The Island of 1000: How Paper Hijacked the State
The Island of 1000: How Paper Hijacked the State
What if we started from zero — and still ended up with the same problem?
Imagine 1000 people on an island. There is no money, no bank, no formal government. Only people, territory, water, food, need, and the will to live.
At first, exchange is direct: fish for fruit, labor for shelter, care for food. Everything happens within territory, with reference to body, time, and life.
Then a simple idea appears: create a system to make exchange easier.
A large piece of cardboard is cut.
It is divided into pieces.
Each person receives some papers.
Now people can buy and sell with paper instead of direct barter. The system works. Exchange becomes easier. Value begins to circulate.
To sustain collective life, the group agrees:
for every five papers circulating, one is reserved for education, health, safety, and common organization.
So far, everything makes sense.
Money — the paper — is born as a tool to facilitate collective life.
The Breaking Point
The problem is not the cardboard.
Nor the paper.
Nor the idea of organizing exchange.
The problem begins when a silent difference appears:
who cuts the paper,
who defines how many pieces exist,
who decides the rules of circulation.
Those people begin to hold a different kind of power.
At first, this may seem functional. Someone needs to organize the system. But over time, those who control the paper begin to control something larger:
access to life,
the rhythm of exchange,
who can participate,
who is excluded.
Paper stops being a medium.
It becomes power.
When the System Begins to Serve Itself
Over time, those who control paper can create more paper, restrict paper, lend paper, charge interest, define complex rules, and punish those who cannot follow them.
Slowly, collective life reorganizes itself not around life, but around the system of papers.
What was a tool becomes structure.
What was a means becomes an end.
The collective begins to be captured.
The Hijacking of the State
On the island, this would still be visible. People would know who cuts the cardboard.
In modern society, however, this became extremely complex.
Karl Polanyi showed that modern economies separated themselves from social life by transforming land, labor, and money into fictitious commodities. The system began to operate by its own rules, often disconnected from territory and human needs.
Today, those who define monetary policy, fiscal rules, credit, financial flows, and access to resources do not necessarily respond directly to the social body.
This is what we can call, in the island metaphor:
the hijacking of the State by the system of papers.
It is not necessarily a conspiracy.
It is structural.
The rules become so complex, so technical, and so distant from everyday life that most people can no longer participate consciously.
Formal democracy may still exist.
But the material basis of power — the paper — is no longer under the control of Jiwasa.
From Paper to Pixel
If the island’s problem was cardboard, today’s problem is even more abstract.
Paper became pixel.
Digital money allows massive creation, global circulation, complete abstraction from territory, and extreme leverage.
Now, those who control the system do not control only papers.
They control codes, algorithms, and invisible flows.
The hijacking becomes deeper because it is less visible, more technical, and more distant from the body.
The Rupture with Territory
Arturo Escobar and Rogério Haesbaert show that territory is the basis of existence. Territory is not only land or administration; it is life, belonging, memory, and world-making.
But the system of papers — and now pixels — began to operate outside this logic.
Money no longer needs territory.
Territory becomes dependent on money.
This inversion breaks Body-Territory, weakens APUS, distances us from Pachamama, and wounds Jiwasa.
The Effect on the Body
When the paper system controls life, the body enters defense. Insecurity increases. Competition intensifies. Belonging weakens.
This pushes society toward Zone 3.
The body stops feeling territory as a space of life and begins to feel the system as a space of survival.
The Loss of dEUS
When the system becomes dominant, something deeper happens:
the Tensional Selves stop composing and begin competing permanently.
What could become dEUS — the composition of the selves in relation with the whole — fragments.
Belonging stops being lived and becomes conditioned by access to the system.
False Democracy
The island reveals something essential:
rules are not democracy;
voting does not guarantee belonging;
formal participation does not guarantee real power.
If control over paper is concentrated, democracy becomes limited.
True democracy does not arise only from elections.
It arises from the collective capacity to participate in the material basis of life:
where money is born,
how it circulates,
who defines its rules.
A Path Out
The island metaphor is not only a critique. It points toward a path.
If the problem is who controls the paper, the solution is to redefine the origin and distribution of value.
This is where DREX Citizen appears as a structural answer.
