The Future of Humanity Project

Carlos Campos
BIS 340: The Future of Humanity: Dialogue in the Workplace
Dr. Michael Pryzdia
28 November 2018

Total Word Count: 2157 Words

 Part One: Seven Questions for Consideration

1. With a changing society how are we supposed to get on mutual terms when it
comes to dialogue?

2. How does Bohm’s implicate order play a role in modern society?

3. In the discussion board regarding the oracle, if our minds already know the
answer to certain decisions why do we have self doubt?

4. In Bohm’s “On Dialogue”, collective thought mentions that the spread of thought
through radio, television, and computers is like a virus. How do we stop the
spread of negative thoughts, or can we stop the spread of these thoughts?

5. If proprioception did not take place, what would be the type of control that our
minds would have over our bodies?

6. How do we deal with people who are not willing to conform to the standards of
dialogue?

7. What makes Bohm’s theory of dialogue more credible than others?

1. This first question I asked is something that I had questioned throughout most of
our readings. Bohm clearly explains how to deal with dialogue, but I never found
an answer for dealing with dialogue with changing societies. Personally I have an
interest in politics and this dialogue in the political world is something I kept in
mind when I asked this question. With a changing society political ideologies tend
to change, but how does the dialogue change. It is safe to say that humans don’t
use the same type of dialogue that they did one hundred years ago, but with this
constant change how do we get on mutual terms with one another to have
successful dialogue? My answer to that is easily just recognizing that there is a
change. It’s as simple as that. Without noticing a change there is no way to
advance communication, but being able to see a change in the dialogue whether
negative or positive allows for improvement. I believe that dialogue starts with
ourselves, and how we try to communicate with others comes next. We must first
understand the setting and what type of dialogue we are participating in. After
setting a standard for dialogue we are then able to allow changes to the dialogue.
With workplaces becoming so competitive the dialogue has changed immensely
within the workplace. Now that more people are able to recognize issues in
communication we as a society are able to fix these issues both in and outside
the workplace. So my answer to the question simply comes down to recognition.
I think this is a very fair question to ask as so many industries have different
forms of dialogue, and with myself being a soon to be graduate I need to start
thinking about the industry I will be working in and how my knowledge of dialogue
can benefit me with my career.

2. The reason I asked this question is because I don’t necessarily think there is a
definitive answer to it. Implicate order can either be taken as very complex or
very simple. I say complex because in Bohm’s example of the hologram he
states that whatever the hologram enfolds is the implicate order, and whatever it
unfolds is the explicate order (Bohm, Wholeness). Metaphorically what exactly is
inside this hologram? It depends how you look at it. You can make implicate
order about anything and everything or about nothing. Which nothing also makes
implicate order simple. You can easily just view implicate order as a way to
describe the universe and our understanding of it. In terms of modern society
implicate order plays a major role depending on your viewpoint. This whole
course is about dialogue in the workplace, but first we must learn about the
foundation of dialogue and thought. Learning about implicate order has given us
a sort of foundation to thought. Thought goes hand in hand with implicate order,
but how do we include thought and implicate order in everyday life? Easy we
simply live! This is how implicate order plays a role in our society. We hold the
key to implicate and explicate order we can either choose to hold things in or we
can choose to unfold these things and understand how it plays a role in our life.
This is the same idea as thought. We can either choose to let thought control us
or we can see how thought plays a role in our life and control our own decision
rather than letting thought play mind tricks into giving us feelings of doubt. My
answer to the question would simply be that implicate order plays as much of a
 role in society as we want it to. Only we can decide when to recognize that it’s
present or that it needs to be present.

3. Going back to probably my favorite module throughout this course “Thought as a

system” I bring up the discussion board post about why you had us meet the
oracle. I think this was my favorite discussion board post because it was the most
relatable to me, and actually helped answer a lot of personal questions. My
question is why do we have self doubt if our minds subconsciously already know
the decision we are going to make? In the reading Bohm explains thought as
collective and everything is tied together in some way. Our past experiences
influence today’s decisions whether they have a direct correlation or not. It
explains self doubt as our mind playing tricks on us when we already know the
decision we are going to make, but why does this happen? I would think that our
mind wouldn’t play tricks so we can make the right decision. The answer to all of
this comes back to recognizing that our mind is playing these small mind games,
so in a way we can be free from our own thought (Bohm, Thought as a System).
Recognition seems to be a reoccurring theme, but I believe that it is the key to
understanding thought. In the exercise with the oracle he is able to make his own
decisions because he knows that the decision has already been made he just
needs to understand that there is nothing else holding him back other than his
own thought. It was very evident in the clip from the Matrix, he does something
but then asks the oracle if she knew he was going to do that. What most of us
tend to do is dwell on making a decision which in term can lead us to making the
wrong decision. Once we realize that we already know the answer than we have
officially conquered our thought and go further with life making real decisions and
understanding why we made that decision.

