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Alternative Futures of War (2005)

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By Sohail Inayatullah

“War is the darkest spot on humanity’s history.”
P.R. Sarkar*

Asking if war has a future may appear ludicrous, given that the 20th century was one of the bloodiest ever, and that scores of low grade wars are currently maiming and killing countless thousands. You may wonder why even ask? Haven’t we always had war? Won’t we always have war?

At times, however, questioning can lead us toward a different type of analysis, possibly even giving us the means to create a future without war. To change the future, we must be able to imagine a different future. As a Lithuanian leader recently said (paraphrasing): 75 years ago, it was impossible to imagine a post-communist world. Then twenty years ago, we could imagine it, but we did not understand how it could practically come about. Now, we are a proud and free part of the European Union. (1)

The impossible can become the possible, first by imagining, then by creating a plausible processes, and bravely and persistently taking necessary steps. So, we must raise the question – Does war have a future? We must challenge the notion that just because war always was, it always has been. Writes Fred Polak:

Many utopian themes, arising in fantasy, find their way to reality. Scientific management, full employment, and social security were all once figments of a utopia-writers imagination. So were parliamentary democracy, universal suffrage, planning, and the trade union movement. The tremendous concern for child-rearing and universal education and for Garden Cities all emanated from the utopia. [It] stood for the emancipation of women long before the existence of the feminist movement. All the current concepts concerning labor, from the length of the work week to profit-sharing, are found in the utopia. (Polak, The Image of the Future, 1973, 137-138.)

Conceiving, of course, is only part of the challenge. We need to go on to create and implement social invention. Specifically, we need to devise new methods to resolve international conflicts. We need to challenge the entire notion of armed conflict, as conducted by powerful governments and weaker organizations.

To do so, we need to first analyze the multiple causes of war. Four levels of analysis can help. First is the level of the litany, the unquestioned “truth” said over and over, presented daily on video and TV. The second is the level of the system, the historical economic, political, environmental, and technological reasons. The third is the deeper cultural perspective, the worldview we live in. This is hard to see, as we breathe it. Just as fish do not know they swim in water, we can rarely see our worldview, unless we begin a process of deep questioning. Finally, is the unconscious story, the group consciousness or the deeper myth.

1. The Litany. In thinking about war and peace, the superficial analysis usually contends that If we can find and kill all the bad guys, and also destroy all the rogue nations, everything will be ok. From James Bond to Arnold Schwarzenegger to Steven Segal, the plot is predictable. But as Mike Myers’s satiric movie character Austin Powers suggests, evil may not only be out there, but it may be also in us. We are often – knowingly or unwittingly – complicitors in evil. Hence, this vastly over-simplifying approach has awesome limitations.

2. Systemic Analysis. The focus here is on historical, economic, political, environmental, and technological reasons for war and peace. For example, proponents emphasize the need to rapidly transform the arms export industry, as by making the export of killing products illegal. This would have great benefit for the whole world, and sharply reduce profits of leading arm manufacturing nations (the USA, China, Britain, Israel and other rogue armament countries). (2) This process has begun with nuclear arms, and while there are many problems ahead, illegal shipping of nuclear arms appears to be diminishing dramatically.

However, any arms ban would not work unless there were security guarantees for those states afraid of aggression. That is, states import arms because they are afraid of enemies within the nation and without (and use this fear to hold on to and extend their power). As well, the military elite in all states becomes accustomed to living in a shopping plaza with endless goodies. Global disincentives would be needed as well.

A world governance structure that could provide security through a type of insurance scheme or through a global police system may help to reduce the demand aspect of global weapons. The supply option would require big states to end their addiction to easy money. Indeed, “Every year the most powerful nations of the world spend over 1,000 billion dollars in weapons. The dollars saved could be spent on forming peace activist forces trained in mediation and peace-keeping skills.” (3)

Transformation must occur most urgently in the global economy. Poverty, and more accurately, relative deprivation knowing others just as talented as you and your society are doing financial better because of unfair advantages are among the deeper causes of conflict and war.

We must create a Glocalization Movement to help end poverty, and see to it that wealth circulates with more justice than at present. Glocalization attempts to keep the benefits of globalization (freer movement of ideas, capital, people) along with the benefits of the local (keeping money circulating in your own area, ensuring that while there is growth there is distribution as well). (4)

3. Worldview. Other dimensions of society than the military-industrial complex also need transformation, especially our worldview. At present, it helps create the conditions for war. Moments of national military trauma become part of our identity creation. War creates a national consciousness we know who we are through battles with others. Whether it is the Star Spangled Banner and the victory of the American colonists over the British, or the defeat of Serbs in Kosovo, war defines who we are. (5)

But this is not the only form of possible self-identification. We can define ourselves differently. A planetary project whether transforming global warming or creating a global governance system or ending poverty or even space exploration seems more likely to help us find deeper reasons for being than available in warfare. We also need peace education that celebrates ahimsa, that celebrates moments of transcendence, that teaches us how to mediate conflict and that celebrates the challenges humanity has faced (not any particular tribe within it) and will continue to face. (6)

4. Myth and Metaphor

Underneath this system of war is a defining Group Consciousness, a deeper culture. Challenging the idea of war as natural means challenging three pillars, or the thought that life is about domination, survival of the fittest, and ego-identity.

The first pillar is patriarchy, or dominator-oriented politics. Truth, nature, and reality are defined in dominator, rather than in partnership terms. What matters most is who is above and who is below. We see the world in terms of feeling superior or feeling inferior. Cultures are seen as evolved or primitive, civilized or barbaric.

Second, evolution is seen as survival of the fittest, and thus war is seen as just since the fittest have survived – instead of as an evolutionary failure. Victory thus justifies evolution. However, it is cooperation among bacteria that has led to our evolutionary development. Cooperation at all levels maximizes our survival and thrival possibilities. (7)

Third, identity is defined in terms of ego attachment to land, race, and language. Thus identity is seen in terms of geo-sentiment (my land, love it or leave it!), race (my color is superior) or linguistic politics, and not in more universal terms. Religion is seen as exclusionary, for the chosen few, or those with special access to the transcendental, and not for all. While this may have been necessary in tribal politics to identify “stranger danger,” there are no reasons for this today at the global level.

How can these views be challenged? First, by asserting cooperation can lead to mutual learning.  Second, by asserting evolution is not merely about survival of the fittest, but involves three additional aspects: An attraction to the sublime, even spiritual; an ability to be guided through human reason and action; and an ability to become ethical. And finally, by asserting we can develop a planetary Gaian consciousness that sees the planet as living. We live in symbiotic relationship to our hosts, and we need to nurture the planet, as she nurtures us. We can create our destiny. (8)

Inner and Outer, Individual and Society.

Along with our four levels of analysis, we can analyze the futures of war with a simple two by two table approach. On one axis is from inner to outer, and on the other axis is individual and collective. From this table, we can different types of strategies emerge. The challenge is to engage at all levels: an individual’s inner self (meanings); an individual’s outer self (behaviours); society’s inner self (myths and collective unconscious); and society’s collective outer (structures and institutions).

Using this type of analysis, there are many activities and strategies we can engage in, and most importantly, begin to imagine and create a world without war.

Transforming the Field of Understanding

Prior to the war on Saddam Hussain and Iraq, Robert Muller commented that he was not depressed at what might happen, since millions were in fact waging peace. (9)  Yes, it was unlikely Bush and Hussain were capable of a peaceful and just resolution, but their worldviews had motivated millions to express frustration, and to call for, indeed, meme a new world.

Memes are like genes but focused on ideas. Memes are ideas that pass from person to person, become selected because they offer us advantages in our thinking, in our survival and thrival. Certainly, war as a meme, I would argue, has reached its limits in terms of offering longer lasting solutions to Earth’s problems, I would argue.

Another world is possible! We need a field that begins the process of moving beyond the world of hawks and doves. And a world that recognizes that multiple traditions are required to transform war and peace. Within our histories are resources of peace, whether Islamic, Vedic, Christian, Buddhist or secular.

But first we must challenge the litany of war. Unless it is contested, we will assume that because it is, it always will be. The next task is to challenge the systems that support war: the military-industrial export complex; national education systems; our historical identities. We also need to challenge the worldviews that both support and are perpetuated by war: patriarchy and survival of the fittest. Ultimately, we need a new story of what it means to be human.

Alternative Futures

What then are the alternative futures of warfare? Four standout as plausible possibilities, and seriously challenge us. First,War now and war forever. We cannot transform war since humans are violent and greedy for land, territory and ideas. Witness History. Whether it is capitalists ruling, or prime ministers and priests or warriors and kings, or workers revolting, it is war that results and is used by each social class to maintain its power.

The nature of war changes depending on which social class is in power (worker, warrior, intellectual, or capitalist) and it also changes depending on the nature of technology. Most recently it has been air power with real time surveillance that has dominated. Nano-technology will probably expand humanity’s capacity to become both more destructive and more precisely targeted. The capacity of one leader to hold a population hostage, as with Milosevic, Pol Pot, and Saddam Hussain, is likely to decrease dramatically. However, at the same time, the capacity of any person to hold a nation hostage will increase.

Second, War becomes ritualized or contained. Generally, in this future scenario, we move to a peace culture, but periods of war remain. However, these are rapidly contained or conducted with the authority of a global governance system. War remains an option, even if a less desirable one. As well, war is used by those challenging the world governance system, and by areas not totally integrated by the world system. War could even become ritualized, either conducted through virtual means or via sports. In such ways, aggression is contained and channelled.

Third, War itself changes. Genetic engineering and other invasive technological procedures search for the “aggression gene” with the hope of eliminating the behavior that leads to war. Some states, however, reserve the right to manipulate the “aggression” gene to make even fiercer fighters. Deeper efforts to transform systems of war are not attempted, as nations are unwilling to let go of their war-industry profits. Efforts to tame war wind up maintaining the status-quo.

Last and most idealistic among the four possibility, War disappears. It does so because of changes in the system of war (the military-industrial complex), in the worldview that supports war (patriarchy, capitalism, identity politics) and in the nature of what it means to be human. We take an evolutionary step toward full humanness. Proponents note we have had periods in history without war. Moreover, humans have begun to imagine a world without war. (10)

Conclusion 

Which of these futures is most likely?  Historical experience suggests the first scenario – war now and forever. However, the future informed by new readings of evolutionary theory maintains war disappears is also possible. At the same time, since new ideas are often taken over by structures of power and those in power, we should not be surprised by the containment of war scenario or even the geneticization of war. In short, all four options must be taken seriously.

What, then, as creative shapers of a more desirable future, should we do? I recommend we remain hopeful about creating a future without war and act across our lives to achieve it. We must also work on achieving peace within. We must employ mediation and conflict resolution in all of our institutions. And we must never stop struggling against social systems and worldviews that help create wars.

