I want to point to Patrick Tanguay's recent Sentiers piece and in particular to Johar's essay. I asked both ChatGPT and Google Gemini to summarize Johar's ideas, and they came up with interestingly different approaches, which I pass on here:
From Google Gemini:
In the essay "The Future of Being Human: A Critical Question," Indy Johar explores the profound shift required in our collective consciousness and systemic design to navigate the complex crises of the 21st century.
The main points of his argument can be summarized as follows:
1. The Crisis of "Objecthood" and Separation
Johar argues that our current global crises (climate change, inequality, systemic instability) are rooted in a 400-year-old worldview based on detachment. We have historically viewed ourselves as "bounded autonomous individuals" separate from the world around us. This "objecthood" allows us to treat nature, resources, and even other humans as extractable assets rather than parts of an interdependent system.
2. From "Human Exceptionalism" to Interdependence
The essay challenges the "fiction" of human exceptionalism—the idea that humans exist outside or above the natural world. Johar emphasizes that modern science (epigenetics, microbiome research, ecology) proves we are fundamentally entangled with our environment. He suggests that the "future of being human" involves recognizing that we are not individuals in isolation but a "multitude" in constant relationship with non-human life.
3. The "Noun-Orientation" vs. "Verb-Orientation"
Johar critiques our "noun-oriented" world, where we focus on fixed objects, property rights, and static definitions. He calls for a shift toward a "relational" or "verb-oriented" understanding, where value is found in the flow of care, stewardship, and the quality of relationships between entities, rather than the ownership of things.
4. Reimagining Freedom and Agency
He introduces a radical inquiry into freedom: "What is the freedom to manifest your fullness of being?" He suggests that true freedom in the future won't be the "freedom to consume" or "freedom from others," but the freedom to live in a way that allows the entire "web of life" to flourish. This requires moving away from systems built on "loss aversion" and risk management toward systems built on "possibility" and "expedition."
5. Systemic Redesign ("The Great Peace")
Johar posits that we are at a crossroads between a "Great Destruction" and what he calls "The Great Peace." To achieve the latter, we must intentionally redesign our physical, structural, and psychological systems. This includes:
Legal Personhood for Nature: Moving from viewing nature as a "resource" to a "person" with rights (e.g., rivers or forests having legal standing).
Decentralized Capital: Rethinking how currency and value are created to support planetary health.
Anti-fragile Institutions: Building governance models that can "govern complexity" and adapt to rapid feedback loops.
Conclusion
The essay serves as a provocation to stop trying to "fix" the old system and instead begin the work of becoming a different kind of human. Johar suggests that our current predicament is not just a technical problem to be solved, but a developmental threshold that requires a fundamental shift in how we perceive reality and our place within it.
The Dark Matter Shaping the Human Experience This video features Indy Johar discussing how the systems we design "design us back," expanding on the essay's themes of systemic redesign and the shift in human identity.
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From Chat GPT:
Summary of Indy Johar, “The Future of Being Human: A Critical Complementary Investment Thesis” (2026)
Core premise
Johar argues that the central question of the AI era is not the future of machines but the future of being human alongside them. The aim is not to predict outcomes but to define new categories—social, institutional, and economic—that allow societies to preserve human depth and agency in a world increasingly shaped by predictive technologies.
1) The machine-shaped environment
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Machine learning is becoming embedded in everyday systems—pricing, access, ranking, and decision-making—so environments increasingly “pre-compose” choices before people act.
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As institutions reorganize around what can be measured and automated, people adapt by becoming more “legible” to systems that allocate resources and opportunities.
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The risk is not intelligence itself but its coupling to extraction, scoring, and behavioral steering, which can erode agency and meaning.
Key claim: abundance of options can coexist with shrinking agency if ends of action are subtly outsourced to algorithmic defaults.
2) What becomes scarce in an AI world
Johar argues the scarce resource is not computation or data but irreducibly human capacities:
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sustained attention not harvested by platforms
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relationships not immediately transactional
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ambiguity and uncertainty that remain unresolved
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learning not reducible to credentialing
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meaning that develops slowly
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the ability to “become” without premature categorization or scoring
This “nearly forgotten future” is not anti-technology nostalgia but a search for environments that preserve depth and degrees of freedom.
3) The limits of current responses
The rise of retreats, festivals, and wellness spaces signals demand for non-instrumental connection and presence.
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But they remain episodic, expensive, and easily commodified.
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They function more as temporary relief than structural solutions.
Johar argues the challenge is to move from lifestyle experiences to civic infrastructure that supports human depth in everyday life.
4) Proposed categories for a “human complement” to AI
A. Rewilding as social infrastructure
Not a return to nature aesthetics, but protection of irreducible human experiences—slow trust, non-transactional relationships, unscored meaning.
These conditions are framed as civilizational foundations for creativity, legitimacy, and social cohesion.
B. Pre-legibility zones / opacity commons
Public or semi-public environments where people can exist, learn, and interact without immediate data capture or identity performance.
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anonymity or pseudonymity allowed
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experimentation without reputational fixation
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spaces for thinking, making, or meeting without surveillance
C. Selective legibility (governance doctrine)
A middle path between total surveillance and total opacity:
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opacity by default
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accountability triggered by events, not constant monitoring
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consent-based identity disclosure
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governance by civic stewards rather than platforms
D. Machine-assisted rewilding
AI should not only extract and optimize; it could also:
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protect attention and privacy
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reduce administrative burdens in communities
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support coordination without constant data capture
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introduce friction against exploitative optimization
5) Investment and institutional implications
Johar frames the “future of being human” as an underinvested domain:
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markets fund what is measurable and monetizable
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human depth behaves like a public good with long time horizons and governance complexity
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societies need new ownership, financing, and institutional models to sustain it
The thesis: durable value will arise from infrastructures that preserve human agency, not just those that enhance machine intelligence.
6) Philosophical conclusion
The goal is not to define a final destination but to expand the range of futures that remain possible.
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category formation creates space for experimentation
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societies must prototype environments where people can think, relate, and become without constant optimization or capture
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preserving “unfinishedness” and presence is itself a form of resistance to total legibility
Bottom line:
Johar sees the central task of the AI era as building institutions, spaces, and technologies that safeguard human depth, agency, and meaning—treating them as essential infrastructure rather than private luxuries.