomenon and consciousness.

    Bohm's views on the nature of consciousness are sophisticated and mature. He explains complex principles using practical examples.  You do not need to be a scientist to see how Thought works as a System.  The tenets covered in this book are likely what Bohm believed to be his more valuable offerings of wisdom.  He states his belief that war and conflict could not be resolved without the realizations that the dialogue of Thought as a System seeks to inspire.  I will summarize his points and then go over each.

• The importance of process philosophy or systems philosophy for understanding human thought and behavior.
•  “thought—the whole system—is even more social and cultural than it is individual”. (Bohm, p187)
• The body’s mechanisms for managing consciousness can be more problematic than helpful at times. 
• Our cognitive faculty of proprioception lets us see how both body AND mind work as reflex systems.  
• Extending this faculty of (the body’s) proprioception into a 'self-perception of thought’ can heal the world.
• We are conditioned to prevent metacognition.

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The importance of process philosophy or systems philosophy for understanding human thought and behavior

    Thought as a System supports the importance of process philosophy (and systems philosophy) for understanding how thought occurs throughout people. Bohm says that throughout society, thought creates "what is often called in modern language a system” (Bohm, 18). It is composed of interconnected parts, some of which are relatively fixed and thus form a structure. Though structured, it never ceases engaging in development and change. Thought's system has been developing much more rapidly since civilization began and not every development was necessarily a good one. "It was probably very simple thought before civilization, and now it has become very complex and ramified and has much more incoherence than before.” (Bohm, p.19)  

    Bohm states that one can see people’s thoughts as isolated and individual "For some purposes...but not for the purpose we’re talking about now." (Bohm, p18) He believes it is 'essential’ to see the whole as a system, as one process—including thought, feelings, the body and the whole of society’s communication.  

“Bohm: I think that we’re not really aware of what is happening in this system which I’ve called ’thought’. We don’t know how it works. We hardly know it is a system; it’s not part of our culture even to admit that is a single system.” (Bohm, p22)

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“thought—the whole system—is even more social and cultural than it is individual”

    Cultures and social groups foster the individual’s thoughts.  In fact, these external influences often play a larger role in identity than the individual’s choices.  Your thoughts are more than yours.  This is especially the case with empaths.  Do not assume your thoughts decide who you are.  The truth of who you are goes deeper.  

    Thought as a System expands on the ideas put forth by one of Bohm's most famous theories, which some would equate to his life’s work:  Wholeness and the Implicate Order.  This theory was oriented towards both physics and humanities.  On one side, it was an attempt at a unified field theory, which means that he attempted to unify the the fields of quantum physics and general relativity.  I don’t think he succeeded at a unified field theory but it could turn out to form the basis for or inspire the theory that does succeed.  Either way, his idea provokes us to think deeper about how consciousness works in the universe.  

   Having been an admirer of Hindu culture, it is no surprise that Bohm's theory resembles Hindu cosmology’s view on consciousness and the physical universe.  In Vedic culture (known also as ancient Hinduism) everything minds experience enters into the akasha.  The phenomenal universe, as Hindus like to call it, as well as human and animal behaviors,  all unfurl from consciousness and the akasha.  

    Bohm, having lived during Jung’s conception of the collective unconscious, was part of a world-movement that began to see each person’s actions as being responses to some distant past event or from the deeper Self.  To Bohm the universe is composed of an implicate order, which is the unseen and metaphysical acting as a 'source realm’, and of an explicate order, which is the seen, physical reality.  This idea of an implicate and an explicate orders fuses classily Hindu philosophy with quantum mechanics.   Bohm was one of the first to pioneer this claim which is now quite common.  To Bohm research into quantum physics and his theory of an implicate order were bringing us closer to finding how consciousness underlies the world and influences our lives.  Now hundreds of authors and millions of people believe that quantum physics supports Vedic cosmology’s belief in a subtle realm to reality.

    Philosophies that promote the idea that consciousness creates the universe or that the subtle level is more foundational to the universe than hard matter, empower minds to mold their perspectives to their choosing.  In other words, believing that mind gives rise to the world increases responsibility over one’s thoughts and lessens any blaming of external factors.  This belief is incredibly powerful and many life coaches, yoga teachers and holistic healers use this. Undoubtedly, the power of the mind is huge. 

