What If Democracy Began with Life, Before It Began with Rules?
What If Democracy Began with Life, Before It Began with Rules?
You feel the heat through your clothes. You look for water. You notice the shade available along the street. Who decided the conditions of that territory? And what if the vote that elected someone could also end their mandate when they no longer represented the collective?
BrainLatam Special Series | 8th Symposium on Neuroscience and Cognition at UFABC — 2026
THE HEAT DOES NOT WAIT FOR THE NEXT ELECTION
Imagine walking down a street on a very hot afternoon.
The asphalt radiates heat. The shade ends at the corner. You feel thirsty.
Perhaps you find drinking water.
Perhaps you do not.
Your organism adjusts circulation, sweating, and behavior in response to these conditions.
But that street also has a political history.
Someone decided where trees, sidewalks, buildings, and water supply networks would be located.
Perhaps you never participated in those decisions.
Nevertheless, their consequences reach your body.
If rules organize our existence, why does the possibility of changing them remain so distant from those who must live with them?
This question accompanies the 8th Symposium on Neuroscience and Cognition at the Federal University of ABC (UFABC), scheduled for November 16–19, 2026, under the theme “The Brain in Context: Contemporary Challenges in Interdisciplinary Neuroscience.”
THE BODY FEELS THE CONSEQUENCES OF RULES
Temperature mobilizes physiological responses.
Thirst participates in fluid regulation.
Discomfort can change attention and movement.
Allostasis helps investigate how organisms adjust their conditions in response to present and anticipated demands.
But physiological mechanisms alone do not determine which public decisions should be adopted.
At BrainLatam, we propose understanding each Body-Territory (Corpo-Território) as an indivisible unit of existence, sensitivity, and participation in the world.
This original formulation invites us to investigate how territorial decisions modify concrete possibilities for living.
In 2025, Luiza Sobhie Muñoz, Denise Duarte, and Rohinton Emmanuel demonstrated relationships between heat risk, housing conditions, and socioeconomic inequality in São Paulo.
Two inhabitants may share the same municipality without experiencing the same conditions of existence.
WATER ALSO PARTICIPATES IN DEMOCRACY
Imagine turning on a faucet.
Water flows because rivers, reservoirs, pipelines, energy, maintenance, and institutional decisions have made it possible.
According to UNESCO, approximately 2.2 billion people lacked access to safely managed drinking water in 2022.
Inequality in water access involves infrastructure, resources, and governance.
But who participates in setting priorities?
Who decides where investments should be made first?
Who can challenge a decision that compromises a community's water supply?
Territory is not merely the place where rules are applied. It is where we experience their consequences.
This relationship between existence and decision-making is our starting point for discussing Real Democracy.
WHEN RULES COME FROM OUTSIDE
Imagine a community receiving a rule established by representatives distant from its everyday experiences.
Perhaps the decision has legitimate foundations.
Perhaps it protects rights that extend beyond local interests.
But perhaps it was developed without listening to those who understand the territory's needs.
In BrainLatam's proposal for Real Democracy (Democracia Real), inhabitants should participate continuously in creating, evaluating, and transforming collective conditions.
This does not require abandoning elections, fundamental rights, or representative institutions.
It requires asking how much effective power remains available after voting.
A public hearing without access to information or opportunities to influence decisions may provide participation that is merely formal.
Democracy weakens when those who live with the consequences cannot participate in transforming the rules.
WHAT IF LEADERSHIP WERE NOT A PERMANENT POSITION?
Imagine a flood.
One resident knows the routes along which water usually advances.
An engineer understands structural risks.
A healthcare professional recognizes urgent needs.
Who should lead?
Perhaps different people, depending on the moment and the problem.
In 2022, Gómez-Nava, Bon, and Peruani observed small flocks of sheep in which leader and follower roles alternated during episodes of collective movement.
The study does not demonstrate how human institutions should function.
But it inspires another question:
Why should the capacity to coordinate remain concentrated in the same person when the collective's conditions change?
