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CLA, ASIA 2038, and Futures. Interview by Louis Zheng (2020). In Mandarin.

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从“⼼”改变未来|对话未来 04 Sohail Inayatullah（上篇）

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新冠疫情不是⿊天鹅！|对话未来 04 Sohail Inayatullah（下篇）

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上篇

从“心”改变未来|对话未来 An interview with Sohail Inayatullah

15岁受到未来学家阿尔文·托夫勒的影响关注未来，

40年前就开始研究人工智能未来趋势和机器人权益，

成为联合国教科文组织中的首位未来学教席，

与亚太17国政府高层探讨国际和地域未来发展，

开创了未来学研究理论的CLA模型，被学术和商界广泛采用….

这一次，我们对话未来的嘉宾是全球知名未来学家Sohail Inayatullah教授。

Sohail Inayatullah教授是全球知名未来学家、政治学家、 联合国教科文组织首位未来学教席(UNESCO Chair In Futures Studies)、Causal-Layers Analysis (CLA)理论奠基人。被Shaping Tomorrow Foresight Network授予未来学家终身成就劳伦斯桂冠奖。主笔或参与编辑的书籍多达35本，他的内容曾被收录到《麦克米伦未来大百科》中。

2019年9月，我们受到未来学家Sohail Inayatullah教授的邀请，参加在泰国曼谷举办的亚太未来学联盟大会APFN( Asia-Pacific Futurist Network)，并发表主题演讲《中国年轻人眼中的未来》 。

APFN是Sohail教授发起并推动的一个国际联盟，专门促进国际组织、政府部门、企业和非营利组织中的未来学家，对未来议题展开前沿探讨以及方法论的切磋交流。正因为这样的机缘，我们独家采访了Sohail教授。

未来学家俱乐部的三位发起人和Sohail教授在大会现场的合影

新年伊始，我们将通过分享Sohail教授的洞见，为你照亮通向新一年的未来路径。

 或许你会好奇：

  • 什么是未来学家？何为联合国教科文组织未来学教席？
  • 是什么促使他在1983年撰写人工智能和机器人权益的论文？
  • 40年来推动未来学发展和商业战略远见的持续动力是什么？
  • 如何看待未来学家经常面临的误解和质疑？
  • 成为未来学家，需要有哪些好习惯？

FC（未来学家俱乐部）：首先，您对“未来学家”的定义是什么？您会称呼自己是未来学家吗？

SI (Sohail Inayatullah教授)：“未来学家”有诸多的定义。一种广义的观点是，每个人都是未来学家，因为我们都对思考和预判明天。狭义上，未来学家特指那些具备未来学理论和实践的人，更符合我个人的定位。我一共出版了三十多本关于未来学理论的书以及相关的期刊。在战略远见的实践方面，我的目标是让人们更清晰地思考他们想要的未来。当房间里有人开始争论，我从不点评谁对未来的预判是对或错的，因为那不是我该做的，我们作为未来学家的角色更多是以问题启发的形式让参与者学会质疑已有的假设，从而找到一个长期的、共益的未来方向。从这个维度上看，我肯定会把自己称为未来学家。当然，我鼓励大家去掌握双重知识。如果设计是你的专长，那么你可以成为设计师兼未来学家；如果你是个工程师，你可以成为工程师兼未来学家，这并不是一个二选一的问题。

FC：在您的个人介绍中，我们注意到“联合国教科文组织未来学教席“，如何理解这一职务？

SI ：联合国科教文组织为了在全球范围内推广和普及各个学科的相关知识，而设立了教席一职。每个学科的教席则负责统筹这些知识。我作为未来学教席，重点负责包括中国、韩国、日本、澳大利亚、美国夏威夷和东南亚等亚太国家和地区。前段时间刚好亚洲发展银行邀请我作为顾问，到北京为政府部门提供未来教育有关的战略共创工作坊。参与者们都希望推动体制教育的创新，他们使用的比喻令我印象深刻，这也是我在2019年最棒的经历之一。

图片来源：UNESCO官网

FC：以未来学家和未来学教席的双重身份，您的主要工作是什么？

SI：如果用植树打个比方，在第一阶段，当我刚获得博士学位、成为这一方面的专业人士时，我做的事主要是“播种”。我在布里斯班（澳大利亚）、曼谷（泰国）以及新加坡等不同国家和地区都播下了未来学的种子。接下来，第二阶段做的事是培育小树，我会一遍又一遍的回到这些地方，并且发展不同国际组织和政府部门的战略远见能力，比如，国际执法组织、城市规划、司法、生物安全部门、火灾和紧急服务部门等。最初的种子发芽变成了小树，许多人都成为在战略远见和创新领域的先锋。这些小树的茁壮成长源于持续不断的研讨交流和实践，以及像亚太未来学联盟（APFN）这样的支持系统。到了第三阶段，我的使命是创造一片森林。既然是森林，我不再需要关注谁是森林里最拔尖、最聪明的树，但是我们仍要保证这个森林不会受到破坏。对我来说，我的终极目标是让这片森林一直生机盎然。有的树是小树，就和你们一样；有的树是年长一点的大树。而我需要做的是确保所有人都有充足的水源，给他们灵感、知识、拓展的视角以及一个不断在实践的社群组织。

今年的APFN大会主题为“共享繁荣2030”，将在9月于马来西亚举办。（图片来源：MyForesight）

FC：您是如何开启未来学研究生涯的？可否跟我们分享一下您的个人故事？

SI：我个人的成长足迹遍布世界各地，从巴基斯坦、印第安纳、纽约、马来西亚、曼谷，一直到夏威夷，这些经历让我目睹了地域文化有其狭隘的一面，人们只认同他们自己的价值观。而我很幸运自己从小有机会见识如此多元的价值观。很快，我就意识到如果想要一个更好的未来，我不能只沉浸在一种文化价值体系中。我还意识到，许多问题不是只有小小的改变就能解决的，我们需要在整个系统上解决问题。我17岁那年在夏威夷大学上过Jim Dator的未来学课程。当时听到了机器人学、社会变迁及相关理论，这些改变了我思考世界和理解未来的方式。后来，我本科主要学习社会变迁，然后硕士是关于未来学。之后开始实习，并在接下来的十年都在夏威夷司法部门工作。

右三为Jim Dator，美国夏威夷大学未来研究中心总监、教授，也是Sohail教授的老师。

(图片来源：网络)

有趣的是，我早在1983年发表的第一篇论文是关于机器人的合法权利的。那时，我们好奇如果法官被机器人取代，将会发生什么？如果AI机器人可以执行刑事审判，法官也许会成为哲学家，那么我们如何将一部分重复的、不那么核心的工作移交给AI机器人？另外，我的论文里也试图探讨：如果机器人拥有像猫和狗一样的权利，我们的世界会发生怎样的变化？这些关于未来司法的前瞻讨论引发了这个领域从业者的极大关注，到了1992年，美国司法部资助了32个州的司法部门开展前瞻战略研究。

FC：您是如何在上个世纪80年代就预见未来AI和机器人的可能性？

SI：我的“未来信号”来自于15岁时看的一部改编自未来学家阿尔文·托夫勒著作的科幻电影。在电影里，有一对情侣在柔美的背景音乐下牵手，他们周围还有美丽的树。你会觉得，哦，多么浪漫美好的画面啊。直到他们转过身来，观众们才发现这对情侣是对机器人。这一幕震惊到了我。

图片来源：Bill Mayer

FC：您从事未来学研究工作已超过40年，这里源源不断的动力是什么？

SI：未来学一直都很引人入胜呐！这里有三方面的主要因素。首先，坚持学习。每周我都会研究最前沿的科技并思考接下来要发生什么。比如，今年的方法论培训课（Sohail教授的未来学曼谷培训工作坊）上我就从一位新加坡未来学家那里学到了食物的地球工程改造。我之前从没想到过这样的解决方案。我们知道气象的地球工程改造是什么，但是我从来没想过改变土壤来种植新的农作物。

另外一个至关重要的因素是，帮助他人从“心”开始改变。想成为一名优秀的的未来学家？你需要深刻理解你的人生故事，我们内心的隐喻塑造了我们是谁。在大部分我的工作坊结束之际，我看到不少人或潸然泪下，因为工作坊启发甚至改变了他们的人生。在今天的课堂上，一位来自曼谷的未来城市规划专家特意邀请他的夫人来参加，他已经不是第一次来上课了，我相信正是因为他自己内心的巨大变化才会做出这样的选择，并且带上夫人共同探索自己的内心世界和人生旅途。

我继续给你们讲个故事吧。我很喜欢跟小孩一起玩，有一次我为7个12岁左右的小朋友主持了2小时长的战略共创工作坊，带领他们用CLA模型思考问题。我先问这些孩子：你们觉得2030年的世界会怎样？你那时会在做什么？我最喜欢的答案是一个孩子说她会在2025年成为“彩虹糖豆公司”的总裁。之后，我问她：你对你目前生活的比喻是什么？未来的“彩虹糖豆公司”的总裁说，她的比喻是“她只身在一个房间里，窗帘全都拉上了”。她的朋友们听完就哭了，边哭边说：“你想成为一个总裁，但是你现在的生活像一扇关闭的门。” 我接着问：这个故事告诉你什么？她立马就理解了——这个故事代表着失败。接着她的朋友们告诉她：他们都爱她，但是为什么她没有和他们心连心呢？然后七个孩子都哭了，非常震撼。我一边安慰他们，一边给她建议：“你的愿景很美好，但是你的故事却存在落差。那有没有更好的故事呢？”她说：“让阳光照进来吧。”然后我说：“这句话战略上到底是什么意思呢？如果这是你的新故事，那你会在哪些地方做出改变？”有人说她数学很好，有人说她科学不错。作为一个总裁，不仅需要技术层面的知识，还要有互助合作的情商。他们都明白了这一点，最后互相拥抱。给他们带来这样内心的变化，让我感到幸福和满足。

第三个因素是影响力的善用。我从20岁开始一直在做学术研究，建立未来学研究的理论并刻苦学习。40年过后，随着我在联合国教科文组织、亚洲发展银行、各国政府、教育系统，以及跨国非政府组织展开的工作，个人影响力也随之显著提升，这样可以帮助身边更多的个体和组织。人们想要一个更美好的世界，他们想要工具和方法来创造这样的世界。

FC：也有人对未来学家表示质疑，他们可能觉得未来学家只会狂言乱语，您对此怎么看？为什么未来学家会有这样的负面名声？

SI：这是个残酷的现实我们不得不面对。在上世纪80年代，我刚开始做未来学研究那会儿是很难的。1989年，柏林高墙坍塌了。这改变了人们的认知：曾经以为不会变的事都将发生改变。接着我么看到了更多的证据以证明世界在变化：苏联解体，基因工程启动，互联网普及，亚洲四小龙崛起，随后又有亚洲金融危机，9/11事件，中国经济腾飞…这些都在20年内发生了，世界在迅速改变着。正因如此，未来学研究和战略远见能力变得必不可少。

对于那些收到负面评价的未来学家，他们做错的地方可能来自几个方面。第一，他们预测结果：这会发生，而且我肯定是对的。第二，当他们与别人合作时，他们会说：你错了，我才是对的。第三，他们不会使用他人的语言体系并触及他们的人生故事，从而并未真正理解对方。

在我个人的工作习惯里，我总是会去问每个跟我合作的人：你是谁？你需要什么？你个人/所在组织的核心故事是什么？当一个团队邀请我去做战略共创工作坊时，我会问，你们想要参与者在下午5点离开会议室前学到什么。不同企业、机构和组织的需求千变万化，我会用他们的语言和故事跟他们一起工作，这跟告诉你的合作者“我有答案，你没有”截然不同。

