From the Collective Brain to a Living Constitution

Science, AI, Body-Territory, Real Jiwasa, Citizen DREX, and the Control of Excess as Foundations for a New Chilean Constitution

Chile does not need merely another constitutional attempt written from the same mental place that has already failed twice. It needs to move beyond the local optimum that still organizes much of modern law: the abstract individual, property separated from responsibility, the State separated from the biome, law separated from the body, the economy separated from territory, and democracy reduced to voting.

This local optimum comes from a Greco-Roman Eurocentric matrix that colonized Latin America through a Logos capable of classifying, separating, hierarchizing, registering, administering, and transforming life into norm. This Logos produced important institutions, but it also produced a blindness: it speaks of humanity without beginning from the body-territory that makes humanity possible.

Today, this Logos has crystallized into Artificial Intelligence. AI already automates formal language, classification, calculation, inference, prediction, data management, report generation, legal analysis, and scenario simulation. This should not be seen only as a threat. It is also a historical revelation. If the machine can already operate much of formal Logos, then it becomes clearer what this Logos has always left outside: the living body, territory, biome, bond, cooperation, ancestral memory, water, mental health, care, world-creation, and real belonging.

AI shows that the Constitution of the future cannot be merely a logical text. It must be an architecture of situated life.

For this reason, the proposal for Chile’s Año del Cerebro 2026 should not be limited to speaking about mental health or education. It must be more ambitious: to use the Year of the Brain to ask which scientific, democratic, and territorial foundations should guide a new Chilean Constitution.

The Año del Cerebro narrative states that the brain is connected to mental health, states of consciousness, education, creativity, democracy, and emerging technologies, recognizing it as a social and collective good. It also states that caring for the brain means strengthening the cognitive and emotional foundations of a broad, healthy, participatory democracy.

From this perspective, the constitutional question changes:

what kind of State protects the collective brain of a people?

Here, the work of Chilean researcher Paulo Barraza becomes central. Barraza studies simultaneous electroencephalographic activity in people interacting with one another, investigating how brain activity between participants coordinates — or fails to coordinate — according to the relational dynamics that arise between them. This line of research moves the brain away from individual isolation and places it inside social relation.

In 2025, Leiva-Cisterna, Barraza, Rodríguez, and Dumas published a study showing that sensory multi-brain stimulation increased inter-brain synchrony, especially at 16 Hz, and favored sustained behavioral coupling in cooperating dyads.

The article does not use the term Jiwasa. But it touches evidence compatible with Jiwasa: human cooperation is not only opinion, contract, or morality; it involves coordination among bodies, brains, attention, rhythm, intention, and action.

Real Jiwasa is precisely this capacity of a collective to sustain common life without erasing the singularity of each body-territory. It is not a hate group. It is not a manipulated mass. It is not a digital bubble. It is not religious fanaticism oriented toward life after death while present life is destroyed. Real Jiwasa is verifiable belonging: it increases cooperation, reduces destruction, returns value to territory, and protects the plurality of ways of being.

This is the bridge between Barraza and the Constitution. If science shows that cooperation has a relational, bodily, and neurodynamic basis, then a Constitution should not begin only from the sum of isolated individuals. The Chilean people are not a spreadsheet of voters. They are a field of body-territories that can cooperate or be disorganized by fear, misinformation, inequality, debt, violence, extractivism, and algorithmic manipulation.

A living Constitution must create conditions for Real Jiwasa: bonds, trust, participation, mental health, water, protected biomes, an economy with return, and public technology under democratic control.

The minimal unit of the State, therefore, cannot be only the abstract individual or private property. It must be the body-territory. Every person exists as a situated body: in a community, with water, air, food, memory, school, neighborhood, language, culture, work, mental health, biome, and possible future.

Living in Santiago is not the same as living in Mapuche territory, in the mining north, in a sacrifice zone, in a coastal community, in a salt flat, in a peripheral commune, or in Patagonia. Formal equality can hide deep territorial inequalities. A body-territorial Constitution does not abandon individual rights; it gives them real ground on which to exist.

