When people ask me what I do, I respond that I'm dismantling capitalism.
Not an easy task, not something I'm doing alone, not a goal I'll see realised in my lifetime (probably… who knows, collapse is escalating quickly).
An endeavour that many of us pursue while living within the very same systems we're trying to change.
Dreaming of different ways of leading and living while getting entangled with business as usual again and again.
Because these systems aren't just out there in extractive business models, unequal societies, or the concentration of financial wealth.
They also run through our veins in the shape of productivity obsession, competitive individualism, and measuring success purely by output and accumulation.
This is the angle I'm devoted to when I say I'm dismantling capitalism: diving deep into the toxic patterns that years of capitalist conditioning and normalised extractive behaviour have left in our minds and bodies.
Where to start doing this work?
Taxing the rich is a great economic repair tool in my opinion, but we won't unleash true systemic change if we don't go to the very root: colonialism.
If you were thinking that colonialism is just a thing of the past, that why do we have to keep talking about this, that it's better to focus efforts on the urgent aspects of climate, economic, and societal crisis rather than reopening wounds of slave trades, Indigenous genocides, stolen land… think again.
Capitalism and colonialism go hand in hand.
Colonialism created, through institutional violence, the conditions for a global extractive system that led to the concentration of wealth, power inequality, destruction of ecosystems, extraction of knowledge and resources, and exploitation of bodies.
These aren't dynamics we've left behind, but patterns we've perpetuated until today, widely present in modern governments, businesses, and communities. Especially for people who have been raised in cultures in the Global North like me, these patterns are ingrained at such a deep level in ourselves that many times we don't even realise they are there, let alone what their root is.
So how are we going to nurture those better worlds we envision if we don't do the arduous, uncomfortable work of decolonisation?
As Laura Storm puts it in her recent blog post on Regenerators: “We will never succeed building thriving, life-affirming regenerative societies unless we are willing to look deeply into the systems, structures, and behavioural patterns that got us to where we are in the first place.”
I feel so blessed that I started this work 3 years ago when I joined the Regenerative Leadership Journey.
And so frustrated that it started just 3 years ago.
Lucky me, I get to continue my practice of decolonisation with the Regenerators community, both as an alumna and co-holding space in the year-long Journey.
If you're thinking about joining, prepare yourself for a powerful first two months when we put this theme at the centre so it continues being at the core of the full year.
Image: The guerrilla artwork I left on a couple of cars as I was coming back home from the supermarket. Berlin, 2025
Originally published on Substack (January 13, 2026): https://juditsaez.substack.com/p/dismantling-capitalism-starting-with