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 ultimate game and the road to convergence

4
How is convergence manifested?
7
Why assume that ecovi!ages wi! converge?
9
Coevolution resource sharing in the convergence
10
The role of themes and context
10
The survival of coevolution in a competitive world
11
Life viewed as information processing
12
References
15

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 CHAP T ER II
Convergent Systemic Teleology

Silver J. H. Jones
2008

Copyright © 2002 by Silver (J. H.) Jones. All rights, electronic, multimedia, and print, reserved. A publi-
cation of SSPEN - Systemic Symbiotic Planetary Ecovillage Network.
For more than a century the secular western industrialized nations of our planet have been dominated by
the Darwinian paradigm of evolution. The original work of Darwin applied specifically to biology, but his
observations of nature have been extended into an entire ‘world view’ of all of reality. Darwin’s view of
nature is one of a cold ruthless machine. Individual organisms are involuntarily atomized into lives of in-
dependent struggle for survival. The systemic, symbiotic, and convergent principles also found in biology
assume subordinate roles in this world view. The ‘survival of the fittest’ theme of Darwinian evolution is
now the predominate theme which structures our society, our economy, our transnational corporations,
and our equity markets.
Fortunately as we approached the turn of the century new research in artificial life, emergence, self-
organization, evolutionary computation, and dynamical networks began to reveal a new view of biology
and its relationship to man’s own cocreative technological efforts. This view differs considerably from
Darwin’s original observations. The following statement by Sole, Cancho, Montoya, and Valverde encap-
sulates this new perspective [1]:
“The heterogeneous character of most complex biological networks reveals a surprising example of con-
vergence. In evolution theory, convergence refers (within the ecological context) to the observation that
organisms living in similar habitats resemble each other in outward appearance. These similar looking
organisms may, however, have quite different evolutionary origins. Convergent evolution takes place at
very different levels, from organisms to molecules, and here we propose the idea that a new type of con-
vergent evolutionary dynamics might be at work underlying a very wide class of both natural and artifi-
cial systems.”
The horrific persecution inflicted by the Catholic Church on those involved in scientific discovery during
a large portion the past millennium, has left long lasting scars on the scientific community. We see this
manifested in the scientific community’s unwillingness to embrace any form of teleology, no matter how
far removed from the original religious views of the Catholic Church.
We believe that a new enlightened form of convergence and teleology will have a very important role to
play in the science of the new millennium. The new forms of convergence and teleology will be led by the
scientific community, once the scientific community is able to throw off the collective resentment it has

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harbored towards the religious community for all these years. For a number of centuries science has
shunned and criticized the teleology offered by theology. The level of status that science has achieved has
allowed it to replaced religion as the ‘world model’ of reality. With this elevated status comes great re-
sponsibility. It is now time for science to be more than a critic. Criticism is much easier than offering an
alternative paradigm in which a truly scientific teleology is fully explicated to replace the earlier and im-
mature theological teleology. We can already see the broadest outline of this new teleology. The new tele-
ology will be multicausal as opposed to monocausal, and it will include a much larger number of degrees
of freedom for individual intelligent life forms to act as cocreators of the universe. The challenge has
been issued! Our survival as evolving intelligent life forms is undoubtedly at stake. Will the sciences step
up to the plate and deliver, or will they continue to hide behind a cloak, differentiating themselves from
theology by abstaining from participating in the greatest of all quests. At least theologians had the cour-
age to attempt this quest. Their only fault was not recognizing and accepting the value of the new tools
that science was able to bring to this effort. True science can not be content to step back from this chal-
lenge, sit on the sideline, criticizing the efforts of others, and offer no improved or more comprehensive
alternative explanation, if science is truly the ultimate form of the pursuit of knowledge. The continuing
need for theological explanations, demonstrates the vacuum left at the core of our current shadow of a
true comprehensive science.

We feel that this type of paradigm shift is essential if we are to go on as a people to craft a long-term sus-
tainable civilization, and we shall here attempt to discuss some of the profound changes we think can take
place in our society by adopting this new ‘scientific teleology’ world view.
For a brief moment in time let us remove our consciousness from our daily planetary existence, and place
ourselves out into the vast dimensions of intergalactic space. Having done this, let us look back upon the
day to day process of life on our native planet. What is life? Let us look at life from the perspective of a
systemic game, and then ask ourselves what is the goal of this game? We must ask ourselves, can one win
at this game, and how can we know when we have truly won? Answering these questions is not an easy
task, because life is a complex game structure with many levels of internalized super-embedded sub-
games. Separating the sub-games from the ultimate game, is the ultimate challenge of our lives in this
universe. All life throughout the universe is united by the challenge to answer these questions.

