S YS TE MI C S Y MBIOTI C P LANETARY

ECOV ILLAG E NE TWORK

Systemic Symbiotic Planetary Ecovillage Network

P O Box 1674
Middletown, CA
95461-1674
USA

silverj6@mchsi.com

Silver J. H. Jones

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 TABLE OF CONTE NTS

The concept of living trusts

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Trust in natures co!ective wisdom
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Trust in extending the systemic and symbiotic paradigm
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The living trust is a stored information repository
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The legal role of trusts
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Ecovi!ages beyond the gravity we!
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 CHAP TE R X
Intentional Living Land Trusts

Silver J. H. Jones
2008

Copyright © 2002 by Silver (J. H.) Jones. All rights, electronic, multimedia, and print, reserved. A publi-
cation SSPEN - Systemic Symbiotic Planetary Ecovillage Network.
Life in our universe is a living trust, granted to us by a higher form of universe design level intelligence.
It would seem that it is possible to create universes without life. However, this is not the nature of the
universe we inhabit. Our universe preexists our arrival as evolving intelligent life forms, by many billions
of years of previous preparation. We are the receivers of a gift - the potential to attain universal aware-
ness. This potential is granted to us as a trust, on behalf of a more advanced level of universal design in-
telligence. How we exercise this enormous responsibility defines our being and our history in this uni-
verse. Currently we are not acting as good trustees. We are abusing our planetary ecosystem at a very
alarming rate. We have damaged a large percentage of the plankton in our worlds oceans, and a large por-
tion of the coral reefs, so important to sustaining almost all forms of larger sea life in the worlds oceans.
We have damaged a large portion of the vital rainforests, that control so much of our weather stability, and
sustain the largest populations of species on our planet. We have depleted the protective ozone in our at-
mosphere, which protects life from damaging ultraviolet light. We have polluted a considerable portion of
the oceans, the land based fresh water, and the soil of our planet with toxic waste.
Is there an alternative to this continuing violation of the trust that has been gifted to us? We think there is,
and we shall attempt to provide you with an alternative perspective on our evolution, the perspective of
long-term survivability and universe ascension.

The concept of living trusts

Just how do we go about becoming better trustees of the 5 billion year experiment we refer to as earth?
The concept of a living trust should be very important to ecovillage networks in a number of different
ways:

• When evolving intelligent life forms enter into this universe, they enter into a universe and a planetary
ecowomb that has already been provided to us by a level of intelligence surpassing our own. We are
presented with these amazing holographic environments that support and sustain our lives, evolution,

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 and ascension - as a living trust. Universe design level intelligence presents this to us ready made in the
form of a living trust in our ability to appreciate and preserve the enormous work that has preceded our
arrival in the universe.

• Ecovillages are an effort to bring forth this reality, into the full awareness it deserves, while being frus-
trated by a civilization that has shown a marked degree of unawareness of this reality. Planets and their
vast ecological historical developments were not provided for the purpose of short-term plunder. The
previous and ongoing destruction of our ecowomb, by ruthless corporations driven almost exclusively
by profit motives, is a sure path to planetary suicide. It is the purpose of ecovillages to reverse this trend
- without preventing innovation and technological progress. We must continue to grow and advance, but
we must accomplish this in a manner that does not destroy the very systemic and symbiotic systems that
makes our continuing evolution possible. We must be responsible citizens of the universe, and we must
preserve and improve this life support system gifted to us by design level intelligence.

• Another reason that we must preserve our ecosystem network, is because it is a vast repository of intel-
ligence that we can learn from.

• And finally, because we have been presented with this living trust by universe design level intelligence,
it is our duty to pass this living trust to the next generation on our home planet as a viable and improved
ecological, biological, social, cultural, and economic system.

In the following sections we shall attempted to convince you that our planetary ecosystem is a living trust,
and that we have the responsibility to preserve and improve it to the best of our ability.

