“We have an ancient and long-enduring cultural imperative of neighbourly love and work. This becomes ever more important as hardly imaginable suffering is imposed upon all creatures by industrial tools and industrial weapons. If we are to continue, in our only world, with any hope of thriving in it, we will have to expect neighbourly behaviour of sciences, of industries, and of governments, just as we expect it of our citizens in their neighbourhoods.”

Wendell Berry, 2015

 

The first task is to tease apart how we treat property that IS the world (as tenants – with use-rights and duties)

 

from property that we make out of the world (as full owners of the products of our work).

 

The time has come to

Occupy the earth!

As tenants of the places we use.

The time has come

To occupy the earth

As tenants of the links between the places we use.

 

We men and we women of this world can overcome the weaponization of the cultures of the places we use.

 

The time has come to write up some tenancy agreements:

 

 

 

Sample Tenancy Agreement

Relating to:

The Place I Occupy

(insert here, the measurable boundaries of the “ground state”: earth/sea/air/waves/light/physics/flows as recorded by land registries and other ground state registries)

Between the one:

(insert here the occupier: My name/my family/ my company/my nation/ my heirs and assigns)

And the other:

(insert here community recipients: i.e links to all other earth occupiers/ trusted community administers/ means to a universal earth citizen’s income)

 

The terms:

The one pays the other a rent (here called an Earth Rent), volunteered and agreed today and to be re-volunteered and re-agreed termly into the future.

 

The earth rent Is a market valuation based on, placed on, and traded on, the desire of all and any to use or occupy the said portion of ground state Earth. This rent funds the links to the rest of ground state Earth.

 

There are only two T’s and C’s

that apply:

The one complimenting the other:

1. To take up our own place as carers-in-chief of the ecologies of the ground state we occupy. That is, to look after our bit of our planet. This may be called the Husbandry / Stewardship clause.
2. With our ground rent payments, to take up our joint places as carers-in-chief of the links between our ground state planet. That is, to look after our community connections to the other parts of the planet. This may be called the community contribution clause.