4. This next question is one that we as a modern society can relate to and hopefully
learn from. I mentioned in a previous answer the change of dialogue in politics,
but this change comes from the spread of certain dialogue. In the standard for
dialogue (if there is one) it never states that all dialogue and communication is
positive and most of the time it could be negative. Collective thought is the idea
that everything is connected in some way. In Bohm’s book “On Dialogue”, it says
that the spread of thought through computers, radio, and television is like a virus
(Bohm, Thought as a System). It doesn’t say that it only spreads good thought,
so what about the negative thoughts? Is there a way that we can use these tools
to stop the spread of negative thoughts or is that just how collective thought is
designed to spread everything and anything? In my opinion I don’t think thought
discriminates. Thought is spread as we let it. If we have the will to spread
negative thoughts on any platform than it will only continue to spread. Same goes
for positive thoughts, it will only spread as far as we let it. Answering my question
“How do we stop the spread of negative thoughts, or can we stop the spread of
these thoughts?”, I believe the only way to manage this would be to recognize
when we are spreading these thoughts. Thought seems so uncontrollable, but
you gain complete control when you don’t let thought control you. This lesson
 can be implied towards really anything. If we see the problem we know that there
is something to fix. Just like with this question if we see negative thoughts lets
not continue letting them spread instead stop and see what the problem is, and
only spread positive thoughts.

5. Now this question might be better answered by a health professional, but it is

something I thought of throughout some of our modules. We bring up
proprioception which is “the ability to sense the orientation of your body in your
environment”. The question I asked could be answered medically, but I am
thinking hypothetically. Proprioception works so that every move we make we
don’t have to think (stop, turn, take a step, look to the right, etc.), but instead it
helps us think fast and respond instantly. Although this is a very helpful and time
efficient thing I start to think hypothetically if this was not a thing how would this
affect our thought and decision making process? There’s a part of me that thinks
this could ultimately help us in making decisions, because we would have to stop
and analyze our surroundings and take in every factor before making a decision.
It’s already been discussed that our mind plays tricks on us, so if we took away
that power would it be beneficial? Taking away proprioception is obviously
something that we can’t take away I just find it interesting to think of alternatives
to decision making. Is it safe to say that if we did not have proprioception that we
would be in complete control of our body and mind? In a way I think we are able
to have complete control by once again realizing that our minds try to trap us
from some things. I don’t think there is a negative intention, but sometimes we
need to be freed from our own thought to realize what we need or what we need
to do. Our thoughts essentially make us who we are, but this does not always
mean that it is who we will continue to be.

6. This question is something that most of us can relate to in terms of

communication and dialogue, but how do we deal with people who are not willing
to conform to the standards of dialogue? It does not matter what industry you
work in or how long you have worked in it there is always going to be people who
can’t effectively communicate. We try so hard to set this standard of effective
communication and what we should do when coworkers don’t want to
communicate, but is it really working? Think about it just about any job in any
work force you get in to you have to take some sort of class that talks about
communication. You can tell someone one thousand times, but there is still
always going to be that one person that still does not get it, or does not want to
comply. The answer to dealing with people who don’t want to act on the
standards of dialogue is to simply, communicate. Dialogue is something
everyone should know how to partake in not only for the sake of others but for
yourself. (Bohm, Fifth Discipline) If you notice someone in the office has an issue
with talking about things, bring up your concerns and fix that. If you see that
someone doesn’t participate in civil dialogue talk about it so that this isn’t an
issue in the future. One thing I have learned is that you can’t change someone
who doesn’t want change, but I can say that people who are confronted will do
 the least and think about what they have done, and in some way try to fix it.
Bringing up concerns in communication is the least we can do. It will not only
benefit the dialogue, but also benefit the communication in the entire unit.

7. Finally onto my last question, and in a way one of the more important one’s to
myself. This is a question I asked at the start of any course or theory, but what
makes David Bohm’s theory of thought any more credibility than others? I mean
no disrespect towards David Bohm in any way, but I think this is a fair question to
ask anyone with a major theory. Going into this course without any prior
knowledge of theories of dialogue and thought made me a bit skeptical of Bohm’s
theory, but as we went through each module I quickly became a fan of his
studies. Bohm uses real life situations to support his studies, and not just
analogies and hypothetical statements. I’m sure there are many others who have
studies thought and dialogue, but I personally can relate to a lot of Bohms
scenarios which makes me more likely to view him has a credible source. One of
the major recurring themes throughout this entire course is the idea of
realizations and recognition. I don’t just believe his theory because it’s the only
one I have knowledge of, but because his material has allowed me to realize that
I have the will to decide if he is credible or not. My mind doesn’t necessarily
make this decision for me I realized what his studies have shown, and made this
decision despite what my mind is wired to do. This is why I asked this question
not to have it answered by someone else, but to choose how I answer it. This
can be applied towards many life scenarios. Our minds might think they know
what’s best, but we need to realize that subconsciously our mind protects us from
certain things, and we won’t be free till we realize that.
 Works Cited

Bohm, D. (1994). ​Thought as a System​. London: Routledge.

Bohm, D. (1980). ​Wholeness and the Implicate Order.​ London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

​ oubleday,
Senge, P., 2006, ​The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization,D
Santa Fe, NM, USA