Instead of money being born only inside the system, it can be born in the citizen.
On the island, this would mean each person receives paper directly, control does not remain concentrated, and the flow begins from the collective.
This does not eliminate rules.
But it changes the starting point.
Jiwasa as Real Democracy
In this reading, true democracy is not only institutional.
It is bodily and territorial.
It happens when the body feels belonging, the territory sustains life, and the collective participates in the economic base.
This is Jiwasa.
Not as ideology, but as lived experience.
Conclusion
The island story shows something simple and profound:
the problem was never paper.
The problem was who came to control paper.
And more than that:
the problem began when paper stopped serving life
and started organizing life.
Today, we live in an expanded version of that island.
But we also have something the island did not have:
technology to reorganize the system,
awareness of the problem,
and the capacity for shared agency.
Perhaps the most important question is not:
“Who governs?”
But:
“Who controls the origin of value?”
Because it is there — in that invisible cut of the cardboard —
that real power begins.
And it is there that change can begin.
References
POLANYI, Karl. The Great Transformation. Beacon Press, 2001 [1944].
Explains how the economy became separated from social life and began operating through autonomous market rules.
ESCOBAR, Arturo. Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible. Duke University Press, 2021.
Frames territory as ontology and the basis of multiple ways of living.
HAESBAERT, Rogério. “From Body-Territory to Territory-Body (of the Earth): Decolonial Contributions.” GEOgraphia, 2020.
Develops territory as a condition of existence and belonging.
DAMASIO, Antonio. Feeling & Knowing: Making Minds Conscious. Pantheon Books, 2021.
Shows how consciousness and decision-making depend on bodily regulation.
DE FELICE, Silvia et al. “Relational Neuroscience: Insights from Hyperscanning Research.” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 2025.
Integrates brain, body, and social interaction.
GRASSO-CLADERA, Aitana et al. “Embodied Hyperscanning for Studying Social Interaction.” Social Neuroscience, 2024.
Supports the study of collective interaction through simultaneous brain and body measures.
La Isla de los 1000: cómo el papel secuestró al Estado
The Island of 1000: How Paper Hijacked the State
A Ilha dos 1000: como o papel sequestrou o Estado
DREX Ciudadano: el dinero como metabolismo del territorio
DREX Citizen: Money as the Metabolism of Territory
REX Cidadão: dinheiro como metabolismo do território
Del Grano al Píxel: cuando el dinero pierde el cuerpo
From Grain to Pixel: when money loses the body
Do Grão ao Pixel: quando o dinheiro perde o corpo
Zona 2: pertenencia real como estado corporal
Zone 2: Real Belonging as a Bodily State
Zona 2: pertencimento real como estado corporal
Devoción Verdadera: cuando pertenecer genera deseo de retribuir
True Devotion: when belonging creates the desire to give back
Devoção Verdadeira: quando pertencer gera vontade de retribuir
dEUS: cuando los eus dejan de competir y comienzan a componer
dEUS: when the selves stop competing and begin to compose
dEUS: quando os eus deixam de competir e passam a compor
Territorio-Cuerpo de la Tierra: Pachamama como cuerpo vivo
Territory–Body of the Earth: Pachamama as a living body
Território-Corpo da Terra: Pachamama como corpo vivo
Jiwasa Herido: cuando el cuerpo no consigue confiar en el colectivo
Wounded Jiwasa: when the body cannot trust the collective
Jiwasa Ferido: quando o corpo não consegue confiar no coletivo
Jiwasa: cuando el territorio se convierte en “nosotros”
Jiwasa: when territory becomes “we”
Jiwasa: quando o território vira “a gente”
El APUS Descuartizado: cuando la tierra se convierte en papel
The Dismembered APUS: when land becomes paper
O APUS Esquartejado: quando a terra vira papel
APUS: el cuerpo más allá de la piel
APUS: The Body Beyond the Skin
Cuerpo-Territorio: cuando dejamos de habitar el cuerpo y comenzamos a pertenecer al mundo
Body-Territory: When We Stop Living in the Body and Begin Belonging to the World
Corpo-Território: quando a gente para de morar no corpo e passa a pertencer ao mundo
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