At BrainLatam, we propose contextual leadership organized around specific issues and Biomes.
THE ELECTED REPRESENTATIVE DOES NOT HAVE TO LEAD EVERYTHING
Imagine a community choosing someone to serve an elected term.
In the proposed Jiwasa-State (Estado-Jiwasa), the elected representative would not necessarily direct every activity.
Their responsibilities would include recognizing, signaling, and facilitating leadership transitions.
For water management, one person may be best positioned to coordinate.
For education, another.
During an emergency, someone previously overlooked may possess the decisive understanding.
Position, experience, knowledge, skills, and needs would contribute to these choices.
The elected representative would remain accountable for the legal duties of their office.
But they should encourage the circulation of information and responsibilities.
Leadership would become a temporary function responding to a need, not the permanent property of whoever exercises it.
AND WHEN SOMEONE CLINGS TO POWER?
Imagine a temporary leader beginning to prevent other people from participating.
They concentrate information.
They resist replacement.
They confuse the responsibility entrusted to them with a right to remain indefinitely.
Under BrainLatam's proposal, the elected representative would be responsible for ensuring that leadership transitions remain possible.
But this responsibility could not become authorization for arbitrary removal.
Replacements would need to respect legal authority, public criteria, oversight, and the right to challenge decisions.
The image of the “make-believe chiefs”, used in earlier BrainLatam reflections, helps formulate a question: does leadership exist to serve the collective or to make itself indispensable?
The expression is a metaphor, not a universal description of Indigenous political organizations.
A leader may be necessary without needing to become irreplaceable.
WHO REPLACES THE ELECTED REPRESENTATIVE?
Now imagine that the elected representative begins preventing leadership transitions.
They control information, protect allies, and obstruct emerging leaders.
Who can replace them?
In BrainLatam's proposal for Real Democracy, the answer remains with the citizens.
Voters already participated in the original choice.
But their support would not need to become irrevocable until the next election.
We propose investigating a secret ballot that voters can individually cancel.
The mandate would also depend on the continued validity of the electoral support originally received.
This differs from calling a new recall election.
The original vote itself would remain cancelable by the person who cast it.
THE VOTE WOULD REMAIN ALIVE
Imagine a representative elected with a certain number of votes.
During the mandate, some voters withdraw their support.
In a cancelable-vote system, they could individually cancel their votes while preserving ballot secrecy.
The amount of remaining valid support would be updated according to publicly established rules.
If it fell below a legally defined threshold, the mandate would end through an established institutional succession procedure.
The model would require answers to difficult questions.
How should the threshold be defined?
How should proportional representation, electoral alliances, and substitute representatives be handled?
How could coercive cancellations be prevented?
How could administrative stability and minority rights be protected?
The possibility of canceling a vote would be a proposal for democratic accountability, not an automatic guarantee of better government.
COULD THIS REDUCE POLITICAL PATRONAGE?
Within political institutions, patronage and transactional politics may involve exchanging political support for appointments, resources, or benefits.
Concentrating such negotiations can distance decisions from voters' needs.
Under BrainLatam's hypothesis, making mandates dependent on still-valid votes could change these incentives.
An agreement among representatives would not, by itself, guarantee continued popular support.
However, the system could also generate new risks: permanent pressure campaigns, information manipulation, and instability.
We therefore cannot claim that cancelable voting would eliminate political patronage.
We can investigate whether particular rules would reduce opportunities for political capture without undermining rights and effective governance.
The question is how to prevent parliamentary support from entirely replacing accountability to citizens.
COULD PERSONAL AI PARTICIPATE?
Imagine accessing public information about a representative and understanding the legal conditions for canceling your vote.
In BrainLatam's proposal, Personal AI (IA Personalíssima) could facilitate this access.
In the future, it could also direct citizens to an official electoral application, including at physical locations designed to support privacy and accessibility.
But the AI should not know the voter's choice, decide whether to cancel it, or control the counting process.
