How Nishida’s concept of space can help us get over the current crisis

or: why we should stop being so binary

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Alienation. Us and them. Me and you. Millennials, GenZ’s. The management, the staff. The leader, the team. Female, male. White, of color. The software, the users. Sales, customer service. Trump, bump. Pro-vax, anti-vax. Quid, quo. You name it.

We live in a world of poignant dissimilarities. Painful antagonisms. Disruptive oppositions.

Oh yes. Rationally, we do know that dichotomies are unproductive. We do appreciate that us-vs-thems should not be. And yet, on an almost daily basis, persistently, we add fuel to the dualities. Even in education: The teacher, the student. The school, the PTA. The curriculum, the student’s learning choice. Alpha, beta. STEM, humanities.

Or did you think the situation is better in L&D? Think again. The trainer, the trainee. The training actor, the role-play participant. The classroom, the workplace. What must be learned, what is being learned. Competencies mastered, competencies to be developed. Sadly, it is has gotten worse in the online webinar mode. Now there is some person up there, on your screen, and you cannot even see who is in the room with you. You look around you and you think you are alone. And then some off-screen…