What Is the Difference Between a Comrade and an Ally? — Four Design Principles for a Relationship Where Thinking Moves

Introduction

I want to connect with people who face the same direction. Thinking so, you join a place where people gather. Indeed, having people who sympathise is reassuring.

But as time passes, a discomfort surfaces. You use the same words, settle on the same ideas, and no one says anything different. It is comfortable, yet thinking is not moving.

Many are surely searching for how to find good comrades. What this article verifies is the premise beneath it: where the relationship in which thinking moves and the one in which it does not divide — its design principles.

Let me give the conclusion first. The dividing line is not “whether you hold the same ideas.” It is whether four design principles are met.

The “Kind” of Reaction Mirrors the Quality of the Relationship

First, let me confirm the place where the difference appears most clearly. It is not the presence or absence of a reaction but the kind of reaction.

As I have gone on transmitting, I have received two kinds of reaction.

On one side there is the reaction shaped as “I think you are exactly right” or “I acted on your reference.” As reception it is courteous. But when I receive this reaction, my thinking does not move.

On the other side there is the reaction shaped as “this viewpoint differs from my own observation right here” or “about this premise, I think as follows.” When I receive this reaction, something happens on my side. There is the surprise of “so that is how this person sees it,” and the discovery of “my way of seeing had stopped here.”

When I keep receiving only the former, my ideas are being verified by no one. No one is turning a critical eye. An idea put out in that state, however precise it looks, remains “a closed system of a single way of seeing.”

The Principle of “Lending Each Other Eyes”

The core I reached over a long time of thinking is the principle of “living by lending each other eyes.”

To “lend an eye” is to share with the other what you have observed. To “borrow an eye” is to take into your own thinking what the other has observed. When this lending and borrowing happens in both directions, thinking reaches a place it could not reach alone.

What matters is the meaning of “borrowing.” Receiving someone’s viewpoint as “an answer” and taking it in as “material for updating your own thinking” are wholly different.

The reception “that person said it, so it is right” is not borrowing a viewpoint but entrusting judgement. It is a state of seeing the world with another’s eyes, not your own.

“So that is how that person sees it. Set against my own way of seeing, there is a difference right here. When I think about why they differ, my way of seeing was incomplete in this part” — this process is the correct form of borrowing. At its end there is always an update of your own viewpoint. Continuing to use a borrowed viewpoint as it is abandons this value.

When this cycle happens simultaneously among several people, “the compound interest of thinking” is born. A’s thought, updated by borrowing B’s viewpoint, updates C further, and C’s updated thought comes back this time to A. The value of a single lending is small, but the more the cycle repeats, the further each person’s thinking advances to a place it could not reach alone.

The Four Design Principles

This relationship is not born by chance. It can be designed with four principles.

Principle 1: self-reliance as a precondition. Each person holds an “eye” they can lend. A human being who has walked their own life by their own choice holds a distinctive observation. This distinctiveness is the source of an eye lendable to others.

Self-reliance here is not limited to the economic. A state of being able to explain in your own words “why do I think so” — intellectual self-reliance — is included. That said, the two often move together, for economic anxiety narrows the room of cognition and shrinks the breadth of autonomous thinking.

Principle 2: resonance at a high level of abstraction in worldview. Using the same method is not the condition.

Agreement at the concrete level — “use this method,” “follow this school” — changes with the times and circumstances. Base it on agreement about a specific method, and the moment the method goes stale, the base of the relationship collapses too.

Resonance at the level of worldview — “I place value on living as an autonomous individual,” “I should grow my own thinking myself” — can keep being asked even as the situation changes. And because the latitude for each person’s interpretation and practice is high, it can be maintained without harming diversity.

Principle 3: bidirectionality. A state in which everyone is a giver and everyone is a receiver.

On one question someone holds the observation; on another, someone else does. This fluidity holds only on the premise that “everyone holds their own observation.”

Conversely, with a person who feels “I have nothing to give,” a bidirectional relationship does not hold. The asymmetric self-recognition “I only receive” makes the structure of dependence.

Principle 4: the tolerance of diversity. Treating the reaction “that differs from my view” not as a problem but as an asset.

This is not the relativism “anything is right.” It is that, on the premise of resonance at the level of worldview, you tolerate the diversity of concrete ways of seeing and practising.

And this tolerance too requires self-reliance as a premise. A person who cannot hold conviction in their own way of seeing is apt to receive a differing view as “something that negates me.” A person who has trust in their own judgement can receive it as “an object to compare and think with.”

Connect by the Abstract; the Concrete May Be Diverse

Let me show Principle 2 a little more concretely.

Do you know the characters called “the Doraemons”? They are a set of characters in a Japanese story, robots of the same type as Doraemon, said to exist in various countries around the world. Each holds a wholly different appearance, personality, and ability, and normally lives independently in their own land. But when some great problem arises, by the single sense of “we are comrades” alone, they display an unshakeable solidarity.

Each lives their own life independently. Their beliefs and their individuality differ. And still, in the crucial moment, they connect — this relationship shows a design principle.

“As long as the abstract is shared, the concrete may be diverse.”

When worldview resonates, the concrete method, way of living, and style may be diverse. Rather, being diverse becomes the material that produces breadth of thinking. From a homogeneous group, only homogeneous conclusions are born. From a diverse group, a conclusion unreachable alone is born.

In this design, diversity is not a risk but an asset.

▸ What happens when this diversity is excluded is treated in peer pressure is not made by anyone.

This Is Not Idealism but a Structure That Actually Exists

The rebuttal “ideal, but not realistic” is natural. The answer is the fact that “it actually exists.”

Look at the world of scholarship. Researchers belonging to different institutions, sharing the abstract worldview “the pursuit of truth,” critically examine each other’s research. A researcher reads a paper not in order to “receive an answer” but as “an object of comparison for verifying their own hypothesis.”

Look at the medieval craftsmen’s guilds. The relations between guilds were equal. Precisely because every craftsman was self-reliant as an independent technician, an equal solidarity held.

It happens in more familiar forms too. Independent workers in different trades hold a relationship of exchanging observations. There is no need to meet regularly, nor to do the same work. “A shared question about working independently” becomes the point of contact, and each other’s thinking is regularly updated.

Common to these are three points. That each participant takes part holding their own base. That the standard of evaluation is not “who said it” but “what was said.” That the choice of whether to participate is autonomous.

Conclusion: The Starting Point Is “Self-Reliant Individuals Together”

Of the four principles, the most fundamental is “self-reliance as a precondition.”

When self-reliant individuals gather, the remaining three come to function naturally. Because each holds an eye to lend, bidirectionality is born; because each holds their own history, diversity necessarily arises; because each holds their own worldview, connecting by the abstract becomes natural.

So the starting point of the design is not to make the place “a site for attaining self-reliance.” It is to make it “a site where those already self-reliant expand their thinking.”

And finally, let me name the hardest point in this design. It is not “gathering self-reliant individuals.” As you go on transmitting, you meet such counterparts naturally.

The hardest is “how to relate to the person who approaches seeking a solution.” The moment you take on the role of one who keeps giving answers, an asymmetric structure is born there.

But “not giving an answer” is not abandoning. Relating from the stance “I support your holding your own question” is possible. Giving an answer and supporting the holding of a question are different ways of relating. This difference lies at the core of what it is to design solidarity. The whole of this structure is gathered in why the more you connect, the lonelier you grow.

References

Academic papers and theory

• Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior (1985) Plenum Press
• Hutchins, E. Cognition in the Wild (1995) MIT Press
• Clark, A., & Chalmers, D. “The Extended Mind” (1998) Analysis, 58(1)