These functions would require independent electoral infrastructure, cryptographic security, auditing, and protection against coercion.
Physical location alone does not guarantee secrecy.
The system would also need to prevent cancellation from retrospectively revealing the original vote.
Democratic technology must not transform the freedom to withdraw support into an instrument of political surveillance.
WHAT DOES BRAZIL'S CONSTITUTION ALLOW TODAY?
The Brazilian Constitution establishes direct and secret voting, plebiscites, referendums, and popular legislative initiatives.
It also defines specific circumstances under which parliamentary mandates may be lost.
There is currently no general constitutional mechanism allowing voters to cancel their original votes individually and thereby automatically terminate an elected mandate.
Implementing this proposal would require constitutional amendments, specific legislation, and assessment of electoral feasibility.
The experience of Porto Alegre also provides a warning.
Ivan Daniel Müller and Luciano Fedozzi demonstrated that Participatory Budgeting lost some of its democratizing characteristics over time.
No mechanism remains democratic merely because it was created with that purpose.
Its operating conditions must be continuously evaluated.
JIWASA: POWER DOES NOT BELONG TO THOSE WHO EXERCISE IT
At BrainLatam, we use Jiwasa to propose shared agency without eliminating the uniqueness of participants.
The collective can recognize different leaders.
The elected representative can facilitate transitions between them.
And citizens could retain legitimate instruments for withdrawing support from the elected representative.
These three functions do not need to belong to the same person.
The Jiwasa-State, like Citizen Drex (Drex Cidadão) and Biome Income (Rendimento Bioma), remains an original proposal requiring institutional, legal, and economic investigation.
Its inspiration does not turn biological phenomena into political laws.
Neuroscience helps investigate organisms and coordination.
Democracy also requires rights, deliberation, and institutions.
WHEN LIFE PARTICIPATES IN THE RULES AGAIN
Return to the hot street.
Notice the available shade.
Look for water.
Recognize the people experiencing different conditions within the same territory.
Now imagine institutions capable of listening to these experiences and transforming decisions.
Leaders would emerge according to needs and abilities.
The elected representative would facilitate their transition.
And voters would retain the possibility of ending that representative's mandate through legitimate procedures.
It would not be a society without conflict.
It would be a proposal for investigating how to prevent power from becoming permanent property.
If life continues changing after an election, why should the conditions for democratic participation remain frozen until the next one?
Jiwasa: the possibility of Being many without anyone having to cease Being.
About This Series
This article is part of a special series by BrainLatam, a sponsor of the 8th Symposium on Neuroscience and Cognition at the Federal University of ABC (UFABC), scheduled for November 16–19, 2026, in São Bernardo do Campo, Brazil.
The article connects research on complex systems, environmental conditions, collective organization, and democratic participation.
Real Democracy, Jiwasa-State, Body-Territory, cancelable voting, Personal AI, Citizen Drex, and Biome Income are original proposals developed by BrainLatam. They are not positions attributed to the symposium's researchers or organizers.
Official event website: https://www.even3.com.br/viii-simposio-em-neurociencia-e-cognicao-da-universidade-federal-do-abc-761401/
References — A Second Reading of the Article
1. The heat experienced by city residents also depends on urban inequalities and housing conditions.
Muñoz, L. S.; Duarte, D. H. S.; Emmanuel, R. (2025). Heat risk in the city of São Paulo: Interactions between SUHI and social inequality. Urban Climate, 63, 102568.
This Brazilian study examines relationships between thermal risk, income, housing conditions, and environmental characteristics in São Paulo.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.uclim.2025.102568
2. Water availability depends on decisions involving infrastructure, distribution, cooperation, and governance.
UNESCO/UN-Water (2024). The United Nations World Water Development Report 2024: Water for Prosperity and Peace.
The report connects water security, inequality, prosperity, and opportunities for cooperation between territories.
https://www.unesco.org/en/reports/wwdr/2024
3. Leadership roles can alternate during collective movement rather than remaining permanently assigned to the same individual.