    Bohm "suggests that collective thought  and knowledge have become so automated that we are in large part controlled by them, with a subsequent loss of authenticity, freedom and order.” (From the book's intro). He uses the examples of capitalism and communism to show how our ways of thinking are filled with assumptions. These "assumptions of necessity" are very powerful and are implicit throughout cultures, from literature to dramas. These cultures form collectives.  

    “It's not just an individual thing. There are whole groups who stick together because of this...The culture contains all these meanings of what is necessary;” (Bohm, p191). “...culture is basically a shared meaning.” (Bohm, p189)  

    "Fundamentally, the whole question of identity, self-image, repression, assumptions and all that, is rising in the culture, which is shared meaning. We may reject some of it and accept some of it, but even to be able to do that is part of the culture. That's all the system. And the culture underlies the system.”  (Bohm, p185-186) And culture, according to Bohm, is creating a bunch of smog which does not let us see clearly or think for ourselves.  

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The body’s mechanisms for managing consciousness can be more problematic than helpful at times. 

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Our cognitive faculty of proprioception lets us see how both body AND mind work as reflex systems. 

    The late twentieth century came bursting with new scientific discoveries.  Two fields of science that underwent  paradigm shifts were biochemistry and quantum physics.

    These allowed us to develop new concepts that increasingly portrayed the body and mind as being comprised of mechanisms.  These mechanisms unveiled how much of our actions are rudimentary-based.  For example the “smog” from culture that Bohm states clouds our thinking is “...really, a state of the material system as well. What generally happens when the whole system is too jangled is that it is filled with all sorts of chemical effects of this incoherent thought, which interfere with perception and put you to sleep, and so forth. You could say the brain is filled with what I call 'electrochemical smog'. And when that is present we don't have truth.” (Bohm, p181)

    One of his ideas that I found most relevant in our day and age was about getting hooked on "Reassuring thoughts” due to the addictive nature of endorphins.  The idea that psychological health requires facing negative thoughts is central to some of psychology’s  more serious literature.  Bohm explains that thought is “conditioned somehow to move as fast as it can toward more pleasant feelings, without actually facing the thing that’s making the unpleasant feeling.” (Bohm, p32-33) 

    "If you engage in positive thinking to overcome negative thoughts, the negative thoughts are still there acting… It’s not enough just to engage in positive thoughts when you have negative thoughts registered.” (Bohm, p44) Doing so, he speculates, makes one resistant toward hearing the truth "because that would remove the endorphins and then the pain would start coming back…The thought process is neurophysiological as well as intellectual and emotional.” (Bohm, p44) A person cheering themself up with positive reinforcement would feel better for a while but would later would be stricken with depression. Thus, endorphins cause us to become "addicted to false thoughts...It is not a solution. We have to get deeper than that.”(Bohm, p46) This brings up a vey important debate about mental health. Should the aim be to make people’s thoughts happy or coherent? What should culture inspire more, thinking positive or unmasking our shadows?

      Consequently, if you use positive images to feel good about yourself, you will soon be perceiving scary images in your head. He concludes his ideas about endorphins and thought patterns by bringing it all back a need for understanding it all as “...one system — the positive and the negative… Anything positive is implicitly negative, and vice versa.” (Bohm, p48)  

    Bohm supports this view with scientific findings of his time that researched the pleasure centers within animal brains. Researchers had found both pleasure and pain working within the same areas of the brain. Whenever pleasure was triggered, leftover pain would return shortly thereafter. And when pain was activated, pleasure would likewise compensate.

    “Then the process gets more complex because we introduce words about it, saying ‘this is pleasure, that is pain.’...if you are losing the pleasure you had before, then there is an implied loss — there is pain. On the other hand, if you think that the pain is over then you are pleased by that… You can’t separate the two — either at the level of chemistry or at the level of the intellect, or anywhere else.” Bohm concludes this idea by suggesting that thought has made the pleasure/pain mechanism problematic in man. "The pleasure-pain reaction is generally appropriate for the animal, but you can see that for thought it is not.” (Bohm, p48-49)  

    One of the problems that I have sensed with his opinion is that Bohm was too caught-up in being 'true and correct’. To him, the only measure of success for psychological health was coherence. By focusing solely on being correct he lost part of the magic that makes us human and happy such as our needs for foolishness and fantasy. Despite having been a genius, Bohm never totally overcame his own depression. But then again, his goal was never joy, but coherence, and at that the man excelled incredibly.

