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Civilization, Peace and the Future: An interview with Johan Galtung |
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Future Studies
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Written by Sohail Inayatullah
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 for Renaissance Universal (RU)
Johan Galtung, fluent in nine languages and author of hundreds of articles and numerous books including Theories and Methods of Social Research, The True Worlds, Essays in Peace Research, v.1-5, founded the International Peace Research Center in Oslo and the Journal of Peace Research. He has taught at numerous universities throughout the world and was Director of the United Nations University's "Goals, Processes and Indicators of Development" Project. He was recently awarded the Right Livelihood award--"The Alternative Nobel"--for his humanitarian work. He is presently teaching Peace Studies at the University of Hawaii. He has been aware of PROUT and specifically Sarkar’s theory of social cycles for many years now. Recently, he was asked to referee an article titled "Sarkar's Spiritual Dialectics," for the international journal Futures and commented "Sarkar will probably stand out as one of the truly great in this century, so much deeper and more imaginative than most of Western narrow efforts to look into the future." For these reasons, Renaissance Universal decided to interview Galtung to gain insight into his vision of the future as well his perspectives on PROUT.
Sohail Inayatullah is a political scientist/futurist in Hawaii. He works for the Judicial system and various think tanks. He has been involved with Renaissance Universal for 12 years and has written extensively on futuristics as well as PROUT.
The main focus of this interview is human rights and ecological balance Both the issues are quite relevant of our times and are a great concern worldwide.
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Future Studies
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Written by Dr Robert Burke
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Changing paradigm of leadership
The current world economic scenario is to a large extent a handiwork of some selfish leaders. The time now is to create a new value system where leaders serve those whom they lead, rather than serving their own interests.
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TRANSFORMATIVE STRATEGIES AND THE FUTURES OF THE PROUT MOVEMENT |
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Future Studies
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Written by Sohail Inayatullah
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 For the Prout movement to play an active role in the future, it is important that Prout should redefine itself to meet the challenges of the future. It is only then that it will meet the changing needs of the society and become a viable movement.
Understanding the futures of any movement is by definition problematic. The future, for one, does not yet exist (except from perhaps an absolute spiritual perspective wherein past, present and future exist simultaneously). Yet, it is possible to identify certain patterns within all movements. Charles Paprocki has analysed the rise and fall of social movements based on Sarkar’s Wave Theory. He argues that new movements appear once old movements (cosmologies, ideologies and the institutions that support them) cannot sustain legitimacy. The old movement dies because of its own internal contradictions; that is, its inability to maintain agreement or belief. By providing a more coherent analysis and explanation of reality, the new movement challenges the past and, if it is successful, becomes the new thesis.
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Future Studies
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Written by Sohail Inayatullah
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 SEVEN POSITIVE TRENDS AMIDST THE DOOM AND GLOOM
Despite several disappointing incidents taking place across the world, there are some elements which offer hope for the future. Let’s look into some of them.
While there is a great deal of bad, indeed, horrendous, news in the world - global warming, terrorism, the global financial crisis, water shortages, worsening inequity - there are also signs of positive change.
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