FC：那么，从另一个角度来说，如何成为一名出色的未来学家？

SI：首先是方法论，要是没有系统方法论和思考框架的支持，你会很容易落入夸夸其谈抑或是奇闻逸事。因此，你需要良好的方法论基础并使用你喜欢的思考工具。其次，对我来说，是通晓历史。我并非中国话题的专家，但我读过司马迁的《史记》。你需要会读书，并阅读不同国家和文化的经典著作。我和Johan Galtung写了一本关于宏观历史的书，里面梳理了不同文明里时间和空间的核心规律。这个方法帮助我们从不同文化的视角窥见一个长期的未来。第三是引导的能力。引导是未来学家很重要的技能之一，因为关于未来的讨论通常很有挑战。我们需要给参与者足够的包容和空间可以探讨未来的不同可能性。第四点也是最后一点，要学会如何灵活地应变不同的环境和挑战。

FC：作为一个未来学家，您的一天通常是怎么度过的？

SI：有两部分。第一部分是内心的部分，我真心觉得冥想是非常重要的。冥想的形式并不重要，重要的是要掌握呼吸和慢下来的本领。因为所有事物都在改变，我们则更需要保持稳定，不能惊慌。我们的大脑需要慢下来。慢思考意味着我们可以看清规律并连接碎片，伴随着冥想大脑的规律识别能力也会逐渐增强。我已经冥想四十多年了，我的建议是你不需要特别用力地去冥想。冥想就像是给你的大脑冲个澡，帮你用新的方式领会这个世界。第二部分就是你需要看清楚接下来会发生的事以及可能的黑天鹅事件。这也是我们需要日常锻炼的远见能力。当别人看不见时，我们能够看见。

下篇

新冠疫情不是黑天鹅！|对话未来 An interview with Sohail Inayatullah

此次新冠疫情并非黑天鹅事件，而是长期潜在问题累积而引发的危机。除了应对当下疫情之外，更重要的是去反思：如果未来新冠病毒的再次爆发仍是可能的，我们该如何预防并提前制定相应措施。

当新冠疫情爆发时，我们向来自不同国家、不同领域的未来学家请教他们对此次疫情的看法。Sohail教授便是其中之一。他从十年前便开始关注流行病学的研究，并预判新冠病毒爆发可能性一直存在，只是具体时间难以预测。对于未来，他认为我们必须从消费主义中反思我们的饮食结构和来源，以及从城市设计上如何在人类和动物之间保留缓冲地带。

访谈亮点：

  • 未来学中的远见(Foresight)跟预测(Forecast) 有何不同？
  • 如果要给思考未来一个时间框架，那会是几年？
  • 善于运用战略远见的企业为什么可以有高出平均33%的更好表现？
  • 为何新加坡总理办公室会下设一个战略远见研究所？
  • 中国在下一个发展阶段将面临怎样的挑战？

FC（未来学家俱乐部）：作为联合国未来学教席，您是否可以从专业角度帮我们理解“未来学”、“远见”和“预测”这几个概念的差别？

SI (Sohail Inayatullah教授)：未来学(Futures Studies)就像是一把巨大的伞，其伞盖下包含了理论、方法、实践以及个体的变化。它的定义很广泛，指向的是长期的未来，关于想要的（preferred)、可能会发生的(possible)、合理会发生的（plausible) 以及极有可能发生的(probable)的未来，以及这些未来可能性背后的世界观和隐喻。

未来学的两个重要概念：远见 vs 预测（原图来自于Dune & Raby）

 远见（Foresight) 相对而言更为具体些，它指的是获取关于未来的预期和展望（又译为“预判”）。

每一个地域的传统文化里都有关于远见的表达。在马来西亚，有句谚语说的是Sediakan payung sebelum hujan （意思是：下雨前把雨伞准备好）。在英语文化中，人们常说A stitch in time saves nine (意思是：小洞不补，大洞吃苦)。在中国，我相信也有很多类似的文化习俗。例如，阴历和24节气反映了农民对于未来的预判。

图片来源：win4000.com

 另外一个概念是预测（Forecast)。 这个概念会更狭义和具体。比如，股市将在一年后达到三万点，或者为残疾人服务的机器操控台在未来七年内将变得更加普及。

预测是单一的、线性的、具体的，

远见则是看到不同未来可能性的能力。

战略远见是在既有条件下的优化；变革远见则关注外部环境如何变化，以及适应变化所需的自身改变。

FC：在商业实践中，未来学是如何被应用的？

SI：在商业的语境中，人们通常会使用战略远见(Strategic Foresight)这个词。不过，我个人主推并擅长的是变革远见（Transformative Foresight)。战略远见是你拿到你认为想要的；变革远见可能则是要改变自己。企业高管们更偏好战略变革远见，因为他们希望先改变自己。

 自我的隐喻：过去 vs 未来

我在战略远见培训中遇到过一个总裁，我们一起用CLA模型（点击跳转了解CLA模型）去分析他个人的内心变化。我问他，你碰到的问题是什么？他说：每次他带着预先的设想参加各种会议，但参会时他总会因为层出不穷的陌生话题感到焦虑甚至迷茫。

我说，好吧，这个问题如果做个比喻的话，你的比喻会是什么？他以打网球为比喻：他本来很擅长在草地球场上打网球，现在当他要去一块新的球场打球时，他不确定那是什么类型的球场，是草地还是泥地，也不确定击球的速度是快还是慢。世界正在在变化，他有点应接不暇。

那么，对他而言，“战略”是指优化在草地球场上的打球效率，而“变革远见”是指他能适应在不同的球场上打球。为了改变自我，他找到的新比喻是“一个能在多样化球场打球的人”。

接着我就说，这个比喻可以带你到2030年，到那时你会是谁呢？

他说，他会变成一个教练，并且打球更多是为了休闲放松、提升技能、改变规则、找寻人生挚爱。我说，为什么会有那样的想法？他继续说到，当他五岁时，他就很纯粹地享受打网球的乐趣。长大后作为一名企业的管理者，脑子里却总是在想如何为企业赚更多的钱。

这便是区别。战略远见是在既有条件下的优化；变革远见则关注外部环境如何变化，以及适应变化所需的自身改变，比战略远见更为深刻，于我也更有意义。

图片来源：123RF.com

FC：未来到底多遥远？如何定义合理的时间范围去思考未来？

SI：思考未来的时间框架得按不同行业有所区分。一个城市级别的战略远见项目大约要看未来30-40年，因为建筑师们告诉我重建所有建筑需要40年。在医药领域里，产品创新一般需要12-15年的时间。对于小型的初创企业，通常时间会更短些。当然如果看得太远，你的同事或客户会觉得他们无法带来影响；如果看得太近，比如6个月内的计划，则更多是执行安排，你需要的是旅行社，而非未来学家。

通常来说，未来学家会看7年，或15-20年的未来。

FC：在您的新书《亚洲2038》里，您讲到了未来3000年的亚洲，那这个时间范围的意义是什么？

SI：下一个千年的未来是为了喜欢未来理论以及宏观历史的人准备的，尤其是对于未来充满憧憬的年轻人。而对于企业决策者来说，3000年意味着天方夜谭，或者遥远、不切实际的科幻创作。对于大部分组织而言，去看未来10-15年的战略远见是有必要的，否则可能会因为太远显得无关紧要。

对未来有准备的公司其盈利表现通常高出市场平均水平33%。

FC：作为一个与政府首脑、组织和企业高管们合作多年的未来学家，您如何评估未来思维之于他们的价值？

SI：未来思维的第一个价值是降低风险。如果我们做未来的情境规划（scenario planning)，实际上就是在减少决策失误的风险。

第二个价值是通过关注边缘创新发现新的商业机会、新市场以及新产品。未来不仅仅是优化，它更需要我们突破现有的思维框架。

第三个价值是树立愿景。一个没有愿景和目标的人，其实是很可怜的，国家亦如此。如果你是一个贫穷国家，只关注眼前水和食物等基本问题。当你变成一个发达国家并有希望在接下来的100年里繁荣发展时，最好有一个清晰的愿景。

此外，我们也注意到来自法国未来学家René Rohrbeck的研究成果：善于利用战略远见且对未来有准备的公司其盈利表现通常高出市场平均水平33%。

未来远见能力不同的公司在盈利表现上的差异。图片来源：Corporate foresight and its impact on firm performance: A longitudinal analysis, by René Rohrbeck, Menes EtingueKum

FC：“战略远见”在亚洲各国的发展和应用如何？

SI：在亚洲，我们看到不少政府部门运用未来思维和战略远见的案例。以新加坡为例，他们的总理办公室下设有Center for Strategic Futures (CSF)。我问这个部门的人，为何新加坡在国家层面如此注重未来布局。他们说，新加坡的自然资源是有限的，他们的竞争力在于大脑和微笑，即远见和服务：远见的能力带动了创新，微笑提升了服务。

此外，马来西亚有相应的政府部门，叫做MIGHT (Malaysian Industry-Government Group for High Technology)；泰国政府的科技和科学部下设NIA (National Innovation Agency)，柬埔寨政府正在做未来50年的愿景和规划。缅甸政府也在做类似的尝试。

FC：您跟亚洲开发银行（ADB）有很多合作，是否方便分享一下ADB如何在组织外部推动战略远见呢？

SI：四年前，亚洲开发银行派了两位高管来上我的战略远见培训课。上完后，他们觉得醍醐灌顶。接着，他们邀请我去为ADB的高层们上3天的课程，同时我给他们做了关于知识未来的主题演讲。高层们在上完课程后，突然意识到他们需要重新思考ADB的投资策略——从基础设施建设的借贷到知识建设的赋能。
一方面，发展起来的国家借钱借的少了，因为他们逐渐变的更富有了，因此ADB需要改变他们对银行和对钱的看法。他们创新部门的领导目前的工作重心就是将ADB转型成为一个知识银行。也就是说，如果国家能开始重新思考知识，比如，我们该从哪里获取知识，他们就想到去找ADB。
目前，他们在不同国家都开展未来思维和战略远见的工作坊，目的是与每个国家、每个城市中最优秀的、最聪明的人建立合作，从而创造一个更好的亚洲。 ADB给我们的启示是：如果过去的经验到现在仍然适用，那非常棒，至于它是过去的或是现在的并不重要；但如果过去的策略不再奏效，那我们何必执着于它？

战略远见的价值在于帮助我们找出不再适用的地方，从而进行改变和颠覆。

图片来源:khmertimeskh.com

FC：您跟中国政府、企业、大学是否开展过战略远见相关的工作？

SI：几个月前，亚洲开发银行邀请我来到北京，与中国财政部和国家发改委的官员们共同探讨教育的未来。这只是推广未来思维和战略远见的第一阶段，现在我们在等下一阶段的合作。另外，蚂蚁金服是我合作的第一个中国企业，当时是在香港的三天战略远见课程。

同时，我也在台湾淡江大学任教，这门课程在80年代引进的。1986年，未来学本科课程第一次开课；2000年，学校开设了研究生项目。未来学课程是每个学生的必修课。在过去20年内，约8万名学生学习了这门课程。

中国将要超越西方，那时中国对整个地球和人类的愿景是什么？

FC：您如何看待战略远见对于中国的价值？

SI：要回答这个问题，我们需要思考为什么中国需要通过战略远见实现腾飞。旧的模型是追赶西方，然后一旦追上了西方，接下来要做什么？这就像是参加一个跑步比赛，你赢了，现在你干什么？只是回家睡觉吗？你在追赶上后需要一个新的愿景和目标。

中国将要超越西方，那时中国对整个地球和人类的愿景是什么？2050年，中国将全面实现社会主义现代会，成为发达国家。那么接下来呢？2090年的目标又是什么？一带一路倡议带来更广泛的经济繁荣，但仍停留同一个模式里。