The ultimate game and the road to convergence

The ultimate game is universal and unites us all, no matter what galaxy, what star, what planet, what
continent, what nation, what ethnic group, or what cultural and political system we find ourselves sus-
pended within. The goal or teleology of the universal and the ultimate game is universal awareness,
and this is attained through the process of universe ascension. This process is both systemic and con-
vergent. It is systemic because we all need each other to get there, because the process is just to immense
for any of us to achieve it on our own. It is convergent because although we may start from very different
circumstances, in the end, our different paths must converge upon the same universal attractor basin in
the form of universal awareness. The subordinate sub-games often tend to separate us, and to make us
think our goals and our objectives are different. I am a conservative. You are a liberal. I am wealthy. You
are poor. Becoming trapped in the sub-games is the ultimate illusion, and this has been addressed in the
original intent of all the great spiritual teaching in our world. Separation atomizes us and makes us think
that we are all going in different directions, when in fact there is but one direction with many paths con-
verging towards it - the omega point of universal awareness. Societies which are not founded upon and
sustained by such a vision, are illusory and temporary. If our societies do not provide this sense of sys-
temic interconnectivity and convergence toward the same objectives, they are not serving us well, and
they will inevitably become extinct. Although it may be difficult to see it at our current stage of develop-
ment, biology, life, and consciousness are a systemic and convergent process within the universe. Con-
sciousness is the process by which the universe becomes aware of itself, and in this process we also
cocreate the universe. A higher level of consciousness provided this universal arena for us, and made this
arena capable of supporting evolving conscious life forms. As life grows and advances, the enormity of
the nature of the game we are suspended within, begins to gradually sink in. The sub-games, once thought

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to be so important in defining ourselves, fall by the wayside. What once seemed so important, now seems
so trivial, self-involved, and unworthy of our attention. We now see that we are all on the same team. If
we are all on the same team, there can be no winners and losers. The only true victory is the one in
which we are all victorious!
The era of competition, with it’s continual emotional highs and lows, illusory victories and defeats, the
historical trail of victims and carnage, and the enormous waste of energy and resources given over to
these pursuits, now seems like a dark age, and we wonder how we ever found value in it.

Competition does not disappear from the universe, but now it is focused on a more constructive and a
more convergent teleology - the convergent ascension of all life in the universe. We are no longer com-
peting as divided teams. We are competing as one team united in competition with the universe itself. This
is the real challenge before us! This holographic arena we refer to as the universe, will continue to chal-
lenge us to extend the breadth and depth of our understanding of the universes scope and purpose. It will
challenge us to move ever deeper into the methods of its construction and dynamics, and beckon us ever
further from our point of origin into the vast reaches of its creation. If it were not for the progression of
time, which spreads out the demands and challenges placed upon us by this pre-existent and continually
evolving reality, we would surely be overwhelmed. The graduated and asymptotic nature of this ascension
through time is absolutely inevitable - when there exists such a vast differential of intelligence between
evolving life forms and universe design intelligence.
For the first time we see clearly what the true work is, and we experience the unsurpassed joy of knowing
that we are not alone in this immense undertaking. This enormous symbiotic team to which we belong
may be spread across the entire universe, but because we now realize that we are all united, we know we
shall not be defeated and that victory is assured. Nothing can stop us now that we know we are one! Yes
much work remains, and the challenges are enormous, but victory is now assured, because our energies
are no longer divided and set one against the other. This negentropic and united network of growing
awareness cannot be thwarted. It will take time for us to assimilate and process the vast explication of
intelligence we witness all around us. We are now like a massive symphony spreading across the uni-
verse. The spiritual fire of cocreation has begun, and each and every one of us is a musician in this
orchestra of enlightenment.
The reality of systemic convergence in our universe is not limited to evolving intelligent life forms, like
ourselves, it also involves the convergence of both universe design level intelligence and evolving intelli-
gence, because the overall process in one of co-convergence. Design level intelligence needs us because
we are the most exquisite form of feedback sensors ever developed. Our every thought, emotion, and ac-
tion individually and collectively informs universe design level intelligence about every aspect of the
qualitative details of universe creation and evolution. In a self-similar universe any particular life explica-
tion event can have a finite beginning. All evolving intelligence has a finite beginning, but through the
process of universe ascension it attains an infinite progression. Life which is created for the first time
within a universe, eventually goes on to create universes in a never ending process of ascension. We begin
life as a product of simulation/creation, and we progress to the stage of being the simulators/creators. This
is very different from the older universal design paradigms, in which a monocausal God is thought to be
an absolute source of authority and law. In our multicausal, self-similar, and self-organizing universe life
begins with finite consciousness, but it progresses by the process of ascension to co-creatorship, and
eventually to full creatorship. In this wide open, unbounded, multicausal, systemic, and self-organizing
multiverse, we are all both students and teachers at every level of existence. The father creates the son;
the son learns from the father; the father learns from the son. The son goes on to become a father who
procreates yet another son. The cycle never returns to its starting place. Each new turn of the helix creates
a new self-similar cycle, a cycle that is similar yet unique. Potentials become explicated. New theory is
followed by simulation, which is then followed by experimentation, which is followed by realization,
which is followed by a return to a new level of theory followed by a new level of revelation. Teleology is
not a static one time objective, it is a dynamical multi-attractor process which constantly supersedes it
own previous objectives!

