Tag Archives: Buckminster Fuller

Buckminster Fuller

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Buckminster Fuller’s Three Keys to Waking Up & Changing the World

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Buckminster Fuller

Buckminster Fuller was one of the most brilliant thinkers of the 20th century, an architect and designer who created inventions like the geodesic dome. He saw the best in humanity, and had a vision for how we could engineer a world with enough for everyone. Here’s three critical things we can learn from him.

Buckminster Fuller was one of the most brilliant thinkers of the 20th century, an architect and designer who made it his mission to advance the evolution of humanity and to “do more with less.” He created inventions like the geodesic dome (most prominently seen in Disney World’s Epcot Center) and the Dymaxion car, and sought to use technology to benefit humanity, specifically to provide cheap shelter and transportation for the world. Though his inventions have not been widely adopted (yet), his theories and ideas have influenced the world in many key ways (if you’ve ever heard anybody in an office meeting use the word “synergy,” for instance, you’ve just heard a Fullerism — he popularized the phrase to mean doing more with available resources).

Fuller’s key idea is that we have enough resources to house, clothe and feed everybody on the planet, but we aren’t doing so. His mission, then, was to create systems solutions that would allow us to properly use the resources we already have for the good of all, instead of maintaining inequality.

Here are three key concepts that Buckminster Fuller embodied that can bring immense value to your life, whatever you do:

1. Your life does not belong to you.

 

As a young man, Fuller worked in a textile mill, in the US Navy and in the meat-packing industry. In his twenties, he founded a company with his father-in-law to build lightweight housing—but the company failed. By the age of 32, he was broke and living in public housing in Chicago; his daughter died of complications from polio and spinal meningitis. Deciding he was a complete failure and responsible for his daughter’s death, Fuller became a heavy drinker and decided to kill himself. On the verge of suicide, he had a transcendental insight—his life was not his own property; it belonged to humanity. He then pledged to dedicate the rest of his life to “an experiment, to find what a single individual [could] contribute to changing the world and benefiting all humanity.” (This would be an example of the “deal with God,” little publicized compared to the “deal with the Devil.”)

2. Don’t change people—change the environment.

 

Buckminster Fuller was an architect, on a mission to change our species, traditionally the role of religious reformers. But his approach was different—he realized that it’s nigh-on impossible to change people. He instead sought to change the environment around people, prompting inventions like the geodesic dome and Dymaxion house: simply seeing or walking around in such structures could shift people’s idea of the possible and prompt them to start rethinking their assumptions. Instead of grabbing and shaking people and shouting “The world’s on fire!” he created environments that demonstrated a possible solution.

3. We have enough for everybody—to see how, think of the world as a whole system.

 

Fuller thought of the world as a whole system, instead of as disconnected nations and warring tribes. (This type of thinking is still the number one thing we need as a species, and is less common than you might believe.) He coined the phrase “Spaceship Earth” to describe where we are, famously stating that “The most important fact about Spaceship Earth: an instruction manual didn’t come with it.” If we can think of the world of a coherent system, we can begin to address resource-waste problems as a whole instead of leaving some to die while others have too much.

Fuller’s work is extensive and complex to say the least—if this starting point has raised your curiosity, check out A Fuller View, which is a collection of introductory essays by other people explaining his key concepts. It’s a great and quick read.

from:    https://ultraculture.org/blog/2017/04/28/buckminster-fuller/

What’s Going on?

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As Always – Do your research, The Decide for yourself:

Mark Zuckerberg is running the Bucky Fuller agenda

by Jon Rappoport

 

“Every time somebody comes up with a universal plan to improve the world, you have to ask yourself this burning question: who will impose the plan? And then you have ask: what are the imposers’ true motives? And you have to remember what a Trojan Horse is.” (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)

Over a period of 50 years, Buckminster Fuller explained his plan for making a better world. He talked about the coming wave of automation that would throw gigantic numbers of people out of work. He talked about the need for a universal system of support, whereby everyone on the planet would be guaranteed, from birth, the essentials of survival: food, clothing, shelter, and limitless free education.