战略远见对于中国的价值在于提升跨越式腾飞的可能性并找到新的愿景和目标。

我们的盲点通常在于看不见真正推开或排斥的东西。

FC：在您看来，思考未来的挑战是什么？您有什么建议？

SI：你试图压制的东西会以另外一种方式反弹，你试图推开的东西会以另外一种方式回来。这在我有生之年的经历里是个颠簸不破的真理。所有我认识的20多岁的人，他们在年轻的时候会把一些东西推开，但是到60多岁就与这些东西共同生活。盲点是其中的一个障碍，因为你通常看不见你真正推开的东西。比如，我和我的朋友在20多岁时会忽视市场经济，因为我们不懂市场经济。现在50多岁的我们正生活在市场经济中，所以这就是我们被推回来的东西。

我不知道你的“回推/反弹”会是什么，但这里有个关键的问题值得思考下：我们现在舍弃了什么。

FC：您的新书《亚洲 2038》简体中文版计划什么时候发布？

SI：这本书的英文原版2018年就发布了，韩语版预计2020年一月会出。简体中文版的翻译也快结束了，我们现在寻求合适的中国出版商，希望这本书可以很快在中国出版，也希望中国读者会喜欢这本书。未来，我也期待在中国引进更多关于未来思维的学术类书籍，同时把战略远见工作坊推广到更多的企业、组织和个人。

From Idea to Reality: Universal Basic Income in Australia by 2030 (2020)

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Journal of Futures Studies, March 2020, 24(3): 97–104

Zara Durnan, Formerly of Jacobs, ‘Corunna’, Deniliquin, NSW 2710, Australia

Sohail Inayatullah, Unesco Chair in Futures Studies; USIM, Malaysia; Tamkang University, Taiwan; University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia

* Web Text version of each JFS paper here is for easy reading purpose only, for the valid and published context of each article, please refer to the PDF version. 

Keywords: Universal Basic Income, Automation, Causal Layered Analysis, Scenarios

This essay explores universal basic income in Australia. It uses causal layered analysis and scenarios to deepen and broaden the debate.

From Idea to Reality

The idea of the universal basic income (UBI) is gaining momentum in popular and political discourse, as it migrates from fanciful theory to a feasible welfare alternative in the face of a changing global labour market and rapid advances in artificial intelligence and automation.

A recent World Development Report “asserts that 68.9% of jobs in India are at high risk – and that number remains at 42.6% even if adjusted for a lag in technology adoption.” (Verick, 2017). In the United States, economists Carl Frey and Michael Osborne concluded 47% of jobs are at high risk of automation. The International Labour Organization estimates that 137 million workers or 56% of the salaried workforce from Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam are at great risk of losing employment in the next twenty years (Aravindan & Wong, 2016).

While retraining is the normal policy prescription, the scale of automation suggests retraining is unlikely to be enough. Automation strikes at the core of the capitalist economy, with the notion of work itself potentially under threat. Universal basic income creates a base from which other alternatives can spring forth leading to enhanced entrepreneurship, innovation, social stability, and cooperatives, for example. Of course, in Western history, debates on universal basic income go back centuries, with many considering Johannes Vives (pp. 1492-1540) the founder of the idea even though he resisted a preventive mode of economy, that is, the notion of providing income before the need arose (Basic Income Earth Network, n.d.).

Earlier, Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) argued that a new global economic model was required. He wrote: “Anarchism has the advantage as regards liberty, Socialism as regards the inducement to work. Can we not find a method of combining these two advantages? It seems to me that we can. […] Stated in more familiar terms, the plan we are advocating amounts essentially to this: that a certain small income, sufficient for necessaries, should be secured to all, whether they work or not, and that a larger income – as much larger as might be warranted by the total amount of commodities produced – should be given to those who are willing to engage in some work which the community recognizes as useful… When education is finished, no one should be compelled to work, and those who choose not to work should receive a bare livelihood and be left completely free.” (Russell, 1918) (Basic Income Earth Network, n.d.).

In the Asian context, philosopher P.R. Sarkar (1921-1990) argued – through his third way model, Prout (the progressive utilization theory) – that intellectual and spiritual progress was only possible if the basic needs of all humans (housing, education, clothes, food, and health) were met (Sarkar, 2018). Along with a minimum base there is to be a maximum ceiling that continuously moved as more wealth was created through spiritual and technological innovation. While in his preferred articulation this is accomplished to increasing worker purchasing power, full employment is increasingly becoming a challenge.

More recently, in ”1984, a group of researchers and trade unionists close to the University of Louvain (Belgium) published a provocative UBI scenario.” (Basic Income Earth Network, n.d.) which led to a gathering of UBI supporters.

But while many have imagined a UBI, concrete trials have been recent.

In 2017 – 2018, Finland became the first European country to trial the application of a UBI – a guaranteed and unconditional payment made to all adult citizens to allow them to meet their basic needs, which is not activity or means tested – with unemployed Finns receiving a guaranteed payment per month for two years, paid even if they find work during that period (The Independent, 2017). The nation has decided it not to continue the trial with the evaluation suggesting that participants were happier – less stressed – but jobs did not result. (BBC, 2019).

Since 2017, two cities in Ontario, Canada have been trialing basic income. One group receives a basic income and another does not. Barcelona has also has been trialing UBI since October 2017. Again one group of a 1000 receives income and the second does not. Scotland will provide 250,000 pounds for a trial as well (Reynolds, Matt, 2018). American presidential candidate Andrew Yang has called for a UBI of 1000 US$ for each American citizen (Darrough, 2019).

Along with political leaders experimenting, corporate thought leaders such as Elon Musk (Weller, 2017), Richard Branson (Chapman, 2017) and Mark Zuckerberg – have also stepped in suggesting that UBI may be an idea whose time has come. In May 2017, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called on the need to consider universal basic income in America during his Harvard Commencement Speech (Haselton, 2017). ‘Every generation expands its definition of equality. Now it’s time for our generation to define a new social contract,’ Zuckerberg said. ‘We should have a society that measures progress not by economic metrics like GDP but by how many of us have a role we find meaningful. We should explore ideas like universal basic income to make sure everyone has a cushion to try new ideas.’

Of course, others argue that this must be more than about income, in fact, we need a system of universal basic assets. This would reduce inequity (Fosco, 2018).

Why the Interest?

While universal basic assets is a novel, UBI is not a new idea as argued above. For decades, if not hundreds of years, it has been promulgated by various economists and politicians. Yet it has experienced a fit of renewed interest in recent years. Along with experiments in the wealthier regions of the planet s mall scale schemes have been introduced in developing nations such as Kenya and India (The Economist, 2017), and a UBI trial is being considered in Uganda (McFarland, 2016). Namibia has seen its basic income program reduce poverty by 18%, average income beyond UBI increase by 29%, and malnourishment drop by 32% (Kingma, n.d.). The idea has also been explored in Australia over the years, including in a research paper published by the Australian Government’s Parliamentary Library in late 2016.

UBI’s re-emergence on the policy agenda is driven by growing concern about permanent mass job loss as a result of automation and technological change. Stemming from the Global Financial Crisis, the ‘growing polarization of labour-market opportunities between high- and low-skill jobs, … stagnating incomes for a large proportion of households, and income inequality’ (Manyika, 2017) is leading to a loss of confidence in the future labour-market’s ability to generate enough jobs to employ the majority.

With unemployment likely built into the future, alternatives are required. And, it is not just automation but the rising peer to peer economy which can create unemployment, as we are witnessing the taxi, hotel, and now even the sex industry (Fleming, 2019).

While it can be argued that the new technologies will create new types of jobs; for example, as Leah Zahidi (2019) playfully suggests: recreationists (using genomics, 4d printing, plus AI to create species gone extinct) or Reality Rehabilitators (bringing back virtual AI addicts to the ”real world”) or sex therapists focused on robotic sex for those addicted to sex with robots…or, as likely is that because of dramatic developments in Artifical intelligence ie the fourth industrial revolution, work as we know it will disappear since humanity will live in abundance. Blue and white collar jobs will disappear.

Indeed, Bank of England Governor, Mark Carney has warned “up to 15 million of the current jobs in Britain – almost half of the 31.8 million workforce – could be replaced by robots over the coming years… entire pro- fessions such as accounting would likely disappear (Duncan, 2016). And going further, Ruchir Sharma, chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, argues that” before long economists [will]be worrying about a global shortage of robots” (Sharma, 2016). In Australia, The Committee for Economic Development in Australia considers 60% of all jobs in rural and regional Australia are at risk by 2030 (Tuffley, 2015).

Does the Idea Have Merit?

A groundswell of advocates contend UBI is a viable policy response to the future world of work, providing a foundation to smooth working-life transitions in a gig economy (where there is a great degree of freedom to choose project work but little financial or legal support if gigs or health fails), foster creativity and innovation (Painter & Thoung, 2015), and provide an efficient alternative to labour-based, complex welfare systems that will become untenable as the labour market contracts.

Opposition to UBI contends it is a ‘dangerous idea’ (Foster, 2016), and typically centres on the high cost and economic impact of a UBI scheme, scepticism that technological change will result in the permanent, pervasive depression of the labour market, and anxiety that a UBI would be politically and economically unsustainable (Mather, 2017), particularly in a capitalist society (Foster, 2016).

The changing nature of work, increasing disparity in wealth distribution and rise of automation signals the advent of a different work and welfare environment in Australia. A UBI is unlikely to be a panacea for the future challenges of the labour market. However, if properly implemented, could a UBI be the foundation for a new social construct that preserves prosperity and equality?

What Could the Future of an Australian UBI Look Like?

Causal layered analysis (CLA) is used as a method in futures thinking to more effectively consider and understand potential futures particularly the underlying myths and metaphors that support policy and data (Inayatullah, 2015, p.2). A CLA considers four dimensions (the litany, the systemic, the worldview and the metaphor) and integrates these four levels of understanding to provide a coherent view of the future. Applying a CLA to the introduction of a UBI deepens the understanding of societal responses to develop future scenarios.

As part of an Melbourne Business School executive program at the University of Melbourne, a CLA was undertaken which contemplates a future Australia which experiences a net shift in the unemployment rate from ~6% to 30 – 40% as a result of automation, with the benefits of economic growth experienced almost exclusively by those with the highest income s rather than the community as a whole. The CLA was developed by the first author of this essay.

The CLA set out at Table 1 considered the introduction of a UBI in Australia from the perspectives of:

  • Conservative government and companies operating within the current capitalist construct. For them, the litany is that we live in a society of dole bludgers. If we trusted the invisible hand of the market, we could easily traverse the forthcoming technological disruptions. Government policy will likely skew the needed dislocations, picking certain industries over other. Let the market innovate.
  • A citizen who has the security of pre-existing financial wealth and/ or an occupation that has not, or is unlikely to be, mechanised or otherwise made redundant. For this group, UBI may be welcome to ensure their class safety, but the cost could be that they must work even harder. Their preferred story is that those who are being dislocated should work harder.
  • A citizen who does not have security outside the welfare net; that is, a citizen who does not have pre-existing financial security and/or is unable to find gainful employment (though they may be able and willing). For this group, new technologies will reaffirm the scales of injustice. A UBI is an excellent way forward. And
  • A ‘transformed’ perspective, which presents a worldview grounded in preserving Australia’s egalitarian precepts through the application of ‘contributory democracy’, where a UBI model is part of a system where citizens’ and corporations’ contribution to society is measured, and citizens who would otherwise be part of the labour force (but cannot gain employment) contribute to society by means other than private sector employment. In this future, we share the meal, small or large.