    The mechanisms that interfere with our perception are not just physical (or chemical), they are psychological instincts too.  For example, thought instinctively tells you that you are in control.  Thought tells you that you choose your thoughts.  It convinces you that you’re in control of your thoughts while on the contrary, “Thought runs you.” It  "gives the false information that you are running it...whereas actually thought is the one which controls each one of us.” It's a very heady thing to comprehend, he admits, "Thought is participating and then saying it's not participating.” (Bohm, p5)

    To Bohm, “emotion and intellect are closely connected, but we introduce into our thought a very sharp division.” (Bohm, p8) This, he says, is socially reinforced in us. For example, the more personal something feels to us, the more we cling to our usual way of thinking. “Now this is rather odd, because the things that matter are where we ought to be especially coherent.” (Bohm, p11) From this protective, emotional-response, thought manifests things familiar to our belief systems.  This also has to do with the mechanisms behind memory.   He states that "thought produces something which seems to be outside, and it doesn’t notice that it is doing so. That's one of the basic mistakes. Thought produces something and says, ‘I didn’t produce it. It’s really there.’” 

    This last argument reminds me of a piece of advice that I give on how memory can be expected to make errors in certain situations.  For example, how easily it is for a waiter that takes hundreds of orders a day to confuse orders that sound alike.  At some point, the server at the chickee-bar will bring you a Fried Conch when what you really ordered was a Conch Salad.  It has to do with the shortcuts that our brains use to operate memory.  Or if you are a chatter box that tells your husband a million things a day, he’s likely going to misinterpret something someday!  Bohm distrusts memories as much as he does reflexes.  To him, memories are just another set of reflexes that especially taint our perception. (Bohm, p139)

    Of all that we can learn regarding the mechanisms that influence thought, our body’s reflexes are of the utmost importance.  Our ability to track our body’s reflexes, movements and position is called proprioception.  Very naturally, dancers and athletes have developed proprioception.  However, we all exercise our mental ability to track our body’s movements.  To Bohm, thought is interrelated with the body’s reflexes.  A large part of Thought as a System focuses on this.  I will go over this but first lets cover the last mechanism that is often an obstacle to us.

    Art by Carlos Estévez

    Much of culture reinforces a strict separation between our thought and the body's movements.  Millenniums of culture have shaped in us the belief that our thoughts are ‘above’ the material processes.  Bohm states:  “...Our first reflex is: 'Thought is farbeyond matter, or separated from matter somehow: 'It has some spiritual truth or significance.' This notion has beenconditioned into us as a reflex.” (Bohm, p150)  In other words, thought thinks of itself too highly to allow itself to be examined.  This is a defense built within us psychologically, but even before language we have had a reflex to prevent the mind from getting too involved in analyzing the body’s reflexes.  "Our conditioning contains various barriers to proprioception, one of which is that thought implicitly says proprioception is not necessary...if thought were only telling you the way things are, then proprioception would not be necessary because there would be nothing to perceive.” (Bohm, p151)  but thought, as we are learning, makes mistakes and its up to us to watch out for them.

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Extending this faculty of (the body’s) proprioception into a 'self-perception of thought’ can heal us and the world

    By extending our understanding and awareness from our body’s to our mind’s movements we may uncover important insights about the nature of the Self.  Ultimately, the conclusion and goal of Thought as a System is to develop a "proprioception of mind".  Just as I said earlier that 'your thoughts are more than yours’, so too Bohm’s idea about ’self-perception of thought’ were part of the larger wave of collective inquiry.  Curiosity regarding the mind’s ability to monitor its own flow grew out from the collective focusing on this concept.  This is supported by the fact that, in sync with his life’s work, a word for this idea was coined into the English language.  What Bohm refers to as 'self-perception of thought’, was given a word less than two decades before the publication of his book and in the middle of his career as a writer.  According to Oxford English Dictionary’s etymological record, the oldest use of the word ‘metacognition’ can be found in 1972’s writings of L. R. Gleitman.  Metacognition is defined by the Lexico website (Oxford University Press, 2019) as the "awareness and understanding of one’s own thought process”.  Bohm, however, focused more on developing metacognition by improving our understanding of the body’s reflexes.

