Beyond division
ZUKAI’s purpose is “beyond division.” We work toward a state in which people whose positions and interests collide come to know each other’s thinking and reasons, cooperate, and solve society’s problems together.
The more complex a problem, the more the circumstances each person sees differ. Talk without knowing each other’s backgrounds, and the conflict only deepens. ZUKAI draws the whole of a problem and each person’s way of thinking, so that people in different positions can talk while looking at the same diagram.
What is division?
Division begins when people do not try to learn why others think as they do, and dismiss them out of fixed ideas and prejudice.
Once that happens, the views they actually share and the places where they could meet drop out of sight. Differences of position or interest are not, in themselves, division. Because people stand in different places, they notice circumstances that cannot be seen from one place alone. Even when interests collide, if people know why the other side thinks as it does, they can talk about where to give ground.
What does going beyond division mean?
Beyond division, people who stood opposed cooperate while keeping their differences, and move together toward solving an issue.
The first step is for them to learn each other’s thinking and its background, and to talk while looking at the same diagram. We do not stop there: together with the people involved, we also rework the mechanisms that keep producing conflict, such as information that reaches only one side, or decisions made in rooms only some can enter.
Why does going beyond division matter?
Solving serious social problems takes people whose interests collide working together.
In conflict, poverty and climate change, the people whose interests collide are often separated by country, region or generation, with few chances to learn each other’s circumstances. While they dismiss one another without knowing, the cooperation a solution needs is hard to come by.
ZUKAI makes diagram formats that people of different standpoints and fields can read the same way, on themes such as business models, accounting, co-creation, policy and environmental issues, and publishes them as frameworks and books. On the ground, we work alongside the people tackling issues as they talk things through using those formats. We will face the divisions around conflict, poverty and climate change in the same way.
How do we face division?
When we diagram an issue, we check with the people involved what to include and what to leave out, and we do not draw it to blame anyone in particular.
When we diagram the background of an issue and the ways each party thinks about it, we decide what to include and what to leave out by checking with the people involved and with experts in the field. Labelling on partial information breeds new conflict of its own.
Every social issue has a background that produces it, and none can be solved by a single organization or person. We share the whole of the issue, background included, with the people involved, so that together they can decide where to start.
With diagrams, we want to change how people judge without knowing the other side’s circumstances, and how hard it is to see how an issue comes about.
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