Bohm on self-fragmentation

Physicist David Bohm reflects on how a fragmenting philosophy, like mechanism, even though mistaken, tends to become a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy and to create fragmentation in the objective world:

Of course, there are areas in which the production of fragments is relevant and appropriate (e.g., the crushing of stones for the making of concrete). But what we are discussing here is that irrelevant and inappropriate fragmentation which comes about quite generally when we regard the "parts" as appearing in our thought as primary and independently existent constituents of all reality (including ourselves). A world view, such as mechanism, in which the whole of existence is thus considered as made up of such "elementary" parts will then give strong support to this fragmentary way of thinking, which in turn expresses itself in further thought that sustains and develops such a world view. As a result of this general approach, man ultimately ceases to give the divisions between things their proper significance (e.g., as useful or convenient ways of thinking, indicative of the relative independence or autonomy of these things), and instead, he begins to see and experience himself and his world as actually made up of nothing but separately and independently existing components. Being guided by this view, man then acts in such a way as to try to break himself and the world up, so that all seems to correspond to his way of thinking. He thus obtains an apparent proof of the correctness of his fragmentary self-world view, not noticing that it is he himself, acting according to his mode of thought, who has brought about the fragmentation that now seems to have an autonomous existence, independent of his will and of his desire.

Fragmentation is thus an attitude which disposes the mind to regard the divisions between things as absolute and final, rather than as ways of thinking that have only some relative and limited range of validity and usefulness. It leads to a general tendency to break things up in an irrelevant and inappropriate way, and so, it is evidently inherently destructive. For example, though all parts of mankind are now actually fundamentally interdependent and inter-related, the primary and overriding kind of significance generally given to the widespread and pervasive distinctions between people (family, profession, nation, race, ideology, etc.) is preventing human beings from working together for the common good, and indeed, even for survival. When man thinks of himself in this fragmentary way, he will inevitably tend to put his own separate Ego first, or else his own group. He cannot seriously think of himself as internally related to the whole of mankind and therefore to all other people. Even if he does try to put mankind first, he will tend to think of nature as something separate, to be exploited to satisfy whatever desires people may happen to have at the moment. Similarly, he will think body and mind are independent actualities, and he will go on in his thinking to divide these further, into various parts and functions, each to be treated separately. Physically, this is not conducive to over-all health (whose root meaning is "wholeness"). And mentally, it is not conducive to sanity (which has basically a similar meaning), as is indeed shown by an ever-growing tendency to the break-up of the psyche, as neurosis, psychosis, etc.

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David Bohm, "The Implicate Order: A New Approach to the Nature of Reality" in Beyond Mechanism: The Universe in Recent Physics and Catholic Thought, ed. David L. Schindler (Lanham, New York: University Press of America, 1986), 13-36 at 36-7.