Indy Johar pointed to the first photographs of the whole Earth taken from space. “This was the moment the planet became self-aware."

This planetary consciousness came with new responsibility, he argued. The task before us is not simply to survive, but to reimagine civilization as a planetary project.

As climate and ecological instability creates extreme whiplash effects, we will find it increasingly difficult to predict, prepare, or govern at a global scale. And as artificial intelligence reshapes labor and value, Johar urged us all to reevaluate what it means to be human. So what does that require in a time of such intense, cascading volatility?

Indy’s answer is civilizational optionality: the breathing room that keeps futures open when shocks compound and our fates are systematically coupled.

As humans, we can't know everything — it's a cognitive impossibility. “But there is a beautiful liberation in accepting our partial knowing,” he said. Reframing this limitation as possibility opens us up to more curiosity and “ways of being that are about tenderness, tentativeness, and care.”

Johar imagines a future that leverages human–machine systems that expand our civilizational capacity for complex discourse and problem solving. Intelligence, in this view, is a conversational field: a meta-capacity for coordination, dialogue, and collective sense-making across sectors, species, and systems.

Climate cascades will not be local; our planetary fates are entangled. Meeting this reality demands an approach to civilization that is capable of responding to volatility and holding uncertainty.

As Johar said with a smile: “It is time to have a fucking worldview.”

This talk was presented January 27, 02026 at the Cowell Theater in San Francisco.

Episode notes: https://longnow.org/talks/02026-johar/

The event livestream is here: https://youtube.com/live/AT6fWX4CbhA

This talk is part of Long Now Talks.

Launched by Stewart Brand in 02003, Long Now Talks has invited more than 400 leading thinkers to share their civilization-scale ideas with a live audience and millions around the globe tuning in to our podcast and videos. Long Now Talks are brought to you by The Long Now Foundation, which has spent the last 25 years igniting cultural imagination around long-term thinking.

By inspiring thought and conversation about how we've been shaped by the last 10,000 years and what might be in store for us over the next 10,000 years, Long Now Talks seek to expand our collective sense of the present moment. Long Now Talks cover futurism and speculative fiction; time, nature, and contemplative practices; the intersection of the humanities and sciences; the evolution of counterculture to cyberculture; cultural imagination, land art and public monuments; and of course, long-term thinking and being a good ancestor.

In our age of compounding crises, The Long Now Foundation is a counterweight. We are a force that imagines new possibilities, thinks critically, and takes action over the long term. We believe that when we all come together, bound by commitment and curiosity, audacious things become possible. Will you join us? https://longnow.org/join

EarthSayer Indy Johar

Leave a comment on YouTube