Artículo 1 — Del cuerpo-territorio como fundamento del Estado

El Estado de Chile reconoce que toda persona existe como cuerpo-territorio: un ser vivo situado en relación inseparable con su cuerpo, comunidad, cultura, memoria, ambiente, agua, bioma y condiciones materiales de existencia.

Toda ley, política pública, actividad económica, decisión tecnológica o proyecto territorial deberá respetar la continuidad vital, cultural, ecológica y social de los cuerpos-territorios afectados.

Ninguna forma de desarrollo será legítima si produce daño grave, irreversible o no reparado sobre las condiciones de vida, salud, agua, cultura, memoria o continuidad ecológica de los cuerpos-territorios.

Artículo 2 — Del Jiwasa Real y la cooperación democrática

La democracia chilena se fundamenta en la cooperación libre, plural, laica e informada entre cuerpos-territorios diversos.

El Estado deberá promover condiciones sociales, educativas, culturales, territoriales, tecnológicas y económicas que fortalezcan la confianza pública, la deliberación democrática, la cooperación entre comunidades y el cuidado del bien común.

Ninguna organización política, religiosa, económica, digital o comunicacional podrá usar la pertenencia colectiva para promover odio, deshumanización, violencia, discriminación, manipulación masiva o destrucción de cuerpos-territorios.

The next foundation is Weichö. Each body-territory has a way of being, a creative power of world-making, its own way of feeling, learning, organizing memory, creating culture, and projecting a future. The colonial State tends to standardize these worlds: one superior language, one superior reason, one superior property regime, one superior economy, one superior city.

But a democratic Constitution must protect creative Weichö without allowing it to become capture. The freedom to create a world cannot mean the freedom to destroy another person’s world.

Artículo 3 — De la libertad creadora del Weichö

El Estado reconoce la libertad creadora de cada persona, comunidad y cuerpo-territorio para desarrollar su modo de ser, pensar, aprender, sentir, crear, convivir y proyectar futuro, siempre que dicha libertad no destruya la dignidad, la vida ni los derechos de otros cuerpos-territorios.

La educación, la cultura, la ciencia, el arte, la tecnología y la comunicación deberán proteger la autonomía crítica, la creatividad, la diversidad cultural, la memoria territorial y la capacidad de construir mundos comunes sin dominación ni captura.

Laws, rules, and norms must emerge from the biome and from the territory for those who live in that territory. This does not mean fragmenting the country into incompatible micro-laws. It means recognizing that life has local causalities.

A desert, a salt flat, a forest, a glacier, a port city, an agricultural zone, and an Indigenous territory do not respond to the same ecological rules. National law must respect the intelligence of place.

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights, in Advisory Opinion OC-32/25, requested by Chile and Colombia, reinforced the relationship between climate emergency, human rights, and State obligations, showing that climate and rights can no longer be separated.

Artículo 4 — De la normatividad bioterritorial

Las leyes, normas y políticas públicas deberán considerar las condiciones ecológicas, culturales, hídricas, climáticas, sociales e históricas de cada territorio y bioma.

El Estado deberá crear mecanismos de participación vinculante para que las comunidades que viven en un territorio participen en la elaboración de las normas que regulen su agua, suelo, energía, biodiversidad, urbanización, cultura, economía y futuro.

Ninguna norma nacional podrá autorizar la destrucción irreversible de un bioma ni anular el derecho de las comunidades territoriales a participar en decisiones que afecten su continuidad vital.

The Constitution must also be secular in a deep sense. Secularism is not war against religion. It is protection of everyone’s freedom of conscience.

The State cannot be captured by a church, market, party, digital platform, spiritual doctrine, economic group, or single ideology. Real Jiwasa is not imposed faith. It is not a salvation group. It is not a community that promises life after death while accepting the destruction of water, childhood, and dignity in the present.

A secular Constitution protects each person’s inner world against capture.

Artículo 5 — Del Estado laico y la libertad de conciencia

Chile es un Estado laico, democrático y plural. El Estado garantiza la libertad de conciencia, religión, espiritualidad, pensamiento, ciencia, expresión y no creencia.