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Space-time is the arena in which this process of continual revelation unfolds. The arena in which impli-
cate potentials unfold into explicate realities, as one cosmic generation reveals its intelligence to a new
cosmic generation. Just as we require time to assimilate the vast intelligence stored and dynamically dis-
tributed in this universe, we will some day require time to distribute our intelligence to the evolving life
forms of our own creation, in some future universe of our own creation and evolution. The graduated
sense of self esteem we acquire in the process of our victories in coinvention/cocreation is what provides
us with the courage, the knowledge, the skills, and the humility needed to eventually attempt universe
creation.
If we are all both students and teachers in the process of life ascension, then the essence of the ‘concept
of God’ must arise from the vast differential that we experience between ourselves and the source of the
enormous stored and distributed intelligence we are learning from. As we attempt to reverse engineer the
universe, we cannot escape the enormous sense of preparation that went into creating the conditions that
are necessary for our existence. Existing religious institutions should in no manner look upon this per-
spective as some form of demoting of God. Nothing could be further from our intended purpose! We be-
lieve that this paradigm strengthens, rather than weakens, not only the believability of God, but also the
viability, and the attainability of God. We have a saying here on earth, that you cannot truly appreciate a
person until you have stood in his shoes, and walked down his path. How better to know the true meaning
of Godhood than to become a creator. What other experience could possibly equal the value of this expe-
rience for creating true reverence? We will probably attain our greatest reverence for what we refer to as
God, not at the end of our attainment of the omega point of our own evolution in this universe, but
rather upon the creation of our own universe. There for the first time we will truly begin to understand
the enormous preparation, simulation, courage, responsibility, love, and patience that are required in
the act of Godhood.

What does convergent systemic teleology have to do with planetary microsocieties or ecovillages? We
shall attempt to address this question in the following discussion.
In a world where so much of what controls our lives seems so removed from us, and where so much about
our lives is determined in distant multinational corporate boardrooms, or in unrepresentative government
institutions so removed from the people they represent, a return to something more intimate, more local,
and less fragmented, seems very appealing and appropriate. What we need are scaled down societies, mi-
crosocieties or ecovillages, where you can actually reach out physically, emotionally, intellectually, and
spiritually to touch your neighbor again.
Planetary ecowombs are the incubators of evolving life in our universe. These ecowombs occur at, and
represent, a very significant turning point in the evolution of the universe. A universe must first begin
with the process of explicating a potential implicate order into a holomatrix movement which carries the
information the universe wishes to explicate, thereby making it available to new life forms. New life
forms are both the product of this holomatrix movement, and a large portion of the purpose of its exis-
tence. Life suspended within a universe with nothing to experience would be absurd. The vast hierarchy
of the holomatrix movement spans a large range of physical dimensions from very large universe struc-
tures starting with textures, then moving down to supercluster complexes, and then to individual super-
clusters, to rich clusters of galaxies, to galaxy groups, to individual galaxies, to stellar clusters, to stellar
groups, and then eventually down to individual solar systems and planets. Many of the stars created in
these systems will have planets capable of supporting life. Without these stars we would not exist. Bil-
lions of years of universe evolution go into the eventual arrival in the universe arena of planetary systems
capable of supporting life. These planets provide the early proving grounds for early molecular self-
organization, and the eventual non-virtual holograms we refer to as biological organisms. The finite teleo-
logical objective of this process is the arrival of mobile and intelligent evolving life forms capable of
comprehending the vast universe into which they have been born. With the arrival of such planets the uni-
verse reaches its nadir, and the process of intelligent ascension can begin. The universe is now capable of
becoming aware of itself. From this point forward the process of ascension will sweep all life toward the
final teleological universal attractor, which we refer to as the omega point of universe evolution.

