The State Did Not Have to Be This Way

The Dawn of Everything, Coloniality, the Island of Papers, and Other Possibilities for Democracy

When the Collective Creates What Comes to Govern It

Imagine our public square once again.

People walk, talk, and share a territory. Some know the trees better. Others understand the pathways, the water, and the spaces where people gather.

Living together produces agreements.

Over time, these agreements become rules. Certain people are entrusted with organizing them.

Until, one day, something unexpected happens.

Those who were supposed to take care of collective decisions begin acting as though they own them.

When did the State stop expressing the collective's State of Being and begin demanding that the collective adapt to the State of Being of its rulers?

This question does not mean that every leader is oppressive.

It means that power can become disconnected from the people who constitute it.

And perhaps we can imagine different institutions.

Awakening to Everything That Could Have Been

In The Dawn of Everything, David Graeber and David Wengrow challenge narratives that present hierarchy, concentrated property, and centralized States as inevitable consequences of human development.

Archaeology and anthropology reveal varied historical experiences of coexistence and authority.

The authors' interpretations are also subject to scholarly debate.

But their central provocation remains.

Why do we imagine that inherited institutions represent every possible form of human organization?

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

At BrainLatam, we propose another question: if a collective continually develops a State of Being, why should its institutions remain indifferent to changes in that state?

The State could be investigated as an organization emerging from relationships among Body-Territories, across time and within the Biome.

Not as an entity that owns those relationships.

The Island of Papers

Let us create an island.

We arrive with 998 other people.

There is food, water, tools, and different kinds of knowledge.

To facilitate exchanges, we create pieces of paper that everyone agrees to accept as money.

But we must decide who may issue them, how they will circulate, and which rules will govern their use.

Twenty generations later, our island has changed.

Some families have accumulated wealth.

Others depend primarily on their labor.

Those who possess collateral may gain access to credit under different conditions. Those with substantial resources can hire specialists to monitor legislative proposals, defend their interests, and interpret complex regulations.

We do not need to claim that every wealthy person behaves this way.

We need to recognize that unequal economic resources can produce unequal capacities to influence collective decisions.

Now imagine that certain rules are developed primarily to serve the interests of those who can finance their formulation.

Perhaps these rules are presented as technical decisions.

But who participated in creating them?

And who will live with their consequences?

When the Papers Begin Writing the Laws

Wealth does not automatically buy legislation.

Nevertheless, institutional research recognizes the risk of policy capture when private interests gain disproportionate influence over decisions intended to serve the public interest.

This issue involves political financing, institutional relationships, conflicts of interest, and access to information.

On our island, some people can follow legislative proposals every day.

Others must work, care for family members, and meet immediate needs.

Both possess political rights.

But their actual conditions for participation are not equal.

A democracy may formally guarantee the right to participate without equally distributing the opportunities to exercise that right.

This is where the Island of Papers meets the Jiwasa-State.

If rules begin responding predominantly to concentrated interests, opportunities for reciprocal participation may become restricted.

The collective continues to exist.

But its ability to transform its own rules may diminish.

Coloniality Within the State

Aníbal Quijano investigated the coloniality of power, showing how structures of social classification and inequality persisted after political independence.

Rita Segato added reflections on authority, gender, violence, and community experiences.

Pablo González Casanova developed the concept of internal colonialism to examine relations of domination within the same nation.

These Latin American contributions allow us to ask who participates in defining what will be recognized as knowledge, development, and the public interest.

When an institution listens only to certain experiences, other possibilities of Being may remain invisible.

Yet communities can also produce exclusion.

For this reason, expanding participation must go hand in hand with protecting each person's rights.

Jiwasa cannot require the Body-Territory to disappear into the collective.

The Mandate That Should Prepare New Leaders

Now imagine that our island elects someone to coordinate certain decisions for four years.

The elected person has experience.

They understand the problems.

They can bring participants together and organize responses.

But what should happen throughout their term?

Perhaps their responsibility should not be limited to managing resources and implementing proposals.

What if one of the fundamental responsibilities of an elected official were to enable new leaders to emerge during their own administration?

Imagine a representative who shares knowledge, expands access to information, encourages disagreement, and creates opportunities for others to learn how to participate in decisions.

Some of these people may agree with the representative.

Others may propose different paths.

Perhaps new leaders will emerge who are better prepared to respond to new problems.

This does not mean automatically replacing representatives or taking away citizens' right to choose their leaders.

It means investigating mechanisms that prevent institutional knowledge and political opportunities from remaining permanently concentrated in the same hands.

An elected term can also be evaluated by its capacity to expand the collective's political autonomy.

When Leadership Does Not Belong to the Leader

Let us return to the five hunters we imagined in the Atlantic Forest.

The most experienced hunter recognizes tracks and knows different routes.

The others learn from him.

But an environmental change may make another participant's perception especially important.

Perhaps the youngest identifies a passage.

Perhaps someone previously silent recognizes a danger.

Coordination needs to change.

If the leader prevents others from contributing, the group may lose important possibilities.

If he shares experience and welcomes new information, he may encourage adaptation.

This narrative does not claim to describe an archaeologically documented hunt.

It allows us to investigate a question.

Does leadership exist to preserve its own position, or to expand the collective's ability to respond to change?

In the Jiwasa-State, leadership renewal could be investigated as a consequence of continuous participation.

We do not need to eliminate differences in knowledge.

We need to prevent them from automatically becoming monopolies over decisions.