Ninguna religión, doctrina espiritual, ideología económica, organización privada, corporación, plataforma digital o grupo de poder podrá imponer sus principios particulares como fundamento obligatorio de la ley común.

Las políticas públicas deberán fundarse en dignidad humana, evidencia, deliberación democrática, protección del cuerpo-territorio, igualdad de derechos y respeto a la diversidad.

AI enters here either as a tool of liberation or as a new colonization. If used without control, it can expand surveillance, manipulation, discrimination, data colonialism, and concentration of power.

But if it is public, auditable, explainable, and subordinated to body-territory, it can help move beyond the local optimum: translate laws into common language, simulate territorial impacts, trace ultimate beneficiaries, measure ecological harm, identify inequalities, preserve public memory, and prevent money from winning through forgetting.

The OECD has already discussed how CBDCs and digital monetary technologies need to be designed with democratic values, privacy, equity, and public trust.

Artículo 6 — De la inteligencia artificial pública y la soberanía cognitiva

El Estado deberá garantizar que la inteligencia artificial y las tecnologías emergentes sean desarrolladas y utilizadas en beneficio de la dignidad humana, la democracia, la salud mental, la educación, la justicia social, la transparencia pública y la protección de los cuerpos-territorios.

Toda IA utilizada por instituciones públicas deberá ser auditable, explicable, no discriminatoria, ambientalmente responsable y sometida a control democrático.

La ley deberá impedir que sistemas de IA, plataformas digitales o modelos algorítmicos manipulen la atención pública, concentren poder informacional, reproduzcan colonialismo de datos o sustituyan la deliberación democrática.

Informational integrity must be a constitutional principle because a Constitution cannot be born free if the people vote under manufactured fear, organized lies, bots, misinformation, opaque emotional campaigns, and algorithmic manipulation.

Recent studies on misinformation in Chile indicate that false information on social networks can spread widely in contexts such as the social uprising and the pandemic, affecting public deliberation.

A democracy does not depend only on freedom of expression; it also depends on cognitive conditions that allow expression to be understood, debated, and not captured.

Artículo 7 — De la integridad informacional de la democracia

El Estado reconoce que la democracia requiere información plural, verificable, transparente y comprensible, así como protección de la atención pública, los datos personales y la libertad de pensamiento.

La ley deberá prevenir la desinformación organizada, la manipulación algorítmica, la propaganda política opaca, el uso abusivo de datos personales y toda práctica destinada a producir miedo, odio, confusión pública o polarización artificial.

El Estado garantizará educación científica, digital, mediática y constitucional en todos los niveles, con especial atención a jóvenes, comunidades territoriales y grupos históricamente excluidos.

The economy is where the Constitution stops being a promise and becomes metabolism. Chile can export copper, lithium, energy, food, data, knowledge, green hydrogen, and environmental credits. But the constitutional question must be: does this production return as life for those who inhabit the territory?

If the territory gives water, minerals, energy, data, and future, but receives contamination, precarity, insufficient pensions, social debt, and inequality, the economy is not democratic. It is extractive.

ECLAC has insisted that Latin America faces development traps and needs productive, inclusive, and sustainable transformations. Its report on climate change and development in 2025 links climate action to overcoming these traps.

ECLAC’s international trade report also shows the region’s export dependence in a world of trade reconfiguration. In 2024, ECLAC estimated 4% growth in the value of regional goods exports, but with a 1% decline in prices, reminding us that exporting more volume does not necessarily mean capturing more territorial value.

Artículo 8 — De la economía con devolución territorial

La actividad económica deberá servir al bien común, a la dignidad humana, a la sustentabilidad ecológica y a la devolución concreta de valor a los cuerpos-territorios donde se produce.

Toda explotación de agua, minerales, energía, datos, biodiversidad, infraestructura o conocimiento deberá generar beneficios proporcionales, verificables y permanentes para las comunidades y territorios afectados.

La ley deberá establecer mecanismos de trazabilidad de beneficiarios finales, reparación ecológica, tributación justa, participación comunitaria vinculante y límites a la concentración económica que amenace la democracia.