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Life forms are not born in isolation. They are born into communities with different levels of sophistica-
tion, and these levels must be evolved over billions of years of evolution. Community is a fundamental
and intrinsic aspect of existence for these life forms. Many millions of years of lower levels of community
pre-exist the arrival of the human life form. Biology is a convergent systemic process of order building
upon pre-established order. It is an emergent process which involves not only some degree of design, but
also a large degree of emergence. In this emergence the universe bootstraps itself into existence as it se-
lects alternative pathways through the much larger phase and configuration spaces of all possible combi-
nations and permutations. We are the partial teleological product of this emergent process. We are beings
that are capable of being more than a spectators in this universe. We are the means by which the universe
becomes aware of itself, and in the process, we inevitably embed our essence within the universe holo-
movement as we increasingly take on the role of cocreators of the universe. Millions of organism experi-
ments preceded the eventual arrival of our current earth species. Our cognitive system is the most ad-
vanced to date on our planet, and is perhaps the first system capable of comprehending the larger uni-
verse. We know this from our ability to reverse engineer the universe, from our ability to reverse engineer
biological and genetic structures, and from our ability to reconstruct the process of evolution. We now
have a general outline of how we got here, but when it comes to understanding why we are here - we
move into a much more theoretical process. In the fullness of time we shall have our questions answered,
but for now we must learn to optimize our effectiveness while working with only a incomplete state of
knowledge. The universe is a vast experiment, and it is inconceivable that we can absorb all of the infor-
mation the universe already has stored and is currently distributing to us through its infrastructure in a
brief period of time. It also seems rash to assume that our current organisms would be sufficient to com-
prehend all of the ascending levels of experience necessary to comprehend an entire universe. What we
are able to discern, even at this very early stage of our evolution, is that the whole process seems to show
signs of convergence toward some ultimate objective. We should not shy away from this teleological chal-
lenge, we should embrace it, for it involves our ultimate emergent and cocreation destiny. In a certain
sense we will become that which we envision. No individual, group, system, or universe design level in-
telligence will alone determine our destiny. It is a systemic, symbiotic, and at least a partially self-
organizing process in which all participants contribute. We seem to be converging towards some form of
universal attractor basin of yet unknown origin. We do not yet know the final phase pathways that will be
chosen at each point in this vast universal process. What we can discern is that the process seems to be
convergent upon such an attractor. When we willingly participate in this process of convergence, our lives
have meaning and purpose. When we hinder this process, our lives diverge from their intended purpose to
the extent that we obscure and prevent the fulfillment of this purpose. We do not have the power to pre-
vent the final convergence. We do have the power to delay the evolution of this process and progression
in some small way, by positioning ourselves in such a manner that we are not in harmony with the overall
purpose of the universe. If we continue to make non-convergent decisions on a continual basis, we may
lose our relevance within the universe by self exclusion. Graduation to higher levels of experience is
never denied, except by our own self chosen exclusion. Relative free will allows us to exclude ourselves
from the future history of the universe if we so choose. We must remember that we are the only one’s
capable of denying ourselves graduation to the higher levels of experience.

How is convergence manifested?

As we mentioned in our previous discussion, we see convergence throughout the biological history of our
planet. Convergence does not end with biology, we see it in healthy societies and healthy civilizations.
Prior to the information age, the convergence of individuals, small groups, and villages was difficult if
they were spread out across nations and continents. This is no longer true due to the introduction of the
internet, but unfortunately we have hardly scratched the surface of this potential for network convergence.
Multinational corporations have been using networking to take advantage of the general population for at
least 50 years. Did you ever wonder how they gained such a powerful advantage over the populous and
the governments. We think it’s time to beat corporations at their own game, and with the internet we now
have the power to take advantage of this same magnification of power utilized by the corporations.

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Communities established around their own privately held land, and devoted to organic, systemic, symbi-
otic, and long-term sustainable living, are already ahead of the pack when it comes to future survivability.
However at this time ecovillages have little political or economic clout in a world controlled by large
multinational corporations. Much can be done to rebalance this condition in favor of the general popula-
tion. The more existing communities network and combine their information, their experience, their cross
network commerce, and their extra-network purchasing power, the more clout they gain in the yet unen-
lightened world which surrounds them. By organizing their voting participation and by providing candi-
dates for offices, they can further expand their political clout to the point that they will have to be taken
seriously. Even though the individuals and communities are separated by vast distances geographically,
they are right next door on the internet. A web site, a bunch of web-cams, and some teleconferencing ca-
pability can soon unite them into a cohesive and convergent power structure that must be recognized.
Communities can invite the unenlightened world to participate in some aspect of their communities as
guests, and provide educational materials, guidance, and incentives for others to go out and establish more
ecovillage communities. These communities must become highly networked, with the intention of some-
day creating a critical mass of awareness.
We do not yet have any idea of how powerful bottom-up forms of organization can become. Prior to the
internet, we had no means to link up and test bottom-up self-organizing models of social organization. We
have many examples of the power of top-down networking, the authority model, by which the average
citizen has lost so much of his representational power in the world to governments and corporations. We
have yet to see the fire storm that can sweep across this planet when the organizing power of the
bottom-up network takes hold via the internet. The only real example we have of bottom-up network-
ing is biology, and that is a very convincing example of the power potential available to us. Just as artifi-
cial intelligence research has provided us with very convincing evidence of the inherent weakness and
lack of robustness of top-down intelligence strategies (normal programming), it has more recently pro-
vided us with preliminary evidence of the enormous potential of bottom-up intelligence organization, in
the form of genetic algorithms and evolutionary computation, where systems learn, self-organize, and
selectively mate or pass on their genes, memes, and learning to future generations or the culture at large.
Our biological organisms are the products of this type of organization, but we have yet to see the full po-
tential of bottom-up organization when unleashed within the collective minds of linked, systemic, symbi-
otic, planetary, ecovillage networks (SSPEN).

