We Are Born Equal. Who Decided We Would Live Unequally?

The Body-Territory, the Atlantic Forest, and the freedom to perceive the futures we can build.

Before We Are Born, Our Story Has Already Begun

Observe where you are at this very moment.

Your body is breathing, your metabolism continues producing life, and thousands of events are participating in this experience.

Now imagine the moment you were born.

Your territory, family, food, water, economic conditions, inherited wealth, and institutions were already part of your existence.

You arrived in a world built by previous generations.

And you brought with you your own possibilities for development.

If we share the same human dignity, how have we arrived at such different conditions of existence?

Let us explore this together, beginning with the Body-Territory itself.

Inequality Also Begins During Gestation

Imagine two children developing in the womb at this very moment.

One experiences favorable conditions of nutrition, healthcare, and environmental protection. The other develops in a territory where families and communities face challenges in securing these resources.

Both participate in the extraordinary process of producing life.

Recent research associates prenatal socioeconomic conditions with characteristics of early childhood brain development.

A study published in Nature Communications in 2024 examined these relationships during the first three years of life.

Science offers us a concrete possibility: understanding how environments and experiences participate in development and using that knowledge to expand opportunities for care.

Think of the opportunities that emerge when a society considers nutrition, health, housing, education, and the environment as interconnected dimensions of existence.

What future can we build by beginning with gestation?

The Body-Territory as the Smallest Unit of the State

Within the BrainLatam framework, we propose the Body-Territory as the smallest and indivisible unit of the State.

Experience this perspective through your own body.

The water you drink, the food you consume, the air you breathe, and the relationships you establish all participate in sustaining your metabolism.

Each of these conditions is connected to territories, ecosystems, and collective organizations.

Within this proposal, the State can be understood as an organization emerging from relationships among Body-Territories and their institutions.

This perspective allows us to investigate public policies beginning with the concrete conditions of existence.

Equality gains a material dimension: expanding opportunities for every Body-Territory to develop its possibilities and participate in shared decisions.

The Atlantic Forest: Perceiving What Is Possible

I invite you to participate in an experience I lived in the Atlantic Forest.

I entered the forest wearing only shorts, barefoot.

At a certain moment, I stepped off the trail and began moving among trees, roots, branches, and tangled vegetation.

My purpose was to move through the forest while preserving every branch and simultaneously protecting my skin.

Imagine yourself there.

The ground presents different textures. Roots offer support. Vegetation forms spaces through which the body can move.

At times, we need to bend down. At others, we crawl.

The entire body participates in perception.

Our hands find support. Our feet recognize the terrain. Our skin participates in the relationship with leaves and branches.

We perceive an opening, adjust our position, and move forward.

Each movement reveals new possibilities.

That environment contains thousands of relationships and alternatives. Perceiving the available passages allows us to continue moving with care.

A principle emerges from this experience:

Perceive what is possible.

Caring for ourselves and caring for the forest become part of the same action.

We can crawl, move around obstacles, adjust our posture, and find pathways while preserving the territory.

Freedom happens as situated movement.

And each new position expands what we can perceive.

Perception Is Already a Selection of Reality

Now observe your own experience as you read.

You perceive words, bodily sensations, light, and perhaps a few sounds.

Your organism continuously participates in sensory, neural, and metabolic processes.

What we perceive emerges from relationships among these processes, our previous experiences, and the environment.

Our perception of reality constitutes a selection shaped by the Body-Territory.

Attention can increase the priority of particular signals and representations, strengthening their participation in experience.

In the Atlantic Forest, perceiving an opening supported the next movement.

We can apply this principle to learning, coexistence, and the construction of knowledge.

As we expand our conditions for perceiving, we also expand our possibilities for acting.

The Screen: A Selection Within a Selection, Transduced into Pixels

Imagine photographing that experience in the forest.

A camera selects a frame. Sensors register physical signals. Digital systems process information. Pixels present a visual representation.

When you look at the screen, your organism once again transduces light stimuli.

You perceive a technologically selected representation of the landscape through your own sensory selection.

On digital networks, algorithms and editorial decisions also participate in selecting the representations presented to us.

Understanding these layers creates new possibilities for investigation.

We can seek different perspectives, explore selection criteria, and share experiences.

And here a question emerges:

If our economic conditions also influence our access to information, how can we collectively expand the perceptual horizons of every Body-Territory?

Wealth Also Transmits Possibilities

Now think about an inheritance.

Money and property may be the first things that come to mind.