Notes

1. Interview on Australia National Radio. August 2003

2. However, given current economic dependence on arms export (even as with tobacco exports), nations should be given a decade or decades to overcome their addiction to easy arms money. Of course, there would still be illegal arms smuggling but at least the large states would not be condoning it. Thus, certainly realizing this will not be easy. It would require international treaties that could be verified. But why might this occur? As with other regulations, pressure from lobby groups, social movements and nongovernmental organizations might lead to new arms sales regulations. In addition, a global regime is possible if a player wants advantage, that is, because of too many arms dealers, a particular player, like the USA intervenes to regulate the market so that it can enhance its own trading at the expense of others. It also may be realized in a step by step fashion, that is, certain arms are banned – land mines – as a first step, and then slowly other arms are banned.

As well, as sticks, there are carrots in the emerging peace business. Peace business is based on the ideas of Johan Galtung and Jack Santa-Barbara, Ph.D. trained as an experimental social psychologist, founded a company that became the largest of its kind in Canada, and won the “50 Best Privately Managed Companies” award in 1997. He has founded a new institute to promote integration of ecological and economic goals in government decision making. http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~mpeia/projectteam2.html

3. Julio Godoy, “Political Obstacles Slow Path to Goals,” Other News – Roberto Savio / IPS <soros@topica.email-publisher.com.

4. Sohail Inayatullah, theme editor, Global Transformations and World Futures, UNESCO Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems. Oxford, EOLSS Publishers, 2002.

5. Hoping for an invasion from Mars as in Mars Attacks and endless other movies only continues to create an us-them.

6. We need to re-write textbooks in nearly every nation and move away from the Great Man or Dynastic theory of macrohistory. Creating alternative futures requires not only requires a rethinking and reacting of the present but recovering our lost and alternative histories. Just as there are many futures ahead of us, there are different histories to explore. This is exploring history from other perspectives that of a worker, the wife or mother of a killed warrior, a tree, ice, other cultures, and even technologies histories such as that of the toilet. What we think, write about, remember repeats the paths trodden in history, and thus, creates the paths we are likely to travel in the future. The work of Riane Eisler is exemplary – www.partnershipway.org. Also, see, Johan Galtung and Sohail Inayatullah, eds, Macrohistory and Macrohistorians. Wesport, Ct, Praeger, 1997. Sarkar, for example, argues there are four types of history – economic, peoples, intellectual and dynastic.

7. http://www.westbynorthwest.org/artman/publish/printer_340.shtml. Article by Lynee Twist, March 14, 2003

8. See the writings of biologist Lynn Margulis and evolutionary biologist Elisabeth Sahtouris,  See also David Loye’s alternative reading of Darwin  – Darwin’s Lost Theory of Love. San Jose, Iuniverse, 2000. Also, see, David Loye, ed., The Great Adventure. New York, State University of New York Press, 2004.http://www.edge.org/documents/ThirdCulture/n-Ch.7.html. Elisabeth Sahtouris, Earth Dance: Living Systems in Evolution. San Jose, Iuniverse.com, 2002. This remains among the lasting messages of the Star Trek series, especially in its latest incarnations.

9. This worldview transformation is a change in two main symbols we use to metaphor war. This is the hawk and the dove. Can there be a third space, another story that can represent a world without war but with justice? Coming up with a new metaphor will not solve the issue, but our failure to do so highlights our conceptual problems. Perhaps looking for stories in our evolutionary past up and down the food chain – is not the way to go. Creating a post-war world may mean looking to the future for ways out.

10. To create the new means being able to first conceptualize it. Next is finding the means to make the impossible, possible. The last stage is merely one of details. The details in this case are about creating a culture of meditation and of conflict resolution. This means making it central in schooling at one level, and beginning to create the process of global-local governance, where war becomes impossible.

References.

For more on Sarkar, see Sohail Inayatullah, Understanding Sarkar: The Indian Episteme, Macrohistory and Transformative Knowledge. Leiden, Brill, 2002.

Fred Polak, The Image of the Future. Amsterdam, Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, 1973, 137-138.

Community Futures (2005)

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Sohail Inayatullah
Professor, Tamkang University, Queensland University of Technology, Sunshine Coast University and Transcend Peace University. www.metafuture.org

PREFACE

This short article explore the futures of community in Australia. It does so using futures methods. Futures methods seek to understand the future seeing the future not as an empty space to be filled but as a space already seeded by current images and drivers. Futures methods are concerned as much with the future out there (external political, technological, economic variable) as well as the future in here (the myths and meanings each individual and collectivity brings)

For this exercise, we will use four futures methods – the futures triangle, emerging issues analysis, causal layered analysis and scenarios.

First we map the futures using the Futures Triangle The futures triangle has three dimensions – alternative images, drivers and weights.

Second we explore trends and emerging issues, using emerging issues analysis. Emerging issues analysis patterns current known problems, uncertain trends and improbable but of potential high impact emerging issues.

Third we unpack the future, using the method Causal layered Analysis. CLA moves beyond official statements of the problem to underlying systemic causes, worldviews that give meaning to these systems (provide cognitive maps which create shared understanding) and then articulates underlying myths.

Finally we conclude with alternative futures of community in Australia.

CONTEXT

Community, while appearing to have one meaning, can be seen to have multiple meanings and contexts.

First, it is understood in opposition to the market (jungle, economic relations, dog eat dog) and the state (power, party politics).

Second, Community as a site of shared identity, whether that of a neighborhood, a community of scholars, medical professionals, or indeed, sex workers.

Third, recent understanding have moved community to being part of the nation’s (or global) social capital. As necessary for economic growth and for resilience in the face of hardship.

Fourth, have been definitions around health and community. Social inclusion has been identified as a protector against various illnesses. [1]

FUTURES TRIANGLE

(1. THE IMAGES OR PULLS OF THE FUTURE, 2. THE PUSHES OR DRIVERS , and 3. THE WEIGHTS OR BARRIERS)

What are the competing images of community?

1. First is the image of  the white picket fence in the safe suburb. The community is homogeneous, the economy is booming, personal relations are important. Conflicts are handled by community leaders, generally elected representatives. Entrance is difficult in this image.
The push for this image was the transition from agricultural to industrial and then the emergence of the postindustrial economy.
A secondary push were individuals leaving the city because of their higher income for more affluent lifestyles.

The weight has been the environmental impact of suburbs, the health impact (the plaza, the car as primary transport mechanism) and the anomie that has resulted – the disconnect of the suburb with the rest of the world.

2. The global community (of nations, of human). This image is focused on humanistic notions of community instead of political (might will win) or economic (wealth will win) but on rational reasonable “men” negotiating peace and goodwill.

The push to this image was the ravages of war, the need for mechanisms that could ensure peace for future generations. Another push was developments in psychology where the id could be tamed through reason.

The weight has been the military-industrial complex and the centre-periphery nature of the world community (security council, for example, dominating the United Nations).

Governance thus is limited in its participation, eligibility of entry is crucial.

3. The hybrid, emergent image is that of the fluid community. Individuals move in and out of identity. Entrance into the community is based on interest. Exit means a new interest. Movement is easy.

The push in this image has been globalization (rapid movement of capital and now labour, as well as cultural products). A recent push has been digitalization with the creation of new communities. The departure from the suburbs to intentional communities in the last few decades was a precursor to the more rapid global and cyber community creation.

4. The last image is that of active communities. Communities not as site of passivity, of receiving declarations from globalization, nations, developers but as a site of agency. Communities, whatever they may be, visioning their desired futures. Active, healthy, vibrant engaged communities. Empowered by their capacity to vision where they want to go (instead of where they came from), by their capacity to deal with difference, and mediate conflict between the “strangers and dangers” within the community.

The push has been the loss of agency felt by a rapidly changing world (globalization, geneticization, urbanization, terrorism).

The weight is the balance of power between community and national and global interests. As communities strengthen, as globalization strengthens, what of the nation and the state.

We thus have four contending images of the future

White picket fence
Community of nations
Fluid Communities
Active communities

As well as multiple drivers and weights.

EMERGING ISSUES ANALYSIS

These maps are based on current understandings of communities, exits and entries and levels of participation. However, the future may change. Through emerging issues analysis, we chart out what trends and particularly what emerging issues are likely to change this map.

While current problems are around issues of:

1. local communities and national interest (can one be both muslim and Australia)
2. the breakdown of communities (increasing perception of crime, divorce rates, high housing prices leading to demographic shifts, often dramatic). [2]
3. the survival of local economies in a globalized era (the Maleny versus woolworths battle, for example).

Trends are more focused on issues where quantitative information is emerging, for example, 1. the development of cyber intentional communities that are giving new meanings to individuals and communities that are part of them. The rise of citizen visioning among communities.

Emerging issues are further out. Some of these may be:

1. The geneticization of communities. As gene therapy, germ line intervention continue to evolve and play a far more major role in how we create the human population, we may see communities along the lines of who is natural, who is not.
2. Cyber democracy. Currently there are experiments in cyber democracy but focused mostly on reality tv. Cyber democracy may plan a dramatic role in enhancing community participation. A whole range of new forms of political, economic and social participation are possible. This is especially true with dot.com children, ie the digital natives who equate digitalization with flatter organizational structures, malleable associations, and cooperative learning environments.
3. Schools as learning and community centres. As communities seek to find ways to develop collective understanding of a changing world, the notion of schools as centres of learning for the entire community is a possibility that could revitalize the community and create a new hub (previously held by the church).
4. New entrants into the community – how might artificial intelligence systems impact communities. Will pet dogs eventually become a central feature? Will the rise in household robots play a role in how we life, love and learn? Will this lead to increased time for humans? Will ai systems create smart houses, smart transport systems and eventually totally networked and adaptive smart communities?
5. Can communities become alive in the collective sense, ie if we fuse gaian thinking (James Lovelock, The gaia hypothesis)[3] with nano-technology, can the community become as living as its individual members. Will communities of the 21st century be foundationally different to those of previous centuries.
6. What will role will developments in meditation as an IQ enhancing technology play in creating learning communities, that is, if Sheldrake and other transpersonal evolutionary biologists are correct, new memes and learning fields may create a collective intelligence. Will meditation be the strange attractor, the driver for a jump in collective intelligence? Will this jump lead to the creation of more peaceful, prosperous communities?
7. Finally, what will be the future indicators of communities? Will most communities adopt the triple bottom line – economic wealth, social inclusion and environmental sustainability? And is spirituality the fourth bottom line, that which creates the deeper cohesion for all communities.[4]

While these emerging issues may be improbable, especially in the short run, their development in the long run is far more plausible, and promises to change the context of communities.

What should then stay the same? In a world where it is not just the increasing rate of change (which is now a banal statement) but the heterogeneity of change (fast time with slow time; globalization with localization; patriarchy with gender cooperation; clash and cooperation between civilizations) and the loss of agency that make mapping the future crucial, but the complexity of change (how bird flu outbreaks and mutation in Vietnam could dramatically impact communities in Australia).

CAUSAL LAYERED ANALYSIS

CLA attempts to unpack the future, focusing on multiple levels of causality. All levels are equally important and qualitatively different.

