Vinay Lal - The Conjuncture of the present: Challenges for the future of humankind, April 30,2026

This is the inaugural lecture, delivered in late April 2026, as part of the revived Multiversity Project, organized by Citizens International, which began in Penang, Malaysia, in 2001 and lasted just over a decade before its participants went their separate ways. In this lecture, I outline eleven theses describing what I call the «conjuncture of the present,» or eleven aspects of our current condition that pose unprecedented challenges for humanity and our planet. Some of these elements, I argue, have existed before, including, for example, a pronounced tilt toward authoritarianism and the decline of more or less «established» democracies such as the United States and India. Some elements have been around for decades, and we are increasingly aware of the dangers associated with them, including global warming and climate change; but some elements are entirely new, including the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI). However, never before have we witnessed such a coincidence or simultaneous presence of all these elements, and this puts us in a position we have never been in before.