We have already seen the multinational corporations climb the evolutionary fitness landscapes at the price
of the general public. However the corporations combined assets are small compared to the combined
purchasing power of earth’s whole population, when this power is linked up and networked from the
bottom-up, in a manner similar to biology. The corporations are not frightened now, because they do not
think we have the will to do it. We are nothing more to them than the pawns. We are nothing more to them
than a market for their products, and the means by which they secure their profits and their power. Corpo-
rations see their CEO’s and their board of directors as holding the power, and we are the pawns that have
no choice but to receive their goods and services as they choose to offer them. However if the tables are
turned, and we as general citizens of this planet organize our overwhelming numbers and powers into
effective, cohesive, convergent networks we will be in the drivers set, and we will be the collective board
of directors. They will be forced to serve our desires, our visions, and our collective teleological objec-
tives rather than their own selfish, short term, profit motives. Try asking any existing corporation what
their long term teleological objectives are for the whole planet. You may find that beyond capturing mar-
ket share, the value of their stock price, and ensuring their own survival, there is only numbing silence.
Why has our collective trust been so abused? With the amount of natural resources and money that have
been thrown at these corporations, how is it that they seem to have no concern for the long-term surviv-
ability of their parent planet and the people that live on it? This is appalling, and yet we accept it as if it
where an inevitable aspect of modern life. Any corporation which does not share our concerns about the
long-term survivability of our planet is guilty of crimes against humanity. So many of these crimes are
disguised within the never discussed area of ‘upscale white collar crime.’ Our current media organiza-
tions, which in almost every case, are owned by large multinational corporate interests, have successfully

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focused the collective mind of the public on low level street crime. The scale of intentional crime at the
corporate level is so many orders of magnitude beyond the level of street crime, that any comparison is
truly absurd. Yet we hear and know very little about the scale and frequency of this enormous organized
crime. The laws have been slanted to favor the protection of corporate interests. The courts and the laws
have been structured in such a manner that it makes it hard to hold corporations responsible for their ac-
tions. We have to begin by take back the power we surrendered to them. Once again our approach is not
anti-corporate. Our approach is totally pro-corporate, but with enlightened people in the drivers seat. We
are anti-terrorist, anti-violent, and we approve of a totally non-violent, pro-Gandhi style of implementing
change. We do not seek to destroy or eliminate corporations, we seek to humanize, ecologize, and spiri-
tualize corporations, so that they become a part of the larger planetary symbiotic network, rather than
parasitic entities that pray upon it from within. We are not anti-free enterprise, nor do we object to prof-
its earned in the proper fashion. We embrace all forms of profit earned through systemic and symbiotic
work, and we encourage every form of innovation and progress which does not endanger the long-term
survivability of our civilization. Unfortunately many corporations have become like the classroom bully, a
young man perhaps more physically mature than his fellow peers, who has learned that he can intimidate
all his fellow classmates. This strategy only works if the classmates remain atomized, and do not collec-
tively come to the rescue of their fellow classmates. Once the atomization is broken, the bully has lost his
power. We have the collective power to bring these socially spoiled, over payed, and over privileged so-
cial bullies into line. It is time to turn the tide and take back our planet. We can take back the power we
surrendered, and regain the power to shape our own destiny without jeopardizing our long-term surviv-
ability. Corporations can be put on notice that if they violate our trust in the new ‘no spin age,’ they will
soon find themselves in the compost pile of extinct corporations.

Why assume that ecovillages will converge?

Many people may ask why we assume that ecovillages will become convergent toward some common
teleological objective. We believe there are many reasons why this will occur, if not in every case, in the
vast majority of cases. We wish to share some of these reasons here:
• The fact that the people within these individual ecovillages have come together within their own com-
munities, and focused themselves around common purposes and objectives, already reveals their under-
standing of the power of community.
• Communities which have succeeded in learning the power of community within their own ecovillages
should easily be able to extrapolate these experiences to larger communities and networks. The princi-
ples are much the same, even if much of the community will be moved into the arena of cyberspace via
the internet.
• Coming together in local communities increases the information, talent, experiential pool, resources,
and power of the community. Complex systems always gain degrees of freedom in excess of the sum of
their parts, and these new degrees of freedom can be put to use in regaining control of our planet.
• In terms of education, networking would only extend the educational practices already going on locally
to a much larger audience. The power of distance learning is just beginning to surface now, and its full
potential has yet to be exercised.
• Being able to call upon the expertise of communities which were previously beyond ones reach, will
considerably enhance and compliment the existing skills already available within the community.
• Being able to develop communal voting and commerce blocks within the larger economic, political, and
corporate world will result in increased power and representation on global scales.
• Projects beyond the economic scope of a single or a few ecovillages, could be considered collective
projects by a larger network of ecovillages. Collective purchasing of materials and resources, much like
corporations now do in their supply chain networks, can reduce the cost of larger projects. The sharing
of intellectual expertise across networks also provides an opportunity for these communities to tackle
larger projects than would be feasible for individual ecovillages or small groups of ecovillages.
• In addition to these observation, we may be able to benefit from some recent computer simulations de-
signed to study resource-sharing, coevolution, and context-preservation in community dynamics.