Level 1, the litany, is focused on the official description of the problem, how regional newspapers, for example, define problems.

Level 2, the systemic, is focused on the interrelationship of problems, solutions and the systems that support them.

Level 3, the worldview, the cognitive and emotive maps we use to make sense of the world, is focused on divergence, of stakeholders can have dramatically different takes on a subject.

Level 4, is the myth and metaphor level, this is the story. Level 4 is the hub of the spoke on the wheel, hardest to change, but leads to the deepest change.

If a current issue is the fragmentation of community, then at that level what is the solution. This is often creating government programs to fund those under risk. It is also church programs and speeches by clergy for more morality, for taking care of others.

A level 2 analysis shows how the fragmentation of the community is created by multiple factors – globalization and economic movement, labour shifting to different areas of the market. Second is the search for a better life, movement toward the Beach. Third, is the work requirements of a postindustrial economy (two incomes, quick time) and the resultant loss of leisure (except as packaged leisure) and loss of family. Fourth is the rise of the women’s movement, desire for a fair go, fair wages, and the resultant loss of the hub of the community (the women’s circle of sharing information, data and gossip, all foundational and evolutionary necessities in creating the communities of today. As time speeds up, as work increases, then the individual family and then the community all are put under pressure. Strategies focus on labour saving devices, new entertainment centre (to escape work and create the tele-community), hiring casual workers to engage in the household economy. The creation of urban villages has been a dramatic strategy, a return to the city but in a village context, thus moving away from the ravages of the suburb.
Level 2 solutions require whole of government but as well whole of society strategies. They are complex with intervention in one site changing the entire landscape.

A level 3 analysis asks: what the are the dominant worldviews around community? What are the main stakeholders.

First is the economic worldview, where community was essentially about potential consumers. Technology has enhanced this by opening up the home as a site of shopping. The plaza has become the postmodern cathedral. “I shop therefore I am” creates community meaning.

Second is the green worldview. Community is the site of agency, of creating environmental, economic and cultural sustainability. Community need to be both socially inclusive (dialogue of religions, civilizations) and are central to creating the good society. Community is the real polis, where differences are understood and the good society create.

Third is the national. Community is an important part of governance, even if the lowest. Federal to state to local. It is at the community where neighbors can ensure that no terrorists are operating; it is at the local where policies can succeed, where elections are won and lost. It is at the local that the myths are generated (the aussie battler, for example). Communities are required for the running of a healthy nation – they ensure that traditional values of family, One god, one people, values (respect for elders) continue. Community is where we feel safe and at home. Community at heart is about security, and comfort.

Fourth is the globalist – Community is what defines us, we become who we are through the social. Communities must be porous, allowing new ideas, capital and labour through. They are quick, they adapt, they provide the glue that allows a world community to emerge. Communities thus are layered moving from the small to the grand.

At this level, the key is to understand that individuals hold different worldview and often cannot understand the perspective of others. Policies fail because the worldview map does not allow individuals to make sense of others.

The myth level is the deepest. It is here that true and long lasting social change can occur. By understanding current myths and creating new myths, community can change, become far more participatory if need be.

What are some of these myths – as mentioned earlier, the white picket fence is one notion of community – home sweet home.

Another myth is that of community as a journey, as a caravan moving in a direction – this is the myth of frontier, of inclusion and expansion. There is a utopian, even spiritual dimension.

A third myth is that of the divided community – the community at war, deep conflict. These are often economic but disguised as religious. Who gets what, who has access to power. This story is about breakdown, about loss.

The last story is about the community and resilience. The community gives us health, we live longer being part of a community. We are healthier. We may struggle in a community but it gives to us as much as we give to it. The community is living, part of an adaptive learning culture. It is organic and we are its cells.

While the previous methods map the future, this final method, scenario visioning articulates the differences. These can be used to understand plausible futures and to give direction from the present to alternative futures.

ALTERNATIVE FUTURES

These scenarios are developed from the methodological context of the futures triangle, emerging and cla. In addition, two variables are crucial:

  1. Integration to fragmentation
  2. Inventive to tradition

1. Communities in Disintegration. Divided by religion, by the inequity from globalization, from the hyper time of postindustrial knowledge economy, from increased demands and rights from the state. Communities are in increased risk. Australia travels the slow but sure path to a divided nation. The gains from its historic “fair go” history are lost as globalization creates a two class society. The rich, the mobile, the learned and the poor, single parent familes. The latter seek to join the world community, the latter seek to return to 1950s Australia. They want their picket fence and are enraged that world is no longer possible. Other divisions are between the aged and the young, each with different urban planning needs. The future for many does not look good. Political leaders however point to the GNP, which continues to grow and astound. Participatory democracy continues however, it is focused on trivial matters – beauty kinds and queens, virtual game shows, and the new “throw out one community member a year.” Gated communities thrive and many now think of the swiss model of citizenship, where the community decides who become Australian. The “fair go” is just a memory. “Give me mine” is more current.

2. Community in Flex. Globalization, technologization, intentionality, postmodernism (choosing based on preference not on tradition, ending the father to son model of religion and land rights). There are multiple communities. Australians are leaders in creating intentional communities. Social learning, social innovation has created institutional rules so that communities are safe, adaptive, learning. Communities are layered, both local, regional and global, even beyond global. Some even imagine space communities, however, most live in multiple communities – of professions, of virtualities, of genetic, of spiritual, of …Communities are constantly invented. Participation is fluid, certainly widespread. But is it deep? Commentators argue that endless choice has not given the health safeguard. Fluid communities do not provide the social protection against heart disease and cancer. Some flourish in this environment. Other are confused, and miss the safety and security of the picket fence, even if they could never be part of it.

3. Communities enclosed. In response to the breakdown of community and the simultaneous trend of the community in fluid movement, most individuals opt for enclosed communities. There is safety in likeness. Federal institutional roles ensure that there is little discrimination, however, generally once one enters a community, there is no desire for exit. Participation remains through electoral democracy. However, there remains tension between those who are fluid and those who prefer gates communities and even gated cities. Entry and exit barriers are high.

4. Communities in sustainability. The experiments of triple bottom line of twenty years ago were successful. Communities enhance inclusion and social capital by focusing on the triple bottom line. The fourth bottom line of spirituality (with the thousands of studies showing the relationship between spirituality and enhanced immune systems, IQ, longevity) is just beginning as well. Communities are open to globalization but insist on regulating speed, slowing it down when necessary. Political participation is deep with the recreation of town hall meetings. Cyber technology plus face to face lead to learning communities. The crisis of global warming and other changing patterns mean that communities are outposts for foresight, ensuring that their sustainability leads to global sustainability.

CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS

First, business as usual will likely lead to the divided community future. Merely leaving issues of community to market forces or even to federal intervention is unlikely to be effective. Finding ways to encourage, seed, community, to empower, as with the Grameen bank experience is likely to be far more productive. Government can set rules of engagement to ensure innovation and equity, however.

Second, communities should be seen as dynamic. While there are always calls to return to images of the past, communities do have resilience. This assume that the lenses we use to see communities should not be industrial (community as a cog in the wheel of democracy) but biological – communities as living dynamic ecological systems.

Third, there is choice in the matter. Communities, as suggested in the scenarios, can enhance their agency through collective self-reflection, through visioning their desired futures.

 

[1] Eckersley, R. 2001, Culture, health and well-being, in Eckersley, R., Dixon, J. & Douglas, B. (Eds), The Social Origins of Health and Well-being, pp. 51-70, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. See Clement Bezold, Will heart disease be eliminated in your lifetime? The best of health futures, Futures Research Quarterly (Summer 1995), 38. See Sohail Inayatullah, Scanning for City Futures. Report to the Asia-Pacific cities Summit 2003. See as well. Eliot Hurwitz, “Communities as Early Warning,” Futures Research Quarterly (Summer 1999), 75-93.Hurwitz points out two critical studies. 1. A 1992 study published in the American Journal of Public Health contrasted the two of Roseta, PA with two neighborning towns served by the same community hospital. Study investigated Roseto’s significantly lower incidence of heart attacks despite nearly identical risk factors, including smoking, high-fat diet and diabetes. The one difference was that Roseto was composed of  a very tightly knit Italian immigrant community with many three-generation households in active extended social networks. Other studies as well confirm that socially isolated people had up to five times the risk of premature death from all causes when compared to those who had a strong sense of connection and community.Dean Ornish as well in his book, Love and Survival – The Scientific Bases for the Healing Power of Intimacy (Harper Collins, 1997), cites dozens of studies, including a Swedish study of 131 women which found that availability of deep emotional relationships was associated with less coronary artery blockage independent of age, hypertension, smoking, diabetes, cholesterol, educational level and menopausal status.

See as well, Jennifer Bartlett and Sohail Inayatullah, Healthy Cities Reader. Brisbane City Council, March 2004.

[2] “Housing affordability hits 16 year low,” the couriermail, 24, March 2005, page 3. Housing affordability has plunged to a 16 year low in Queensland. Often this means that communities break down as renter have to move away from their neighbors.

[3] For more on this, see Johan Galtung and Sohail Inayatullah, Macrohistory and Macrohistorians. Wesport, Praeger, 1997. Also see, Phillip Daffara, Macrohistory and the City. Phd thesis, in progress. University of the Sunshine Coast.

[4] For more on spirituality and health, see http://www.deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,375016315,00.html?

Last Butt Out By 2030 (2005)

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By Amy Marshall
August 12, 2005

We will see the last of cigarettes in Australia by 2030, a futurist said yesterday.Sohail Inayatullah: photo by Glen Watson, The Standard, Australia, all rights reserved.

Professor Sohail Inayatullah also suggested four different scenarios for the future of alcohol abuse.

He took this year’s Rural Victorian Alcohol and Drug Conference theme of Time for Change by the horns and challenged listeners to make a move.

He said if we don’t identify the future we wish for, we’ll end up with something we don’t want.

“Democracy isn’t just about voting for a councillor,” Professor Inayatullah said.

In terms of a solution to alcohol abuse, one of the possible future scenarios he identified was a `Nanny State’ whereby people would enter bars with `smart cialico.com health cards’.

The cards would identify our genetic make-up so bartenders could decide whether to serve us.

Another option was similar to the gingko and ginseng-infused `smart foods’, and low-carb, low-fat options which have flooded our supermarket shelves.

“We would change the nature of alcohol and develop smart alcohol,” Professor Inayatullah said.
“The guy from Foster’s who heard that was really excited.”

The other two options were to return to a style of moral thinking where “the good person doesn’t drink”, or to continue what is happening now, where we swing between harm minimisation and `just say no’ policies.

Oxford House resource worker Ron Blake listened to Professor Inayatullah speak yesterday and said he would be able to apply his ideas to drug and alcohol rehabilitation.

“What he’s saying is not just about drug and alcohol, but we can apply it to putting people back in charge of their own recovery,” Mr Blake said.

“He opened up a way of looking at the future where he encouraged people to have a vision for what they really want.

