extractivism - TOWARDS LIFE-KNOWLEDGE

This paper presents a critical and systemic analysis of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, situating it within a five-century genealogy of empire grounded in coloniality, extractivism, supremacist ideologies, and ontological separation. Drawing on the symbolic framework developed by Sahana Chattopadhyay — particularly her “Hegemonic Pyramid” visualization — the article traces how empire’s logic has evolved through successive phases of conquest, development, neoliberal globalization, and surveillance capitalism. The central argument holds that Gaza is not an exception to the global system but its structural and symbolic expression. Through an interdisciplinary synthesis of political economy, decolonial theory, epistemology, and regenerative philosophy, the paper explores the collapse of meaning-making (meta-crisis), the erosion of civilizational coherence, and the rise of relational alternatives. The conclusion proposes that the task of our time is not merely resistance but regeneration: to midwife the symbolic and systemic transition toward a pluriversal, life-affirming future. The empire is ending — not by overthrow, but by ontological exhaustion — and we are called to become stewards of coherence in its aftermath.

This white paper offers a paradigm-shifting critique of the global sustainability industry through the evaluative and philosophical lens of Life-Value Onto-Axiology (LVOA). It argues that the prevailing sustainability regime, despite its aspirational rhetoric, is structurally embedded in colonial, extractive, and technocratic systems that continue to disable life capacities across ecological, cultural, and political domains.

Building on the groundbreaking analysis in Colonial Sustainability (Sayson et al., 2024) and practitioner reflections such as Bjørkskov’s We Can’t Manage Decline and Call It Justice, the paper diagnoses five domains of systemic life-incoherence — ecological, economic, cultural, technocratic, and political. It then articulates a life-coherent alternative rooted in LVOA, including principles for regenerative design, bioregional governance, communal sovereignty, and systems transformation.

This is not a reformist proposal but a life-centered civilizational pivot: from greenwashed empire to biocultural regeneration. It calls for the hospicing of dominant sustainability paradigms and the seeding of coherent futures grounded in reciprocity, responsibility, and relational repair.