Long Now

The Bureau of Linguistical Reality is a participatory artwork facilitated by artist Alicia Escott and Heidi Quante which collaborates with the public to create new words for feelings and experiences for which no words yet exist. Recognizing the climate crisis is causing new feelings and experiences that have yet to be named, the project was created with a deep focus on these and other Anthropocenic phenomena. The Bureau views the words created in this process as also serving as points of connectivity: advancing understanding, dialogue, and conversations about the greater concepts these words seek to codify.

This talk was an intimate sharing of The Bureau's findings from their decade long social art practice as well as a Word Making Field Session where Escott and Quante collaborated with participants to collectively coin a term together.

Participants were encouraged to consider in advance their personal unnamed experience(s) of our changing world as well as their unique feelings for which they wish there was a word and to bring the diversity of their linguistic backgrounds to this conversation as the Bureau creates neologisms in all languages.

Alternative visions for social change rooted in the frameworks of capitalism and colonialism only reproduce contemporary structures of power. How can indigenous perspectives and knowledge inform the structural transformation necessary to improve the health of the natural world and of human communities?

Dr. Cordero discussed how indigenous epistemologies challenge the ideas and practices related to capitalism and colonialism and how the enhancement of indigeneity and sovereignty are critical to the maintenance of indigenous epistemologies. Throughout his talk, Dr. Cordero drew from academic and communal discourses on decolonization, settler colonialism, and epistemicide, revealing the nuances of indigenous worldviews with deeply researched case studies. Dr. Cordero also shared how indigenous perspectives and knowledge inspire work of the [Association of Ramaytush Ohlone](https://www.ramaytush.org/), where he serves as Executive Director.

Economic policy can seem abstract and distant, but it manifests the physical world, affecting us all. Our economic stories shape our systems, and they in turn shape us. What myths continue to constrain us, and how might new stories emerge to scaffold the future? This talk explores concepts we often take as gospel: profits, competition, economic value, efficiency, and others — and asks how we might reshape them to better serve planetary flourishing — today, and well into the future.

Drawing on insights from economics and the social sciences more broadly, writer and researcher Denise Hearn makes the case that the challenge for 21st century policy-making is figuring out how much we can "hold economic reasoning back." In her Talk, she asks: in what areas can we bring in new paradigms and systems of understanding that don't produce the same problems that our societies are trying to escape?

_What really interests me is how long-lived plants allow humans to think about—and emotionally relate to—long units of time. They provide a bridge between human time and geological time. - Jared Farmer_

In his Long Now Talk, Geohumanist and historian Jared Farmer shared his multi-faceted approach to understanding our human relationship with trees over millennia. From ancient stories, as objects of reverence, named individuals and clonal organisms, sources of wealth in ancient and modern times, the lungs of the planet and the wood wide web - trees are deeply interwoven with our histories, cultures and growing scientific understanding of our complex global ecosystem. Through his work, Farmer reflects on our long-term relationships with long-lived trees, and considers the future of oldness on a rapidly changing planet.

As authoritarianism continues to rise around the world, the stories we tell ourselves about our collective history become a battleground for competing visions of the future. Drawing extensively from Russian history in the 20th century, Rumsey offers a framework to discuss our current social and political tensions and how our increasing polarization could shape our future.

Abby Smith Rumsey was joined by archivist and filmmaker Rick Prelinger for the Q&A.

This Long Now Talk is presented in partnership with the [Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences](https://casbs.stanford.edu/about?ref=longnow.org) (CASBS) at Stanford University. CASBS brings together deep thinkers from diverse disciplines and communities to advance understanding of the full range of human beliefs, behaviors, interactions, and institutions. A leading incubator of human-centered knowledge, CASBS facilitates collaborations across academia, policy, industry, civil society, and government to collectively design a better future.

Over the last two years, the US government has started thinking about the future of the world in a very different way. Across speeches and policy papers, a vision of world politics has emerged which breaks sharply both with the old logic of the Cold War and the newer politics of globalization.