“We seem to be constantly in crisis management instead of having a vision for the future and identifying the way towards it.”

Why Companies Fail (2004)

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Capitalism forever? Why Companies Fail

Sohail Inayatullah

“Why companies fail,” a remarkable essay by Ram Charan and Jerry Useem in Fortune magazine (May 27, 2002, 47-58) offers ten reasons to explain the crash of great companies and three ways to prosper. While focused specifically on companies, what Charan and Useem miss is that their analysis can be employed to understand the globalized system of capitalism that sustains these companies.

“Companies are born, companies die, capitalism moves forward. Creative Destruction, they call it.” (48), what US Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill calls “the genius of capitalism” (48). But economic and meaning systems (that frame what it is that we do when we wake up in the morning) also fail. First, is the problem of success. “A number of studies show that people are less likely to make optimal decisions after prolonged periods of success. NASA, Enron, Lucent, Worldcom – all had reached the mountaintop before they ran into trouble.” (50). Might not this be the case with the world capitalism system itself, 500 years of success. No one can see that it too might fail, we are vested in it, from superannuation to life in the Plaza, capitalism defines what we do and how we do it. Fish cannot see water nor can we see life after capitalism. Those at the center, who are mostly deeply vested in it, especially can not see its future.

The basic assumptions of endless consumption and growth is not really contested. Maybe we might vote green or recycle but our bank account is still with a bank, which is foundational to the capitalist system. Even if we bank in a cooperative bank, they too must negotiate the larger monetary system. But assumptions we must question.

Cisco, did not, write Charan and Useem. “Cisco, more than any other company, was supposed to be able to see into the future. The basis of this belief was the much vaunted IT system that enabled Cisco managers to track supply and demand in “real time,” allowing them to make pinpoint forecasts. This technology, by all accounts, worked great. The forecasts, however, did not. Cisco’s managers, it turned out, never bothered to model what would happen if a key assumption – growth – disappeared from the equation.” (50). Even when things were looking bad, CEO John Chambers was still projecting 50% growth. He said: “I have never been more optimistic about the future of our industry as a whole or of Cisco.” (50).

As 14th century macrohistorian, Ibn Khaldun wrote in his classic The Muqaddimah (An Introduction to Hisory): ” At the end of a dynasty, there often also appears some (show of) power that gives the impression that the senility of the dynasty has been made to disappear. It lights up brilliantly just before it is extinguished, like a burning wick the flame of which leaps up brilliantly a moment before it goes out, giving the impression it is just starting to burn, when in fact it is going out” (Khaldun 1967, 246).

Thus, the paradigm that informs how we see and create the world is not questioned. Why is this so. For companies that fail, Charan and Useem, quote Jim Collins, author of Built to Last and Good to Great. ” The key sign – the litmus test – is whether you begin to explain away the brutal facts rather than to confront the brutal facts head on.” (52).

While for companies the brutal facts are often an unsustainable business model, cash flow problems, too much risk, and acquisition lust, for the capitalist system as a whole, the brutal facts (taken from the United Nations Human Development Report, various years) are:

  • While there are still 840 million people malnourished and 2.6 billion people have no access to basic sanitation, the world’s 200 richest people more than doubled their net worth in the four years to 1998, to more than $1 trillion
  • The assets of the top three billionaires alone surpassing the combined GNP of all Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and their 600 million people.
  • People in Europe and North America spend $37 billion a year on pet food, perfumes and cosmetics, a figure which would provide basic education, water and sanitation Viagra health and nutrition for those deprived.

Writes Sarkar, ” When the whole property of this universe has been inherited by all creatures, how can there be any justification for the system in which some one gets a flow of huge excess while others die for a handful of grains?” (www.prout.org and in Sohail Inayatullah, Understanding Sarkar. Leiden, Brill, 2002).

Of course, it could be that others are just lazy or just not smart enough or too corrupt or too feudal or too … or perhaps we need to face the brutal facts: (1) capitalism has succeeded for the last 500 years, recreating the planet, bringing untold wealth and now placing the entire planet in jeopardy (2) capitalism can create wealth but distribution remains a quandary (3) all systems come and go, and new ones can and will be created.

Perhaps it is time to move away the metaphor of the jungle of evolution (survival of the fittest) and design and create a system that works for all – humans and gaia. And perhaps that would be the greatest genius of capitalism, self-destruction, so that a new system can emerge.

Expanding Economic Thinking: Shrii Sarkar and Amartya Sen (2004)

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By Sohail Inayatullah


There is a general sense of exuberance that with the recent Nobel award going to a social welfare economist the trend away from financial markets being primary has been validated by the economics profession. It is thus heartening that the Nobel Committee has finally discovered the People’s economy.

We say finally because it has been the people’s economy for thousands of years that has nourished us, that has kept us alive. Whatever the historical era – shudra, ksattriya, vipra or vaeshya – it is this level of the economy that has been most crucial, and it is this economy that those in power have been most concerned about dominating.

When capitalists are in power, they want to ensure to monetize the informal dimensions of barter, of small markets, of localism. They want to ensure that the far reaches of corporatization expand to the most remote village so that there can be paying customers for their products; customers who can pay in cash and not in-kind through bartering.

When vipras are in power, they too want to ensure that there is surplus at the bottom level so their welfare can be taken care of. They want to ensure that every last bit segment of the market is appropriately taxed.

Too, in ksattriyan eras, warriors take from the poor for their dreams of conquering neighbors. Indeed, history can be understood from this dimension – who is taking from the peoples economy, what ways have been found to extract wealth upward. Is it through donations to priests and monks, is it calls to globalize, is it through monetization? By analyzing in which ways the people are removed from direct economic activities we can gauge what level of exploitation exists.

DEFINED

But what specifically is the People’s economy? Shrii Sarkar defines it as such: “People’s economy deals with the essential needs of the people – the production, distribution, marketing … and all related activities of such essential needs. Most importantly, it is directly required concerned with the guaranteed provision of minimum requirements such as food, clothing, housing, medical treatment, education, transportation, energy and irrigation water.” (i). At essence, it is about survival. With a vibrant peoples economy, people live, without it, as Sen has argued, famines can result. And yet, it is this economy that the state tries to regulate. Again as Sen has shown famines result partly due to state intervention, especially in immoral dictatorships where there is no opposition, where people have no way to express their frustrations, where information is kept secret. In contrast, a people’s economy is decentralized, local, and ideally based on the cooperative economic model, wherein individuals exist in community, in relationship with each other.

This message of localism has been the most recent wave of economic thinking. Thinkers such as Hazel Henderson, James Robertson and representatives of indigenous communities have consistently argued that the opposite of capitalism is not communism but localism – that to survive we need to (1) focus on the environment – a concern for animals and plants, (2) focus on just distribution – on the ratio of wealth between the richest and poorest, (3) focus on local forms of exchange, including local money, (4) focus on the most vulnerable – often women and children, and (5) find ways to empower these groups not by “developing” them but by removing the barriers that vipras, ksattriyas and vaeshyas place in front of them, that is the barriers that intellectuals/priests; police/military and merchants/capitalists place on them. The goal is not to help these people become rich (as defined by those in power) but to ensure their dignity and their survival, to empower them. While emergency help though social relief organizations is important, far more crucial is removing the power of the landlords, of the courts, the police, and larger corporations. Doing both of course is what states find problematic.

WHY?

Feeding the poor is admired but asking why the poor are hungry, and then taking steps to eliminate the barriers of poverty is what threatens governments, for it exposes that those in power are unwilling to transform the structural basis of violence, of poverty. It is precisely this reason why Shrii Sarkar and his social movements – Ananda Marga and Prout – have been at the receiving end of brutality from state and national governments in India and elsewhere. Sen wins an award because he theorises poverty, Mother Teresa wins an award because she relieves human suffering – both are deserving winners – but Shrii Sarkar, who theorizes poverty, relieves human suffering and initiates powerful movements to expose and end poverty was vilified. Of course, we should not be surprised by this. As he says himself, whenever truth has been spoken to power, the response has been an attack on truth. This is the natural cycle transformative movements must endure if they are to create the conditions for a better life for future generations.

Finally, and this is crucial, and again problematic from a reductionist modernist perspective, Shrii Sarkar has included inner, personal transformation as part of the solution to poverty and injustice. Unless humans begin the inner purification moral process themselves as well as the mental expansionary process – through meditation – they, over time, will also become part of the problem. The structures of exploitation – that is, the institutions, the values and persons who legitimise and validate them – have too deeply infected society. Only by enhancing one’s morality and expanding the inclusiveness of one’s mind is it possible to avoid the dis-ease of an unjust system. It is this combination that makes Shrii Sarkar both utterly unique and fundamentally problematic to grasp. It might even have been enough, as mentioned above, to theorise, relieve and challenge poverty but then to investigate inner poverty, the lack of spiritual nourishment, immediately relocates poverty not only as a food issue for the poor but as well a global moral and spiritual issue. The solution thus becomes not just less authoritarian systems, and a better framework for distributive justice – Sen’s argument – but inner and outer systemic and epistemic transformation. It is thus grand sweep of self and society that Shrii Sarkar brings to economic thinking, and in the process fundamentally redefines the field.

OTHER SYSTEMS

Returning to the more specific issue of the people’s economy, it is important to note that communism as well spoke of the people’s economy, indeed, the entire philosophy was based on protecting the people, on ending wage labor exploitation, but there were two problems. (1) Politics instead of being landlord-laborer based became party apparatchik-laborer based. (2) Violence was systematically used against localism so that there could be massive industrialisation. (3) Dignity, in terms of local religions, customs and ways of knowing, was jettisoned for progress. While in some cases this can be justified, that is, where religion and other systems are conducive toward violence against the other, in many cases, localism was quickly replaced with allegiance to party, ideology and the great leader. Thus one dogma was replaced by another.

Confucianism as well has attempted to end the people’s economy but in a far more benign way. The trade off for ending local systems has been the paternal state where father knows best. While this has had its merits – safety, security, survival, education, a concern for the family and future generations, transparent politics – the loss has been cultural pluralism, of the right to dissent. While certainly for a “well knit social order” – to use Shrii Sarkar’s language – dissent should only come with responsibility, it appears that in Confucian societies the spirit of difference, the sweetness of culture, has been lost.

Globalism, while absolutely brilliant at the continuous movement of money, its rolling, has been less concerned about where the money is going, the ethical in and outputs. It has been excellent at economic growth but less with distribution. Moreover, the rolling of money has been based not on productive investment but on short-term speculation, thus leading to a delinking of the financial economy with the real economy of goods and services.

It is this concern for inappropriate economic practices that Sarkar’s other branch of economics, the psycho-economy, attends to.

PSYCHO-ECONOMY

Psycho-economy has two branches, the first of which, will never deliver a nobel in our modern world, but the second in the coming generations should be fundamental. The first branch consists of exposing and eradicating “unjust economic practices, behaviors and structures.” (ii) This is generally well represented in the Marxist literature, and more or less, consistent with the intentions of radical political-economy. Current thinkers such as Immanuel Wallerstein and Johan Galtung have both excelled in this approach.