 

Table 1: Causal Layered Analysis – UBI in Australia by 2030

Perspective Conservative government/ corporations Secure citizen Insecure citizen TRANSFORMED
Litany (day-to-day future, current headlines of the way things are or should be) •   Society of dole bludgers•   Paying for UBI will cripple the economy

•   This is communism

 •     Your choices determine your future•     Anyone can change their stars

•     Why should I work hard to support them to sit around and do nothing

 •     Corporations took my job (automation)•     The system sets me up to fail – I cannot win in the current system

 

 •     We are all in this together•     We all win if one wins

 
System(social, economic, political causes of the issue) •   Welfare system designed around labour market (job hunting, pension schemes (unable to work due to age or disability etc.)•   Competition drives innovation •   Capitalism drives economic prosperity and societal advancement•   Hard work = reward

•   Monetary investment is my means to climb social rungs and secure my future

 •   Current welfare drives poverty line•   Assessment-based approach

•   Competition drives labour elimination

 

 •   Welfare system based on contribution to society•   ‘Contributory democracy’
Worldview(cognitive lenses used to understand and shape the world) •   Capitalism•   Government promotes business to support economic growth and national prosperity •   Agency / free will•   My talent and hard work drives my success

•   I look after my own patch of turf

•   Welfare fatigue

 •   The government should serve and protect its citizens•   I have no social mobility because the system defeats me •   Egalitarian Australia (preserve the Fair Go)•   Capitalism made fair

•   Robots don’t need to eat
Myths and metaphor (the narrative) “the invisible hand” works for all “Work harder” – millions on welfare depend on you’ “Scales of injustice” – poverty ascribed to the masses, wealth increasingly concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority’ “Share the meal”

 

A successful strategy to introduce UBI in Australia thus must address the different narratives – it would need to be a broad based as strategy could be thwarted by any party This is further explored in the integrated scenario in Table 2.

Potential Future Scenarios

Scenario planning unpacks potential futures and provides a breadth and depth of analysis to inform policy responses. While there are numerous scenario methods, we use Inayatullah’s integrated approach as it seeks to link the long term with the short term, the vision with current political reality (Inayatullah, 2015).

Building on the perspectives of the CLA, four potential future scenarios of an Australian UBI emerge (sum- marised in Table 2). These scenarios are imagined versions of the future; ‘unlike predictions or forecasts, sce- narios are stories about possible futures, about what could happen, not what will or should happen’ (Inayatullah, 2015, p.66). These were developed by the first author of this essay.

Table 2: Potential future scenarios – UBI in Australia by 2030 (Australian UBI by 2030)

Preferred (the desired future) Share the meal

 •     Harmonious, altruistic society

•     Fosters inclusion, drives innovation and improved environmental outcomes

 Disowned (the rejected/non-negotiable future)Communism-lite

•     Lack of work ethic

•     Global welfare mentality

•     Lack of social mobility and individual agency
Integrated (unifying the preferred and disowned futures)The new Fair Go for All

•     Contributory democracy

•     Shifting shared value ethos from capitalism to social development and equality

•     Reformed welfare system and tax system

•     Non-work contributions valued and measured

•     Bi-partisan support

•     Rise of cooperatives

 Outlier (surprise future based on disruption)Hunger Games

•     Work unattainable for the majority

•     Endemic poverty subsistence

•     Extreme wealth concentrated in a tiny minority

•     Societal breakdown

•     Civil war

•     Geopolitical shifts

Preferred scenario – Share the meal

The preferred scenario envisages a future where the construct of capitalism is redefined and the welfare and tax system is radically overhauled, to enable a more equitable redistribution of wealth for all. This scenario envisages that with this redistribution, all citizens will have the opportunity to experience Zuckerberg’s ‘cushion for new ideas’, driving innovation, peace, true environmental stewardship and altruistic behaviours.

This scenario would likely rely on the introduction of analogous tax and welfare systems on a global scale, so corporations and wealthy citizens could not simply debunk to a country with a more advantageous system that enables disproportionate wealth generation.

Disowned scenario – Communism-lite

The disowned future depicts ‘Communism-lite’, where a balance is unsuccessfully struck between the preserva- tion of capitalist enterprise and the emergence of a socialist state with a false economy based on 100% make-work employment.

This scenario envisages a future where Australia transitions to a pseudo- socialist state, to ensure the population is occupied and civil unrest or widespread poverty is avoided. In this scenario, the state falls prey to the pitfalls of past socialist enterprises.

Outlier scenario – Hunger Games

The outlier scenario considers societal breakdown and unrest as a result of entrenched, interminable inequality, culminating in a civil war or revolution with an uncertain outcome at its conclusion.

This scenario envisages a future where citizens have little agency or prospects, where wealth resides with increasingly powerful corporations that generate and control profit through automated processes and robot- performed functions. Those with jobs or assets (shares, property etc.) have security; the majority subsists on welfare or contract-based employment. Without reliable, paid work for the majority, poverty or subsistence becomes endemic. There is an aching gulf between the haves and have nots, with an apparent failure of wealth redistribution (through tax systems or welfare systems), leaving the populace little prospect of social mobility and the emergence of an entrenched class or caste system.

Integrated scenario – the new ‘Fair Go’

The integrated approach contemplates a new ‘Fair Go for all’, a future in which the best intentions of the preferred and disowned futures are applied to the practical realities and constraints of democratic capitalism to engineer a reimagined state of ‘contributory democracy’, where a UBI is introduced that re-orients individuals and entities (citizens, government and private enterprise) to measure and value their contribution to that society distinct from wealth creation.

This scenario envisages a modified UBI which is not unconditional but rather, is contingent on those who could work (but cannot secure work) delivering a social contribution of some kind. An approach like this could balance the preservation of capitalism (and the agency, innovation and social mobility it enables) with a reformed welfare system that retains a measure of agency while redefining the dominant basic values that underpin Australia’s current society. It could reconcile the tension between those who work and those who don’t, by having those that do not work contributing to social progress in other ways. Redefining social constructs and values could help navigate a path to preserve Australia ‘s relatively flat class structure and its egalitarian traditions.

Here Be Dragons

On medieval maps, dragons or sea monsters represent uncharted areas or dangerous waters. Realising the inte- grated future described above would require a nuanced, comprehensive policy response to navigate a course that treads new ground, preserving the benefits of capitalism yet pursuing wealth redistribution and a progressive form of social contribution.

The introduction of a successful, sustainable UBI model would be dependent on its design, as well as the design of the wider policy landscape in which it operates. Sweeping change requires foresight and anticipation. In this case, futures thinking assists in shaping the desired future by forecasting socio-political change s and the necessary repositioning of societal value. It illustrates that effective UBI introduction would require policy intervention to cast wider than welfare, education, tax and banking structure reform; policy levers would need to go further, to support the evolution of the Australian value set from foundational capitalist principles to social contribution and betterment.

Would the Australian government be able to develop a UBI prior to the foreseen dramatic job losses likely to occur through automation and developments in the peer-to-peer economy? If the response to climate change is an indicator, then most likely Australia will lag far behind other regions. The fear of dragons will overwhelm the imperative to create and innovate.

References

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Chapman, B. (2017, August 25). Richard Branson backs universal basic income joining Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. Retrieved 18 December 2019 from The Independent: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/richard-branson-universal-basic-income-mark-zuckerberg-elon-musk-virgin-ceo-a7911866.html

Darrough, C. (2019, December 12). Andrew yang belives in UBI. here’s what his plan would really do for America. Retrieved December 18, 2019. https://www.mic.com/p/andrew-yang-believes-in-ubi-heres-what-his-plan-would-really-do-for-america-19437397

Duncan, H. (2016, December 6). Robots to steal 15million of your jobs, says bank chief. Retrieved December 10, 2016, from Daily Mail Online: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4003756/Robots-steal-15m-jobs-says-bank-chief-Doom-laden-Carney-warns-middle-classes-hollowed-new-technology.html

Fleming, P. (2019, January 14). Sugar daddy capitalism: even the world’s oldest profession is being uberised. Retrieved18 December 2019 from The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/sugar-daddy-capitalism-even-the-worlds-oldest-profession-is-being-uberised-109426

Fosco, M. (2018, November 30). Universal Basic Assets:A Smarter Fix than Universal Basic Income. Retrieved18 December 2019 from OZY. https://www.ozy.com/fast-forward/universal-basic-assets-a-smarter-fix-than-universal-basic-income/90019/

Foster, G. (2016, December 27). Universal basic income: the dangerous idea of 2016. Retrieved from The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/universal-basic-income-the-dangerous-idea-of-2016-70395

Haselton, T. (2017, May 25). Mark Zuckerberg joins Silicon Valley bigwigs in calling for government to give everybody free money. Retrieved 18 December 2019 from CNBC: http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/25/mark-zuckerberg-calls-for-universal-basic-income-at-harvard-speech.html

Inayatullah, S. (2015). What Works: case studies in the practice of foresight. Taipei: Tamkang University Press.

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Mather, J. (2017, November 5). Universal basic income an ‘unbelievably bad idea’. Retrieved 18 December 2019 from Australian Financial Review: http://www.afr.com/technology/universal-basic-income-an-unbelievably-bad-idea-20171101-gzcsxn#ixzz51Yps7ks0

McFarland, K. (2016, November 20). UGANDA: Two-year basic income pilot set to launch in 2017. Retrieved 18 December 2019 from http://basicincome.org/news/2016/11/uganda-two-year-basic-income-pilot-set-to-launch-in-2017/

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Russell, B. (1918). Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism and Syndicalism. In (pp. 80-81 and 127). London: Unwin Books.

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The Independent. (2017, May 8). Finland’s universal basic income trial for unemployed reduces stress levels, says official. Retrieved17 December 2019 from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/finland-universal-basic-income-trial-pilot-scheme-unemployed-stress-levels-reduced-a7724081.html

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Weller, C. (2017, February 14). Elon Musk doubles down on universal basic income: ‘It’s going to be necessary’. Retrieved 15 December 20219 from Business Insider: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/elon-musk-universal-basic-income-2017-2?r=US&IR=T

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Making the Transition: Creating a Forest of Foresight (2020)

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An interview with the UNESCO Chair in Futures Studies, Sohail Inayatullah by Fayaz Ahmed.

Fayaz Ahmed: First of all, please tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.

I was born in Pakistan and have lived in Bloomington, Indiana; Flushing, New York; Geneva, Switzerland; Kuala Lumpur; Malaysia; Honolulu, Hawaii; and, Mooloolaba, Australia. I live in Brisbane, Australia.

I did my doctorate from the University of Hawaii, Department of Political Science. I focused on the South Asian Philosopher, Shrii P.R. Sarkar. I examined his theory of history and vision of the future. I compared and contrasted his spiral theory of history with other macrohistorians such as Ibn Khaldun, Karl Marx, Pitirim Sorokin, Arnold Toynbee. This thesis was published by Brill in 2002 as Understanding Sarkar: The Indian Episteme, Macrohistory, and Transformative Knowledge.

With Johan Galtung, I sought to explore and integrate the western notion of linearity, development, with classical, shall we say, Asian positions of the cycle. We explored the theories of the history of twenty grand thinkers from Ssu-Ma Chien to Ibn Khaldun to Arnold Toynbee. This came out in our book, Macrohsitory and Macrohistorians. These grand patterns of social change contrasted with the trend analysis I was seeing in conventional Futures Studies. Trends overly stated continuation, while macrohistory sought to move towards an understanding of the grander patterns, past and future. They add realism – though not with the straight jacket of geo-politics – to scenarios, which while useful in exploring alternatives, can be fanciful.

I also worked for the Hawaii Judiciary for a decade in Honolulu. We developed the Court’s foresight program, anticipating future trends and issues that could impact the courts. We explored the rise of attorneys, mediation, the rights of robots, the use of artificial intelligence in the Courts, the need for a specialized Science Court to address the exponential increase in technologies.

