A Foundational Theoretical Framework for the Study of Psycho-Cosmocide

This paper establishes a foundational theoretical framework for understanding Psycho-Cosmocide — a concept naming the process by which the systematic disruption of the human psyche leads to the destruction of the collective, meaningful world through which peoples orient their existence. Drawing on the Lani cosmological tradition of the West Papuan highlands, the paper develops and situates four core terms: Wone, the primordial ordering principle of all existence; Psyche, the human interior architecture through which that principle is received and enacted; Psycho, the condition of disturbance and structural collapse produced in the psyche by systematic imposition of alien symbolic systems; and Cosmocide, the destruction of the ordered, relational, meaningful world that results from Psycho operating at collective scale. The paper proceeds through three integrated movements. First, it offers comparative philosophical analysis, situating Wone within a global history of analogous concepts — including the Greek Logos, Egyptian Ma'at, Chinese Dao, Hebrew Dabar, Polynesian Mana, Hindu Rita and Dharma, and Lakota Wakan Tanka — while demonstrating that Wone constitutes an irreducible and original contribution to cosmological thought. Second, it maps the civilisational trajectory from original alignment (Wonesis) through progressive distortion and collapse, identifying four phases of Psycho-Cosmocide and culminating in the Terminal Phase of digital extraction. Third, it extends Plato's allegory of the cave as a proto-analysis of Psycho-Cosmocide, arguing that the Wone framework both confirms and significantly transcends the Platonic diagnosis by grounding liberation in embodied, communal, and ecological re-alignment rather than philosophical abstraction. West Papua, as the territory from which this framework emerges, is examined throughout as a site in which Psycho-Cosmocide is enacted with particular intensity. The Lani cosmological tradition is offered not merely as a regional phenomenon but as a critical resource for diagnosing the crisis of global civilisation.