The Saviors of Tomorrow - Extraterrestrials, Gods, and the Promise of a Superior Existence

The Man of Clay waits for another world. The Man of Wood follows the promise. The Man of Maize recognizes the life already being produced.

What If Someone Promised to Save You?

Imagine your phone announcing extraordinary news.

A distant civilization offers technologies capable of transforming humanity. Millions of people follow the promise of a better tomorrow.

You feel curiosity, hope, perhaps excitement.

I would also like to learn about their knowledge.

Now imagine that these new masters present one condition: handing over decisions about our future to them.

Notice what happens in your body.

You can admire someone, learn from their discoveries, and explore new possibilities.

But who will continue to be you?

Even when those promising a better tomorrow have the best intentions, we must continue to Be for ourselves.

This question will accompany our journey through three figures: clay, wood, and maize.

The Fiction That Reveals Our Choices

In the Netflix series 3 Body Problem, humanity encounters signals from an extraterrestrial civilization.

The story explores different human reactions to this fictional possibility.

Some characters place their hopes in the visitors. Others develop technologies and strategies to protect humanity.

What interests me most are the decisions made here, among human beings.

Imagine believing so deeply in a promise that it begins to define your friendships, your values, and your identity.

Now imagine defending humanity with such conviction that every decision becomes evaluated according to its intended final outcome.

Two different narratives may share the same ethical question:

Whom are we willing to sacrifice for the tomorrow we imagine?

The Ship and the Children

In the fifth episode, a ship called Judgment Day travels through the Panama Canal.

Families and children are on board.

An operation designed to recover information uses nanofibers capable of slicing through the vessel.

The ship is destroyed, along with its passengers.

Imagine a child on that deck.

Perhaps the child was playing, learning a new word, or talking with someone they loved.

Now imagine the people who planned the operation.

They possess scientific knowledge, institutional responsibilities, and a mission considered essential to protecting humanity.

How can a promise of protection accompany a decision that destroys the very lives it claims to protect?

The scene allows us to investigate a human problem, independently of its extraterrestrial fiction.

When the Ends Begin to Justify the Means

Utilitarianism includes complex philosophical traditions that evaluate consequences, well-being, and the effects of human actions.

In this fictional situation, we encounter a particular problem: turning an expected outcome into permission to use any means.

A child becomes part of a strategic calculation.

An imagined future receives greater priority than a life being lived in the present.

Now I want to ask a question that reaches directly into our Body-Territory:

How can we evaluate collective consequences while simultaneously recognizing the dignity of every existence?

Science helps us investigate outcomes. Ethics allows us to discuss values. Law organizes responsibilities and guarantees.

And every Body-Territory participates in the concrete consequences of these decisions.

The Man of Clay Believes He Belongs to Another World

Within the K'iche' Maya tradition of the Popol Wuj, we encounter human figures made of clay, wood, and maize.

Drawing on this ancestral heritage, BrainLatam develops its own philosophical interpretation.

Our Man of Clay lives in profound introspection.

He perceives himself as belonging to another planet, a spiritual plane, or a superior order.

He believes he possesses an elevated identity connected to an existence far removed from the one being produced every day within his territory.

Imagine what an extraterrestrial promise might mean to him.

Tomorrow seems to offer a reunion with what he believes he truly Is.

His experience invites us to ask:

What possibilities emerge when we also recognize the life our body is producing here?

The Man of Wood Follows the Narrative

Now meet the Man of Wood.

He learns by repeating gestures, beliefs, and interpretations.

He finds friendship, recognition, and security within a shared narrative.

At BrainLatam, we investigate this stability through the metaphor of a semantic-affective local optimum.

The narrative works so well that it begins to rigidly organize his perception of Being.

Within our metaphor, we call this configuration blind faith.

It can occur in religious, technological, scientific, or political experiences.

Our Man of Wood might follow the visitors. Or he might follow the leaders who promise to fight them.

In either case, his identity may become dependent on carrying out the narrative.

The follower has ceased to Be.

This provocation questions what happens when we surrender our own agency to someone else's interpretation.

Who Conquers Our Hearts and Minds?

Remember a film that deeply moved you.

The music rises. The character faces a challenge. Your heart begins to race.

A narrative participates in your bodily experience.

Religious, political, and technological promises can also mobilize hope, fear, recognition, and belonging.

We know the expression: winning hearts and minds.

Emotion, memory, cognition, and learning participate in interconnected processes that neuroscience continues to investigate.

We can study responses related to expectation and information evaluation using EEG and, in appropriate tasks, cortical hemodynamic changes using fNIRS.

These measurements help us formulate scientific questions.

Our hearts and minds can participate in the freedom to learn and transcend our own Being.

The Screen Offers a Selection Within a Selection

Look at your phone again.

A scene has been framed, edited, and transformed into digital signals.

The screen displays pixels. Your senses transduce light stimuli.

Your perception is already a selection shaped by the history and metabolism of your Body-Territory.

Now you perceive a representation produced through additional choices.

Algorithms also participate in circulating these images.

It is a selection within a selection.

At BrainLatam, we propose:

We are mass-conditioned by choices we never had.

Yet every new learning experience can expand our perceptual horizon.

We can seek other sources, discover new experiences, and participate in formulating the questions themselves.

The Man of Maize Recognizes His Territory

Let us return to the Popol Wuj.

Maize holds fundamental importance in the K'iche' account of human creation.