Read this statement by Fuller:

“We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.”

Obviously, Fuller’s plan carries great appeal for many young people, for whom the idea of earning a living is a full-bore horror movie.

Fuller also believed that freeing up the young to “think about new solutions” for humanity and come up with new technology would justify his plan.

Compare Fuller’s agenda with Mark Zuckerberg’s. The Facebook founder recently gave a commencement address at Harvard. Read his words carefully:

“…today, technology and automation are eliminating many jobs…Our generation will have to deal with tens of millions of jobs replaced by automation like self-driving cars and trucks. But we have the potential to do so much more together.”

“Every generation expands its definition of equality. Previous generations fought for the vote and civil rights. They had the New Deal and Great Society. Now it’s our time to define a new social contract for our generation.”

“We should have a society that measures progress not just by economic metrics like GDP, but by how many of us have a role we find meaningful. We should explore ideas like universal basic income to give everyone a cushion to try new things… And as technology keeps changing, we need to focus more on continuous education throughout our lives.”

By direct statement and implication, Zuckerberg is echoing Bucky Fuller. The threat of automation. Massive unemployment. Guarantee the means of survival for every person. Free education for life. Come up with new ideas that contribute to the progress of the human species.

But as with Fuller, the thorny question about who is going to put this new universal plan into action is sidestepped. It appears the answer is: “the government.”

The most incompetent, bloated, corrupt, conniving force on the planet is in charge.

Doesn’t that fill you with confidence?

There is more. Who, behind the scenes, influences and controls government decisions and policies? A few groups come to mind: Bilderberg; Council on Foreign Relations; Trilateral Commission; United Nations. Fill in others yourself.

These are people we can trust?

And then there is this: what is the overall effect of gifting everyone on the planet with the basics of survival? On balance, does it produce visionaries and determined entrepreneurs? Or does it produce massive numbers of Welfare dependents, who drift in a sluggish space and want, at most, periodic stimulations of adrenaline to relieve their interminable boredom? Do they seek out endless free education, or do they ingest various drugs and sit glued to screens—and occasionally take to the streets to demand MORE?

Are fervent Globalist, Leftist, technocratic academics prepared to offer an honest assessment of the effects of a few billion people living on universal Welfare?

It’s quite convenient that “utopian” thinkers like Bucky Fuller and Mark Zuckerberg avoid these questions.

It’s not a stretch to infer that Zuckerberg views his brainchild, Facebook, as a means to expand the Surveillance State to new dimensions, because a few billion people living on Welfare are a potentially volatile demographic and “need to be watched.”

Is this liberation? It’s about population-pacification, passivity, endless “entertainment,” lowest common denominator, mind control, creating “voting blocs”; and yes, elimination of all borders, and a global superstructure of management for planet Earth. It’s about smaller living spaces, assigned from above, overcrowding in cities, and governments taking over more and more public lands…

This is the reality behind the utopia.

As usual, the devil is in the details. It’s easy to envision whole generations of empowered visionaries finding new solutions for the planet. But on even a cursory examination, the whole plan sinks into a morass of grotesque consequences.

If you’re up for it, try researching this question: How many government programs, and how much funding, is devoted, in all countries of the world, to authentically stimulating the freedom and power and creativity and independence of The Individual?

A related question: How many college courses around the world teach The Freedom and Power and Creativity and Independence of The Individual?

Answering these questions will give you some idea of governments’ “genuine caring” for individual innovation.

Good hunting.

Zuckerberg is Bucky Fuller 2.0. Unlike Fuller, he has billions in the bank. He has allies in the Deep State. He has the means to push the Fuller agenda.

From the top down.

And as usual, that’s where all the trouble starts. “Here, all you people, this is what you want. This plan will make life easier for you. Don’t you want things to be easier? We will make it happen. It’s our gift.”

