Sohail Inayatullah, Forecasting, Political Science

I have been running workshops and seminars with dozens of groups on their responses. And there’s two things they tell me: one is workplace flexibility, second—wellbeing. Everyone says this is the part irrespective of what happens the next 10 years they wish to keep.

The most important perspective, approach, is developing trust. In a world where trust is in deficit, you want to make trust your asset, and increase it, enhance it, demonstrate it and create it.

I think it would be based on fear. The fear leads to a lack of epistemic agreement on what is real. And there’s the rise of conspiracy theories, which lead to a rise of, I would say, deep racism throughout the world. So that would be the most negative thing I can see going on right now.

So there’s two aspects. One is really, you might say, new humanism. Which is, we don’t see the world from our own ego, or nation state or our tribe, but the entire planet with Gaia, to its nature plus planet, and this is a practice we try to do every day. The second of that, of course, is solid science. We want this ethical, almost spiritual perspective, with solid science. Putting those two together, they become pathways forward.

Certainly, in our scenario work we’ve done is, when it’s difficult to find meaning and purpose in it. If you know Victor Frankl’s work, those in extremely difficult situations, they do better when they have purpose. So we have one scenario called the Great Pause. If you’re stuck and you can’t get out, it’s pausing, slowing down, breathing. Of course, finding a metaphor, or narrative in which this makes sense. You might feel like it was a prison, but you transform it to “here’s my time for inner reflection.” So, you want to find a way to transform your current situation so that it is purposeful. You find a way to find a metaphor that gives meaning. And then once the pause ends you have more energy to create the future you want.