Professor Sohail Inayatullah is the UNESCO Chair in Futures Studies at Sejahtera Centre for Sustainability and Humanity, IIUM. He is a political scientist/futurist at Tamkang University, Taipei and an Associate at Melbourne Business School, the University of Melbourne.
In 2021, he was Futurist-in-Residence (virtual) for the Government of Abu Dhabi. From 2011-2014 he was an Adjunct Professor at the Centre for Policing, Counterterrorism, and Intelligence, Macquarie University, Sydney. In 1999, he was the UNESCO Chair in European Studies at the University of Trier, Germany. He is listed in the top 2 percent of the world’s scientists as measured by the highest impact of citations.
Dr. Inayatullah has authored and co-edited twenty-eight books, including: Understanding Sarkar (2002), Situating Sarkar (1999), Prout in Power (2017); CLA 3.0: Thirty Years of Transformative Research (2022); From Anticipation to Emancipation (2022); The End of the Cow and other Emerging issues (2022); Futures Thinking in Asia and the Pacific (2020).
His PhD was on the world philosopher, Shrii PR. Sarkar, the founder of Prout. Shri P.R. Sarkar read parts of his PhD thesis and commented on the text.
Question 1:
What should we be doing now to see the future that we would all like to see?
a. Eliminating poverty
b. Universal Education
c. Universal Health Care
Hey welcome to the Prout now.com interview series we’ll let our panel introduce themselves first is myar Dr inah we have been communicating with each other for some time my name is mayang I live in Houston United States and I’m a mechanical engineer by profession yeah I’m really glad to be
Here today to interview you thank you and rajendra yeah namaskar drah I’m rajendra from India basically my profession is I’m a chemical engineer by profession and recently I super innovated since 2020 and now I’m associated with PR so I love working with PR and during that I have
Gone through many of your videos and I’m your Facebook friend also so it is very nice to hear from you today thank you so much great to meet you we have two Engineers already okay and Manish hello Dr inah it’s so nice to meet you uh I’m Manish Dave uh I live in
The US um and uh I’m also an engineer by profession so but uh you know I’m more so on the you know it and the software side so I’m part of the proud now uh editorial team which is our team here so we are so happy to be interviewing you
Today thank you for your time to be here thanks so much great to meet you and uh my name is Maru Sudan I’m the editor of Prout now.com and president of Prest Universal in the United States it’s brilliant great to meet you as well have
We met before we have met before a long long time ago we first met in Hawaii ah yes I lived in honolu almost 20 years I was anyway that’s another long story I understand okay so it is our pleasure today to welcome Dr so inayatullah Professor inayatullah is the
UNESCO chair in future studies at sagitar Center for sustainability and Humanity ium he is a political scientist futurist at Tam Kang University Taipei and an associate at Melbourne business school the University of Melbourne in 2021 he was a futurist residence for the government of Abu Dhabi from 2011 to
2014 he was an Adjunct professor at the center for policing counterterrorism and intelligence Mur University Sydney in 1999 he was UNESCO chair in European studies at the University of Trier Germany he is listed in the top 2% of the world scientists as measured by the highest impact of Cit
Ation Dr inayatullah has authored and co-edited 28 books including understanding sarar 2002 situating sarar 1999 proud in power 2017 CLA 3.0 30 years of transformative research 2022 from anticipation to emancipation 2022 the end of the cow and other emerging issues 202 22 and futur thinking in Asia and the Pacific
2020 his PhD was on the world philosopher Shri PR sarar the founder of proud Shri PR sarar read parts of his PhD thesis and commented on the text Dr inula a warm welcome to you and thank you so much for taking time to be with us today despite your busy schedule
Brilliant great to be here thanks so much well thank you so much and we will start off with the first question please tell us what is future studies so I was 17 and moved from Malaysia to Hawaii and I had grown up in a situation my father was working with the UN my
Mother was a Mystic and Sufi Mystic and so what I learned from them our discussions my father was very Nation Centric if we see a nation Centric world it’s a realist world it’s a geopolitical world to get out of that is nearly impossible to had 17 a senior course on
Future studies and suddenly I saw here’s a way out instead of only being structured in geopolitics we can choose Different World Views and offer different Alternatives a spiritual worldview a feminist worldview an idealistic worldview so suddenly the notion of going from nothing is possible to anything is possible was the core of
Future studies the methods and tools are about macro history the large 1,000 year patterns 50-year patterns the methods and tools are also scenarios not what will happen but what’s possible what might happen so future studies is really exploration of alternative and preferred Futures it says yes there’s structure to
History but how can we find agency our capacity to influence the future in any given moment so if you know Shri sarkar’s work he talked talked in his 1990 talk I believe it was you’ve entered Galloping time and the uniqueness of G Galloping time is not
Just the acceleration of time but is he argued the ability to enhance your agency you have greater impact when time Galls if you studied the French Revolution no one with any certainty could say here’s what will happen tomorrow would the boura win would the aristocrats win would the clergy win
