When Money Breathes with the Earth – Decolonial Neuroscience

“Money is the ATP of society.” — Jackson Cionek

Money as ATP: The Living Energy of the Economy

The human body maintains its vitality through ATP (adenosine triphosphate) —
the energy molecule that fuels every cell.
Likewise, a living society needs circulating energy —
a social equivalent of ATP.

Money, when freed from speculation and unbounded interest,
acts exactly like that: social energy
that sustains the vital processes of the collective body.

ATP in the body is never hoarded — it is constantly produced and consumed.
The same should occur with money:
when it circulates, society renews itself;
when it is concentrated, the economic body collapses energetically.

mTOR: The Switch of Economic Metabolism

In biology, the mTOR complex (mammalian Target of Rapamycin)
regulates whether the cell is in a growth mode (mTOR on)
or a repair and recycling mode (mTOR off).

When mTOR is on, we use immediate energy —
we grow, produce, and multiply.
When mTOR is off, the body recycles its reserves,
using stored fats to generate new energy.

This alternation is essential for homeostasis —
without it, the body suffers from overstimulation and exhaustion.

The same principle applies to economies:
a system permanently in “growth mode” (mTOR always on)
generates inflation, scarcity, and ecological collapse.
But when collective mTOR off phases emerge,
the community reorganizes its metabolism —
reuses resources, reduces waste,
and burns “stored fat” — idle capital — as renewed social energy.

This metabolic balance is the natural antidote to inflation:
the financial fat accumulated by the few returns
to nourish the social body.

DREX Citizen: Social ATP and Economic Homeostasis

The DREX Citizen system is designed as the ATP of a living economy.
Its goal is not to enrich a few but to sustain a constant vital flow.
Each daily credit acts as a molecule of civic energy —
a pulse of trust circulating between individuals,
local enterprises, and the ecosystem.

Just as ATP is generated by mitochondria in response to oxygen,
the DREX is generated by social oxygen — belonging.
The more cooperative a community becomes,
the more efficient its economic metabolism.

When applied locally, DREX activates a form of sustainable metabolism:

• exchanges become shorter and more direct (less energy loss),
  
  

• goods circulate within the territory,
  
  

• and inflation naturally decreases through local self-sufficiency.
  
  

Metabolic Economy and the Planetary Brain

The Earth itself functions as a body —
with electric networks (lightning, magnetism),
respiratory systems (forests and oceans),
and metabolic circuits (carbon, nitrogen, and solar energy cycles).

When money imitates this metabolism,
economy ceases to be a machine of extraction
and becomes a planetary nervous system.

Healthy value circulation depends on balanced social synapses,
just as ATP depends on neural integrity.
If dopamine is the messenger of motivation,
DREX is the messenger of belonging.

Decolonial Neuroscience of the Economy

Colonial thinking taught us accumulation, not metabolism.
Decolonial Neuroscience teaches the opposite:
to use consciousness to restore the natural flow of energy.

Just as the cell alternates between mTOR on (doing) and mTOR off (reorganizing),
societies must oscillate between growth and reflection,
production and regeneration.

Money, then, returns to its biological and ethical purpose —
to facilitate exchange and nourish life,
not to hijack time, affection, and the planet.

When the Economy Breathes with the Earth

A living economy is one where value is born from life itself.
When money circulates like ATP,
the Earth and society enter a homeostatic resonance.

The DREX Citizen becomes the pacemaker of this synchronicity,
maintaining equilibrium between abundance and rest,
creativity and sustainability,
individual and community.

Inflation, in this view, is not a lack of resources —
but a loss of belonging.
A society that breathes in tune with its metabolism
does not need to grow endlessly to live —
it simply lives to continue growing.

References (Post-2020)

• Damasio, A. (2021). Feeling & Knowing: Making Minds Conscious.
  
  

• Northoff, G. (2022). Mind-Brain Synchrony and the Social Self.
  
  

• Friston, K. (2022). The Free Energy Principle and the Social Brain.
  
  

• Graeber, D., & Wengrow, D. (2021). The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity.
  
  

• Pereira Jr., A. (2021). Triple-Aspect Monism and the Unity of Mind and Body.
  
  

• Benard, L. et al. (2023). mTOR Signaling and Cellular Homeostasis: Energy, Growth, and Autophagy. Nature Metabolism.
  
  

Final Synthesis

Money is the social ATP.
DREX is its mitochondrion.
Community is the body.
And Earth is the brain that breathes through us all.