A common pattern in conflict:
Alice and Bob have mutually exclusive priorities. Alice wants A, Bob wants B. Alice and Bob have some kind of shared future, as friends, spouses, colleagues, etc. If they didn’t have some kind of shared fate, the solution is easy: decouple, and pursue priorities independently.
Assuming sharedness, a common pattern is for Alice and Bob to draw a mental line between their priorities and to work along it. Compromise. In a nuclear family context, a word that’s practically sacrosanct. Another way of saying lose-lose; no one gets what they want. Another option: my turn, then your turn. This option gets one person what they want, but at the expense of the other, in the short run.
Both involve losing. In the former, both lose, but as a kind of loyalty gesture to the relationship: we’ll cut the baby in half to show that we’re invested in the relationship. In the latter, one person wins, another loses, with the goodwill assumption that things will even out in the future, again, for the sake of the relationship continuing.
The framing of the solution is a direct consequence of the framing of the problem: the only degree of freedom is along a line between A and B. Once framed this way, loss is guaranteed, and all parties tunnel-vision and entrench out of fear of loss.
Is this the only way? Are partial or absolute compromises the only available options? What’s a different framing that could achieve better outcomes?
A line between opposing priorities can be imagined as a tense string, one in which there’s little to no slack. This tension is fundamental to the parties pulling in opposite directions, it will not change on its own. However, there are ways to create slack along dimensions that A and B depend on and Alice and Bob jointly do not care about. These are axes of non-care.
Axes of non-care are the inverse of axes of care. They are axes of freedom and flexibility rather than tension and entrenchment. Along these axes, Alice and Bob are both open to adjustment. Movement along any number of these axes may introduce slack along the original axis of care and unlock better outcomes, with the best case being total resolution — win-win. But non-cares exist in negative space, they’re practically invisible when cares are on the line. As such, it’s unintuitive to consider them amidst conflict.
Engaging on axes of non-care inherently lowers the stakes, opening up dialogue and collaboration predicated on the possibility of win-win. Anchoring polarized negotiations on axes of care only raise the stakes, as they will always be predicated on the near certainty of net-negative or zero-sum outcomes.
There is a simple procedure (moral algorithm?) for conflict resolution via non-cares:
- Clearly articulate the axis of care – what is A and B?
- Clearly articulate all parties’ non-cares.
- Find joint non-cares.
- Seek dependencies of the care on axes of non-care.
- Once a dependency has been found, investigate whether movement along the non-care creates more slack for the care.
- Keep going until a win-win solution is found or all non-cares are exhausted.
- Once exhausted, pick your best option or fallback to norm.