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Coevolution resource sharing in the convergence
We have deemed convergence to be desirable in universe evolution, so we must now take a deeper look
into this process of convergence. One of the ways that we model evolution in computer simulations is on
fitness landscapes. These fitness landscapes look just like geographical terrains. Mountain tops and high
ridges represent high degrees of evolutionary fitness, the rolling hills represent intermediate level of fit-
ness, and the valleys represent the lowest levels of fitness. Those organisms that attain the highest peaks
are the most efficient and optimized products of evolution. They have attained the convergent teleological
objectives of evolution. Organisms which have become localized in the lower elevation landscape have
demonstrated their inability to attain the highest degrees of fitness. What we have learned from these
simulations is that one does not want convergence to occur to prematurely, because this results in less
than optimal fitness. This happens when clusters of organisms settle on the rolling hills. These organism
can easily see that they have risen above the valleys bellow, but they prematurely think they have attained
the higher fitness peaks which lie at other locations on the fitness landscape. They have achieved a local
optimization, but not a global optimization. One method of preventing premature convergence is to add
noise into the system. This has the effect of knocking organisms of these less than optimal hills, forcing
them to explore a larger part of the landscape before they terminate their search. Werfel, Mitchell, and
Crutchfield [2] have shown that two other interesting techniques, which more closely simulate human
social phenomena, are available and produce superior results:
Resource-sharing - this type of simulation allows organisms to share their knowledge and strategies, in
an attempt to solve the same problems that individual competitive organisms are asked to solve.

Coevolution - in this type of simulation previous problem solutions are retained within the organism
population and these strategies can be compared, combined, mixed, and generally modified in an attempt
to solve new evolutionary problems. The problems strategies are allowed to evolve along with the whole
simulation. This is similar to the manner in which viruses keep quasi-species around in their collective
population, which although less optimal under current environmental circumstances, my prove more op-
timal under new environmental challenges. The gene pools of the quasi-species may be mixed with the
current optimal species when the optimal species begins to show less than optimal behavior when sub-
jected to a new challenge. Various combinations are tested in an attempt to get around new challenges like
new virus drugs or successful immune system challenges.

Resource-sharing, as opposed to individual competitive search, has been shown to provide improved fit-
ness optimization in cellular automata simulations. Furthermore, if coevolution is combined with
resource-sharing even higher levels of optimization are attained. It is a well established fact in the cellular
automata research community, that even though cellular automata update their status in computations
based only upon local information and interactions, they are capable of producing complex global behav-
iors.
We mention these types of studies for the purpose of comparing these results to the concept of intentional
ecovillages. Since ecovillages are centered around intentional core themes of systemic and symbiotic
communal behavior, we should expect to see a large degree of resource-sharing and coevolution. There-
fore, we should have every reason to expect that these experiments would produce superior fitness in
comparison to the current Darwinian social model which involves independent competitive search. The
fact that simple computational systems, like cellular automata, are eventually able to obtain global opti-
mization even though they must operate with only local information - is also promising. This would seem
to provide some evidence that projects initially started and focused locally do have a high degree of prob-
ability of eventually becoming successful, not just locally, but globally.

The role of themes and context

We have classified ecovillages as a form of intentional community. Intentional communities are estab-
lished around core themes. We have proposed that the core themes of ecovillages should consist of the
following:

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• a deep concern to provide an eco-friendly life style

• The utilization of a general system theory to provide systemic, symbiotic, and coevolutionary approach
to evolution, as opposed to a reductionist and and competitive Darwinian approach.

• the full utilization of dynamic networking principles

Themes play important roles in intentional communities, because they serve as conceptual and behavioral
network hubs. When challenges to the communities’ integrity arise, themes provide a sense of identity and
purpose. We could easily make an analogy between themes and and ‘context preservation.’ Cohen, Riolo,
and Axelrod [3] have conducted some cellular automata simulations in which ‘context-preservation’ was
studied. The conclusion of their studies found the following results:
“In this paper we focused on one important factor that contributes to the emergence and maintenance of
cooperation, namely the degree to which the interaction processes preserve the context, or neighborhood,
in which the agent’s (and their descendants) act. In general, we found that conditions that strongly pre-
served context led to the highest levels of cooperation.”
The smaller and more intimate conditions of microsocieties along with their core theme values, should
provide an atmosphere where we can expect to see not only high degrees of resource-sharing and coevo-
lution, but also strong context-preserving behaviors around the core themes of the community. At the
same time we must not forget that community is both physical and conceptual, which means that it is not
necessarily limited to proximity. This is why we are strong promoters of networking as an essential com-
ponent of the ecovillage concept. With the aid of the internet we can spread out this sense of context con-
ceptually in the form of a meme that can race around the planet at the speed of light, tying otherwise
separate and distant nodes into a common context and vision for the future.