Trust in natures collective wisdom

Unfortunately our governments, corporations, economic institutions, and a large part of our citizenry have
not yet awoken to the reality that our planet is a living trust, what would seem a self-evident fact. It is the
purpose of ecovillage networks to awaken the true nature of this reality in the larger society, first at the
local level, and then spreading outward, eventually sweeping around the circumference of our troubled
planet. By no means should this effort be misconstrued as an effort to prevent progress, and to retreat
from the challenges that lie ahead of us. We can not solve our problems by looking in the rear view mir-
ror. We must continue to advance into the information age, with nanotechnology, with bioengineering,
and with all forms of advanced computation (DNA computers, vastly distributed computational grids, bio-
molecular computation, and quantum computers). However we must proceed with a great deal of respect
and caution, and not allow ourselves to rationalize the destruction of our planet by short-term objectives.
Nature has mastered its objectives over billions of years of experimentation, and when we think we can
improve on natures efforts we must proceed with due caution. We must test in restricted environments,
and test, and retest, again and again, under every possible scenario, before we unleash our inventions into
the larger environment.

Trust in extending the systemic and symbiotic paradigm

Ecovillages should be the cutting edge for such research, they should attempt to attract the greatest den-
sity of PhDs per square acre of land anywhere on the planet. They should encourage the most advanced
forms of ongoing and continuous education, and support these efforts with the most advanced light optical
fiber nodes in the larger information network. Networking should be the mantra of ecovillage life, the
near-instant-access to all forms of information should be a primary objective. They should serve as exam-
ples for the larger society, of the benefits of systemic and symbiotic living - in contrast to the competitive
environment in the larger ecologically unenlightened society at large. They are the proving grounds for

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demonstrating the superiority of systemic and symbiotic win/win approaches to life and evolution, over
the old and outmoded competitive win/lose scenarios. As the network of ecovillages grows and expands,
both physically and virtually through cyberspace, the superiority of this model will have more and more
wins in the larger environment, and eventually the unenlightened will either come around through an
awareness of the proven success of this paradigm, or be forced to join the cause because they are no
longer competitive in a cooperative world. A competitive world is a world always divided, half of the
players must always be losing or disadvantaged. It is like a tug-of-war, in which half of the participants
are exerting all of their energy, in a effort to make sure that the other side does not succeed. Just for a
moment try to envision a world in which everyone is pulling in the same direction all at once. The
tremendous gain in efficiency that would take place, the lack of duplication of resources, materials, and
effort would lead to enormous increases in efficiency, and reduction in waste of materials and effort.
Some people believe that a world without competition would produce no innovation or creativity. Yet
most of our most important theoretical and applied advances in technology come out of university re-
search departments, which are much more sheltered from the immediate demands of competition and
profit. A typical corporation, in the current environment, must deal, on a day to day basis, with short-term
objectives, if they wish to preserve their stock price on a quarterly basis. There are many incentives in the
competitive business environment to shun long-term research in return for a quicker payoff from shor-
term research. This is why few really fundamental advances are produced by corporations. Instead they
are produced by university research labs, where the environment is more conducive to the sharing of in-
formation, collaboration, and a focus on deeper levels of inquiry, which can only be achieved within a
environment which nurtures a long-term perspective.
Corporations for the most part are ‘quantification magnifiers,’ they take the deeper long-term fundamental
advances produced at universities and research labs and exploit them on a much broader and larger scale
in their competitive environments. Yet most corporations themselves, are unwilling to provide the envi-
ronments necessary to produce this long-term research. By no means is this short term perspective fun-
damentally inherent in the nature of incorporation. If corporations chose to provide an atmosphere similar
to academic institutions, they could foster similar long-term research advances. This would require a
change is in their current competitive mind-sets, and it would require a similar change in the mind-sets of
the venture capital and investment banking community who’s current obsession with short-term profits
supersedes better judgement. We have nothing against profits, but true profits, when seen from the long-
term perspective, are advances which preserve the life support environment which support these corpora-
tions. Shortsighted, premature, and trivial exploitations of natural non-renewable and renewable resources
are self-defeating, and self-destructive in the long run. It is the purpose of ecovillages to reverse this cur-
rent trend, and to provide a proving ground for the greater viability of the systemic, symbiotic, and long-
term perspective.
The awareness of this living trust must be exhibited not only at the local level by exemplary individual
and community actions, it must be extended into the larger web of society by networking. As ecovillages
grow, flourish, reproduce, and network around the globe, they will create an enormous body of people
spanning all the continents and oceans of the world. By no means should these people view themselves as
‘drop outs.’ Their collective voting, purchasing, government representation, and investing power will be a
force to be reckoned with. If these communities network their collective information, media presence,
voting power, investments, and resources, they will magnify their potential power to influence world wide
decisions to a considerable degree. How do you think corporations have been spreading their influences
across the globe? By networking they have become multinational, an in so doing, they have increase their
power, their influence, and their ability to shape and control worldwide decisions in a manner that bene-
fits their organizations. While they claim to cherish competition on the surface level of discourse, they are
doing everything possible to reduce the true competition among themselves for their own direct benefit.
Ecovillages must compete in the world arena, by extending their influence though the media, the govern-
ment, the investment community, and the multinational corporations by beating them at their own game.
They can form their own collective banks, and control what types of economic proposals are funded by
their banks. They can compete with the world media, by presenting their own media broadcasts. They can
even invent their own versions of stock markets, where true investment in the future can take place with-
out assisting the destruction of our environment. Companies which wish to be traded on these new stock