Time was Speedy time was plastic so I think that’s the core of his argument as time time accelerates gallops uncertainty increases that’s difficulty but also the ability to influence increases and that’s what I think prod universe is about to find ways within the world system you might say the
Points of pressure to help navigate to help make it jump to a new world and future studies is a way to do that you might say for those of you it’s proud light it’s a way to talk about proud in language that’s easily accessible to the engineer to the scientist to the business
Leader that’s very interesting so in light of future studies what should we be doing now to see the future that we would all like to see such as eliminating poverty or Universal education or Universal Health Care so this is dependent on your worldview so I wish I could say do XY Z
But what we’ve learned in doing this work that’s always the wrong answer so strategy comes from we will do this for to you so if you look at International Development agencies they work with a group in any country and they said please tell us what to do and the expert says do
This now I think if you think that through that’s still strategy in a zero sum game the world is limited you have to compete against X and win by doing y future thinking and proud as well is actually you’re co-designing no one’s above or below we’re all on this planet
Together so you eliminate hierarchy of persons but also hierarchy of knowledge hierarchy of who knows best and you co-design and you co-create so every project I do it’s almost weekly there’s a different person or group or country I’m working with and there’s different answers so of course in PR we have some
Core principles the social cycle Universal the notion of a wealth cap notion of deep spiritual ethical leadership we have some core ideas but the application the connection Community is all time space person dependent so I’m hesitant to tell people do X my role and I think all of our roles is to find
Where the possibilities of change which they identify in their local knowledge their local ways of knowing and we work with them almost like a gardener to help create the new crop the new field so I always I’m asked a lot in future studies tell us what will happen
Tell us what to do and that’s the mistake everyone makes that that they have the answer I’m very clear with my limited understanding limited body and mind here’s what I know and here’s what I don’t know but if you get many smart people together we can create
More well can you give us an example of something you’ve worked on that where you’ve applied future studies okay for example we were working with undp in Egypt and their issue was uh postco strategies and I think the remarkable thing that came out of the meeting is everyone says let’s
Use AI to help large corporations create new value and that meaning once we did scenarios of no change marginal adapted radical it became very clear the radical scenario is how do you use AI for the poor so not for the large Agri business but how do we get AI into every farmer
Every person on the street in Cairo selling fruits and vegetables into their smartphone so they can better understand implications of food and climate change realtime pricing realtime Trends this if we want to transform the economy it’s using AI for the poor AI for the greater good as a
Way to increase power and so this was to me quite novel many organ ganizations we use future studies to rethink their purpose with one large International Development agency their purpose was infrastructure but as you could see with intell the nature of intelligence changing aha is really our purpose creating more infrastructure or really
Is our purpose creating more knowledge tailor knowledge Precision knowledge knowledge that’s person country focused so they start to think about redoing their purpose from the infrastructure development provider wrer to the knowledge development priv Rider so as the world changes things work and then we enter a bottleneck where our strategy
Doesn’t work who we are doesn’t work and that’s where Futures comes in says Ah we have to change our core narrative and we have to change our strategy with one Olympic group we were working with it was I can’t tell you the country or the group but they were working at swimming
At winning right so they had a very core strategy which was heavily funed by the national government to win more gold medals so they said well how can we do this better so we went through this process became very clear they had a metaphor which was the golden
Second that if you train Olympians that last second is what decides between no medal bronze silver gold I said well that’s great that’s working why do you need to talk to us you know you’re experts you’re Sports scientist they yeah we’re doing the visioning we’re teaching meditation we’re doing exercise
We’re doing all the things to increase our ability to change the future for Olympian swimmer said then what’s the problem I said the problem is after the Olympics I go what do you mean they go many of our Olympians they’re so used to competition they go home and they
Continue competition in the home which doesn’t make sense they’re so used to this these hormones going in their body serotonin to feel good now they’re looking for hormones even though they’re no longer Olympians so we see spouse abuse drug abuse so then it became very clear they had the wrong story the story
Was the golden second as we worked with them they suggested ah it’s the golden life golden life means not just winning the pool but winning in life which means emotional intelligence lifelong literacy financial literacy spiritual intelligence the goal of future is it works it doesn’t work what’s a broader
Deeper more effective way to transform self Society of the world so these are examples of future thinking in practice as you can see the underlay are some of the core ideas that emerg from proud emotional intelligence gender Equity spiritual literacy fascinating