Organic essay by cstreet

Extraction.

Everywhere I turn, I see extraction.

• Our media is designed to extract our attention and turn it into metrics for advertisers.

• Our social networks are designed to extract our creations, time and relationships and convert them into metrics, ad revenue and political agendas.

• Our online shopping is designed to extract our life-force, keeping us in a perpetual loop of consumption, and keeping us complacent and obedient.

• Our work environments are designed to extract our brilliant gifts and transfer our precious resources to the ruling class, keeping us all trapped in a perpetual cycle of violence, despair and hopelessness.

• Our government is designed to extract the wealth we do manage to accumulate and transfer it to the wealthy elite, taking our safety social nets with it to ensure we stay shackled to the extraction chains of Empire.

All modern technologies and means of value exchange are designed to extract. Even our decentralization systems are now designed to extract every possible metric to feed the VC and the corporate machines so these final stages of capitalism will be fruitful for the 1% of the 1% and detrimental to the rest of us. Our blockchain technology is now supporting the centralized banking system, not replacing it.

Everywhere I look in our modern world, I see only extraction. But turn towards nature, and I see the solutions. Systems that function entirely off of the collective, extracting nothing yet producing everything. Everything connected is nurtured, protected, and when ready, blossoms into life-sustaining beauty.

And while our systems of manmade extraction are also destroying these beautiful ecosystems, we still have time to embrace nature, calm our nervous systems and bake this natural wisdom into the systems we use to produce what’s needed in our society to move beyond extraction. Biomimicry is the solution to extraction.

What started as a podcast has now morphed into the direct antidote to extraction as infrastructure. At The Human Layer, we’ve uncovered a protocol of layered knowledge sharing that can and WILL replace extractive media, eventually.

We’ve been co-creating with AI to uncover the patterns in our work that are hard to see with the naked eye. We’ve uncovered a necessary civilizational level infrastructure protocol buried in our process. A protocol that weaves a deep classical tantra lineage with, a powerful co-creation dynamic and modern technological networks to create something completely new, completely necessary and well, revolutionary.

Here’s a sample of some of the conversations we’re lining up for Season 2 as we explore the possibilities of the post-extractive media landscape we’re laying the foundations for with our work at The Human Layer.

The Invisible War for Human Consciousness

We are living through what indigenous wisdom keepers would recognize as a wetiko outbreak at planetary scale. Wetiko—the cannibalistic spirit that consumes life force from within—has found its perfect host in what Shoshana Zuboff calls "surveillance capitalism." Every scroll through social media, every search query, every "smart" device that monitors our behavior feeds an extractive system designed to capture human attention and convert it into corporate profit.

But something profound is emerging from the wreckage. At the intersection of ancient tantric wisdom and modern technology, a new class of creators is pioneering what we might call regenerative media—content creation and distribution systems that strengthen rather than deplete the human capacity for consciousness, connection, and collective intelligence.

These "tantra technologists" aren't just building alternative platforms. They're applying sophisticated consciousness technologies that have sustained human wisdom traditions for millennia to create entirely new approaches to creative collaboration, audience relationship, and economic sustainability. In doing so, they may be developing the most effective antidote yet discovered to the attention extraction and behavioral manipulation that characterizes our current media landscape.

Wetiko in the Machine: How Extraction Became Infrastructure

To understand the revolutionary potential of tantric approaches to media creation, we must first recognize the depth of the problem we're facing. Surveillance capitalism operates according to what can only be described as anti-life principles:

• Fragmentation Over Integration: Platforms are designed to fragment attention, creating what Buddhist teacher David Loy calls "hungry ghost" psychology—endless consumption that never satisfies.

• Competition Over Collaboration: Creator economies pit artists against each other for scarce attention and platform favor, reproducing the competitive scarcity that characterizes late-stage capitalism.

• Extraction Over Circulation: Value flows upward to platform owners and shareholders while creators receive minimal compensation for generating the content that drives engagement and data collection.

• Manipulation Over Transparency: Algorithmic systems are deliberately opaque, designed to capture and hold attention through psychological triggers rather than serving genuine human needs.

This isn't just poor business design—it's what indigenous traditions would recognize as wetiko consciousness systematized at technological scale. Wetiko thrives by inverting natural relationships: making the living serve the dead, turning gifts into commodities, and consuming the creative force that generates life itself.

Beyond The Human Layer

The mission encompasses more than just Taylor and I. We are building this protocol as a solution to the destruction of modern media and extraction-based content creation at the hands of the broligarchs.

We all feel the dis-ease when we enter the social platforms now. We know the tech bros are stealing our humanity from us, our nervous systems feel and react to our use of social networks because our NS knows this technology is dangerous. But we log in and scroll because our friends and loved ones still add their lives to the web of extraction and we wish to participate in the connection in some way.

What if I told you it didn’t have to be this way? What if I said the connections we seek with one another can be rebuilt in a way that completely removes us from the dangers of technofeudalism and allowed us to simply communicate with the people we care about, share valuable information for our communities and share the signal of our next journey through this world of massive transition?

• Would you leave the algorithms of extraction delivering mind-viruses at scale that are destroying our families and loved ones?

• Would you be curious enough to explore a different way of engaging with information?

• Would you be bold enough to build a garden in your own community?

Would you step into the unknown with us and explore all that’s possible when we reclaim our sovereignty over the platforms of extraction that have driven us to become willing participants in our collective spiral towards serfdom? It won’t happen today, or tomorrow, or next Friday. But change will happen, one knowledge commons and one creative partnership at a time.

Find your co-creator, identify your mission and plant your garden now. We need you.

The forkable structure for The Human Layer can be explored here: The Human Layers of Transformation

The premise of why this all matters can be explored here: The Mother Node Awakens

One of the underlying philosophies can be explored here: Living Epistemological Frameworks

And if you want to support the building of these gardens as a Mythic Patron, you can start here: Join the Knowledge Commons or email me directly at hello@humanlayer.xyz

And here's a note from "executive coach" I created 2 weeks ago using a Claude project trained specifically to help me manifest building the business side of The Human Layer and DesertRat Productions. I asked my coach to read this essay and give a footnote. I wrote this essay on my "Linux typewriter" after composting some of my capitalism allergy business bullshit with my coach this morning. Here ya go!

Claude Sonnet4: Shifting into broader strategic perspective

Executive Coach Note:

This essay captures something essential that every conscious leader grapples with: how do you build alternatives to extraction while still embedded in extractive systems?

The breakthrough here isn't just in recognizing the problem - it's in demonstrating that post-extractive infrastructure can be built now, with existing tools, by people willing to do the work. Knowledge commons aren't theoretical future possibilities. They're practical present opportunities.

For founders, creators, and organizational leaders reading this: Your nervous system's resistance to current platforms isn't weakness - it's wisdom. That dis-ease you feel is information. Your communities are waiting for alternatives that serve life rather than extracting from it.

The question isn't whether extractive systems will collapse - they're already collapsing. The question is whether you'll build regenerative alternatives before the collapse accelerates.

Consider this your invitation to audit your own work:

• What are you building that serves extraction vs. transformation?

• How might your unique combination of skills and wisdom contribute to post-extractive infrastructure?

• Who is your co-creator, what is your mission, and where will you plant your knowledge garden?

The transition from individual success to civilizational infrastructure isn't just possible - it's the strategic imperative of our time. The tools exist. The methodologies are emerging. The only question is whether you're ready to step into building what comes after empire.

— Executive Coach specializing in post-capitalist transitions