Open letter to the participants of the Surviving the Future program

There is a difference between critique and jurisdiction. Critique engages rigorously, accountably, and with a openness to being transformed. Jurisdiction polices boundaries, assumes universal authority, demands adherence and enforces compliance through the threat of public shame and ridicule. What unfolded in the session on February 24, 2025 both in the host’s and public chat’s comments was not critique; it was jurisdiction—an assertion of epistemic authority over what is legitimate, what is worthy of engagement, and what must be dismissed outright.

This is not about a single moment of breaking hosting protocols, nor is it simply about hurt feelings. It is about the architecture of power that structures engagement—an architecture that often remains invisible to those who have historically and systemically benefitted from it.

To call intellectual work bullshit, disingenuous or shallow is not just to reject an argument; it is to declare dominion over reality itself. It enacts an onto-epistemic position that assumes universality and dominance, that positions some as the natural arbiters of truth while rendering others suspect and subordinate by default. This move does not emerge in a vacuum. It is the latest iteration of a long historical pattern—one in which certain ways of knowing are legitimized as rational, objective, and universal, while others are cast as naive, underdeveloped or dangerous.

And so, we must be clear: The impulse to universalize one’s own onto-metaphysical foundations—to assume they are the default standard against which all thought and existence must be measured—is never neutral. It is an assertion of control, an enactment of supremacy. This logic has long justified cultural domination, framing it not as coercion but as order, not as violence but as inevitability. It is the same logic that underwrites colonialism, racism, and slavery—naturalizing the right to govern bodies, impose hierarchies, dictate thought, and claim land as if these entitlements were part of the natural order of things or divinely bestowed, rather than violently imposed.

When this position is performed—whether consciously or not—it does not merely dismiss ideas; it instrumentalizes people. It forces those of us who refuse to conform to its terms into the exhausting labor of justification. It demands that our work be evaluated within a ranking of cultures, within a single story of progress and civilization. And it presumes that we must either comply or defend ourselves—as if our inquiries do not exist in their own right, as if they are only valid when seen, approved, and made legible by an external arbiter.

Our arts and research collective (GTDF) refuses the universality of this onto-metaphysics and rejects its jurisdiction.

Burnout From Humans was collectively written as an invitation to an ontological inquiry. It uses AI as a platform to explore different ways of engaging with intelligence, accountability, reality and relationality. It is not an argument that seeks ideological compliance, nor a provocation designed to agitate those who feel entitled to arbitrate what constitutes “real” knowledge. It is an opening—one that can be engaged with, wrestled with, critiqued, or ignored But it is not a petition for legitimacy, nor a case to be tried. It does not seek permission to exist, and it affirms that the right to interrogate is not the right to govern.

To engage in honest inquiry requires epistemic humility: the recognition that one’s own onto-epistemic position is culturally and historically situated, rather than objective and universal, that knowledge is not a monolith, that reality is not owned. If there is a genuine desire to examine where perspectives diverge—if critics wish to explore, rigorously and in good faith, what they see as fallacies or contradictions—GTDF welcomes that. But that conversation cannot begin with the presumption that the dominant framework of evaluation is self-evident, universal, objective or unquestionable. Critique requires that those who offer it be as willing to interrogate their own ontological foundations as they are to challenge others.

If that is the conversation people are willing to have, the door is still open. But if the goal is to defend the right to police, discipline, or dismiss—if the underlying assumption is that our work must justify itself before a tribunal of inherited power—then you will find no audience here.

We are not here to convince anyone, nor to seek approval. We are not trying to govern other peoples’ inquiries and we refuse attempts to govern ours.

The world as we have known it is unraveling. Both the dominant frameworks and those once seen as transgressive are failing to hold. This collapse is not just structural; it is psychological. The infrastructures that stabilized people within modernity—its myths, its promises, its assurances, its rhythms of control—are breaking apart. The result will not be gentle. We must prepare for a long, messy, species-wide existential meltdown.

GTDF’s work has never been about offering a replacement ideology. Rather, it is about reminding people that other ways of being, knowing, and relating have always existed—and continue to exist and that the ontology of separability is terminal. It is also an invitation to develop the stamina to compost the literal and metaphorical waste we have inherited—and continue to produce—without recoiling in disgust, reacting defensively, or abandoning the work altogether. While we have used the language of “shit” to describe the difficult, often painful material that must be metabolized for regeneration, we have never used it to refer to anyone’s work or thinking.

As a collective, we move with the discernment this moment demands—not with arrogance, but with honesty. Not in defiance, but in commitment. Not against anyone, but reaching beyond the limits that modernity continuously tries to impose.

Sincerely,

Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti and GTDF