The second branch is concerned with a post-scarcity society, that is, with mundane economic problems solved, how to deal with pressing issues such as the relationship between technology and work or the office environment. These post-industrial issues include as well: how employees feel about their lives, about their job, and about what is important to them.

Psycho-economy is not an attempt to create a theory of information, since Shrii Sarkar is not a reductionist but to ask what are the values behind an economy, what are our aspirations? It acknowledges that life is not about economics and economistic (reducing life to materialistic principles) thinking. As Shrii Sarkar writes: “the psycho-economy is to develop and enhance the psychic pabula of the individual and collective minds.” (iii). What does this mean? At heart this is about inclusion, about reframing our identity not as consumers (I shop therefore I am) or as competitors (I have to increase my wealth by eliminating other firms) but as spiritual human beings. This means seeing the exchange of good, services and ideas as a process wherein others are not harmed, stolen from or maligned but creating an economic process that allows each participant to prosper. At heart, this is about spiritual cooperative economics, about including others in how we do business, how we produce, how we consume, how we live. It is understanding our desires and their relationship to the physical world. Capitalist economics, however, ignores social costs such as the drudgery of much work or the social problems caused by unemployment. Capitalist economics does not ask the crucial question: is what is being produced that which should be produced for the health and happiness of all?

Conventional economics thus defines values, impact on the environment, impact on future generations, as external to the economic process. Indeed, critics of globalization have called for full pricing, where externals are internalized by economic actions. The goal thus is to increase access to information for buyers and sellers and to determine the impact of specific economic activity on society. While this important, it does not nearly go far enough for Sarkar.

INFORMATION ECONOMICS AND OTHER PARTS OF THE ECONOMY

Information economic theory has made the mistake of further dividing reality into tiny bits with the goal of quantifying each further subdivision, while Sarkar argues that the opposite is needed, an expansion of what we allow in our minds, or how we construct our minds. With Sarkar, information theory thus moves to communication theory with reality being a co-evolutionary process between self, others, the transcendental and the natural world. This synthetic approach will not win nobel or other awards since it does not give any specific additive knowledge (what science excels at), instead it creates a new framework in which to understand current knowledge – that is, it is transformative knowledge.

But Sarkar’s redefinition of economics does not avoid current commercial issues. Indeed, he also writes on the Commercial Economy. This branch is generally similar to our present understanding of economics, which is concerned with issues of how to develop scientific productive and efficient processes that “which will not incur loss,” (iv) and ensure that “output will exceed input.” (v) While an idealistic, Sarkar never ignored the reality of the physical world. Indeed, he asserted that we are not properly using our current resources, either misusing them or mal-appropriating them. The majority of problems in the world have come about because the Commercial Economy has been seen as the totality of economics instead of just as one dimension of economics. While Sen brings in values to economics, he still does this largely in the context of the commercial economy. It is left to others to point out that the general tools of economic theory cannot deal with the household, village or indigenous economy.

Finally, Sarkar adds the General Economy to his model. This last part is his ideal vision of the economy. In this case, a three-tiered economic structure (state run, cooperatives and individual/family run). Thus, while earlier parts of the economy focused on the minimum requirements of life (that is, the needs of the South); on the structural problems of exploitation (the global problematique); on a postscarcity inclusive economy (the concerns of a post-industrial economy); on issues of production and the international monetary system (the world-economy), the last section of his theory of economics, focuses on what an ideal economic structure should look like.

These categories he gives us – the four parts of the economy – are not only descriptions of the economy, but as well analytic tools, that is, they serve to describe and reveal the world in front of us.

For economic students, much of this is not economics, as economics as currently defined is only concerned with production, and not with the values behind the system. Issues of inflation and depression, while the concern of conventional economics are not Sarkar’s direct concern except in so far as they lead to system transformation – the end of capitalism – or they increase human suffering.

Sarkar’s Proutist Economics is then not about debating economic trends or pinpointing depressions but rather about using the analytic tools Shrii Sarkar has given us to better understand the world, to change the world, to relieve human suffering, to transform self, to create a moral economy; and ultimately to create a spiritual cooperative society.

Will Shrii Sarkar ever win a nobel prize? Most likely never, and, of course, this was never his aim. His prize will be the creation of a new planetary society, a prize no committee can ever give, only the hard work of women and working collectively, and the grace of Parama Purusa can afford that.

Notes:

i. P.R.Sarkar, “The Parts of the Economy,” in P.R.Sarkar, Prout in a Nutshell. Translated by Acarya Vijayananda Avadhuta and Jayanta Kumar. Calcutta, Ananda Marga Publications, 1987 (First edition), 16.

ii. ibid., 19.

iii. ibid.

iv. ibid., 20.

v. ibid.,

References:

Alan Fricker, guest editor, “Beyond Capitalism,” special issue of New Renaissance, Spring, 1999.

Hazel Henderson, Building a Win-Win World: Life Beyond Global Economic Warfare. San Francisco, Berret-Koehler Publishers, 1996.

Sohail Inayatullah, Prabhat Rainjan Sarkar – On Economics. Minneapolis, Minnesota, Renaissance Universal Institute Publication Series No. 5, 1988.

Sohail Inayatullah and Paul Wildman, Futures Studies – Methods, Emerging Issues and Civilisational Visions. Brisbane, Prosperity Press, 1998.

James Robertson, Beyond the Dependency Culture: People, Power and Responsibility. Twickenham, Adamantine Press, 1998.

P.R.Sarkar, Prout in a Nutshell. Calcutta, Ananda Marga Publications, 1987 (First edition).

P.R. Sarkar, Proutist Economics: Discourses on Economic Liberation. Calcutta, Ananda Marga Publications, 1992.

Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1981.

Amartya Sen, “Information,” www.nobel.se/announcment-98/economics98.html

Amartya Sen, “Development Economist,” www.economictimes.com/151098/15opin01.htm

Acarya Shambhushivananda Avadhuta, Prout – Neo-Humanistic Economics. Weisenauer Weg, Germany, Dharma Verlag, 1989.

Rameshwar Dayal Singh, “Poverty Alleviation is Possible,” Prout (December 1-15, 1998), 38-39.

Ted Trainer, “Our Economic System: Why it must be scrapped.” Research paper, Faculty of Arts, University of New South Wales.

The Fourth Bottom Line (2004)

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The 4th Bottom Line
Saturday 1 May 2004

Summary
Futurist Sohail Inayatullah argues that spirituality should be adopted as the “4th bottom line” after economic, social and environmental elements.

Alexandra de Blas: Like Mary Clark, Professor Sohail Inayatullah works with the deeper stories and worldviews underpinning the way we see the future. He’s a leading political theorist and writer in the field of future studies; and holds positions at Tamkang University in Taiwan, and the University of the Sunshine Coast and the Queensland University of Technology.

An idea he’s explored recently adopts spirituality as the fourth bottom line. You may have heard of the triple bottom line, which values the economic, social and environmental elements. But how would spirituality sit as the fourth?

Sohail Inayatullah: My sense is when I talk to people around the world, there is a sense that there’s something about spirituality and meaningful life, a notion of transcendence that has to be behind the other bottom lines, and there’s also a sense of spirituality even if crudely can be measured, asking OK, that city’s prosperous, that city is environmental, that city is socially inclusive, but what would a city that’s spiritual look like? So those are some of the questions I ask, and people actually are very interested in starting to figure out what would a spiritual country, a spiritual city, a spiritual family look like? What are the indicators, how do we actually create that?

Alexandra de Blas: Well how might it look?

Sohail Inayatullah: Well for one thing, if you look at the centre of cities, they’re all framed around finances. The CBD, the Central Business District, is not the CSD, the Central Spiritual District. So it could be that you might have more meditation centres, you might have more health centres, or the city design needs to be transformed. Even environmentally, to make sure the buildings are really green, but deeper to make sure the type of experience people have for them, at least at some level match or appeal or evoke the spiritual. I mean having at the airport a meditation and a worship centre is of course in the right step, but I think we’re trying to push the barrier beyond that.

Alexandra de Blas: How could we push the barrier?

Sohail Inayatullah: I’m not really sure. Living a healthier life, being in touch with our deeper meanings, those two keep on coming up. Something about inclusion, something about what does it all really mean. Those issues come out both in a society that’s under attack, in the sense that scarcity, so when there’s so much scarcity you go to what’s deepest, but also it’s very true for societies that are post-scarcity; they’ve actually done very well in terms of basic needs, housing and the economy, and the spiritual interest comes out much more. So then it’s asking, OK, you’ve done this project and it did well financially, it’s green, it’s socially inclusive, but was there a spiritual dimension to it, something that really sparked people’s hopes. I know this sounds strange, when I do a lecture or have a workshop, or a meeting, people say, Oh, you look slightly disappointed at the end. I say Well for me, it’s not just that the audience liked it, but I’m happiest when there’s a sense that angels are in the room. And angels for me of course, that’s metaphorical. But something else happens, and there’s different civilisations from the Indian view, something called micro-vita that what is, there’s some energy in the room, in traditional religions there’s some sense of notion of transcendence.

Alexandra de Blas: What are some of the ways in which you could measure spirituality?

Sohail Inayatullah: First it’s contested space. So I’m very happy with that. I don’t want the official measure out there, I want this to be a way for people to talk about it and then eventually to come up with some measures. Positive measures are easy, wellbeing, happiness, we know how to have indicators of that. Negative measures, hate, crime, bullying in schools, cigarette consumption, treatment of animals, that’s I think quite easy. Now the larger categories I would say No.1 is your organisation society, what I would call near-humanistic, going beyond nation, religion and state, and moving towards an expanded sense of the planet. That’s the first measure. And we all know when we’re seeing people as humans on the planet, versus ‘Oh, that person’s part of that religion, race or country.’ That’s measure No.1.
No.2 is, is there a link between highest and lowest? That’s the spiritual, economic link that of course we want an economy that’s dynamic and prospering, but the highest income should be linked to the lowest income. If the highest income is building up, I would want the lowest income to be moving up, too.
Three, is it really socially inclusive beyond just genders and minorities being better represented, but there are ways of thinking about time, significance also being part of how we design society. So I would say deep social inclusion. And fourth, consistently what I see in organisations is the issue of example. Are leaders of the organisation, the country, in the fourth bottom line in fact showing that? If they’re not, then I may as well, so I’ll do what I want. So I would look at those four, the new humanistic issue, the economy being linked, the deep representation and the issue of leadership.

Alexandra de Blas: When you start working in this way, you have actually pioneered a model which is called Causal Layered Analysis, which is a way of looking to the future, and working out what possible future one may wish to have. Tell me about this process, how does it work?