This is where territorial carbon credits enter. Carbon markets are expanding around the world, but they can repeat colonialism if the value of forests, water, soil, and biodiversity is captured by funds, consultants, and intermediaries without direct return to communities.

The World Bank reports that carbon pricing already covers almost 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions and mobilized more than US$107 billion for public budgets in 2025. But this money will only be Real Jiwasa if it returns to living territory.

Recent research warns that Indigenous peoples are still frequently excluded from decisions about carbon markets, even though they are central guardians of biodiverse landscapes.

Artículo 9 — De los créditos de carbono territoriales y la reparación ecológica

Los créditos de carbono, biodiversidad, agua reutilizable, restauración ecológica, corredores verdes, vegetación nativa, protección de cuencas y preservación de biomas deberán beneficiar prioritariamente a las personas, comunidades, pueblos originarios, comunas y cuerpos-territorios que viven, cuidan, regeneran o sostienen dichos territorios.

La ley establecerá mecanismos transparentes, auditables y democráticos para medir, distribuir y fiscalizar estos créditos, evitando su captura por intermediarios financieros, estructuras societarias opacas, fondos especulativos o agentes que no devuelvan valor real al territorio.

Las personas naturales o jurídicas, propiedades, ciudades, industrias o actividades económicas que destruyan vegetación nativa, contaminen agua, degraden biomas, eliminen corredores ecológicos, aumenten vulnerabilidad climática o produzcan daño ambiental deberán pagar contribuciones, tasas o reparaciones proporcionales al valor ecológico y social afectado.

Water must be even more central. Without water, there is no brain, childhood, school, agriculture, city, mental health, Indigenous people, economy, or democracy.

The OECD and IDB published a 2025 report on the circular water economy in ten Latin American countries, including Chile, highlighting reduction of use, efficiency, reuse, recycling, and recovery of energy and materials from wastewater treatment.

This shows that reusable water is not a technical detail; it is a foundation of territorial sovereignty.

Artículo 10 — Del agua reutilizable y los biomas como fundamentos de la vida constitucional

El agua, los glaciares, salares, ríos, humedales, bosques, montañas, mares y ecosistemas son fundamentos vivos de la continuidad del país y deberán ser protegidos por el Estado, la sociedad y las instituciones.

El acceso al agua para la vida, la salud, la alimentación, la higiene, la cultura y la continuidad ecológica tendrá prioridad sobre cualquier uso económico.

El Estado deberá promover agua reutilizable, saneamiento, restauración de cuencas, economía circular del agua, protección de glaciares y participación vinculante de las comunidades que viven en territorios hídricamente afectados.

Now we can go further: a living Constitution must control the production of excess. The Latin American problem is not only lack of production. Often, it is excess without internal service.

Excess minerals, energy, commodities, carbon, data, food, and captured water leave the territory before returning as dignified pensions, health care, schools, sanitation, transportation, science, culture, cheap energy, and ecological restoration.

Excess without return becomes dependence on tariffs, exchanges, external buyers, certifications, exchange rates, geopolitics, and the policies of other States.

Artículo 11 — Del control democrático de la producción de exceso

La producción de excedentes estratégicos —incluyendo minerales, energía, alimentos, datos, créditos de carbono, biodiversidad, agua, conocimiento, infraestructura y recursos naturales— deberá estar sometida a control democrático, transparencia pública, límites ecológicos y devolución proporcional a los cuerpos-territorios donde se produce.

Antes de autorizar la exportación masiva o la apropiación privada de excedentes estratégicos, el Estado deberá asegurar que parte suficiente de ese valor sea destinada a servicios internos, pensiones dignas, fondos de garantía, restauración ecológica, infraestructura pública, ciencia, educación, salud, agua, energía limpia y reducción de desigualdades territoriales.

Ningún excedente nacional podrá ser considerado legítimamente productivo si aumenta la riqueza externa mientras profundiza deuda social, daño ecológico, precariedad territorial o dependencia económica del país.

Citizen DREX, or an equivalent Chilean citizen CBDC, enters as a constitutional instrument to make this return circulate. The idea is not merely to modernize payments. It is to create a public layer of retail digital money capable of paying territorial yield, pensions, guarantee funds, carbon credits, reusable water, ecological restoration, strategic local production, and essential services without depending exclusively on money created as private debt.

