Extractive Knowledge and Existential Knowledge

What is knowledge for?

Throughout this series, we have explored how representational spaces emerge, receive attention, leave traces through memory, organize lived time, create belonging through Jiwasa, and materialize as technologies.

Now we arrive at a question that has accompanied humanity since its origins:

What is knowledge for?

Many answers point toward external results.

Producing wealth.

Building tools.

Developing technologies.

Creating cities.

Transforming landscapes.

Expanding material capacities.

All of these are part of the history of knowledge.

Yet there is another dimension that is equally important.

A dimension that accompanies every Body-Territory from birth to death.

A dimension devoted to the quality of the experience of existing.

Decolonial Neuroscience proposes that these two dimensions coexist:

Extractive Knowledge

and

Existential Knowledge.

Knowledge as the Expansion of Spaces

Every form of knowledge expands representational spaces.

A new language expands possibilities for communication.

A new technique expands possibilities for action.

A new theory expands possibilities for observation.

A new experience expands possibilities for existence.

From this perspective, knowledge always generates movement.

The difference lies in the direction of that movement.

Some forms of knowledge expand our capacity to transform the world.

Others expand our capacity to inhabit the world.

Both participate in human experience.

Extractive Knowledge

Extractive Knowledge focuses on transforming environments.

Its primary interests include:

• production;

• efficiency;

• predictability;

• organization;

• accumulation;

• material transformation.

It produces agriculture.

It produces engineering.

It produces medicine.

It produces satellites.

It produces artificial intelligence.

It produces wealth.

Through it, humanity has built cities, universities, hospitals, laboratories, and scientific institutions.

Its contribution to civilization is extraordinary.

Existential Knowledge

Existential Knowledge begins with a different question:

How can the experience of existence be enriched?

Its focus lies in presence.

Attention.

Consciousness.

Perception.

Meaning-making.

Active participation in life.

It seeks to understand:

• how we feel;

• how we belong;

• how we learn;

• how we flourish;

• how we create meaning;

• how we expand our experience.

Its purpose is to enrich the journey between birth and death.

Two Paths Walking Together

Since the earliest human communities, these two forms of knowledge have developed side by side.

A community needed to learn how to build better tools.

How to hunt.

How to cultivate.

How to construct.

At the same time, it needed to learn how to cooperate.

How to care for children.

How to transmit experience.

How to navigate loss.

How to celebrate achievements.

How to cultivate belonging.

From the beginning, humanity has developed simultaneously:

• knowledge for transforming the world;

• knowledge for participating in the world.

When Production Grows Faster Than Experience

Technological progress has dramatically expanded our ability to transform reality.

At the same time, many people report increasing difficulty experiencing:

• belonging;

• presence;

• meaning;

• well-being;

• critical awareness.

Technology accelerates.

Productivity accelerates.

Information accelerates.

The existential question remains:

How do we live well within acceleration?

This question becomes increasingly important.

The Worker and the Salary

Daily life offers a simple example.

Every Body-Territory participates in collective systems.

Companies.

Institutions.

Markets.

States.

Universities.

Communities.

Receiving a salary is part of life.

Fulfilling responsibilities is part of life.

Contributing to collective projects is part of life.

Critical awareness emerges when participation coexists with perception.

We understand the rules.

We understand incentives.

We understand limitations.

We participate consciously.

We preserve inner autonomy.

Sometimes we accept certain dynamics to achieve concrete goals.

At the same time, we maintain the capacity to observe reality clearly.

This position strengthens both Fruition and Metacognition.

The individual participates in the game while remaining capable of perceiving the game.

Jiwasa, Belonging, and Critical Awareness

Throughout history, countless forms of Jiwasa have emerged.

Families.

Communities.

Schools.

Universities.

Scientific institutions.

Cultural movements.

All offer belonging.

All offer shared spaces.

Critical awareness helps us perceive which Jiwasas expand the possibilities of existence of the Body-Territories participating in them.

Existential Jiwasa strengthens:

• learning;

• creativity;

• cooperation;

• human development;

• well-being;

• autonomy.

It expands both individual and collective life simultaneously.

Fruition and Metacognition

Fruition allows deep participation in experience.

Metacognition allows observation of experience while it unfolds.

Together, they create a privileged position.

The individual continues to belong.

Continues to learn.

Continues to produce.

Continues to collaborate.

At the same time, they preserve a space for observation.

This combination supports:

• critical thinking;

• creativity;

• autonomy;

• continuous reorganization.

Attention remains available for new possibilities of existence.

Knowledge Between Birth and Death

One of the central proposals of this series is simple.

Human experience unfolds between birth and death.

Within that interval:

• we learn;

• we belong;

• we create;

• we teach;

• we love;

• we transform the world;

• we are transformed by it.

Existential Knowledge enriches this journey.

It expands the capacity to live.

The capacity to perceive.

The capacity to participate.

The capacity to create meaning.

Integration

Decolonial Neuroscience does not propose a conflict between Extractive Knowledge and Existential Knowledge.

It proposes integration.

Extractive Knowledge expands our capacity to act upon the world.

Existential Knowledge expands our capacity to participate consciously in that action.

One produces tools.

The other produces wisdom of use.

One expands material transformation.

The other expands the quality of experience.

Together they produce a more complete civilization.

Scientific Materiality

The difference between Extractive Knowledge and Existential Knowledge can be investigated through the ways they reorganize the Body-Territory during real experiences.

In a predominantly extractive condition, participants perform activities organized around pressure, urgency, debt, external reward, or productivity goals.

In a predominantly existential condition, participants engage in similar activities while experiencing meaningful purpose, belonging, autonomy, learning, reflection, and lived significance.

EEG can reveal whether a task promotes attentional rigidity and cognitive overload or flexibility, reorganization, and metacognitive openness.

fNIRS can compare cortical metabolic demands between activities performed under continuous pressure and activities performed with autonomy, learning, and meaning.

HRV, respiration, and GSR can indicate whether the Body-Territory organizes itself around urgency and exhaustion or around presence, sustainable engagement, and physiological regulation.

EMG can identify bodily tension patterns associated with prolonged attentional capture, especially in facial muscles, jaw, neck, shoulders, and hands.

Eye-tracking can reveal whether visual exploration remains focused on threat, error, and evaluation or expands toward possibilities, relationships, and pathways for solution-building.

Behavioral measures can compare creativity, decision quality, persistence, cooperation, learning, and recovery following mistakes.

Multimodal hyperscanning allows the investigation of entire groups organized through different collective dynamics.

One group may synchronize through pressure, surveillance, and competition.

Another may synchronize through cooperation, purpose, learning, and belonging.

The scientific question becomes:

What kind of Jiwasa is this knowledge cultivating within Body-Territories?

This approach allows empirical investigation of a central question of Decolonial Neuroscience:

Is knowledge transforming time into lived life, or transforming life into consumed time?

Final Reflection

Perhaps the most important question is not:

How much knowledge have we accumulated?

Perhaps it is:

How much of that knowledge has expanded our capacity to live?

Extractive Knowledge transforms the world.

Existential Knowledge transforms the experience of inhabiting the world.

When both walk together, technology meets wisdom.

Production meets belonging.

Transformation meets meaning.

And the Body-Territory discovers new possibilities for consciously participating in the extraordinary experience of existence.

References (Post-2021)

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Barrett, L. (2024). Minds in Movement: Embodied Cognition in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.

Liu, C. et al. (2024). Neural, Genetic, and Cognitive Signatures of Creativity. Communications Biology.

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Carollo, A. et al. (2024). Hyperscanning Literature After Two Decades of Neuroscientific Research.

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