Sohail Inayatullah: Causal Layered is a method and theory of futures that I use as part of the futures workshop, and the idea with CLA, is that you want to unpack the future. So if someone says, Here’s the future, you want to say, Well what’s the systems behind that? So the future we give, the image, the newspaper headline, that’s the future we normally think of as the future, so that’s to me the litany. If you think about icebergs, that’s the superficial part. Underneath the iceberg is the system, the politics, the economics, the environment, the technology. So most people want to convince you that the litany, which is isolated to individuals, actually connected to community to a system. That’s a huge jump in thinking. And the environmental movement has been very strong in that. Don’t see yourself as isolated, don’t see your actions as isolated, they’re part of a larger system. So your pollution in one city actually impacts pollution somewhere else. But underneath the systemic level of world views are deeply held positions of the nature of life, of time, of society, or love, of what the city looks like, or what a country looks like. So that’s where most people stop it, they don’t get to that worldview level. And the last part is the myth of metaphor, the story. So underneath that even is an unconscious story. If you’re in a company, ask What story are you living? Someone might say, Well I’m living Cinderella. Then who’s your Prince Charming? And do you want to live that story? Who’s the stepsister? So what it’s identifying, what unconscious story are you living? And each culture has its own stories. Some cultures, the way you say Hello is to say My back hurts, and you say My back also hurts, that’s how you make friends. Does that friendship making in fact impact your health? So that’s one that was to challenge the https://disabilityarts.online/levitra-20mg/ story. The second level is to look at what are the alternative worldviews.

Alexandra de Blas: If we look at an issue like climate change in Australia, how would you attack that one?

Sohail Inayatullah: In terms of greenhouse one, now that’s become a litany, right, that’s on the newspaper all the time, then I would look at the system that creates that knowledge. Who were the scientists doing it, research institutes, and how that knowledge is circulated throughout the world. Now underneath that, we know there’s a big debate and there are real worldviews here. We have at most scientists saying it is a problem and here’s the research, then we have conservative think-tanks saying It’s not a problem, that in fact it’s too costly to actually have greenhouse cuts etc. And so here you actually have a struggle foundation of different world views, it comes across as meaning it’s a struggle about science, we don’t know the full data, but my sense that’s what’s going on, it’s actually a foundational perspective on science, nature, technology, population. And to get sides to have a conversation about that, it’s not easy. So what tends to happen then is one worldview ends up dominating. And that may be the right way to go, that you actually develop a preferred vision and move towards that, and in this sense though, CLA is mapping out what the problem is, what the system is, what the competing sciences are, and what the stories are, because underneath is, they are different stories, right. Story No.1 is the world is ending because corporations are evil, so we have to change. Story No.2 is these are just green whingers all the time, and we just have to stay with the progress forever. And there’s also some third, fourth, other stories. But the first step for me as a researcher interested in the futures of what are is to actually map it out. Once you can map it out, then you can say OK, here’s the preferred future, or Here’s my preferred future, and here’s what I need to do.

Health-bots and the Rights of Robots (2004)

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Will health-bots monitor your caloric intake, warning you when you’ve eaten too much or not exercised enough?  Will a strategically placed health-bot make the toilet smart, giving instant feedback on potential diseases brewing?  

   “Will we use up-to-the-minute information to create the world we want, purchasing health and other products that match the futures we want to create?  For example, will values-oriented consumers buy only products that follow ethical guidelines focused on people (social justice, women’s and labour rights); planet (environment, and future generations); and acceptable profits?

    “And as robots like this get smarter, as artificial intelligence develops, will robots gain legal rights?  Who will represent them?  What type of world will result as we merge with new information and genetic technologies?

   These were just a few of the provocative questions raised by Professor Sohail Inayatullah, a member of the Futures Foundation’s professional advisory board, when he spoke to journalists at a Science Forum on artificial intelligence hosted by UTS with the support of the Department of Industry, Science and Resources.

   “As the web and artificial intelligence develop, we can anticipate health-bots or health coaches, that is, always-on wearable computers,” he said. “They will provide individualised and immediate feedback, letting us know for example our caloric intake or the amount of exercise needed to burn off the pizza we just ate.

   “They will also let us know the make-up of each product we care considering purchasing, helping us to identify allergies, for example.

   “These intelligence computer systems would be reflexive knowledge systems, learning about us and our preferred and not-so-preferred external environment.

   “They will be powerful health coaches provided by your health-care provider, which will not only aid diagnosis but also reinforce pursuit of your chosen health goals.   These expert systems, or electronic personal guides, will tailor the information to your own knowledge level, interest level and learning style, as well as those of your family members, each of whom would have a personal electronic ‘health coach’.   If you are genetically or otherwise inclined to heart disease, your coach will encourage specific preventive measures.

   “This is the health professional on a wrist.

   “What is crucial is that these bots will be customised, immediate and reflexive.”

   Professor Inayatullah argues that in the long run, this means that there will be smarter consumers who will check on research studies and be able to manoeuvre in a world of conflicting data and conflicting paradigms.

   “Smarter and more empowered consumers should make the jobs of health and other professionals easier.  And as smart cards and health bots continue to evolve, their intelligence will certainly reduce doctors’ visits, saving money to the health system but also forcing GPs to reconsider their role in the health system.  GPs and other professionals will need to quickly become net-savvy, seeing it as a way to communicate with patients, especially younger patients raised on the net – the .com generation and the emerging double helix generation.”

   Dr Inayatullah argues that standards are changing swiftly, with consumers shifting their attention upstream — from the functional use of a product to its cost/benefit, from there to the way it confers identity or status on the user, and on to consideration of the type of future that the buyer’s choice of product will create.   For example, he quotes the dramatic shift to ethical investment funds as more and more people recognise the impacts of the investment choices they are making.

   “Bots will be able to reflect these changing standards and provide us with information for our individual and social consumption needs.  Already websites such as www.lead.org/leadnet/footprint/intro.htm help us to determine our footprint on the Earth: www.consumerlab.com provides product information on which to base value-driven buying decisions.”

Be Alarmed, Be Very Very Alarmed (2003)

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Reflections on anti-terrorism kit send by Commonwealth Government of Australia

By Ivana Milojević

Written 5th February 2003

I still remember vividly the short feature presentation I watched several times during my schooling. It was called “Yellow Mini Morris” and it went like this: a couple, a blond beautiful woman and a tall handsome stranger arrive to the (former) Yugoslavia from western Europe. They pretend to be ‘tourists’ admiring ‘our’ beautiful scenery. They drive around in their lovely yellow car apparently taking pictures of themselves. But all along, they were in fact taking picture of our airports, bridges and other vital infrastructure. The message was: never trust foreigners, no matter how beautiful or well dressed they are. Be aware of anybody acting suspiciously. This especially includes anyone taking photographs. Also watch out for those travelling in a small yellow car. Driving past bridges, factories, electricity and gas companies. Being beautiful, blond or tall. Wearing designer outfits. And, especially, be aware and be suspicious of western Europeans!

In retrospective, and in the light of the fact that NATO did bomb my native town and destroyed all its three bridges over Danube some twenty years later, the Yellow Mini Morris story might not be as ludicrous as it seems. In fact, one could go as far as to suggest that xenophobic communist regime was right to teach us about all the treats coming from outside and endangering our then way of life. After all, many parts of former Yugoslavia will for many more years to come have to deal with not so nice remains of NATO liberation from ethnic cleansing and totalitarian regimes, such as depleted uranium polluted soil, diseases brought by foreign soldiers and the newly formed American military bases.

Were xenophobes, totalitarian dictators and nationalists thus right when warning about the treat from ‘the Other’? Or was it that the discourse they created in itself helped create an environment conducive of suspicion, therefore fear, therefore obsession with protecting oneself, therefore bad diplomacy, therefore ‘pre emptive defence’, therefore reactive response, therefore various military operations, therefore several full blown wars?

Yet again I find myself in a country where the government warns us to be alert (but not alarmed!) so as to help protect ‘our’ way of life. It is as if I never really left a society based on suspicion and fear and never really came to supposedly democratic, multicultural and ‘open’ one. Not surprisingly, apart from experiencing some strange déjà vu that started a couple of months earlier when I was asked for my I.D. for (acting suspicious by) sending a parcel overseas, I have in addition started experiencing a serious case of Post Traumatic Suspicion Disorder and am in a desperate need of consulting ‘a health professional’. But perhaps the need for counselling could be averted if only our Prime Minister could take his time to reassure me over several things.

First, that I should not be suspicious of his desire to maintain peace. That the $1.4 billion spent to strengthen Australia’s counter-terrorist capability, part of which includes some of my tax money, is NOT going to be used for destroying someone else’s lives, soils, bridges and places of residence. That the timing of sending this kit so as to correspond with preparations to attack Iraq IS coincidental.

Second, that upgraded resources for the ‘Australian Secret Intelligence Service’, ‘new state-of-the-art surveillance systems’, possibility for the Prime Minister to ‘take strategic control in a national emergency’ and people being encouraged to spy on and dobb in each other, are NOT the tell signs of Australia becoming a totalitarian state.

Third, that ‘television, radio, newspapers and the internet’ will NOT be used by government to control the public opinion.

Fourth, that additional money WILL be given to the national and state Anti-Discrimination and Equal opportunity commissions so to better respond to increased harassment of ‘certain’ community and/or religion that has already been happening since the horrific events of September 11th.

Fifth, that the government WILL say sorry to the Indigenous population of Australia so as to stop projecting forward what had been done backward (physical violence and murders, destruction of one’s way of life).

Sixth, that xenophobes and racists individuals calling themselves Australians WILL be deported to an isolated island in the Pacific, as they clearly do not fit the profile of ‘friendly, decent, democratic’ Australians’ who ‘embrace people, religions and languages from every corner of the world’.

Seventh, that Australian children are NOT going to suffer from living in an environment where an overly dangerous and threatening view of the world is being communicated to them. Alternatively, that in addition to the increased availability of free counselling, he WILL provide stockpiles of herbal, homoeopathic and allopathic anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications for many more generations to come.

Eight, that he WILL insist on disarming ALL nations from dangerous weapons of mass destruction, including the most powerful ones as well as those that have already used them on a defenceless civilians and nature.

Ninth, that he WILL send us yet another kit, with another budget outlined so as to address pollution, global warming, chemical spills, climate change and other serious treats to our current way of life.

Basically, what I am looking for is for prime minister to reassure me that the suspicion of ‘the Other’ won’t yet again lead to fear, therefore to bad diplomacy, therefore to pre emptive strikes, therefore to a full blown war. That a history won’t repeat itself. That we will resolve our (actual, perceived and/or potential) conflicts and suspicions of each other through trust, cooperation, dialogue and most importantly, by peaceful means. That we will work towards letting go of our personal and communal desire to control everything and everybody. That we will get our priorities right.

I sincerely look forward to the prime minister finding time in his busy schedule to address some of my concerns. But if he stays numb and counselling fails to respond I believe I would still have several options to improve my mental health. First, quickly consult my new fridge magnet. Then go and look for the location of our electricity switchboard. If that fails to reassure me, I can call the Energex. Or the local Vet. Check myself into nearest hospital. Inundate my kids school’s administration with calls. Harass my neighbours. Stalk our local council members. And, last but not least, I can always go and hang out by the gas meter. So, no worries mate, I’ll feel safe again.

