Wealth generated over a lifetime is often just handed down to our grandchildren. But is that simply increasing enequality, putting the community and economy more at risk?
Is there a more eco-centric, shared-sufficiency approach to making a difference for our future generations?
Perhaps by investing in systems for a more equitable and sustainable future will enable future generations to look back and say we were good ancestors. Isaac Newton said, if I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. And it is not genetics that make us giants in this case, but where we invest our time, effort and money!
Research
from the University of Maine found that human evolution is becoming increasingly collective, cultural, and socially organised rather than genetic. So rather than investing our money in the self-sufficiency of our genetic descendants, instead, we invest in the shared-sufficiency of our community — the sustainable and regenerative initiatives.
To reciprocate Nature for our carbon emissions flying from Auckland to a wedding in Christchurch…and driving a hybrid rental from Christchurch to Picton, we donated to the amazing Hinewai eco-restoration project led by 84 year old Hugh Wilson. His story is inspiring! EVERY sign, letter, instruction, newsletter etc is handwritten/drawn by Hugh.
To offset Jon and Yoshimi's air travel for their 2023 round-the-world trip, they matched airfares dollar-for-dollar with donations that serve Nature.
The 2023 Gift 4 Nature project ► Strategy... ► Invitation... ► Outcomes... ►Precession...The 2024 Gift 4 Nature project ►Flight Emissions & Gift 4 Nature...
Metaphor opens our minds to changing perspective AND context. Aristotle said being a master of metaphor is a sign of genius. Perhaps most indigenous teachers would agree.
Yoshimi and Jon used a variation on their Strategy Spiral to try and define the purpose of the Sustainable Business Fund from a philanthropist point of view.
Current moment and urgency
New Zealand faces multiple converging crises—energy, food and water security, ecological collapse, climate change, democratic fragility and social anxiety—while public policy remains growth‑focused and sustainability is not prioritized. At the same time, 200+ promising SMEs are primed to scale but lack patient capital and systems‑thinking support. Media polarisation deepens division rather than collective action.
Why donors matter now
Many retirees and high‑net‑worth individuals want to leave meaningful legacies. Philanthropic capital can convert accumulated wealth—often amassed during periods of extractive growth—into lasting reciprocity for people and nature. Donors can harness their resources to create practical, scalable solutions that restore agency, hope and social cohesion.
Why the SBN Fund is an appropriate vehicle
What philanthropic gifts will achieve
Clear donor benefits
Call to action (brief)
Philanthropic contributions to the SBN Sustainability Investment Fund offer a disciplined, credible way for wealthy donors to convert legacy intentions into systemic outcomes: funding scalable, vetted SMEs that regenerate environment and society, restore hope and leave a lasting, positive imprint.
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When you put an idea into practice in a place-time context, things get complicated. Bucky likes the example of drawing a triangle on the ground (on the earth). When we draw a triangle on any surface, it divides the surface into two triangles, one on the inside of the triangle and the other on the outside of the triangle. And because the triangles are on a surface, the dirt triangles are concave and the air triangles are convex .
Bucky describes the tetrahedron with 4 sides as the minimum structural system that you can point to. In other words, any thing in a place-time context must have at least 4 sides. If you cut a triangle out of a piece of paper, it has 3 very thin edges. plus 2 sides of the paper, so it is really just a very thin wedge with 5 sides. And of course a cube is even more complicated with 6 sides. And sphere 
is at least 12 sides.
This implies we need to look for fourness when describing anything real. What about "the three pillars of ..." which uses the analogy of a three legged stool, the simplest stable platform you can stand on. Without the seat (or roof) the three pillars or legs would be very unstable. That fourth component is vital for the integrity of the system.
In the standard 3 dimensional Cartesion coordinate system, one point is at the origin, and x,y,z are vectors at right angles to each other in relation to the origin point. Bucky says in Synergetics [527.703], ...people speak of length, breadth, and height as constituting a hierarchy of three independent dimensional states—"one-dimensional," "two-dimensional," and "three-dimensional"—which can be conjoined like building blocks. But length, breadth, and height simply do not exist independently of one another...