    Thoughts and memories are both reflexes, he states.  It is all a movement, and "when 'A' happens 'B’ follows.” (Bohm, p122)  Bohm gives the example of a woman, who having suffered a stroke, damaged some nerves needed to produce proprioception.  At night, she would wake up and hit herself unceasingly until turning on the lights.  She could not sense herself doing it but her motor nerves and defense mechanism would just act up.   If not being able to sense what happens to you physically, means that you could attack yourself without any control over it, then one could suppose that as long as we do not develop a sense of what thoughts cause damage inside our bodies then we may similarly be attacking ourselves with our thoughts.  But worse of all, when the negative thoughts attack us, the thoughts also tell us that it is something out there in our lives causing the attack.  "You say ‘I’m hurt’, under the impression that the attack has come from the outside.” (Bohm, p133)

    If the body, memory and thoughts are all being run by our reflexes then where is our autonomy?  To Bohm, many may have a free will but not all of us do.  Some of us have become so conditioned, that we have lost our ability to have (authentic) insight that is not rooted in our conditioning.  Bohm: “thought...registers in…memory...in the form of a reflex…You think logically by a set of reflexes. There may be a perception of reason beyond the reflexes, but anything perceived becomes sooner or later a set of reflexes. And that’s what I want to call ‘thought’ — which includes the emotion, the bodily state, the physical reaction and everything else.” (Bohm, p52-53)

    Again, this is his main point, that “...proprioception should be extended into thought, so that we are aware of thought as it participates…where you would become fully aware that thought is affecting your perceptions.” (Bohm, p146)  I had thought this long before reading Bohm’s work and would lament "If only thinkers valued the nurturing qualities of their thoughts as nutritionists value the nurturing values of foods; If only friends were as cautious with the power of gossip as environmentalists are with regards to the destructive nature of pollution.”  Alan Watts also compared eating with thinking when he said that "Knowledge is, in other words, a form of eating, just for the two processes are equally of assimilation.” (From KQED’s TV series: "Eastern Wisdom and Modern Life")

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We are conditioned to prevent metacognition.

    However, to “become aware of the reflex character of thought” (Bohm, p53) is much more difficult than one would imagine. The very system of thought attempts to block you from doing this.  

    If you are moving effectively then why bother to review your movement? This is true not just about oneself but also in how we check on each other.  If others are focusing on what you say and do it is commonly because they seek to regulate your thoughts and actions.  In other words, having actions or thoughts observed can remind us of our negative reactions about “not being good enough”.  Thus, Bohm's suggestion that thought implicitly denies being looked at, is a reflex that has been picked up from various areas of our lives.  

    The fear of being inferior, feeling anxiety form our watchers/superiors, each contributes in causing an aversion toward being watched, changed or regulated.  Also we associate being optimal performance or finding our flow with the letting go of this need to supervise.  This is a common theme in the Art Perspective's research concerning how health monitoring affects our lives.  Thus, as Bohm points out, we face a double edged sword here.  On one side metacognition both liberates us and expands our capacities for compassion and wisdom. On the other side, overly-focusing on one’s patterns can be problematic.  It begins to signify to us that we are not good enough and we begin to fight and defend ourselves against it.  

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    Bohm's superior etiquette and kindness, his wisdom-guided leadership and his extensive knowledge, all provide excellent educational guidance for those interested in studying the nature of mind(s).  His very well organized insights and brilliant responses to the questions, make Bohm stand out as a great chief and a master educator.  He commands an extra clear and great flow that shares deep wisdom in very practical terms.  This book is not just informative but enlightening, for it expands our free will and our capacities for (wiser) compassion. 

Arturo Jose

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