An Alternative View of the Futures of South Asia (2003)

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Steps to a Confederation

Sohail Inayatullah

Professor, Tamkang University, Taiwan and Sunshine Coast University, Australia

www.metafuture.org

October 11, 2003

While we are all aware why we do not have peace in south asia, there is a paucity of explorations on how to create a better future.  The lack of peace defined as both individual peace (inner contentment), social-psychological peace (how we see the Other), structural peace (issues of justice, particularly territorial justice) and epistemological peace (toward a plurality of ways of knowing) are among the major factors contributing to poverty in south asia. Government expenditures in each nation, especially India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka go for military purposes and not for education or health.  Every time a positive economic cycle begins, yet one more confrontation sends military expenditures higher.  Few, except military leaders and a few corporations (mostly foreign), benefit from this escalation. Indeed, the entire system is now war based, from the military-industrial complex to the worldview of citizens and leaders.

Lack of Visions

Part of the reason for this vicious cycle of confrontation and poverty is because South Asia has been unable to move outside of colonial and partition (or liberation) categories.  Conceptual travel outside of British influence is difficult and cultural, economic, military and psychological colonialism and categories of thought remain in south asian internal structures and representations of the self.

Intellectuals in south asia also do not help matters, in fact, we are often part of the problem.  Focused on historical investigations and mired in feudal social relations, academic discourse, in general, and the future, in particular, has become fugitive and, when apprehended, made trivial.  This is largely because of the style, content and structure of south asian intellectual/State relations.  By and large administered by the civil service, appeasing the chief minister (as evidenced by the center stage of the minister at book launchings and public lectures) is far more important than independent intellectual inquiry. It is the State that gives academic discourse legitimacy, since it is the State that has captured civil society.  The paucity of economic, social and political resources for the Academy exacerbates, if not causes, this situation. Social sciences remain undeveloped.

Nation, State and Real Politics

Colonial history has produced an overarching paradigm that even the interpreters of the hadith and Vedanta must relinquish their authority to.  This is the neo-realist model of International Relations and National Development. Caught in a battle of ego expansion, of self-interest, nations function like self-interested egoistic individuals. Economic development can only take place at the national level with communities absent from participation. Thus making peace at local levels impossible.  Security is defined in terms of safety from the aggressor neighboring nation, not in terms of local access to water, technology and justice. Only real politics with hidden motives behind every actor and action makes sense in this neo-realist discourse. The task then for most is explaining the actions of a nation or of functionaries of the State.  Envisioning other possibilities for “nation” or “state” and their interrelationships, that is, the assumptions that define what is considered eligible for academic discourse remains unattempted, thus the absence of communities, non-governmental organizations, class and other transnational categories such as gender from the realm of what is considered important.  Moreover, structural analysis such as center/periphery theory (a step beyond conspiracy theory) is intelligible but only with respect to the West not with respect to internal structures.  Finally, visions of the future, attempts to recreate the paradigm of international relations, strategic studies and development theory through women studies, world system research, historical social change analysis, peace studies, participatory action research or the social movements are considered naive and too idealistic.   Worse, it is believed that this naivete and idealism threatens security on the home front. Thus it is fine if class and gender are issues that challenge mainstream politics in the neighboring nation but not in “our perfect country.”  What results thus is at best static peace – that is the diplomatic accomodation of official differences and not what Prout founder, P.R. Sarkar calls, sentient peace, or the creation of a mutual ecology of destiny based on shared moral principles.

However even with the dominance of real-politics, idealism does exist, but, in the quest for modernity it has been marginalized.  Visions remain limited to evening prayer or meditation, for personal peace, but they have no place in politics or structural peace, except at the level of the State which uses religious practices to buttress its own power and control over competing classes, that is, it appropriates vision into its own strategic discourse.

Again, the dominance of neo-realism and the loss of mutual trust can be explained by many variables. The most important of them is the event of partition – the alleged break from colonialism -that has dominated intellectual efforts. With more than a generation of mistrust, hate and fear, creating alternative futures, not dominated by the partition discourse is indeed challenging. The disappointment of post-colonial society has worn heavy on the south asian psyche – betrayals by leaders and calls for more sacrifices from the people for yet another promised plan is unlikely to transform the weight of the past and the abyss of the present.  The future that we have arrived at to is not the final destination for south asia, it is a dystopia.  As Faiz has written[i], “The time for the liberation of heart and mind has not come yet. Continue your arduous journey. This is not your destination.”

Possible Strategies

Given this history, what are some possible strategies outside of the partition and nation-state discourse.  And how can social movements and others desiring a different future help in these strategies, in creating new visions and realities for south asia.

The short run strategy social movements would be to attempt to encourage peaceful citizen to citizen meetings between Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans, Pakistanis and Indians. Their effort in creating links between intellectuals, writers and artists across national boundaries would be critical in such efforts.  Unfortunately south asian intellectuals are often beholden to the bureaucracy. Rarely are they independent.  Moreover, in general, intellectuals tend to adopt nationalistic lines seeing history only from a nationalistic perspective, thinking that the other nation’s history is propaganda and one’s own nation’s historiography is the real objective truth. This has worsened in recent times with the rise of the BJP in India and of rightist Islamic parties.

Intellectuals who have left the “homeland” for the West are not immune from this intellectual cancer. While south asians may unite in critique of the West, when it comes to the homefront, they remain attached to nation. Religion as well has increasingly become a weapon of identity, used not to create a higher level of consciousness but to distance from the other.  In this sense, the neo-humanist mind and paradigm has yet to emerge. Instead, identity is based on geographical sentiments, national sentiments and religious sentiments.

The recent war in Afghanistan has further hardened identity, forcing individuals to be either, especially in Pakistan, strict muslims or western oriented. Layered identity, that is, we are primarily human beings, and secondary national citizens or members of a particular religion, is more difficult to achieve. Indeed, as Marcus Bussey (www.metafuture.org) has argued, neo-humanism should not be seen solely as a theory but as a practice. We must live day to day through neo-humanism, asking ourselves, how in our conversations, our views, our teaching of children do we recreate historical identities, or help create inclusive identities.

Nonetheless, it is imperative that we find ways to encourage citizen to citizen interaction through sports, arts, music and literature, to begin with. To do this, of course, there needs to be travel between the various south asian nations.  However given the intervention of each nation in the Other: Pakistan in India; India in Sri Lanka; and given secession movements in each country, suspicion is natural and travel difficult.  Normalization of borders when the nation-state is under threat appears unlikely especially as violence has become routine in local and national politics.

One way out of this is to begin to focus on ideal futures instead of dis-unifying pasts; that is, instead of asking who actually attacked who or should Kashmir be part of Pakistan or India or independent we need to practice compassion and forgiveness towards the other, to not see the gaining of territory as central to the national and personal ego.  What is needed are meetings among artists, intellectuals, and even bureaucrats to stress areas and points of unity–sufis who are hindu; yogis who are sufi, for example. We need to remember stories of how difference has led to mutual benefit, to glorify how intimacy with the other can create sources of cultural vitality. The usefulness in this citizen to citizen contact is that it will build amity among people who feel the other is distant, who fear the Other.  While citizen to citizen contact did not markedly change US or Soviet policy towards each other, it did create peace forces in each nation, that created dissension when governments insisted on arguing that the other nation was the evil empire.  Citizen to citizen contact ideally will develop into contact between non-governmental organizations that are committed to same ideals: serving the poor, empowering women, caring for the environment, for example.

The nuclear tests in Pakistan and India have led to numerous exchanges between Indians and Pakistanis, largely through the medium of the internet–a dynamic loose association called south asians against nukes has taken off. It intends to lobby governments in both countries to take steps to develop conversations of peace, of shared futures, as well as to set in place fail safe measures to avoid nuclear accidents and provocation by nationalists on all sides.

But most important is not specific issues but the hope that these NGOs may be able to strengthen civil society in each nation thus putting some pressure on politicians to choose more rational strategies, strategies that place humans and the environment ahead of geo-sentiments and geo-politics.  Currently the politician who wants to negotiate with the leader of the other nation is forced to take hard-line aggressive policies (“we will never give up Kashmir or we will never give up nuclear power”) lest he or she lose power to the Opposition. By having a transnational peace, ecological, service movement pressuring each nation’ leaders they will have more room to negotiate and pursue policies that benefit the collective good and security of the region.

Of course, NGOs can as well distort local civil society, as they are financed by external sources. Trade associations, professional groups and other forms of community need as well to be activated along these neo-humanist lines.

While it would be ideal to reduce the likelihood of local leaders to pursue aggressive/nationalistic strategies most likely positive change, paradoxically enough, will come from the globalizing forces of privatization.  Irrespective of how privatization harms labor and small business, it does create a wave of faith in the emerging bourgeois, who in their search for profits are transnational.  The rational ceases to be the nation but the profit motivation.  Profit motivation might begin the process of increased trade, and commercial contacts between the various nations of the south asian region. For Capital, mobility, the free flow of borders is the key to its expansion.  Historical feuds only limit its accumulation. For south asia, unless there are increased economic ties then the capital that accumulates because of privatization will largely go to overseas destinations, Tokyo and New York.  Beginning the process of developing a south asian economic sphere, even it is created by those who have little concern for the environment and for social justice, in the long run will help create more peaceful futures for the region. At the level of the person, business men and women who have to make deals will have to face each other, will have to see that they have common interests. Moreover, they will not be branded as spies by opportunistic political leaders since business can always claim they are only working for national productivity. Of course, , creating economic and cultural vitality through social/peoples’ movements, particularly the cooperative movement, or increasing the rights of labor throughout south asia is even more important – it is creating a more fair society, not the rise of the bourgois that is crucial.

In the meantime, labor, unfortunately, has far less mobility than capital.  Labor leaders who are transnational will certainly be branded as unpatriotic, in fact, in contrast to business leaders, labor leaders will be seen as spies who are attempting to stifle national growth.  Arguing for local economic democracy by contesting the power of the federal bureaucracy and outside economic interests will also not beholden social movements to the power of government and capital. Indeed, decentralization will be misconstrued for secession, in some cases.

However, we can hope that at the regional level as the Other becomes less distant or because of the pressure of external forces, we can envision a time when national policy leaders meet to create a south asian confederation of sorts.  To develop such a larger south asian trade association or confederation, there needs to be agreement or negotiation in the following areas.

Areas of Negotiation

1.         Water regime. The problems here are associated with the use of water for the short term instead of the long term, for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many.  Should water become a joint resource then?

2.         Human rights regime.  The problems in reaching agreement in this area should be obvious since each will claim that the other violates human rights while it has a perfect record.  Action from global human rights associations can help create pressure on local levels. Human rights will need to focus not just on individual rights but the right to purchasing capacity. The right to religion and language will also have to be central in any human rights regime.  We must remember that the debate on human rights in Asia is about expanding the Western notion of liberal individual rights to include economic rights and collective rights. It is not about the restriction of rights but their augmentation.