Cover pages of book and article on Judicial futures

Fayaz Ahmed: Please tell us about your role as Chair in Futures Studies at UNESCO and why it was established?

UNESCO has a global chair system, to spread and integrate knowledge. My role as the Chair of Futures Studies is to move foresight from a strategy of planting seeds of change to growing these trees, to creating a forest of foresight. This is to help develop the foresight capabilities of individuals, organizations, and indeed, the planet. Futures literacy is the ability to read the future with greater effectiveness so that tomorrow’s problems can be solved today; so that emergent opportunities can be used to enhance well-being. Prevention of disease, of calamities, of social problems, is crucial in this work.

Image result for futures literacy

https://en.unesco.org/events/transforming-future-seminar-futures-literacy-latin-america

The notion is moving global, national and organizational policymaking based on anticipatory sciences instead of, as Ian Lowe argues, “organized superstition” – policymaking based on the whims of political leaders. We ask what is changing, what is the same, and what should change, and what should not. Thanks to the intervention of Riel Miller UNESCO has numerous chairs in the field, in Futures Studies, anticipatory systems, organizational futures, futures literacy, and more.

Fayaz Ahmed: In 2010, Shaping Tomorrow Foresight Network awarded you with the Laurel award for all-time best futurist, tell us a bit about this award and why they chose you?

Colleagues were generous. The network chooses colleagues who have made unusual contributions or who are unusual themselves. I believe this was perhaps from research work on

1. Causal layered analysis, a theory of knowledge that assumes four levels of reality. The litany or day-to-day. The system or the next level of causation. The worldview or deeper perspectives of stakeholders (the Chair, the CEO, workers, partners, competitors) or stages of time (ancient, modernity, postmodernity). And at the deepest level are myths and metaphors. This approach ensures there is depth, not just breath to foresight.

2. Macrohistory – the grand patterns of history, as a tool to understand our changing world.

3. Narrative foresight – the use of stories for individual and organizational transformation. It is this latter work that I focus mostly on these days. This is especially satisfying working with individuals. As the world changes, figuring out our role, how to manage this change, flow with this change becomes increasingly difficult. One CEO commented, he no longer knows what is expected of him, how he is to act. Seeing life as a tennis court, he said he was an expert on hard courts, but now when he goes to a meeting he no longer knows which court he is to play on. Is it grass? Is it clay? Will there even be a court? We worked together to develop a new metaphor, storyline – this was the person who could play on many courts. Practically, this meant, learning new skills for a changing world: emotional literacy, technological literacy, and spiritual intelligence.

At another meeting, a young detective described his time on the force as being “an iPhone in a room full of Nokias.” This narrative, unfortunately, while true, set him apart from older detectives. He changed his narrative to the far more useful, “co-designed chip maker.” In this story, he would work with others and co-create strategies using new technologies. This shifted his world from hierarchy and difference to a flatter space of inclusion.

Fayaz Ahmed: What is very exciting about working as a futurist and what does a futurist do?

We get to help others and in that process change ourselves. We work with different groups of all ages around the world. These include the very important – Prime Ministers, CEOs, Chairs of executive boards, to the powerless, children, and others whose concerns for the future need to be heard, understood and acted on. We always ask in foresight interventions, who is missing in the room, whose voice do we need to hear. And, how can we best listen to the voices of future generations

Futures work has a clear structure. I use the Six Pillars approach. In this we first map out the past and the vision of the future. Then we ask what might disrupt that image. Then we search for the levers of change, how to use change for change. Then we go deeper, moving to the core stories, powerful metaphors of transformation. Then we manage uncertainty through scenarios. Finally, we focus on transformation, on how to make the vision real, how to use the future to change. Futures studies october 2013 latest.jpg

Futures work does not get boring because we deal with authentic concerns, real issues humans face. For example, recently at a meeting in a drought infected area, we went through a process that attempted to understand the futures of that area, the Granite Belt.

We first examined the used future of the Granite Belt. This was the view that water was plentiful and that would continue with the same agriculture paradigm. We then explored the disruptions – focusing on a long term drought and a decline in entitlements. From here we explored scenarios linked with guiding narratives. The historical past was the Food Bowl. But climate change was threatening this history. This would lead to the Dust Bowl – the deadening of the region. This would result in an exodus, with the likely future being the begging bowl, with Granite Belt residents leaving the region and moving to Brisbane as climate change refugees. They would be second class citizens there – poorer in need of help, and susceptible to politicians using migrants from other parts of the world as political fodder to divide the community. The last scenario was the Green bowl. This was the preferred future. In the backcasting and next steps part, we worked on strategies including permaculture, water from the air, water efficiency, green design, cooperatives, a federal government where science decided policy instead of, as environmentalist Ian Lowe suggested, “organized superstition.” The session concluded with an inner guided visioning session where individuals focused on their own calling and strategy.

FOUR SCENARIOS FOR THE GRANITE BELT

Granite Belt Dustbowl Begging Bowl Green Bowl
Traditional agriculture Primary implications of Climate change Secondary implications of climate change Results if action is taken
Water everywhere Slow death Second class citizens Green design

What is exciting then is looking at how individuals and communities can create preferred futures. How they can move from the disarray and turmoil of the present to a different world. This is not the search for the utopia, but as my own mentor James Dator has written – the creation of a eutopia, a good society. A good society is aware of its contradictions, understands that each situation, each phase in history creates the seeds of its destruction.

And as Riel Miller has argued, Futures Studies helps us understand novelty, but also contingency. It creates tools and methods to optimize strategy. However, for me, as Miller would agree, visioning or creating the preferred is as important. Indeed, Futures Studies is about challenging today and creating a different tomorrow. It is not just about analyzing reality by mapping the world we see, but changing the world we see, both through epistemology – ways of knowing – and ontology, the world that is, as it is.

Fayaz Ahmed: Why do we need futures thinking and how can this way of thinking help us transform the present as well as the future?

Futures, as I have learned from Michel Foucault and Michael Shapiro, is about creating an epistemological distance from the present. The future helps to see the present anew, it makes the present remarkable. Scenarios, understood in this way, are less about the contingency of clarifying alternatives, and more about transforming today. They help us see what is right and wrong about today, and what a new future can be. The present, as we know, is highly politicized with actors fighting over the present, using fake news, bots, and other weapons of knowledge to allow their interests to win over others. It is a quicksand morass where few come out alive. While we need to be aware of contemporary politics, futures suggest we also need to ensure we are imagining different realities, different worlds.

The three horizons approach is very useful. The third horizon is the long term – the space of visioning the impossible, the truly desired. The second horizon is the space of uncertainty and of creative destruction, where the new emerges and the past is still alive. The Six Pillars approach helps in his space – it maps, anticipates, times, deepens, explores alternatives, and transforms. The first horizon is present and the next few years – this the space of current problems with seeds of change suggesting direction change.

Most recently, working with the Centre for Strategy and Policy Studies, the three horizons were incredibly useful. The first horizon was the reality of young people being employed and leaving the nation for jobs elsewhere. The second horizon was uncertain – could the nation create new jobs in digital and green tourism? Could foreign direct investment create new start-ups focused on tropical innovation? Horizon three was more focused on the implications of robotics and artificial intelligence creating a society where only a few worked or work was just for a few hours a day. We pondered what a universal basic income would look like for the nation. We also asked what would be appropriate bottom-lines for the nation beyond GDP?

Fayaz Ahmed: But if futures thinking is so important, why don’t more people do it?

There are numerous reasons:

1. Our brains are wired for the past, we have to train the brain to understand possible and emergent futures.

2. Futures literacy takes time and effort as any skill. We do not invest in this skill. Schools are already busy teaching too many subjects.

3. It could be that we are still collectively in the “rush.” By this I mean we are like teenagers, unable to deeply reflect, looking for the latest high, not responsible, broken up into tribes. We are not adults who have learned from the past, who have a developed brain, who take prevention seriously. We do not have global governance structures where anticipation is built into what they do. And,

4. Finally, the education level of many leaders is low – they are in power not because of their understanding of science and possibility, but because they use fear to stay in power. Ivana Milojević has been doing cutting edge research in this area, called Futures Fallacies.

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Ivana Milojević. Picture by Sohail Inayatullah. Brisbane, March 2019.

Fayaz Ahmed: Yes, that makes sense. So what then are the basics of futures thinking.

In my work, there are a number of core concepts. These are:

1. The used future – what we are doing that does not work but we continue to use it. Used futures are built into our ways of thinking and institutional practices. They ensure failure. For example, the factory model of education where surveillance and standardization are primary, instead of the co-creation of knowledge. They also keep the system safe from innovations that may doom.

2. The disruption – what is likely to change. For example, the implications of artificial intelligence on work and the futures of work

3. Scenarios or alternative futures. Given the rise of AI, what are our teaching and learning futures we can ask? In scenario one, the no-change future, we can teach and train for the 1950s. In scenario two, the marginal change scenario, we engage in catching up – learning to code and learn a few more languages. In scenario three, the adaptive future, we scan the changing world and develop national or organizational strategies to adapt and lead, for example, energy solutions, in 3D printing, in peer to peer energy platforms, in therapeutic robotics, in aged care, and in conflict resolution skills. In the last scenario, the radical future, we explore a world after work – how to do we teach and train for a world where jobs have practically disappeared because of technological disruptions.

4. The preferred future – which future do we truly want.

5. The supportive narrative – what is the metaphor that will align with the strategy to help create the desired vision. For example, one employment agency had as its metaphor – bludgeoned by the present. They were so caught up in the day to day – horizon one -they could not see the future. They changed their metaphor to a flock of eagles. Within this narrative, they could see emerging opportunities and are now playing a national role in the conversation and strategy around work futures.

Fayaz Ahmed: What then are the main tools and methods needed for structured futures thinking?

As discussed above, I use the Six Pillars approach. In the mapping phase, the most useful is the futures triangle. The triangle has a quantitative aspect (the pushes of the present), a qualitative aspect (the weight of history) and a visual aspect (the pull of the preferred future).

In the anticipation phase, my preferred method is the Molitor s-curve or emerging issues analysis. Instead of focusing on the current problem or trends we focus on disruptions, emerging issues. For example, twenty-five years ago, while most researchers were focused on over-population, we were writing on de-population in European and East Asian nations as well as the anticipated dramatic shift in the worker-retiree ratio in China. In the 1980s, we explored the rise of China to the number one status by 2020. In the 1990s and early 2000s, we were exploring the shift from traditional meat to the new meat (in-vitro meat, cellular agriculture). Of course, with emerging issues analysis insofar as the issues explored have low supporting data points one can easily be wrong, and if policymakers act in a preventive way, they can ensure that the issue does not become a trend and problem, i.e. they can solve tomorrow’s problems today.

In the Timing phase, the best tool is macrohistory less as a theory of time, but as a diagnostic, asking which parts of the organization are exhibiting linear patterns, which part cyclical, which part pendulum and is there the possibility of spiral transformation, where progress plus tradition are critically combined. I also use the Sarkar game, a process invented by Voros and Hayward based on the work of P.R. Sarkar. In this game, we explore how power is used and attempt to have actors create a successful society by working with each other and by developing leadership skills where they serve others, are protective, create novel ideas, and use finances for the good of all.

Image based on the work of Peter Hayward and Joe Voros (2006).

In the Deepening phase, I use Causal layered analysis. We dig deeper beyond the headlines and attempt to understand the core issue for the organization. We then move into the transformation phase, creating the new metaphor. For example, with many energy organizations, they know well that they need to begin to understand the shift from fossil fuels to renewables. CLA has helped energy companies in Europe, Africa, South-East Asia, and Australia make this transformation. Here is an example of CLA in action from five years ago.