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exchanges, must agree to maximum recycling and utilize non-destructive industrial practices. In return
they can be assured that their funding will not be subject to the ravages of naked short selling, and short-
term hedge fund market manipulations, swing traders, day traders, and all other forms of parasitic short-
term investing. Parasitic short term trading cares little about the overall effects of such activity on the
long-term sustainability of our civilization. Ecovillages can start their own corporations, and eventually
network them into multinational webs of sane constructive investments, sane organic agriculture, and
sane long-term nondestructive industrial development.

The living trust is a stored information repository

With our recent theoretical advances in physics and chemistry, we are now on the threshold of the nano-
technology age. The nanotechnology age represents the second industrial revolution. The second indus-
trial revolution differs from the first, by virtue of the fact that we will no longer build objects at the
macro-level, by forging, machining, bolting, and welding parts and components together. In the age of
nanotechnology, we will build objects at atomic and molecular levels. The first industrial revolution was
based upon a top-down model, and the second industrial revolution will be based upon a bottom-up
model. Instead of machining objects, we will grow them in a manner much more akin to biology. In fact
much of the most advanced work in nanotechnology that is now underway, is looking to biology as a gen-
eral guide into how to go about developing nanotechnology. This approach is sometimes referred to as
biomimetics, and it consists of efforts to either copy biological approaches to solving construction prob-
lems at the atomic and molecular level, or at least to learn from the success of biology, and to modify such
approaches to our intended purposes where ever possible. Every planetary society, if it is going to achieve
long-term sustainable living, must become close to 100 percent recycling in a manner similar to biology,
which has already achieved this objective. Our current industrial processes are very crude in comparison,
and although we have just begun to realize the need for recycling, any hopes of achieving close to 100
percent recycling will only come with the full blossoming of nanotechnology. If you can assemble objects
atom by atom or molecule by molecule, you can also disassemble these objects back to the original
atomic or molecular level, which would constitute 100 percent recycling.

The legal role of trusts

Once ecovillages are established, the land holdings, structures, and resources of these ecovillages must be
preserved and secured for future generations. This can be accomplished by establishing ecovillages as
some kind of trusts. We are by no means legal experts, and this is a subject that must be approached at the
level of existing law, and in some cases it may require the adoption of new laws. We can simply state that
the current generation that lives, survives, and thrives in their ecovillages, must take measures to make
sure that their land and resources will not be exploited by future generations of developers who might still
choose to rezone and exploit the land. Each generation must do everything possible to preserve the efforts
of the founder generation which established the ecovillage. One would hope that as more and more land
trusts are established and eventually joined into a common cause, the world will come to see their inher-
ent value.
Trusts are legal documents which are registered in the state or nation in which they function. They can be
set up as either for profit, or with a non-profit status, or you can set up some form of combination of both
statuses. A combination of a nonprofit trust, an LLC, or corporation will allow ecovillage communities to
both preserve the land, and set up profit oriented businesses. The basic ingredients of a trust are:
• A written legal document referred to as the trust document or trust deed.

• The trust document should clearly state the intended purpose of the trust.

• The trust must provide guidance on the purpose of the trust, and who the intended beneficiaries of the
trust are to be.

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• The trust document should clearly state the scope of the types of financial interactions that the trust can
enter into.

• The trust document should clearly state the circumscribed powers of the trustees authority.

• The trust should address which kinds of profits, income, investment, and indebtedness are allowed in
the trust, and how income is to be distributed to the intended beneficiaries during the lifetime of the
trust, and upon its termination if it has a limited life expectancy, how the collective assets will be dis-
tributed.

• The trust should include a trust will.

• The trust should include a statement about the duration of the trust, if it has a finite duration. However
in the case of intentional community land trusts, one would not want the trust have a limited duration.

