I was amazed to read the following remarks of Ham
(in the Thread 'for Ham", Feb.12) :
" David Bohm was also a communist of pacifist
persuasion whose loyalty to the US is questionable"
Amazed, because they are not the sort of remarks one
would expect to find in a Forum such as this. One can
not help but wonder what's the use of MOQ or
Essentialism or whatever if "in real life" we go on
keeping provincial world views and cataloguing
outstanding thinkers by sticking on them dubious
labels. Is the MOQ just an intellectual exercise into
the abstract realm with no consequences in the way we
conform our opinions about what happens to us in our
day-to-day life?
One cannot help to recall similar attacks on
Bertrand Rusell, who was branded dismissively as a
pacifist, whose loyalty to the (UK) was questionable;
(I think he was branded a "radical socialist" instead
of "communist" because the later label wasn't much in
vogue then.) Some might say that was nearly a hundred
years ago, something of the past but, to judge from
Ham's remarks above, bigotry is still very much with
us.
David Bohm was a renowned physicist and,
perhaps, one of the most original thinkers of the last
century. Besides "Wholeness and Implicate Order"
(quoted by Ron Kulp in other threads)his ideas on
Dialogue had a wide effect in inter-human relations
all around the globe.
Yes, Bohm was a sort of 'liberal leftist',
which in McCarty's times was the same as 'communist'.
Yes, he was some sort of pacifist who in his writings
emphasized the futility of violent confrontations.
Yes, he was in a sense "disloyal to the US" since in
his Essay on Participatory Thought and others
criticized the doctrine of individualism, a sacred cow
in that country.
On the face of all those 'shameful' admissions,
I am left wondering if the MOQ has anything to say
regarding persecuting people because their political
ideas contradict those of 'the people at large'; about
favoring dialogue in place of armed confrontations and
about being disloyal to one's country through
criticism of its cherished values.
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