By executives at a course on Futures Thinking and Strategy Development, Melbourne, September 2016

In the CLA process, while all levels are important, the metaphor is crucial in ensuring that there is an overall story that can drive the organization. One large corporation seeing the need for flexibility in the energy markets argued that today they were like a rusting tanker and in the future they wished to be like Optimus Prime – a flexible and adaptive leader.

Another suggested that there were now the pretenders, with great visions that no one believed in. In the future, they wished to be like an energy genie, anticipating and delivering on the changing needs of citizens.

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By participants of futures of energy workshop, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, March 15, 2018

The key, however, is to link the new story with a new strategy. In this CLA done recently in Brunei, participants imagined a new health future for themselves. The burning platform was the rise of obesity in the country.

TODAY 2030
LITANY The second most obese nation in the region. A regional leader in health indicators – Number 1.
SYSTEMIC High standard of living with plentiful food.Subsidized rice.Dormant lifestyle. Taxation on sugar and oil and a reduction of rice subsidies. Incentives to grow one’s own food. Move toward plant-based diet and reduce meat-eating. Encourage natural and organic foods.
WORLDVIEW Rice culture Health centric-culture
MYTH-METAPHOR

CLA by participants at Center for Strategy and Policy Studies, Brunei, February 29, 2020. Picture by Sohail Inayatullah

The CLA process works at the external level, but equally so for inner development. Recently a marketing executive used the process to transform his life story. He wrote:

“The rebel archetype has permeated my sense of self as far as some of my earliest childhood memories. I have always felt the “Abrahamic tension” of a man going against the world to eventually change it. That was my metaphor until I engaged in the CLA of the self process. I learnt that a better, more realistic yet hopeful alternative was possible. That was when I realized that interdependence with like-minded individuals and organizations was a more viable path. That was also when, to my son’s delight, I decided to become one of the Avengers – the rebel yet heroic spirit enabled by fluid partnerships. It’s been over a year since my encounter with the inner CLA process, and the metaphor has since materialized. I’ve changed and the world around me has changed with that.”

Another person used the CLA process to explore his/her health. That person changed the life story from feed chicken to fighting chicken.

TODAY NEW FUTURE
LITANY表象層 I am a healthy person (with a little higher blood sugar).我是一個健康的人 (只是血糖偏高) I know how to control my blood sugar to keep myself in healthy condition.我曉得如何控制血糖以維持自己身體的健康
SYSTEM系統層 I have maintained good health by some exercise (hiking and walking) and light dinner (only vegetarian foods).我透過適度的運動及蔬食的晚餐來維持目前的身體健康 People with high blood sugar should have different diets (low-carbohydrate diets and sufficient water) and more exercise. 高血糖者有不同的飲食習慣 (低碳水化合物飲食 + 充分的水) 及更多的運動
WORLDVIEW世界觀觀 Moderate exercises and a balanced diet can keep one person in good health. People should not be picky eaters. Having delicious foods is one of the joys of life.適度運動與均衡飲食是維持健康最關鍵的要素人不應該偏食美食是人生樂趣之一 Patients should follow doctors’ advice: picky eating is a must for patientsI’d rather give up some delicious foods to avoid taking medicine. Delicious foods can be explored. Exploring delicious foods for high blood sugar people can be a new joy of life.病人必須聽醫生的話：病人必須偏食我寧可少吃點美食，也不想吃藥美食是可以開發的，開發高血糖者的美食可以成為人生的新樂趣
METAPHOR隱喻隱喻 Feed Chicken 飼料雞(Eat to die) Fighting Chicken 鬥雞(Fight to Live – fighting against diabetes)

Another person in the midst of a cancer diagnosis changed her story from “life is like a black hole” to “life is like a shining light.”

In the Creating Alternatives phase, we develop scenarios. While there are many scenarios methods – bivariate, organizational, archetypal – the one I use the most is integrated. With Jose Ramos and Rob Burke, we have developed this extensively.

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Robert Burke, Melbourne Business School. September 17, 2018. Photo by Sohail Inayatullah

The first scenario is preferred. The second scenario is the disowned, what one cannot see, what one has pushed into the unconscious. The third scenario is the integrated – this united the first and the second. The last is the outlier scenario. One policy advisor, for example, used this to explore regional futures. In her preferred future, there is a considerable investment, population shift, and economic growth in regional centers in her state. However, as she discussed this with workshop participants, it became clear that most prefer to live in city centers – jobs, economies of scale, global airports, and cultural diversity make the center far more inviting. Her preferred future seemed more like a pipe-dream. In the integrated scenario, she focused on “Leadership through stars” that is, choosing a few regional cities to focus her funding on. Once these were successful, then she could move to finance the entire region. Her last scenario was “Ghost towns” i.e. climate change and other factors making living in regional areas impossible. She, of course, could have focused on the opposite i.e., because of 5 and 6g, true population distribution could result in everyone working remotely.

The last pillar is Transformation. In this, we develop a shared vision and use backcasting to create it. Along with backcasting are action learning experiments. For example, an organization may have a new vision. However, the transition to that vision can be difficult. Action learning takes a few experiments with real funding and develops those experiments. They become the bridge to the new future. Action learning works well as change is within one zone of control, in areas one can make a difference. Having a backcast where all change-events external – market crash, a war, a technological breakthrough – is interesting but not overly useful for creating plausible change. Backcasting creates the bridge between today and tomorrow.

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Backcasting at Melbourne Business School, December 2019.

The final step is the inner visioning. In this process, we take individuals and have them meet a mentor from the future or their future self. This self gives advice, offers gifts, and guides the person from the desired future to the present.

With all these processes, the goal is to make the desired future, more real and lived.

One senior government executive told me recently, a decade ago, they would send Ministers and policy researchers around the world to see what were the latest innovations. For them, seeing was believing. Now that they were the world’s number one, believing was seeing. There is nowhere to visit, but their imagination.

I have recently been writing on a stage theory of foresight – to meet the person where they are at. For example, I find that if a group feels disempowered, then visioning or metaphors will feel like fairy tales. It is first important to use CLA to unpack power and possibility. Action learning processes that enhance power – that moves from fatalism to anger that creates change – are equally powerful. Once this is done, then organizations prefer to about risk mitigation – how do they keep their new found power or wealth. Tools like emerging issues analysis are excellent here. From disruption, we can move toward scenarios which can enhance opportunity creation. Once we have done this, then I can move toward directionality, where do we wish to be. I then move to make the vision real – through backcasting and action learning. Then I find the supportive metaphor. The narrative helps in making a supporting reality. Finally, I use the CLA of the self process to aid in personal transformation. Recently, using the work of the late Dada Prana, I use sacred sound or mantra to help create a metaphor that represents the deepest part of the psyche.

Fayaz Ahmed: Given that the future of the world is inseparable from the future of energy. What role can futures thinking play in developing a new energy development model, compatible with environmental and climatic goals?

http://anandamargasociety.com/wt/imagesWt/August%202013/4949149_333207_dadaprana.jpg

https://anandamargasociety.com/yoga-mediation-teachers/the-voyage-of-dada-pranakrsnananda

As with the examples above, futures thinking is crucial as an asset to help in the energy transition. As Sohail Hasnie paraphrasing Sheikh Yamani has said, “it is not due to a lack of stone that the stone age ended”. Yamani could see the end of the oil era, not necessarily the end of oil. Similarly, for futurists, we are likely at the end of multiple eras – the end of patriarchy, the nation-state; fossil fuel; meat; American-centrism; and one way of knowing. Instead, we see the possible transition to 1. A global governance system certainly a planetary wide anticipatory system. 2 A shift from meat to protein. 3 A move toward gender partnership; 4. A move toward Asia as the center and 5. And the possibility of neohumanism, or identity that is planetary, not ego or nation or religion-based.

However, as we know from Sorokin there are pendulum swings, fight-backs from the old era. In one nation, when we were working on the national energy plan, it became clear we needed to shift from nuclear and fossil fuel to solar and wind. And then develop continent-wide peer to peer solar energy sharing platforms. The project had excited everyone, however, the CEO was soon indicted for corruption for allegedly taking bribes from the nuclear industry. And as the previous head of the European Parliament stated – we know what the right thing to do is – with respect to climate change – but we can’t get elected on it.

I am confident we will make the transition. Not making it, is too horrible to contemplate, as we are seeing today with the global rise of fascism.

We must imagine and create a different future. Futures Studies can assist in this process.

About the Authors

Dr. Sohail Inayatullah is a Professor at Tamkang University, Taiwan; Adjunct Professor, the University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia, and Associate, Melbourne Business School, the University of Melbourne, Australia; Director www.metafuture.org. He can be contacted at sohail@metafuture.org

Fayaz Ahmed is an energy engineer, PMI, Lausanne, Switzerland. He blogs at fzahmad.com/blog.

SELECTED REFERENCES

Dator, James.1974. “Neither There nor Then: A eutopian alternative to the development model of Future Society.” In Masini Eleonora (Ed.) Human Futures. London: IPC Science and Technology Press.

Dator, James. ed. 2002. Advancing Futures Studies: Futures Studies in Higher Education. Westport: Praeger.

Foucault, Michel. 1984. The Foucault Reader. Edited by Paul Rabinow. New York: Pantheon

Hayward, Peter and Joseph Voros. 2006. “Playing the neohumanist game”. In Sohail

Inayatullah, Marcus Bussey & Ivana Milojevic (Eds.), Neohumanist educational

futures: liberating the pedagogical intellect (283-296). Taipei, Taiwan: Tamkang University.

Galtung, Johan and Sohail Inayatullah. 1997. Macrohistory and Macrohistorians. Westport: Praeger.

Inayatullah, Sohail. 2002. Understanding Sarkar. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill.

Inayatullah, Sohail. 2008. “Six Pillars: Futures Thinking for Transformation.” Foresight 10 (1): 4–21

Inayatullah, Sohail. 2017. “Teaching and Learning in Disruptive Futures: Automation, Universal

Basic Income, and Our Jobless Futures.” Knowledge Futures 1 (1).

Inayatullah, Sohail. 2015. What Works: Case Studies in the Practice of Foresight. Tamsui:

Tamkang University Press.

Inayatullah, Sohail and Ivana Milojević. 2015. CLA 2.0: Transformative Research in Theory and

Practice. Tamsui: Tamkang University Press.

Miller, Riel. 2018. Transforming the Future. London: Routledge

Milojević, Ivana and Sohail Inayatullah. 2015. “Narrative Foresight.” Futures 73:151–162.

Molitor, Graham. 2003. “Molitor Forecasting Model.” Journal of Futures Studies 8 (1): 61–72.

Post COVID-19 Futures (2020)

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This interview with Sohail Inayatullah explores four possible futures after the COVID-19 crisis. It refers to the article he published together with epidemiologist Peter Black in the Journal of Future Studies “A Black Swan Nor A Zombie Apocalypse: The Futures Of A World With The Covid-19 Coronavirus” (https://jfsdigital.org/2020/03/18/nei…)

Full interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amnCrF5FKfU&list=PLW7Bpux_zmBQK2KVgF-aqPLWQciHQA5yN

Why Futures Thinking Matters_ Part 1 (2020)

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Beyond The Paradox Podcast

Release Date: 04/21/2020

Host Juanique Randall speaks to Sohail Inayatullah, inaugural Chair of UNESCO’s Futures Unit and creator of Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) about his technique, used in strategic planning and futurology to more effectively shape our future through narrative.

Who is Right, Lyn or Pam? Using Conflict Resolution Scenario Methods (CRSM) to Resolve an Organisational Conflict (2020)

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By Ivana Milojević, First published as JFS Blog, 11 February 2020.

