"Thought is constantly creating problems that way and then trying to solve them. But as it tries to solve them it makes it worse because it doesn't notice that it's creating them, and the more it thinks, the more problems it creates"
About this Quote
Bohm, a physicist who spent a career watching elegant equations breed unintended consequences, aims this line less at “thinking” in general than at thought as an automated system: reflexive, self-propelling, and oddly invisible to its operator. The bite is in the loop. Thought manufactures a problem, treats it as an external object, then escalates its own output to fix what it just fabricated. You can hear the scientist’s impatience with a runaway process that refuses to measure itself.
The intent is diagnostic, almost clinical: if your tool is also your blind spot, more tool-use won’t save you. Bohm’s subtext is that modern life rewards precisely this kind of mental overproduction - abstraction layered on abstraction, analysis chasing analysis - until anxiety looks like “data” and worry masquerades as responsibility. The “more it thinks” clause is not anti-intellectual; it’s an indictment of thought unconstrained by awareness, like a lab instrument left uncalibrated.
Context matters: Bohm’s work in quantum theory and his later interest in consciousness and dialogue pushed him toward a worldview where fragmentation is the enemy - the mind slicing reality into pieces, then panicking about the mess. This quote is a warning against mistaking conceptual maps for the terrain, then hiring the map to clean up the terrain.
What makes it land is its quiet reversal of our cultural superstition that every problem is solved by more cognition. Bohm suggests the radical move is noticing: seeing the mind as an active participant, not a neutral observer. That shift turns “problem-solving” into something more uncomfortable and more powerful - self-observation.
The intent is diagnostic, almost clinical: if your tool is also your blind spot, more tool-use won’t save you. Bohm’s subtext is that modern life rewards precisely this kind of mental overproduction - abstraction layered on abstraction, analysis chasing analysis - until anxiety looks like “data” and worry masquerades as responsibility. The “more it thinks” clause is not anti-intellectual; it’s an indictment of thought unconstrained by awareness, like a lab instrument left uncalibrated.
Context matters: Bohm’s work in quantum theory and his later interest in consciousness and dialogue pushed him toward a worldview where fragmentation is the enemy - the mind slicing reality into pieces, then panicking about the mess. This quote is a warning against mistaking conceptual maps for the terrain, then hiring the map to clean up the terrain.
What makes it land is its quiet reversal of our cultural superstition that every problem is solved by more cognition. Bohm suggests the radical move is noticing: seeing the mind as an active participant, not a neutral observer. That shift turns “problem-solving” into something more uncomfortable and more powerful - self-observation.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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