The IMF published a 2025 study on how retail CBDCs could improve the delivery of social safety nets, and the international debate recognizes that programmable payments can be used for public transfers, although they require careful design, privacy, and democratic governance.

This must be stated responsibly: it is not about creating money without a base. The base already exists: water, biome, labor, energy, territory, common infrastructure, public data, cooperation, preserved carbon, and strategic surpluses.

Nor is it about eliminating all bank credit or all traditional fiscal policy. It is about creating a public pathway for economic circulation that does not always begin with the debt of the body-territory.

When money is born only as debt, the future begins mortgaged. When it is born as auditable territorial return, the future begins to circulate.

Artículo 12 — Del DREX Ciudadano, la CBDC pública y la seguridad económica territorial

El Estado podrá crear, administrar y regular una moneda digital pública de varejo, denominada DREX Ciudadano u otro instrumento equivalente, destinada a garantizar circulación económica soberana, rendimiento territorial, seguridad social, inclusión financiera, pagos públicos, trazabilidad democrática y devolución de valor a los cuerpos-territorios.

La emisión, distribución o programación de dicha moneda no será considerada deuda individual cuando corresponda a devolución pública de valor generado por el territorio, el trabajo social, el bioma, el agua, la biodiversidad, la energía, la infraestructura común, los datos de interés público, la cooperación democrática o los excedentes estratégicos del país.

El Estado deberá utilizar instrumentos monetarios públicos, fiscales y tecnológicos para fortalecer pensiones, jubilaciones, fondos de garantía social, fondos laborales, protección al desempleo, cuidado, salud mental, educación, transición ecológica y desarrollo territorial.

Toda CBDC pública deberá proteger privacidad, libertad de uso legítimo, seguridad tecnológica, auditoría democrática, inclusión financiera e impedir vigilancia abusiva, discriminación, bloqueo político de recursos o captura por intermediarios privados.

Artículo 13 — De las jubilaciones, fondos de garantía y crédito sin deuda individual

Las jubilaciones, pensiones y fondos de garantía social no deberán depender exclusivamente de rentabilidad financiera privada, endeudamiento público o ciclos internacionales de mercado.

El Estado podrá complementar dichos sistemas mediante flujos públicos digitales vinculados a excedentes estratégicos, royalties, créditos de carbono territoriales, energía limpia, agua reutilizable, biodiversidad, datos de interés público, infraestructura común y productividad social.

Estos instrumentos deberán garantizar un piso de dignidad económica para personas mayores, trabajadores, comunidades territoriales, pequeñas empresas, cooperativas y sectores estratégicos, sin transformar dicha protección en deuda individual del beneficiario.

Childhood closes the causal circle. The baby is not born wanting to capture the State. The baby is born trying to express their Weichö: to create an inner world from the body, care, hunger, fear, imitation, language, affection, and territory.

But if the baby grows up in a monetarist society that rewards manipulation, fame, coldness, mastery of rules, financial capture, and absence of return, they may learn that winning means capturing.

The Constitution must protect childhood not only against physical violence, but against a culture in which intelligence becomes domination.

Artículo 14 — Del neurodesarrollo, la infancia y la formación ética de la vida común

El Estado deberá proteger el desarrollo físico, mental, emocional, cognitivo, social y ético de niños, niñas y adolescentes, garantizando condiciones de cuidado, vínculo, alimentación, salud mental, educación, cultura, juego, descanso, naturaleza y participación.

La educación deberá formar personas libres, críticas, cooperativas, creativas y responsables con la vida común, evitando modelos que premien la manipulación, la deshumanización, la violencia, la captura económica o la destrucción del territorio.

El interés superior de la niñez incluirá la protección de su cuerpo-territorio, su mundo interior, su salud cerebral y su capacidad de crear futuros compartidos.

The synthesis is this: Chile can use the Año del Cerebro to do something unprecedented. Not only to celebrate the brain as an individual organ, but to recognize the brain as a social, collective, and democratic good.