If we add a 5th point in the centre of a regular tetrahedron as the origin of a 4 dimensional Quadray coordinate system, then the 4 vertex points mark the ends of four vectors at 60 degrees to eachother in relation to the origin. 5 points can define a tetrahedron in place-time which is 4 dimensional.
Bucky says [527.712], All conceptual consideration is inherently four-dimensional. Thus the primitive is a priori four-dimensional, being always comprised of the four planes of reference of the tetrahedron. There can never be any less than four primitive dimensions.
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Take the cycle of the four seasons for example. The seasons repeat every cycle, but that is just an idea. Every season is different from the previous year, so a cycle in a place-time context is really a spiral. As Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee says, And for me, the seasons at their core are an expression of the cyclical nature of reality as it unfolds. And as the cyclical nature of reality unfolds, it unfurls. And it unfurls as a spiral.
Two substack articles resonated with eachother, one on Cubist Evaluation and the other on What comes after civilisation? Jon used Artificial Intelligence to express what he intuitively sensed but could not express.
This illustrates how a fractal (repeating pattern) of a triangles with a huge diversity of sizes and angles can create an image of Nature. But it is only two dimensional. Perhaps a three dimensional fractal of tetrahedrons with a huge diversity of sizes and angles could model the structure of Nature — the tetrahedron is the minimum structural system possible:
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Nature is a totally efficient, self-regenerating system. If we discover the laws that govern this system and live synergistically within them, sustainability will follow and humankind will be a success.
R. Buckminster Fuller
Two dimensional triangles have no opposite sides or angles. The Emérgéntly triangles fold up into a three dimensional tetrahedron, a triangular based pyramid, which also has no opposite sides or angles. Each face of the tetrahedron shares an edge with every other face, so they are all equally interconnected - equally interdependent. According to Buckminster Fuller, the tetrahedron is the way Nature works. In fact, there is an Emergence Theory that reality is built from tetrahedrons.
Carbon is the basis for all life on Earth and the carbon atom always has four relationships with other atoms (it is tetravalent). Carbon is an extremely abundant element by mass in the universe (after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen) so the repeating pattern of fourness probably pervades the entire universe. Every system exists within a context, except perhaps the universe itself (assuming the multiverse is fictional).
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Emérgéntly seems to be a fractal (repeating pattern) of relationships within a system e.g. organisation. |
| These tree images were generated with software. The fractal used is a varied dragon curve. See Wikipedia | Hubble-Space-Telescope-Galaxy-Collection. See Wikipedia |
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According to a Review in the August 2019 issue of, Ecological Complexity, panarchy (nested adaptive cycles) has been used as a metaphor and conceptual tool for understanding long-term dynamics of change in complex systems like ecosystems and social–ecological systems.
Complex systems like forests, cities, customers or teams follow repeating cycles of four phases
And these cycles happen at many nested scales at once e.g. small patches inside a whole landscape, teams inside a company, etc. Understanding these cycles helps predict when a system is becoming fragile and how it might change after a shock. Resilience depends more on how the system is organized and how parts interact across scales than on any single component — systems can keep working even if individual parts change.
Forest:
- Growth — young trees rapidly fill open space after a fire.
- Accumulation— mature forest stores lots of biomass and seeds.
- Collapse — a big fire or pest outbreak suddenly clears canopy.
- Renewal— new seedlings and different species colonize, starting a new growth phase.
Action: monitor tree age structure, fuel buildup, and seed sources to detect rising fire risk and guide controlled burns or planting.
Small business:
- Growth — rapid customer and staff expansion.
- Conservation — stable processes, accumulated cash, less innovation.
- Collapse — sudden market change or loss of a key client causes sharp decline.
- Reorganization — pivoting to a new product or restructuring staff, then growing again.
Action: track cash flow, customer churn, and innovation rate to notice fragility and trigger changes earlier.
When you put an idea into practice in a place-time context, things get complicated. Bucky likes the example of drawing a triangle on the ground (on the earth).
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