• The trust should include statements about the trustee or trustees administrative responsibilities.

• The trust should give some description of governance, and the voting privileges of shareholders and
community members.

Trusts are a well established, efficient, and useful legal tools which can be utilized to establish and protect
ecovillage communities both in the present, and in the future. Development and property trusts can be set
up with a great deal of flexibility.
A property trust is generally set up to purchase real estate with the intent of improving and developing the
land. The trust allows a number of investors to pool their money for development purposes. If a profit
motive is involved - the trust wishes to rent, lease, or sell the property for a profit after completing the
improvements. Non-profit motives can also be provided for in a trust. A trust can purchase land for the
purpose of preventing development, and for the purpose of preserving it for wilderness area. A trust can
also be set up to develop land in an eco-friendly manner, and then to preserve this development for future
generations. Trusts are very flexible mechanisms and they can be set up to accomplish any number of ob-
jectives. Once the ecovillage has been completely developed by its residents, the trust can continue to
serve the residents in an ecovillage in a conservatory capacity, protecting the project from future attempts
by outsiders to alter it intent and purpose.
Trusts can also offer tax advantages, depending upon their purpose, if they are structured properly. Prop-
erty trusts designed for long-term projects which extend beyond 10 years, are not subject to taxes on the
increased value of the property.
We as the indigenous people of our lands must turn to land trusts, because the evidence is now over-
whelming that we can not depend on governments and the current financial system to solve problems
which effect us all like top soil erosion, the decline of our forests, the pollution of surface, ground, and
sea water, the depletion of our ozone, and the increase of carbon build up in our atmosphere. The existing
governments and economies of the world exist to serve the incumbent power structure no matter which
type of front organization it promotes - socialism, communism, democracy, republic, royalty, etc. In the
end we must face the unpleasant fact, that it is up to us to take back the power we gave away. We must
take back the land, rehabilitate it, and in the process rehabilitate our educational systems, our economies,
and our institutions of government. However, we have absolutely no hope at all of accomplishing this, if
we do not control the population growth of our own species. Nothing invites exploitation like overpopula-
tion, it is like a magnet for aggressive Darwinian exploiters. Making life overabundant not only has dev-
astating effects on our bounded planetary ecosystems, but it invites exploitation by the more fortunate
wealthy minority. If we want to have any chance of a fair and equitable global social and economic sys-
tem, we must voluntarily reduce and stabilize our population at long-term sustainable levels of popula-
tion.

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Trusts can be designed to protect and develop earth resources as symbiotic natural ecosystems working in
harmony with advanced technology in an otherwise adversarial political and economic system.

Ecovillages beyond the gravity well

There is absolutely no reason why ecovillages should be limited to the earths gravity well. Space colonies
(of the Gerard O’Neill type) in L5 or geosynchronous orbits, would provide excellent ecovillages, they
should be built around all the same principles of environmental preservation in concert with well thought
out and tested technological innovation. Colonies from less than a mile in diameter to 15 miles are possi-
ble with current technological principles and materials. Colonies up to a hundred miles in diameter may
be possible with the additional strength provided by nanotechnology materials and construction tech-
niques. These colonies would provide complete ecological systems, with agriculture, lakes, running water,
and natural solar illumination from the sun. They would be capable of supporting considerable popula-
tions of humans, and would provide an excellent jumping off point into the larger solar system and be-
yond. The ecovillage network does not stop at the edge of the earths gravity well. Some earth based eco-
villages can serve as staging and training areas for those preparing to depart into space colonies. A vital
and long-term sustainable earth ecosystem is not the final goal, it is just the beginning. It is the prerequi-
site to advancing to the higher-levels of universe experience. Contact with other stellar systems that sup-
port life, will extend the ecovillage network to a network of stellar long-term survivable civilizations. We
are in preschool now, and we are attempting to gain the respect, and possibly the help of more advanced
civilizations, but these civilizations will expect us to have at least made a serious effort at attempting to
establish a long-term survivable civilization on our home world, before they will take us seriously. Will
we be invited into the larger network of transstellar civilizations? The choice is ours, but the hour is late,
and we have little time to self-correct the current destruction of our ecosystem.

We would very much like to extend the legal issues presented here, If anyone has expertise in this area of
land trusts, ecology, and intentional commlunity, and would be willing to help further develop this sec-
tion, their input would be greatly appreciated. Please contact us.

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