Barraza’s work helps show that cooperation has a relational and inter-brain basis. AI shows that formal Logos has already been crystallized. The Chilean constitutional crisis shows that written rights are not enough without Real Jiwasa. The climate crisis shows that the biome cannot be a passive object of law. The economic crisis shows that the production of excess without return becomes subordination. The pension crisis shows that retirement cannot depend only on financial profitability. And carbon credits show that ecological value must return to body-territory before becoming a speculative asset.

A new Chilean Constitution should not ask only:

which rights does the State grant?

It must ask:

what kind of State does life authorize to exist?

If the minimal unit of the State is body-territory, the law changes its origin. If Real Jiwasa becomes a constitutional principle, democracy stops being merely a vote count and becomes living cooperation. If Weichö is protected, each person and community can create a world without capturing the world of others. If the biome becomes a normative source, water, salt flats, glaciers, forests, and territories stop being available objects. If citizen CBDC is designed as public return, money can circulate without always being born as debt. If excess is controlled, Chilean abundance stops being subordinated export and becomes internal life.

This is the proposal: to move those responsible for constitutional texts out of the juridical-colonial local optimum and place them before science, evidence, the collective brain, territory, and biome.

Because a living Constitution is not only a text.

It is a decision about which world the Chilean people authorize to be born.

Post-2021 references compatible with the text

1. Año del Cerebro Chile 2026 — uploaded document
Compatible with the opening of the text: the brain as a social and collective good, mental health, education, creativity, democracy, and emerging technologies. It also supports the idea that caring for the brain strengthens participatory democracy.

2. Leiva-Cisterna, I.; Barraza, P.; Rodríguez, E.; Dumas, G. — “Sensory multi-brain stimulation enhances dyadic cooperative behavior” — 2025
Compatible with Real Jiwasa, cooperation, inter-brain synchrony, and the centrality of Barraza’s work. The study reports increased inter-brain synchrony and sustained cooperation in dyads.

3. Inter-American Court of Human Rights — Advisory Opinion OC-32/25 on climate emergency and human rights — 2025
Compatible with biome, climate, human rights, State obligations, and the need to reposition nature as a juridical-political foundation.

4. OECD/IDB — “The Circular Water Economy in Latin America” — 2025
Compatible with reusable water, circular water economy, sanitation, reuse, recycling, and recovery of energy/materials from wastewater in Latin America, including Chile.

5. ECLAC — “The economics of climate change in Latin America and the Caribbean, 2025” — 2025/2026
Compatible with the thesis that climate action must be linked to overcoming Latin America’s development traps.

6. ECLAC — “International Trade Outlook for Latin America and the Caribbean, 2024” — 2024
Compatible with the control of excess production, export dependence, and the need for greater regional value recovery.

7. ECLAC — 4% growth in Latin America and Caribbean goods exports in 2024 — 2024
Compatible with the distinction between exporting more and returning real value to the territory; ECLAC pointed to a 4% increase in export value, with 5% volume expansion and a 1% decline in prices.

8. World Bank — “State and Trends of Carbon Pricing 2026” — 2026
Compatible with carbon credits, carbon pricing, and mobilization of public revenue. The report states that carbon pricing covers almost 30% of global emissions and mobilized more than US$107 billion for public budgets in 2025.

9. Redvers et al. — “Carbon markets: a new form of colonialism for Indigenous Peoples?” — 2025
Compatible with the critique of carbon credit capture and the exclusion of Indigenous peoples from decisions about environmental markets.

10. IMF — “Can Central Bank Digital Currencies Improve the Delivery of Social Safety Nets?” — 2025
Compatible with the proposal for retail CBDC for social payments, pensions, guarantee funds, and social safety nets.

11. European Data Protection Supervisor — “Central Bank Digital Currency” — 2023
Compatible with programmable payments by State actors, but also with the need for caution around privacy, freedom, and democratic CBDC design.

12. OECD — “Central Bank Digital Currencies and Democratic Values” — 2023/2024
Compatible with the defense of public CBDC linked to democratic values, privacy, equitable treatment, public trust, and rights protection.