The globalization bet has turned sour, but it has created a far more closely connected world than ever existed before. Problems such as climate change, economic inequality, food security, supply chain vulnerabilities, democratic weakness and mass migration emerge from the interdependent choices of people and governments in a global system without any global rulers.

In a complex interdependent world, is the only way forward to accept these complexities, and try to work with them? That is the challenge that the US now faces – moving from the simple imagined futures of the past to a more entangled and realistic vision of our planet's future.

This Long Now Talk is presented in partnership with the [Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences](https://casbs.stanford.edu/about/about-us?ref=longnow.org) (CASBS) at Stanford University. CASBS brings together deep thinkers from diverse disciplines and communities to advance understanding of the full range of human beliefs, behaviors, interactions, and institutions. A leading incubator of human-centered knowledge, CASBS facilitates collaborations across academia, policy, industry, civil society, and government to collectively design a better future.

Coco Krumme traces the fascinating history of optimization from its roots in America's founding principles, to its dominance as the driving principle of our modern world. Optimized models underlie everything and are deeply embedded in the technologies and assumptions that have come to comprise not only our material reality, but what we make of it. How did a mathematical concept take on such outsized cultural shape?

Krumme's work in scientific computation made her aware of optimization's overreach, where she observed that streamlined systems are less resilient and more at risk of failure. They limit our options and narrow our perspectives. Optimal Illusions exposes the sizable bargains we have made in the name of optimization and asks us to consider what comes next.

Our bodies, our houses, our land, our space: we humans don’t always like to share. Author Bette Adriaanse engaged in deep discussion with fellow author Chelsea T. Hicks. as well as virtual guests Brian Eno, Margaret Levi, and Aqui Thami, about property, sharing, and how to make a lasting positive change in the way we share the world with each other. Alternating between thinkers and doers whose approaches are helping to foster long term equality, this talk explored the choices that can be made to share time and resources with others in radical ways.

**Virtual guests:**

**Brian Eno** is a musician, artist, writer, and co-founder of Earth Percent and The Long Now Foundation.

**Margaret Levi** is an American political scientist and author, noted for her work in comparative political economy, labor politics, and democratic theory.

**Aqui Thami** is an Indigenous artist, activist, academic, and member of the Himalayan Janajati Thang-mi community.

**Story & Performance Credits:**

**Dodging the Apocalypse** story by Mark Alpert | Actor: Stuart Briggs | Video: Ruda Virginio | Score: Tristan de Liège

**Victory Condition** story by Eliot Peper | Actor: Marilyn Pittman | Video: Back Pocket Media and Ruda Virgini | Found footage by: Chris Lange, Oscar Osbo, Robert Pullum, Sean Kirmani, Matt Trainor, Billy Bjork, Loren Hamilton, Panorama International Productions, Living with Fire_ The USGS Southern California Wildfire Risk Project | Score: Tristan de Liège

**Glacial Elevation Operations** story by Kim Stanley Robinson | Actor: Conrad Cecil | Video: Alborz Kamalizad | Score: Tristan de Liège

How can we turn the tide on species loss and help biodiversity and bioabundance flourish for millennia to come?

Ryan Phelan is Executive Director of [Revive & Restore](https://reviverestore.org); the leading wildlife conservation organization promoting the incorporation of biotechnologies into standard conservation practice. Phelan shared the new Genetic Rescue Toolkit for conservation – a suite of biotechnology tools and conservation applications that offer hope and a path to recovery for threatened species. In this talk, Phelan presented examples of the toolkit in action, including corals that better withstand rising ocean temperatures, trees that withstand a fungal blight, and the genetic rescue of the black-footed ferret, once thought to be extinct.

Revive & Restore brings biotechnologies to conservation in responsible ways; from engaging local communities where ecological restorations are underway, to connecting stakeholders in disciplines like biotech, bioethics, conservation organizations and government agencies. Together, they are forging new paths to bioabundance in our changing world.

Ryan Phelan was joined by forecaster and Long Now Board Member [Paul Saffo](https://longnow.org/people/paul-saffo/) for the Q&A; to discuss long-term outcomes and the Intended Consequences framing used by Revive & Restore.