Gómez-Nava, L.; Bon, R.; Peruani, F. (2022). Intermittent collective motion in sheep results from alternating the role of leader and follower. Nature Physics, 18, 1494–1501.
The study demonstrates the alternation of temporary leadership roles in small sheep flocks. Applying this observation to human democratic institutions is an analogy, not an experimental conclusion.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-022-01769-8
4. Real Democracy can be formulated as a proposal for leadership transitions according to specific issues and territorial needs.
Cionek, J. (2025). Jiwasa e Sistemas Complexos: liderança orgânica por pautas e biomas [Jiwasa and Complex Systems: Organic Leadership by Issues and Biomes]. BrainLatam.
The essay proposes temporary, contextual leadership, rotation mechanisms, and the reassessment of collective responsibilities.
5. Elected leadership can also be evaluated by its contribution to the emergence of other leaders.
Cionek, J. (2026). O Estado não precisava ter sido assim [The State Did Not Have to Be This Way]. BrainLatam.
The article develops the proposal that representatives should share knowledge, facilitate participation, and expand the conditions for their own succession.
https://www.brainlatam.com/blog/o-estado-nao-precisava-ter-sido-assim-8760
6. Functional collectives can inspire investigations into distributed leadership, cooperation, and the rotation of responsibilities.
Cionek, J. (2025). Democracia Real em Coletivos Funcionais [Real Democracy in Functional Collectives]. BrainLatam.
The essay develops a proposal for contextual leadership in sports teams, without constituting scientific validation of an institutional model.
https://brainlatam.com/blog/democracia-real-em-coletivos-funcionais-6026
7. Private interests can capture public decisions and distance them from the collective interest.
OECD (2017). Preventing Policy Capture: Integrity in Public Decision Making. OECD Public Governance Reviews.
The report discusses disproportionate influence over public decisions and measures for integrity, transparency, and accountability.
https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264065239-en
8. Democratic participation depends on maintaining the institutional conditions that enable people to influence decisions.
Müller, I. D.; Fedozzi, L. (2024). Democratização e desdemocratização na metrópole de Porto Alegre: três décadas do Orçamento Participativo [Democratization and De-democratization in Metropolitan Porto Alegre: Three Decades of Participatory Budgeting]. Opinião Pública, 30, e30113.
The UFRGS researchers investigate the history of Participatory Budgeting and identify processes through which democratizing characteristics were weakened.
https://doi.org/10.1590/1807-0191202430113
9. Brazil's Constitution establishes mechanisms of popular sovereignty and grounds for loss of office, but does not provide for individual cancellation of the original vote as a general recall mechanism.
Brazil (1988, text in force in 2026). Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil, particularly Articles 14 and 55.
The Constitution provides the legal starting point for analyzing the amendments that would be necessary to introduce a cancelable-vote system.
https://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/constituicao/constituicao.htm
10. Studying the brain in context can involve interdisciplinary research without turning neurobiological evidence into political prescriptions.
UFABC (2026). 8th Symposium on Neuroscience and Cognition — The Brain in Context: Contemporary Challenges in Interdisciplinary Neuroscience.
The symposium connects different approaches to investigating the brain, organisms, behavior, and environments. The political proposals presented here are independent of its scientific program.
Scientific, legal, and conceptual note: Body-Territory, Real Democracy, Jiwasa-State, Jiwasa, Personal AI, cancelable secret voting, Citizen Drex, and Biome Income are conceptual proposals developed by BrainLatam. Research on collective animal behavior, environmental inequality, and participatory institutions does not directly validate this political model. Implementing cancelable voting would require constitutional changes, thresholds for continued electoral support, ballot secrecy protections, safeguards against coercion, independent auditing, and legitimate succession procedures. Its effectiveness against political patronage remains an institutional hypothesis to be investigated.
BRAINLATAM · W45/2026 · BLOG 09 · ENGLISH EDITION