In our BrainLatam interpretation, the Man of Maize represents the Body-Territory recognizing itself through the relationships that produce its existence.

He perceives himself in food, water, culture, knowledge, and the people with whom he lives.

Food participates in his metabolism. Learning transforms his possibilities. Relationships participate in the experience of Being.

The Man of Maize is our metaphor for Jiwasa: belonging, perceiving, learning, and participating in collective transformation.

His existence has a history and continues to move.

The Ancestral Future Already Participates in the Present

In Ancestral Future, Ailton Krenak offers an important perspective on the relationships among future, memory, and the continuity of life.

Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui investigates Andean experiences of collectivity, creativity, and the coexistence of differences.

Mexican philosopher Lucero González Suárez develops a phenomenological-hermeneutic interpretation of the figures of clay, wood, and maize in the Popol Wuj.

And Isael and Sueli Maxakali share Tikmũ'ũn knowledge through projects in which Indigenous peoples present their own worlds.

These contributions invite us to expand our questions.

We can respect our ancestors without reducing our Being to the limits of what they were able to perceive.

Learning from others can also expand our participation in the present.

In the Atlantic Forest, I Found My Own Movement

I entered the Atlantic Forest barefoot, wearing only shorts.

As I stepped off the trail, I encountered roots, branches, and tangled vegetation.

I needed to preserve every branch while protecting my skin.

At times, I crawled.

My hands found support. My feet recognized the terrain.

Every movement revealed new possibilities.

There, I intensely experienced a principle:

Perceive what is possible.

Imagine someone offering guidance on how to cross that forest.

I could learn from their experience while continuing to perceive the territory through my own body.

Shared knowledge opens new pathways.

And every existence participates in its own movements.

Yãy Hã Mĩy: Learning to Transcend Our Being

In dialogue with Tikmũ'ũn/Maxakali knowledge, BrainLatam develops an extended philosophical interpretation:

Yãy hã mĩy — Imitate Being to transcend one's own Being.

We learn by observing, imitating, experimenting, and transforming our interpretations.

Our Man of Wood also learned through imitation.

Now he can experience other positions.

The Man of Clay can recognize new possibilities for belonging within the territory.

And the Man of Maize can continue learning from both.

We propose a sequence:

Let it come → Let it stay → Let it Be → You may disobey → Let it go.

Questioning a narrative can open possibilities for transformation.

Jiwasa: Who Will Produce Our Tomorrow?

Within the BrainLatam framework, the Body-Territory is the smallest and indivisible unit of the State.

Personalissima AI proposes expanding our participation in interpreting data.

Citizen Drex explores possibilities for monetary autonomy.

Biome Income proposes recognizing the ecological and social foundations that sustain life.

Production of Excess investigates collective needs, wealth distribution, and territorial regeneration.

These pathways remain open to research and democratic development.

We are heirs to the past, participants in the present, and jointly responsible for the futures we make possible for the next Body-Territories.

Now return to the child on the ship.

That child is living, learning, perceiving, and participating in producing tomorrow.

We can welcome knowledge from every imaginable world. But our future begins with the lives already producing it.

And the question belongs to you, too:

What tomorrow can we build together when our hearts, minds, and decisions participate in every Body-Territory's freedom to transcend its own Being?

Commented Latin American References

Lucero González Suárez (2023). El ser del hombre a la luz del Popol Vuh. Análisis fenomenológico-hermenéutico. LiminaR. Estudios Sociales y Humanísticos, 21(1). The Mexican philosopher examines the human figures of clay, wood, and maize in the K'iche' tradition, providing a particularly relevant academic foundation for the three metaphors developed by BrainLatam.

Ailton Krenak (2022). Futuro ancestral. Companhia das Letras. Krenak connects ancestry, rivers, the continuity of life, and possible futures, contributing directly to our reflection on salvation and participation in the present.

Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, in dialogue with Paola Lopes Zamariola and collaborators (2024). Campo Abierto: conversas sobre prácticas y discursos descolonizadores con Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui. Rebento. This dialogue with the Bolivian sociologist explores collective practices, temporality, territoriality, Aymara worldviews, and decolonization, expanding our investigation of belonging and agency.

Isael Maxakali, Sueli Maxakali, and Indigenous curators (2025). Mundos Indígenas — UFMG. An Indigenous-curated exhibition presenting Tikmũ'ũn/Maxakali, Yanomami, Ye’kwana, Xakriabá, and Pataxoop perspectives. It emphasizes the importance of understanding cosmologies through the participation of the peoples who sustain them.

BrainLatam (2026). Territory — The Environment Is Not a Backdrop: From the Man of Clay to the Man of Maize. Develops a contemporary interpretation of the Popol Wuj, connecting Body-Territory, perception, food, and existence.

Complementary Audiovisual Reference

Netflix (2024). 3 Body Problem — Episode 5: Judgment Day. The production's official recap documents the operation against the ship and the moral conflict faced by the characters, highlighting the violence committed by those who present themselves as defenders of humanity.

The Netflix series serves as a fictional analogy for examining human decisions. The Popol Wuj provides an ancestral tradition with its own meanings, while BrainLatam develops an extended philosophical interpretation of clay, wood, and maize.

The central question remains one of shared agency: how can we imagine and build a better tomorrow while recognizing the dignity and participation of every Body-Territory already producing life today?

BRAINLATAM · W43/2026 · THE THREE-BODY PROBLEM