Add education, security, time, mobility, knowledge, and social relationships.

All these elements participate in the possibilities transmitted across generations.

The World Inequality Report 2022 documents the concentration of wealth in Latin America.

UNICEF also documents the multiple dimensions of childhood poverty in Brazil.

These studies help us understand how material conditions participate in opportunities for development.

We can then ask how to transform the economic and scientific wealth accumulated by society into growing opportunities for participation.

And how can we evaluate prosperity while also considering the continuity of life within our biomes?

Production of Excess: What Kind of Wealth Do We Want to Produce?

Imagine an economic activity that produces goods, jobs, and revenue while using water, energy, land, and other territorial resources.

Now consider the possibility of increasing its added value, making better use of resources, and investing in environmental regeneration.

At BrainLatam, we use Production of Excess to describe a hypothesis for investigating productive expansion that exceeds socially defined needs and increases pressure on ecological resources.

This reflection also participates in our question about Brazil as a country treated as the property of the wealthy.

Who participates in productive decisions?

How are economic benefits distributed?

How do the Body-Territories sustaining production participate in its results?

We can develop metrics relating sufficiency, added value, territorial resource use, and regeneration.

Economic activity can then also be evaluated according to its contribution to the continuity of life and the expansion of shared opportunities.

Four Proposals for Exploring Other Futures

Within the BrainLatam framework, four proposals can contribute to this transformation.

Personalissima AI proposes expanding each Body-Territory's ability to understand, interpret, and participate in processes involving their data.

Citizen Drex proposes investigating a digital monetary infrastructure oriented toward economic autonomy and participation under public rules.

Biome Income proposes economically recognizing the ecological and social foundations of life, with mechanisms for distribution and regeneration.

Production of Excess proposes evaluating productive expansion according to needs, resources used, value generated, and ecological capacity.

These hypotheses offer pathways for research, democratic debate, and institutional experimentation.

Together, they allow us to investigate an economy in which prosperity also means expanding possibilities for existence.

Jiwasa: The Reader Participates in What We Are Building

Notice how you have participated in this reading.

Perhaps you remembered your childhood, your ancestors, or an experience in nature.

These memories participate in the interpretations we are constructing.

At BrainLatam, we explore Jiwasa as shared agency.

The text offers questions. You contribute experiences. New interpretations can emerge from this encounter.

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

We inherit stories and can expand them.

We inherit knowledge and can transform it.

Belonging also means participating in collective movement.

What Future Are We Perceiving Together?

Return, for a moment, to the Atlantic Forest.

We are barefoot, sensing the ground, finding support, and adjusting our bodies among the branches.

An opening appears.

We crawl carefully.

The next movement reveals another possibility.

Now imagine a society learning to do the same with its institutions, its economy, and its ecological relationships.

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

We can honor history, care for the territory, and expand the conditions through which each new generation discovers its own pathways.

Perceive what is possible. Do what is possible. Together, expand what we may Become.

Commented Scientific References

Tooley, U. A. et al. (2024). Prenatal environment is associated with the pace of cortical network development over the first three years of life. Nature Communications.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-52242-4

Investigates how characteristics of the prenatal environment are associated with developmental trajectories of brain networks.

UNICEF Brazil (2025). Multidimensional Poverty in Childhood and Adolescence in Brazil — 2017 to 2023.
https://www.unicef.org/brazil/relatorios/pobreza-multidimensional-na-infancia-e-adolescencia-no-brasil-2017-2023

Presents indicators of material living conditions and developmental opportunities for children and adolescents.

World Inequality Lab (2022). World Inequality Report 2022.
https://wir2022.wid.world/

Provides indicators of income and wealth distribution among social groups and across regions.

BrainLatam (2026). When the Biome Also Enters the Decision.
https://brainlatam.com/blog/quando-o-bioma-tambem-entra-na-decisao-8666

Develops Biome Income and Production of Excess as proposals for connecting economic value, material sufficiency, and ecological regeneration.

BrainLatam (2026). Produce More Until When? When Excess Begins to Produce Less Future.
https://brainlatam.com/blog/produzir-mais-ate-quando-quando-o-excesso-comeca-a-produzir-menos-futuro-eleicoes-2026-presidente-8451

Explores alternatives for evaluating economic production through social needs, territorial resource use, and added value.

Clarify the Three-Body Framework EarlierStrengthen the Screen-and-Pixels Metaphor

BRAINLATAM · W43/2026 · THE THREE-BODY PROBLEM