The gift sounds appealing. It looks appealing.

Roughly 3200 years ago, after Greek forces failed to penetrate the gated city of Troy during a decade of war, they abandoned the field in apparent defeat. They left behind a giant wooden horse. The Trojans took the beautiful and appealing statue as a trophy and brought it into the city. At night, under cover, a door opened in the horse, Greek soldiers slipped out, opened the gates of Troy, and the rest of the Greek force, which hadn’t really retreated, flooded in.

The gift that wasn’t a gift.

“Oh look, that’s a wonderful idea to make a better future. I’ll take it in. I’ll believe in it…”

The gates of a city; the gates of a mind.

from:    https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2017/06/02/mark-zuckerberg-is-running-the-bucky-fuller-agenda/

Nick Meador on Money, Survival, Integrity

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Funding My Existence

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It appears we are living at the dawn of a new era. Throughout our culture we see signs of change, progress, and evolution. A “Creative Class”  is on the rise that — with the help of the Internet and other related technologies — will reportedly transform our entire socio-economic system.

And yet, at the same time, something is amiss. Much of this so-called Creative Class can only prosper by finding work within the current corporate infrastructure, resulting in very little actual creativity or innovation. The very ones who might create the necessary change in society must expend their time and energy worrying about “making a living.” Those who can keep a job have to sacrifice ideas that contradict the wishes of bosses and the company’s stockholders.

For those who have been diagnosed “abnormal” by our society, this problem is especially prevalent. Such people are variably labeled anti-social, eccentric, introverted, highly sensitive, ADD, bipolar, neuro-atypical, differently abled, gifted, or one of many other similar terms that have a derogatory effect. The trouble is that the only people who ever made any worthwhile changes in this world belonged to one of these categories.

The most creative visionaries often cannot function adequately in modern society. This makes it extremely hard to avoid unemployment, let alone to feed and shelter oneself. But admit that you feel this way, and you’re instantly labeled lazy, arrogant, elitist, etc. We’re evidently not ready to admit on a mass scale that the current definition of a “normal” human being is not only imaginary, but impossible.

It is time that we break out of this double-bind. One idea how to do that has sat dormant in the cultural underground for the last few decades. In 1969, R. Buckminster Fuller (a.k.a. Bucky Fuller) published his short volume, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. As Fuller writes:

“…we must give each human who is or becomes unemployed a life fellowship in research and development or in just simple thinking. Man must be able to dare to think truthfully and to act accordingly without fear of losing his franchise to live. […] For every 100,000 employed in research and development, or just plain thinking, one probably will make a breakthrough that will more than pay for the other 99,999 fellowships.”

This will never be possible in a purely capitalistic system that runs according to the tenets of selfishness and greed — or the misapplied motto “survival of the fittest.” The Internet has allowed for certain non-traditional funding platforms, but the most popular ones are oriented around funding creative projects — not funding a creative life. And taking out any kind of loan seems dangerous when there’s no way to be sure about the possibility of paying it back.

For some of us, a “job” or a “career” is not the answer. For some, it’s time to admit: “What I really need is help FUNDING MY EXISTENCE.” Fuller also used the term “mind fellowships.” His purpose was very clear:

“Through the universal research and development fellowships, we’re going to start emancipating humanity from being muscle and reflex machines. We’re going to give everybody a chance to develop their most powerful mental and intuitive faculties. […] What we want everybody to do is to think clearly.”

With this spirit in mind, let’s give birth to an online community designed to provide existential funding to the people who need it. Recipients will have to demonstrate what value they have contributed to society in the form of ideas, projects, art, innovation, social movements, etc. Donors will be able to choose which individuals interest them the most.

We’ve spent enough time talking about futuristic visions of society. Some feel an urgent drive to manifest it in reality. It is time to enable those people by funding their existence, allowing them to worry about more pressing matters — like changing the world.

from:    http://www.realitysandwich.com/funding_my_existence