Lyn and Pam (names have been changed) are co-workers in an Australian organisation. They are in the middle of a conflict that has been brought to their director’s attention. The director is not sure whether to engage with this conflict, as it appears rather trivial. Like most people do when it comes to conflicts, the director is hoping that the quarrel will dissipate and disappear on its own. Also like most people, she habitually uses a style of conflict resolution that she learned in her family of origin; she applies it to all conflicts, regardless of the context. She has spoken to both Lyn and Pam, yet the conflict persists. Team work is suffering and the organisational targets are not going to be met.

Conflict in organisations can take many forms and can manifest at different magnitudes. Left to fester, conflicts can have a number of detrimental consequences for the organisation and the people who work in it. The ten biggest costs of organisational conflict have been identified (Blank, 2020: 46) as: (1) wasted time, (2) bad decisions, (3) lost employees, (4) unnecessary restructuring, (5) sabotage, theft and damage, (6) lowered job motivation, (7) lost work time, (8) health costs, (9) toxic workplace and (10) grievances and lawsuits. In terms of ‘hard currencies’ of time and money, one 2008 study found that U.S. employees spent 2.8 hours per week dealing with conflict – the equivalent of 385 million working days of $359 billion in paid hours (Blank, 2020: 45-46).

Conflicts have been part and parcel of human experience. For a very long time, humans have tried to solve conflicts and have developed a host of strategies which can be grouped into four basic categories (Ury et al 1988, Galtung, 1965):

  1. Power-based methods. The question asked here is: who is the most powerful? Common strategies used are direct violence (e.g. military action, forceful policing, domestic violence, torture) and various types of threats and coercion (e.g. economic sanctions, shunning, ostracising and bullying).
  2. Rights-based methods. The question asked here is: who has (or can make) the best case? Common strategies used are reliant on dominant rules and authorities within a society or a community (e.g. laws and legal systems, religious texts, codes and tenets or other forms of authority).
  3. Randomness or chance-based methods. The question asked here is: who is the luckiest? Strategies used may involve any type of sortition such as coin toss, straw-draw, rock-paper-scissor game or random lottery/selection.
  4. Interest or needs based methods. The question asked her is: what are the needs and concerns by all parties involved in the conflict? Strategies used involve various problems solving approaches which require empathy, nonviolence and creativity.

https://examples.yourdictionary.com/internal-conflict-examples.html

It is clear from the above that the way conflict is resolved and whether such conflict resolution is sustainable is highly dependable on the way the conflict is framed. The way conflict is framed then influences the question asked and the strategies used. The underlying views and assumptions about human nature – such as (1) humans are violent and world is competitive vs. (2) humans are rational and can resolve conflicts non-violently vs. (3) humans are naturally good and connected with everyone and everything else that exists vs. (4) humans are all those things – will also impact on a choice of strategies. Finally, personal and cultural factors determine whether parties involved will be able to resolve the conflict themselves informally or there will be a need for the third party and formal involvement. As the power of disputants to manage their own conflict decreases, so does the potency of interest and needs based methods, to be replaced by rights based and power-based methods instead. As evocatively expressed by Kraybill (2001: 18) when law begins community ends.

At the organisational level, disputants commonly have access to a range of these methods, and sometimes legal instruments are needed. Legal processes, however, are costly and time consuming so interest or needs based methods are preferable when there is still even a semblance of a community within an organisation. Moreover, even after legal processes are completed, organisations need to restore optimal communal functioning. Conflict resolution scenario methods (CRSM) help with such organisational, interpersonal and community-based disputes.

The (trivial?) conflict between Lyn and Pam is as follows:

Pam recently moved to the same shared, open-space office where a number of other people, including Lyn, work. When she met everyone, she introduced herself as Pam. While all other people call her by that name, Lyn refuses to. Instead, as is the custom in some parts of Australia, she decided to make her name longer and add ‘o’ to it. The day Pam became ‘Pam-o’ was the day she became irritated by Lyn. At first, she tried to ignore her. Then she became stern and rude towards her. Then she engaged in some passive aggressive behaviour, refusing to follow up on the projects that were to be done cooperatively. After a number of months, she stopped talking to Lyn completely. She tells her friends that Lyn is a horrible person. Pam’s friends at the office agree. They say Lyn is a ‘country bumpkin’ and a ‘bogan’ [an Australian slang for an uncouth or unsophisticated person regarded as being of low social status]. Lyn has no idea why Pam is so upset. Her and her friends think Pam is a bit uptight and should mellow out. Lyn is higher in the organisational hierarchy though not directly Pam’s superior. Pam has worked in that organisation for a longer time but has never confronted Lyn about the nickname issue directly.

https://blog.bookbaby.com/2017/07/internal-conflict-and-your-characters/

From the outside, the conflict between Lyn and Pam seems relatively easy to resolve. The director of the organisation thought that by raising the issue with Lyn, she would stop her behaviour. However, Lyn claims that she has trouble distinguishing between Pam and Pat who both work at the office, so calling Pam Pam‘o’ makes it easier for her. Pam rejects this explanation and believes Lyn’s motives are more sinister. In any case, both are now so irritated with each other that they are requesting the director to ‘chose a side’ and to explain the other one why she is wrong in her thinking and behaviour.

The director herself became irritable that she has to waste her time on a trivial conflict, instead of focusing on reaching organisational targets. She attends a futures workshop (which I co-facilitated) where Conflict Resolution Scenario Methods (CRSM) are used.

I have previously used CRSM on a number of conflicts and in a number of settings. For example, I have written a theoretical piece, published in 2008 in Journal of Futures Studies, which applied it to an international, inter-ethnic conflict (Milojević, 2008). I have also used it to better understand and propose solutions to an intergroup conflict, e.g. the Australian 2005 Cronulla Riots. Finally, I have used it to assist disputants resolve interpersonal conflict, such as the one between Lyn and Pam.

In a nutshell, CRSM proposes there are five basic future outcomes of any given conflict between two disputants. Based on works by Johan Galtung (the Transcend method), Thomas Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument and Ron Kraybill’s Conflict Styles method, the five possibilities are summarized as follows:

  1. Conflict is resolved ‘my way’. Disputant 1 wins.
  2. Conflict is resolved ‘your way’. Disputant 2 wins.
  3. Conflict is resolved ‘half way’. Disputants compromise.
  4. Conflict is resolved ‘our way’. Disputants achieve transcendence and cooperation.
  5. There is ‘no way’ to deal with conflict. Disputants withdraw or continue to evade the conflict.

Researchers have found that most people are comfortable using one or two conflict resolution styles and that they apply them to most situations, irrespective of circumstances. Personal, cultural and ideological factors also play a role. ‘My way’ approaches are more popular with people who hold political and economic power, and in individualistic, competitive based cultures. ‘Your way’ approaches are commonly utilised by those who have a dominant ‘pleaser’ self. Most people, most of the time, try to not deal directly with conflict, i.e. to not engage or somehow withdraw from it. Most of us are conflict avoiders (most of the time) even though the news makes it seem we are all at war with each other. ‘Our way’ or ‘win-win’ solutions are favoured by cooperative cultures and left leaning ideologies.

Each of these styles, however, has costs and benefits. What is helpful for conflict resolution, in organisations and elsewhere, is to get out of routine responses to conflict, critically evaluate which style may be the most appropriate and help our (reflective) self choose the style rather than a particular style becoming the core of our identity/habitual response.

Certainly, conflict resolution is enhanced if there is empathy (with all parties), nonviolence, creativity (imagination is practiced), honesty and compassion, and a focus on needs (Galtung, n.d.). Some knowledge and understanding of the conflict itself as well as perspectives of all involved is needed. The better the understanding, usually the more appropriate the response. The goal is a solution/outcome that is acceptable and sustainable (Galtung, n.d.).

CRSM facilitates moving away from the problem (past/present, unmet expectations) to the future (going beyond, ‘dis-embedding’ the conflict from where it is currently located and ‘embedding’ it elsewhere’ (Galtung, n.d., Boulding, 1988). When we access the future – where people could be or want to be, rather than where they were or are – we immediately move to a better place as far as conflict resolution goes. Once again, as argued by Johan Galtung, the more alternatives are presented and developed by people, the less likely they are to engage in violence, whether direct, structural, cultural, epistemological or psychological.

CRSM is helpful as it can map the conflict before a decision as to which style of conflict resolution is the most appropriate can be made.

As far as the conflict between Lyn and Pam is concerned, the mapping the director did was to create five scenarios, organised on a two by two axis wherein axis one represents the level of assertiveness (and level of concern for a principle) and axis two represent the level of cooperation (and level of concern for a relationship). Five possible courses of action resulted from the mapping:

After overviewing these possible strategies, the decision was made that some of them are either not going to work (e.g. ‘Lyn calls Pam Pam‘o’ half of the time’) or are going to create further conflict and friction (e.g. Directing or Avoiding). The director and her other co-workers present at the workshop then applied the Transcend Method’s axis to come up with a host of cooperating, collaborative, transcendent and imaginative ‘our way’ strategies. These are presented on the right side of the following table:

As is visible from the above paragraph, the Transcend method focuses on five possible outcomes as does the two by two axis, five scenario method. Both reframe conflict as an opportunity to create something new and improve relationships in the long-term. However, the Transcend method orders them differently so to enhance futures direction. Furthermore, Transcend method privileges ‘our way/win-win/cooperating’ approach and is useful when such strategies are considered the most http://asnu.com.au/levitra-20mg/ appropriate. At the same time, our way/cooperative strategies may not be appropriate if (1) the time to resolve the conflict is too short, (2) people are overloaded with ‘processing’, (3) the goals and issues of one disputant are undoubtedly wrong or (4) when the disputed issues are not really important for anyone. To further ascertain which of the five futures outcomes and styles (Style Matter, 2020) may be the most appropriate for the specific conflict, mapping via two by two axis, five scenario method is critical.

Armed with a host of strategies to resolve the conflict, the director returns to her office. She calls both Lyn and Pam to join her for a cup of tea. After they are settled and relaxed, her first question to them is: Do you want me to decide who is right and wrong or do you wish to resolve the conflict?

Stay tuned!

About the Author

Dr. Ivana Milojević is a researcher, writer and educator with a trans-disciplinary professional background in sociology, education, gender, peace and futures studies and Director of Metafuture. She has held professorships at several universities and is currently focused on conducting research, delivering speeches and facilitating workshops for governmental and academic institutions, international associations, and non-governmental organizations around the world. Dr Milojević can be contacted at ivana@metafuture.org

References:

Blank, Sam (2020) Managing Organizational Conflict. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company.

Boulding, Elise (1988) Image and Action in Peace Building. Journal of Social Issues. 44(2), 17-37.

Galtung, Johan (1965) Institutionalized Conflict Resolution: A theoretical paradigm. Journal of Peace Research. 2(4), 348-397.

Galtung, Johan. (n.d.) Conflict Transformation by Peaceful Means (The Transcend Method). Participants’ and Trainers’ Manual. Accessed 22 January 2020, from https://www.transcend.org/pctrcluj2004/TRANSCEND_manual.pdf

Kraybill, Ronald S. (2001) Peace Skills: Manual for Community Mediators. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Milojević, Ivana (2008) Making Peace: Kosovo/a and Serbia. Journal of Futures Studies, November 2008, 13(2): 1-12. Available here: https://jfsdigital.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/132-A01.pdf

Style Matters: The Kraybill Conflict Style Inventory. Accessed 21 January 2020, from https://www.riverhouseepress.com/

Ury, William L., Brett, Jeanne M., and Goldberg, Stephen B. Getting Disputes Resolved: Designing Systems to Cut the Coasts of Conflict. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Change and Stillness: Visioning the Futures of Malaysia and ISKL (2019)

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First published here

ISKL IN THE 70S

I went to ISKL at Jalan Maxwell from 1973-1975,  then graduated and moved to Honolulu in August 1975.  I had two wonderful years there. The teachers were supportive, creative, and truly loved their jobs. Two teachers stood out for me. First, was Rodney Kling. What I remember most was his ability to make English literature fun. I still remember during one session when a few of us really enjoyed his treatment of Shakespeare, he commented: “there appears to be different levels of levity” in this room.  Bill Wright was equally memorable. Not for laughter, but for discipline. He was the basketball coach. He really stressed that taking care of the body was important as taking care of the mind. I still remember saying to me: “practice, practice, practice.” And if you missed basketball practice? He suggested to not show up again.