The survival of coevolution in a competitive world

Since the vast majority of our planet now exists in a competitive Darwinian environment, what chance do
cooperative microsocieties have of surviving in such a world? What are the probabilities that cooperative
societies can not only coexist with competitive societies, but thrive and prosper? Research in this area is
just beginning to be accumulated. Axelrod has published a book, The Evolution of Cooperation [4], and
has provided an annotated Bibliography on this topic [5]. Sella and Lachmann [6] have run simulations
designed to study the long term dynamics of cooperative populations coexisting within competitive popu-
lations. The conclusion of their research is:
“We have demonstrated that cooperation may persist in a system in a steady state where populations of
cooperators and defectors are constantly appearing and disappearing. This can be understood by con-
sidering the life-cycle of a population at a site. The life cycle starts with one cooperator that establishes
a population, then defectors invade and take over, and it ends with the death of the population. During
this life-cycle, new populations of cooperators are founded by single cooperators that migrate to empty
neighboring sites. The system reaches a steady state where cooperation persists, if the global “birth”
rate of populations is equal to the rate of their “death,” or if on average every population gives rise to
one other population during its life-cycle. This steady state is dynamic in nature - cooperation persists
even-though every single population of cooperators eventually dies out. In section 4 we demonstrate
that these dynamics enable the persistence of cooperation in a large section of the model’s parameter
space. Furthermore, we demonstrated and explained how d.i. models, taking the local fitness of coop-
erators to be lower can enable the persistence of cooperation; and within the region of persistence it
can increase the global density of sites inhabited by cooperators.”
Since our planet has no database of other planetary civilizations, we have no hard evidence of whether
competition, cooperation, or some combination of both strategies (either simultaneously or sequentially)
provides the most successful strategy in evolution. Until we have evidence, either from experiments on
our own planet, or from extraterrestrial planets, we are limited to testing these alternative approaches in

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computer simulations. We believe, based upon the current research available, that in the early stages of
evolution competition predominates, but as social systems mature and reach the natural ecological
boundaries of their planet’s, cooperation and the utilization of more advanced conceptual models leads to
coevolution via systemic and symbiotic integration.

Life viewed as information processing

If you were smart enough and powerful enough to create a universe, would you create a universe without
life? How interesting would a universe be without both a feedback mechanism to inform you of what it is
like to experience a universe from within it, as well as from outside it? Life not only adds an enormously
valuable information feedback system to the universe, it also potentially adds vast degrees of complexity
to the process if some degree of free will is designed into these new life forms. The universe no longer
need be a single act of creation, because new life forms bring with them the potential for cocreation, and
the ability to test cocreation across an enormous range of experiences which can asymptotically approach
those of the level of the design intelligence. Design level intelligence can learn a great deal more about its
creation by adding life to the universe, and it gains the satisfaction of being able to have its efforts com-
prehended, appreciated, and shared with a new and novel form of life. Both design level intelligence and
evolving intelligence benefit from the existence of a universe which includes life.
Life in many respects is an exquisite example of information processing. Design intelligence distributes in
the dynamic holomatrix of the universe vast stores of non-static intelligence, and evolving life gradually
assimilates this intelligence in an effort to approach the level of intelligence of design intelligence. Design
intelligence acts as the great attractor in the universe, challenging and pulling evolving intelligence
ever higher in the graduated process of universe ascension. Community plays an essential role in this
ongoing process. No individual evolving intelligence is capable of assimilating this vast store of informa-
tion alone. Life is an interdependent process. Life as we experience it in our universe is no simple process
of cloning. Each individual life form is unique. Each life form has the potential to contribute something
unique to the development of the universe through its cocreation efforts.
The more efficient a life forms becomes at processing the information made available to it in the universe,
the less it suffer, and the more quickly it attains higher levels of evolution. Systemic information process-
ing brings with it increased joy, comfort, and expanding horizons of experience into a larger portion of the
universe. Life forms, both individually and collectively, that do a poor job of information processing, ex-
perience, pain, suffering, and self limitation. If this tendency becomes chronic rather than acute, these life
forms and their civilizations become lagging entropy cores in an otherwise negentropy ascension process.
Pain, suffering, and repetitive failures result from feedback mechanisms in the universe designed to in-
form us that our current efforts at information processing are less than optimal. Some minimal degree of
struggle is inevitable in the evolutionary process, but this minimal suffering can be considerably ampli-
fied if we violate and ignore the systemic laws of the universe.

The purpose of systemic and symbiotic ecovillages is to live within the universal natural laws and to
achieve the maximum possible benefit from them, while carrying on the process of evolution and ascen-
sion. In this manner, each new generation of life forms receives an improved living and learning envi-
ronment in which to carry on the ultimate quest of life. Ecovillages must of necessity think long-term.
They must preserve and improve all the natural resources within their environment, and when ever possi-
ble supplement those resources with the eco-friendly inventions of new biology and new technology. The
primary purpose of ecovillages is to provide a legacy of ever increasing knowledge and awareness of this
process to each new generation, which can then proceed to build upon these foundations. Short-term ex-
ploitation at the expense of this overall objective, is detrimental and suicidal, and must be avoided at all
cost, even when the temptation seems rational to a portion of the population. Growth in the universe is a
very long-term process, due to the enormous differential of intelligence between design intelligence and
evolving intelligence. The goal must be to survive the entire process, and to attain the omega point of
evolution. To quickly attain some brief level of progress by the over exploitation of the natural resources