The Body-Territory Is Not the Property of the State

Our hypothesis considers the Body-Territory the smallest indivisible unit of the State.

Each person participates in the relationships that make collective life possible.

But no one should be reduced to their productivity, wealth, or electoral preference.

This requires effective conditions for participation.

Understandable information.

Opportunities to challenge decisions.

Protection against arbitrary authority.

Access to decisions affecting one's territory.

It also requires recognizing that the Biome itself participates in the conditions of existence.

Water, soil, food, and ecological relationships are not merely external elements of our institutions.

If the collective's State of Being changes with its Biome, its rules must retain the capacity to respond to those transformations.

Without abandoning fundamental rights or legal certainty.

Citizen Drex and Biome Income

The Island of Papers also asks who participates in the creation and circulation of money.

At BrainLatam, we propose investigating Citizen Drex (Drex Cidadão) as a retail digital monetary architecture designed to expand possibilities for access and participation under public rules.

This hypothesis differs from the official Drex project developed by the Central Bank of Brazil.

Its feasibility would depend on monetary, legal, technological, and privacy-protection studies.

Biome Income (Rendimento Bioma) introduces another provocation.

If the existence of every Body-Territory depends on shared ecological and social conditions, can we investigate mechanisms for distributing economic resources associated with sustaining those conditions?

Both are proposals open to evaluation.

No technology guarantees democratic participation by itself.

The central issue remains who defines the rules, who can change them, and who shares in collectively produced resources.

The Memory of Laws and the Freedom to Transform Them

Perhaps our island needs institutions that preserve two complementary capacities.

The first is memory.

Decisions should have justifications, verifiable records, and public procedures.

The second is transformation.

Rules must allow revision when new evidence, needs, or experiences require reconsideration.

In the Jiwasa-State hypothesis, leadership renewal and the prevention of economic capture would be part of this process.

We can investigate transparency, independent oversight, continuous participation, and mechanisms for developing new leaders.

But we must recognize that no institution will ever be permanently protected against abuse.

Democracy requires continuous work.

The State Did Not Have to Be This Way

Let us return to the square.

The children have grown up.

New people have arrived.

The trees have changed the landscape.

Someone proposes another path.

Will those who govern listen?

Will those who possess wealth be able to influence decisions?

Will someone who has never participated be able to propose an alternative?

Perhaps the most important measure of our institutions is whether they can respond to these questions without requiring any Body-Territory to abandon its freedom to Be.

The State may emerge from the State of Being of a collective. Its laws preserve the memory of how we learned to live together; its democracy allows us to transform that memory when we discover new ways of Being.

And those elected to represent the collective can participate in this transformation by preparing new leaders, including those who may eventually succeed them.

Truth may exist between Us without belonging exclusively to any one of Us.

Likewise, the State may emerge from Us without becoming the property of any one of Us.

Our question remains open:

What institutions can transform collective belonging into effective participation in decision-making, leadership renewal, and the distribution of resources?

Annotated References

Graeber, David; Wengrow, David (2021). The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Challenges narratives of inevitable political development and brings together archaeological and anthropological interpretations of historically diverse forms of collective organization.

Quijano, Aníbal (2000). Coloniality of Power and Eurocentrism in Latin America. International Sociology, 15(2), 215–232.

Introduces the coloniality of power and its relationship to the historical formation of inequalities in Latin America.

Segato, Rita Laura (2015). La crítica de la colonialidad en ocho ensayos: y una antropología por demanda. Prometeo Libros.

Broadens the discussion of coloniality, authority, gender relations, and recognition of community experiences.

González Casanova, Pablo (2006). Colonialismo interno. CLACSO.

Examines processes of domination within nation-states, including inequalities between groups and territories.

OECD (2017). Preventing Policy Capture: Integrity in Public Decision Making.

Examines how private interests can exert disproportionate influence over public policies and discusses measures for transparency, integrity, and accountability.

Hamada, Yukihiko; Agrawal, Khushbu (2025). Combatting Corruption in Political Finance: Global Trends, Challenges and Solutions. International IDEA.

Analyzes risks of undue influence in political financing and institutional mechanisms for oversight and accountability.

Brazil (1988). Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil.

Establishes popular sovereignty, fundamental rights, political representation, and mechanisms for direct democratic participation.

Central Bank of Brazil. Drex Pilot.

Provides the basis for distinguishing the official development of Drex from BrainLatam's original proposals for a retail digital currency.

BrainLatam (2026). A Ilha dos Papéis — Quem recebeu o direito de criar o dinheiro?.

An original narrative exploring money creation, wealth, credit, institutional influence, and unequal participation in rulemaking.

BrainLatam (2026). O Brasil como Coisa de Ricos — Quando as regras pertencem a quem pode interpretá-las.

Explores relationships among wealth, legal interpretation, political power, and opportunities for democratic participation.

Cionek, Jackson. Religare — Religiosidade Plena em um Estado Democrático, Laico e de Direito.

A philosophical work contributing to the original formulation of Egregore, freedom of Being, and the relationships between multiplicity and collective organization.

Central idea of the article: The State should not be confused with those who temporarily hold its power. Within the Jiwasa-State hypothesis, elected representatives would also be responsible for expanding opportunities for new leadership, while democratic institutions would need safeguards against the concentration of economic influence over public rules.

The article presents Citizen Drex, Biome Income, and the Jiwasa-State as original proposals for investigation, rather than established public policies.

BrainLatam | W44/2026 · Political Organization · Coloniality · Body-Territory · Jiwasa-State