The school created a community, where teachers, students, staff all liked each other, most appreciating that we were guests of Malaysian culture.

TO HAWAII

From there I went to the University of Hawaii, where I did a BA in Liberal Studies. They allowed me to design my own major. I linked political science, philosophy, and religion and created a major called, “Spirituality and Social Change.”

I then did a Masters in Political Science, focused on Alternative Futures. I was fortunate to gain an internship at the Hawaii Judiciary, where I worked for ten years as their strategy analyst/futurist. In 1987, I returned to the University of Hawaii and I did my PhD, focusing on the Indian philosopher, P.R. Sarkar. The PhD focused on Indian epistemology and macrohistory, the grand patterns of time from different civilizational perspectives.

I began taking classes in Futures Studies in 1976, when, while discussing strands of philosophy and technological change, my dorm roommate Bob Homer, said, ” You have to take a course from Professor Dator.”   I did. It was life-changing. I took every class he had to offer and did my Masters and PhD with him. His focus was on how we create technology and then technologies creates “we”. We also did research papers on topics such as climate change, robotics, and global governance. At the Hawaii Judiciary, along with traditional quantitative forecasting, we pursued disruptions such as the rise of robots, mediation as an alternative to litigation, and the rise of the Hawaiian Sovereignty movement. We did this both to create futures literacy in the courts and other branches of government and to enhance the ability to anticipate the future and influence the trajectory of emergent futures.

The Hawaii Judiciary had gained interest in the future from the Hawaii 2000 project. This was intended to create anticipatory governance, to not be a slave to trends, but to create desired futures.

While university study extended my fascination with change, I had actually heard about futures thinking earlier, at ISKL. In the 11th grade,  Dr. Frank Shephard introduced us to the thought of Alvin Toffler, inspiring us to think about novelty and change. Indeed, as a student at ISKL, I remember reading in the Malay Mail about a conference on Malaysia 2000, which explored how Malaysia could become a developed nation. Luminaries such as Herman Kahn and James Dator presented, said the article. It would be twenty years later that Malaysia began the ambitious task of imagining itself in 2020, as a developed nation. Having a vision is critical in that it organizes strategy, allows one to focus on the use of resources and ensures expenditures are linked to direction.  Other nations, Singapore, Cambodia, and many others, have followed the Malaysian example, and are better for it.

FUTURES STUDIES

Futures Studies, as we define it today, is the study of preferred, possible, and probable futures and the worldviews and myths that underlie them. It is both quantitative, qualitative, critical, and transformative. We study what may happen, what is likely to happen, what we wish to happen, and how our mindsets and the stories we tell each other are complicit in how we see and shape the world.

By necessity, it is trans-disciplinarian. A good futurist must first be critically reflective, aware of how he or she languages the world, uses discourse to understand what is and can be. A good futurist needs to be both an expert in one area and be a generalist, being able to understand many domains of knowledge. But the most important skill of a futurist is the help to listen to the views of others and help them create the futures they wish to see.

Anticipation is essentially about emancipation.

While in the 1980s and 90s, Futures thinking was a hard sell, and only a few countries such as Malaysia were imagining where they wished to go, now it is commonplace. I work with nations around the world and help them focus on their national vision and strategy. We attempt to ensure that they are not drowned by the waves of change, that they learn to surf, and eventually become wavemakers. They frame the terms of engagement of desired futures.

Recently through the sponsorship of the Asian Development Bank, I have worked with leaders in Armenia, Kazakhstan, the People’s Republic of China, Cambodia, the Philippines on their national strategies – what should they focus on, and how can they advance futures literacy. Among the common themes has been:

  1. The need for gender partnership in every facet of society. The Cambodian executives suggested they need to change the story from the woman as the garment maker to the woman as the Prime Minister.
  2. Deep flexibility in education. The Government of Norway leaders suggested that the current metaphor of education as the factory needs to become more like a jazz orchestra, wherein every student is valued, they learn to hear and create music together, they respond to knowledge and they create new knowledge.
  3. Climate change and adaptation –  that the challenge to climate change must be met globally, as a civilizational project. This could create institutions of foresight throughout the region and the world. While there are short term political interests still focused on the previous era, it is clear, we are entering the era of renewables, As Sheikh Yamani said decades ago, it is not due to the lack of oil that the oil age will end and it was not due to lack of stones that the stone age ended, as Sohail Hasnie of the ADB recently stated. In the long term, we need to create the Uber of energy, peer to peer platforms where citizens can share – buy and sell – from each other.
  4. The need to bring AI into everything we do. In Bangladesh, they suggested, we should move the data not the patient. Hospitals are great, but we need every citizen to be engaged in preventive medicine.
  5. The need for an evolutionary jump in governance. The debate now and in the foreseeable future is not about types of political systems, but the need for transparency in every system. As well as the need to shift from nation-states as defining to individuals, regions, and true global governance. Our problems are post-national (finance flows, climate, refugees, taxation, crime) and our solutions must be regional and global.
  6. The end of work as we know it. We need to move from teaching and training for jobs that do not exist to teaching and training for the emerging jobs. Many of these jobs have been created, many will be created in the decades to come. Skill sets that focus on the peer-to-peer revolution, spiritual intelligence, caring for the aged, 3D printing, big and deep Data will become far more important. The core skill will be the ability to adapt to changing conditions.
  7. The inner revolution. While this was confined to counter-culture decades ago, today is part of optimization strategy and part of finding deep purpose and bliss. Meditation remains one of the most important technologies to help young and old create the stillness in life when everything changes.

ASIA 2040

In my latest book, with the Futurist Lu Na, we imagined a new Asia by 2040. Our chapters headlines demonstrate this change, we see occurring:

  • A Bird Cannot Fly On One Wing Alone: The Rise of Asian Women
  • Will You Be Able To Marry Your Robot or Same-Sex Partner? The New Extended Asian Family
  • The End of the God King and the Big Man: Workplace Flexibility
  • Education Factory in Tatters: New Models of Learning and Teaching
  • Gross National Cool: The Wandering Societies of Asia
  • Drown or Swim Together? Social Consequence of Climate Change
  • Living the Asian Dream: The Great Migration to Asia
  • Open Skies and Shared Umbrellas: Towards an Asian Confederation
  • Asian Dynamic Balance: Leading in the Transition to a Spiritual Post-Capitalist Society
  • The Great Leap Frog Forward: An Asia That Can Say Yes to Herself

These chapter headlines are there to help readers become comfortable with dramatic change. While my generation will not marry their robots, by 2050, well…

Of course, other futures are also possible. There could be “a fortress Asia” by then too, or far worse, “a warring Asia”, and, of course, current climate change trends suggest “an Asia underwater”. We are hopeful that as governments, individuals, businesses and non-governmental organizations gain futures literacy, they will work together to create a transformed Asia.

ISKL 2050

And what will happen to ISKL in the long run? What might the futures of education look like? First, we should expect a far greater use of AI in teaching. The repetitive tasks will be done at home via new technologies. Holograms will be the norm. I assume a robot of sorts will be on the Board. Will there still be a need for physical places to meet? While e-games will be the norm, physical places will be necessary to enhance sports learning, emotional intelligence, community connectivity, and spiritual intelligence. But while more technology is likely, there are many uncertainties.

ISKL may be far more distributed, part of a broader global education brand. “International” will likely change as well, especially if by 2050 an Asian confederation has taken shape. Will schools still call themselves international? Will there be a need to?

A second key challenge will likely emerge from the large digital companies of today – Google and Facebook, for example. What if by 2050, they become education providers? Traditional schools and universities will likely then disappear as we move toward global education?

And if these new providers interconnect, will we have finally created the “Global Brain” as imagined by HG Well over eighty years ago.

While many imagine education beyond this planet, I doubt that ISKL will have students and teachers on Mars or the Moon though certainly space science will be a foundational subject.

In my preferred future, teaching and learning will have an extraordinary convergence of nature (breathing, living, growing), technology (breathing, living, growing), and humans (breathing, living, growing) in a distributed environment all focused on using knowledge to solve the planetary problems we face today and in the future.

I am grateful for having spent two wonderful years at ISKl. They shaped my thinking and activities for decades.

[i] I am grateful to Lynette Macdonald for curating this short piece. He questions led to its development. Inayatullah is the UNESCO Chair in Futures Studies, held at USIM, Malaysia. His recent book is Asia 2038, available from www.metafuture.org.

Transformation 2050 (Book info, 2018)

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Transformation 2050: The Alternative Futures of Malaysian Universities

By Sohail Inayatullah and Fazidah Ithnin (with contributing chapters by Azhari-Karim, Ellisha Nasruddin, Reevany Bustami, Ivana Milojević)

USIM Press, Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia, Bandar Baru Nilai, Negeri Sembilan, 2018

This book presents some of the best thinking, globally and nationally, on the futures of higher education in Malaysia. The collated articles in this volume are produced by experts and practitioners of futures thinking based on current scenarios and their imagination of preferred futures. The current pushes of the future call for institutions of higher education in Malaysia to respond in ways that enhance the system and effectuate the nation's aspiration of becoming a fully developed nation in 2020 and a global economic and social leader by 2050.

Transformation 2050: The Alternative Futures of Malaysian Universities sums up the critical relevance of designing the desired future using the six pillars approach - encouraging university leaders to envision best-case scenarios involving university leadership, teaching, and learning, students and academics.

The following salient points are made by the authors of this book:

First, Malaysian higher education is in the process of massive changes primarily due to globalization, digitalization, the development of a knowledge economy, and demographic transitions.

Second, as much as feasibly possible to create a far more flexible system -  more choices for students and academics. This system can be called the “healthy buffet” or the “education mall” or when it comes to talent, the analogy of the Swiss army knife. In any case, the factory model or the “force-feed” scenario has reached its limits. New systems of assessment and cooperation need to be invented.

Third, the ethical cannot be lost sight of; indeed, it is crucial to the future. Whether the cooperative of professors, the murabbi or the university based on social justice, scholars are clear that the ways forward must enshrine ethics in the future. Opaque institutions biased by politics and bureaucratic inference tinged with favouritism have no place in the future.

Fourth,  all these possible changes must proceed with cooperative leadership and decision-making. Leadership must hold the vision of the future, but full participation and inclusion in the process and implementation is required.

The book is introduced by Dzulkifli Abdul Razak on the transformation potential of scenario planning. This is followed with the following chapters:

  • Transforming public institutions by Azhari-Karim
  • Foresight at Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka by Fazidah Ithnin and colleagues
  • Transformative foresight: University Sains Malaysia leads the way by Ellisha Nasruddin, Reevany Bustami and Sohail Inayatullah
  • Augmented reality, the Murabbi, and the democratization of Higher Education by Sohail Inayatullah and Ivana Milojević
  • Leadership and governance in Higher Education 2025 by Sohail Inayatullah and Ivana Milojević
  • A Meta-analysis of higher education scenarios by Fazidah Ithnin and colleagues

Concluding comments on the urgency of change and the role of leadership are provided by Ahmed Yusoff Hassan.

Length: 149 pages

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