3.         Nuclear non-proliferation.  This is problematic since India believes that it has to fear China as well as Pakistan.  China sees itself as a global power and thus will not agree to any nuclear agreement, especially given the inequitable structure of the present global nuclear and arms regime.  However, nuclear proliferation promises, as with the US-USSR case, to bankrupt first one nation and then the other – Pakistan is already on the verge of financial calamity.  Given the lack of safety of nuclear installations, it might take a meltdown before some agreement is reached.  Pakistan believes that it must have a dramatic deterrent since it believes most Indians have yet to truly accept partition, independence. Indeed, Indians generally see Pakistanis as double traitors, first for having converted from hinduism to Islam and second for having carved Pakistan from India.

4.         UN peacekeeping forces in troubled areas.  This step while impinging on national sovereignty could ease tensions throughout south asia.  For one, it recognizes that there is a crisis that the leaders of each nation, particularly Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and India, have failed to resolve.  Will we see blue helmets throughout south asia in the near future?  However, peacekeeping should be not restricted to weaponed officers but rather should include community builders–therapists and healers. Recent breakthroughs in Sri Lanka have partly come about through intervention of mediators from Norway. This external peace building as been essential in moving Sri Lanka from its abyss.

5.         Regional conferences at Cabinet level.  While governments often obscure truth, more meetings might begin a thawing process and, unfortunately, if not properly structured, they might further reinscribe half-truths and vicious stereotypes of the Other.  Still, meetings on specific points where there is a great chance of agreement are a great place to begin. Start slow, reach agreement, and build from there, would be a place to begin.

6.         Regional conferences of ngos (environmental groups, feminist groups, peace movement, universal spiritual groups, artists, human rights activists).  This is even more important as it helps build relationships among like-minded individuals who are tired of the symbolic efforts of their own governments, who crave a different south asia.

While all these steps begin the process, the long run strategy would be to encourage a rethinking of identity and an alternate economic and political structure.

Long Term Steps

The long terms steps would be:

1.                  Denationalize self, economy and identity.  This the larger project of delinking the idea of the nation, whether India or Pakistan, from our mental landscape and replacing it with more local–community–and global concepts, that of the planet itself.

2.                  Essentially this means a rewriting of textbooks in south asia. Moving away from the neo-realist real politics paradigm and toward the neo-humanist educational perspective. This means rewriting history as well rethinking the future.

3.         Create Peoples’ movements centered on bioregions and linguistic and cultural zones, that is, begin the process of rethinking the boundaries of south asia along lines other than those that were hammered out by Indian political parties and the British in the early half of this century. This is Sarkar’s notion of samaj movements.

4.         Encourage self-reliance and localism in each zone.  While trade is central between nations and the economic zones, it should not be done at the expense of the local economy.  This is not say that poor quality products should be encouraged, rather on non-essential items there should be competition. The State should not give preferential treatment to a few businesses at the expense of others.

5.         Barter trade between zones is one way to stop inflation.  In addition, it leads to a productive cycle between zones, especially helping poorer zones increase wealth.  These will especially be useful given the upcoming world recession or depression.

6.         Encourage universal dimensions of the many religions and cultures of the area. While this is much easier said than done, it means that individuals have a right to religious expression with the role of the State that of ensuring non-interference from local, national and regional leaders who desire to use religion and its strong emotive content to gain votes.

7.         Develop legal structures that can ensure the respect of the rights of women, children, the aged and the environment. The latter is especially important given that environmental issues are transnational. Indeed, the disastrous climatic after effects of recent nuclear explosions show that the environment is a genuine global rights issue. Eventually, while this is a long way off, we need to consider the creation of an Asian International Court.

8.         Transparency.  Governmental decisions need to be open. Ideally meetings should be televised. Promises made by politicians need to become legal documents so that citizens groups can initiate litigation against corruption and mis-information. The same level of transparency should be expected for corporations as well as ngos.

What this means is that we need visions of the future of south asia that are not based on communal violence but are based on the possibility of dynamic peaceful coexistence – what P.R. Sarkar has called, prama.  The task while seemingly impossible must begin with a few small steps, of Indians and Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans, Nepalese and Bhutanese and other historical groups in south asia finding ways to realize some unity amongst all our differences.

The challenge is to use local categories but not within traditional frames, ie to move through the traditional and the modern to a transmodern.

Future generations will remember that there were those that did not accede to narrow sentiments, that kept alive the idea of south asia as an historical civilization, and thus managed to transcend its Indian birth to become a true universal movement.  Let us begin together to create a new history for future generations.

Certainly with the day-to-day violence through south asia, whether Gujrat or Kashmir, it is difficult to imagine a better future. But by staying within current identities and politics, we doom future generations to poverty. When will we choose otherwise?

[i].          Quoted in Syed Abidi, Social Change and the Politics of Religion in Pakistan. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii, 1988, 239.

Alternative Futures of Dubrovnik (2003)

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Written by students of the American College of Management, Dubrovnik and Sohail Inayatullah 

Hotels, traffic systems, buses, airports all digitally connected allowing the seamless and energy efficient movement of tourists and goods, ensuring that tourism in Dubrovnik stays clean, green and respectful of its historical splendour.

An independent city – once again – with a valuable local currency, a thriving economy structured around local cooperatives – an example to the rest of the world how money can stay in the community, leading to prosperity for residents.

Drugs, sex, AIDS, Mcdonaldization and even Wal-Marts – the destruction of traditional values that citizens of Dubrovnik hold dear. Mass tourism leading to the breakdown of the infrastructure – pollution, traffic jams and a loss of identity. Dubrovnik becomes just another declining tourism destination.

Citizens develop foresight, a 2020 commission is set up in the City council, and best practices and visioning chart Dubrovnik on a new course. Green spaces are enlarged so that mass tourism development does not destroy what is unique about the city. Ecological design of systems ensures that building use energy efficiently. Dubrovnik focuses on two markets – elite as well as student tourists, both necessary for the future of the city.

These four scenarios were developed by students of the American College of Management and Technology. They grew out of the New Wave: Vision of Youth Conference organized by the young people of Dubrovnik (in association with many nongovernmental organizations and governmental organizations).  They were the outcome of a lecture given by former unesco professor (Trier, Germany, 1999) and currently professor of futures studies in Taiwan and social sciences in Australia, Sohail Inayatullah.

Inayatullah explained that there is not one future, but alternative futures. To minimize risk and uncertainty it is wise to develop scenarios of the future. Of course, gaining clarity on the desired vision of the future is crucial. We are always, consciously or unconsciously, living someone’s vision of the future. By developing our own, for our city, nation, civilization, organization, we can decolonize the future and move in the direction we wish.

As well, the vision of the future helps us move out of the jungle. The jungle approach to planning and business is focused on surviving, on being the fastest. From there we can move to the strategic, planning ahead. But further are the mountain tops, the scenarios. These give us the big picture. And high above is the star, the ideal. We may not reach there, but the star gives us a direction for movement. This is especially important as day-to-day we have many crisis. Each crisis overwhelms us. We forget to think strategically, or to search for alternatives, and to stay with our vision. Thus, by developing a landscape of the future, we have a higher probability of realizing our goals.

As argued by researchers on the most successful corporations – those with vision have done the best in terms of longevity and indeed profit.

But along with the vision, is the push of the future. These are trends that are changing the structure of the future. Aging, for example, will have dramatic impacts throughout Europe. Who will pay for the pension if the worker-retiree ratio moves from the current 3-1 to 1.5 to 1? What will happen to city design as we age as a society? Will young people become a highly valued resource? Or will there be generational wars?

But there are also weights to the future? Along with the pull, the vision and the push, the trends, there is the weight. These are forces and structures difficult to change; for example, patriarchy or male ways of running cities and business, or old traumas from centuries of conflict and war. The weights make it difficult to create our desired future, but they also give us wisdom, knowing what is a fad, and what can truly change society.

Finally, Inayatullah suggested that we need to anticipate the future, to look for emerging issues, that is issues that have still yet to ripen. These can help us avoid future problems as well as gain new opportunities. What are the emerging issues in Dubrovnik, he asked? How might, for example, digitalization change the nature of city governance. This is more than having a nice webpage, but using the internet for more efficient city services, and even for e-governance. How would an e-council change local politics?

Based on his work with the Asia-Pacific Cities Summit (a meeting of hundreds of mayors and deputy mayors), Inayatullah offered, along with aging and digitalization, the following important themes for cities.

These were:

1.      Transforming urban sprawl. American cities lose up to 76 billion US$ a year because of sprawl, that is, waiting in traffic, health costs related to car pollution. A well, recent research shows that there is a direct link between sprawl – suburbanization – and obesity. The changing nature of the city has led to the rise of King Car, such that, instead of walking, cars become the way of movement. This tyranny of distance is one of the causes of obesity and thus cancer and heart attacks in the Western world.  700,000 deaths in developing countries annually could be prevented if three pollutants – carbon monoxide, suspended particulate matter, and lead – were brought down to safe levels.

How can Dubrovnik ensure that traffic jams do not spoil the tourist experience, especially as Croatia moves up the world economy?

2.      The greening of the city. This means more than simply more green spaces, but ensuring that all design is based on ecological principles and has a productive after-life.  Energy efficiency in buses, in cars, is changing the nature of the city, and creating a new industry. Australia, for example, has a new system to rate all housing, giving stars for the following; (1) biodiversity, (2) embodied energy, (3) energy consumption, (4) water consumption, (5) indoor air quality, (6) resource efficiency, (7) location and transport, (8) waste management and (9) food production

How can Dubrovnik become a greener city? What architectural practices, city planning, needs to be rethought:? What from the past should continue?

3.       The healthy city has inner and outer dimensions. The inner dimension is based on perceptions of citizens on the quality of their life. Is it improving?. Externally, it is based on longevity, being free of diseases, reduced infant mortality. 500, 000 Europeans die annually from tobacco related illnesses – all which can be easily prevented. However, the foundations of a healthy city include many variables : environment, social justice, participation, basic needs, connection, urban design, and access to health benefits.

Finally, and most importantly, enhanced health is partly determined by level of social connection in city. Social inclusion leads to better health. Related is the notion of place. This has become more important for individuals and community health as globalization makes place less important for business.

How can Dubrovnik become an even healthier city? Can health become part of its future focus, not just in terms of spas, but in terms of the real social, economic, community and individual indicators?

4.      The global-local city. As globalization makes nations more porous and capital freer, it as well opens up space for cities to create the futures they desire. Changes at macro levels are not so easy, but cities, by being attentive to their local citizens and needs, as well as to the larger global environment (pollution, capital flows, tourists, diseases) can in fact dramatically influence the future.

What is Dubrovnik’s vision of the future? And who should it align with to create that? Which other cities have similar pasts, presents and desired futures?

The session concluded with the development of interactive scenarios – digital outlier, back to the past, worst case and best case.

What next then for Dubrovnik?