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of our planet is certain folly. This type of thinking leads to extinction, long before the end game has been
completed, and is a form of self inflicted abortion from the perspective of the universe as a whole. Unfor-
tunately our current planetary civilization is quite entrenched in this very process, and as things stand
now, we are only moments away from extinction on a cosmic time scale, even if we foolishly think we
have all the time we need to correct our myopic mistakes. It is the purpose of ecovillages to correct this
dangerous trend before it is too late.
Ecovillages by no means should be seen as simply going back to the land and becoming nothing more
than an agricultural society. Life never allows one to go backward. Ecovillages certainly should incorpo-
rate proper utilization of natural renewable and nonrenewable resources, but this should never become
their sole purpose for being. Ecovillages must be extremely inquisitive, progressive, and future oriented.
By no means should eco-healthy technology be shunned. Our civilization is now in the process of moving
our collective focus from the previous industrialization era into the newer information era. The goal of the
information age is to make all the knowledge on the planet available to everyone in real time, and at an
absolute minimum of expense. Now for those of you who think life is all about profits, you may be
shocked to find out that keeping people ignorant is the best pathway to unprofitability in the long run.
Every human being who is kept from living up to their full potential is an enormous loss which can never
be replaced by our civilization, and every failed human life is an enormous economic, psychological, and
social drain on the efforts of our civilization to move forward in the ascension process. The sum total of
the ideas, imagination, inventions, solutions, and wisdom that is lost with the deprivation any and every
human being is inestimable. We will never know what our civilization might have been like had this dep-
rivation not occurred in the past. If we continue to deprive our population going forward, our future will
hold little promise of biorapture and universal ascension. The purpose of community is to provide an
environment in which every individual can thrive and achieve their full potential. The causal effect of
such a reality - will exponentially feedback progressive rewards into the collective ascension efforts of
the larger community. The next Einstein, Mozart, or Gandhi may be your next door neighbor. If we fail
to invest in them, we will never know how much we may have lost. The challenge before us is enormous,
and we need all our players functioning at maximum fitness and efficiency.
Maximum efficiency bioinformation processing requires that a planetary civilization continually distin-
guishes between the trivial and the truly important forms of information processing. High level informa-
tion processing involves continual discrimination. Information processing is an energy intensive task, and
all biological life exists as an open thermodynamic systems which must borrow energy from the larger
entropic environment. This is why information processing is expensive, and because it is expensive we
must be discriminating in our choice of what information is worth focusing on, and what information is
less crucial to our evolution and ascension. Good information processing involves both quantitative com-
putational power, and good qualitative discrimination as to what information is placed highest on our
computational priority list.

The ultimate objective of community is to keep the larger vision of the total ascension process always in
our thoughts. Community must keep our priorities straight, and provide the never wavering teleological
vector that leads to universal victory for all of our inhabitants. Community by its very nature can not
avoid teleology!
Community is inherently abstract and deeply conceptual. The life span of community is infinite, because
it out lives all of those who pass through its process. Community is like a river that channels and focuses
the new water which constantly flows through it, eternally existing and eternally renewing itself. As we
pass though our universe we shall experience the continual dilation of communities boundaries. In the
future we can be assured that we will encounter other stellar civilizations, stellar cluster civilizations,
globular cluster civilizations, galactic civilizations, supercluster civilizations, and finally universal civili-
zation. Just the thought of such an enormous organized effort runs chills up an down the spine. In a self-
similar multiverse, these ever expanding boundaries exceed even the universe itself. Standing against
foundational systemic principles, is a sure path to retardation, degradation, and eventually extinction.

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Community when understood in its proper context in the universe, is both convergent and teleo-
logical!
So let us put destructive non-synergistic competition with its win/loss strategy behind us, and let us ini-
tiate a systemic and joyous win/win strategic approach, so that we can witness the magnificent process
of convergent systemic teleology at work in our individual lives and in our communities.
The roads to the omega point are well paved by those who have preceded us in this universal journey!

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References
1. Sole, R. V., Cancho, R. F., Montoya, J. M., and Valverde, S. Selection, Tinkering and Emergence in
Complex Networks. 2002, p. 10. (http://
www.santafe.edu/sfi/publications/Working-Papers/02-07-029.pdf)
2. Werfel, J., Mitchell, M., and Cruthfield, J. P. Resource Sharing and Coevolution in Evolving Cellular
Automata. 1999. (http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/ publications/Working-Papers/99-07-045.pdf)
3. Cohen, M. D., Riolo, R. L., and Axelrod, R. The Emergence of Social Organization in the Prisoner’s
Dilemma: How Context-Preservation and other Factors Promote Cooperation. 1999, p. 37.
(http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/ publications/Working-Papers/99-01-002.pdf)
4. Axelrod, Robert. The Evolution of Cooperation. Basic Books. 1988.
5. Axelrod, Robert. Annotated Bibliography of The Evolution of Cooperation. 1994.
(http://www.pscs.umich.edu/research/Publications/ Evol_of_Coop_Bibliography.html)
6. Sella, Guy and Lachman, Michael. On the Dynamic Persistence of Cooperation: How Lower Fitness
Induces Higher Surivivability. 1999, p. 16.
(http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/publications/Working-Papers/99-03-017.pdf)

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