CHAPTER 2

PURPOSE
HUMANS ON
EARTH

2.1 “The most important thing about Spaceship Earth—an instruction book didn’t come with it.”

OUR HOME PLANET DID NOT COME WITH AN INSTRUCTION book, and Buckminster Fuller was one of the first people to try answering the question of how we can most effectively and efficiently function on Earth. In 1968 he wrote the classic book Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth.

Bucky realized that the Earth and all its inhabitants are constantly changing, and we must continually revise the way we function on our Spaceship in order to survive and thrive. Currently, we’re at a critical moment that Bucky defined as “humanity’s final examination,” and we still don’t seem to have realized that Nature has provided us with a perfect operating system. It’s all there and available to us, if only we would follow the clear path that Nature / Universe / God / Great Spirit / Higher Power / Greater Intelligence uses to create and manage everything.

Most humans believe that we know better. We think that we can impose our will upon Nature. We believe that it’s a question of us versus them, man versus Nature or survival of the fittest. Nothing is farther from the truth that Bucky and other wise people have discovered.

If we want to survive and succeed as a species, we can no longer continue functioning as our ancestors did. We know that their unsustainable ways are not applicable in a highly industrialized and more technically savvy culture. We have the knowledge, and we need to put it to use on behalf of all sentient beings.

Today’s Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth would tell us that we must include all people and living beings in the formula for success. It would again emphasize that in 1976 we entered a period of abundant resources in which there is enough to support everyone. Within that context, war, poverty, starvation, and politics are now obsolete.

The primary means for manifesting this already present paradigm and saving the human (and many other) species from extinction is a shift from weaponry to livingry. This transformation is essential for the successful operation of Spaceship Earth today.

It becomes an increasingly viable shift as more Spaceship Earth crewmembers become aware that humans have created this situation and as more of us take action to solve our critical problems. Those same first responder / early adopter crewmembers are also the people who will remain calm and focused on our collective well-being as our environment becomes increasingly chaotic and fear-based.

Bucky was one such early adopter, and he created a template for effective, efficient human action that is more vital today than it was when he was alive. He determined and documented what one individual can accomplish on behalf of all humankind that cannot be achieved by any government, corporation, or other institution—no matter how large or powerful.

We can all learn from his example of what the “little individual / average healthy man” can achieve and go well beyond what he was able to accomplish because of the “Operating Manual” that he left us. That Manual was more than the thin book he published in 1968. It is, in fact, his well-documented life, which is a model for living as a conscious human and employing technology both physical and metaphysical to create a sustainable environment that supports all life.

The fact that today’s ever expanding technology allows one individual to make a greater impact than the largest, most powerful organization or institution is a critical element of a modern Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. We can now each follow Nature’s basic instructions in creating a sustainable, abundant planet for all sentient beings. We can write our own Operating Manual based on love, cooperation, peace, joy, union, and the success of each and every person.

This modern approach to life that melds technology and compassion is critical. It would have probably been in the first chapter of a written instruction book for our planet—if we had been provided with one.

2.2 “The most special thing about me is that I am an average man.”

By Robert White

GUEST COMMENTATOR

Clearly these are not Bucky’s most intellectually challenging words. Yet their meaning for me was profound and useful in my life journey. They could play the same role in yours.

1980 was my seventh year living and working in Japan when the Tokyo American Club hosted Buckminster Fuller’s speech. I had read the books, marveled at the dome, and been fascinated by the Dymaxion car at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. We used John Denver’s birthday gift song for Bucky, What One Man Can Do, in our seminars, and I’d often thought about how wonderful it was to have a song written for you. John did write a song for me after his experience of our seminar eight years later … but that’s a different story.

Bucky was one of my heroes, and I might have been the first person to sign up for the event. I arrived early, notebook in hand. I strategically selected my seat. For me, he was a rock star and I was experiencing a kind of giddy excitement while attempting to remain a cool Tokyo businessman.

The introduction was what you would expect. Lengthy and laudatory—a fitting tribute to a man who had lived his life in service to humanity. Then this tiny, frail giant slowly walked to the stage while we gave him a standing ovation. His first words after all that praise were:

“The most special thing about me is that I am an average man. I say that as a challenge to any limitation you may have accepted for your life.”

I was shocked and barely remember the balance of a one-hour speech. My business success and lots of therapy had not been adequate to erase a history of feeling “less than.” I felt I needed to stretch in order to get up to average and here was one of my heroes saying firmly and sincerely that he was just that: average. It was one of those moments where it’s possible to have one’s worldview altered and it was happening to me. Something shifted within me and it has made all the difference in my life.

Bucky stole my best excuse for being and doing less than my potential. While I was comfortable knowing that I would not approach his contribution in the world, I could no longer use the “I’m not enough” excuse for doing what was possible for me in my family, my company, and my world. After all, Bucky was also average.

When I later grappled with general systems theory I stepped up to the intellectual struggle—especially when we were taught about the power of leverage points. Of course that was just a different version of Bucky’s trimtab teachings. When John Denver and I traveled together to deliver the Windstar Foundation’s Higher Ground event—where we played a modified version of the World Game—I was able to honor and celebrate Bucky’s life—and mine.

Recently, someone asked me about those serving in the American military. “Where do we find these people?” I’d ask the same about Buckminster Fuller. I will be forever grateful.

ROBERT WHITE founded human potential training companies Lifespring, ARC International, and Extraordinary People. He’s an executive coach and author of Living an Extraordinary Life. You may reach him and register for his free weekly e-zine “An Extraordinary Minute” at www.ExtraordinaryPeople.com.

THIS SIMPLE STATEMENT REPRESENTS THE ESSENCE OF Buckminster Fuller, and he shared it often in both writing and speaking because he wanted people to realize that he was not special. In reality, he was unique not because of his intellect or amazing metaphysical capabilities but because of his willingness to take action in support of what he felt was most important, and that was usually the welfare of all life on Spaceship Earth.

We are all “average.” We’re simply humans operating out of physical bodies on Earth. We’re also unique and capable of accomplishing much more than we believe ourselves to be. We can accomplish anything we set our minds to, and Bucky proved that throughout his life and especially during this “56 Year Experiment” to determine and document what the “little individual, average man” could accomplish.

Bucky’s accomplishments are well beyond what most people achieve, but by reminding us again and again that he was an “average man,” he reiterates the fact that anyone can accomplish what he did and more. This is particularly true today when our ever-expanding technology allows each of us to do so much more with fewer resources.

When the “average man” Bucky Fuller was conducting his experiment, a phone was a static device that connected people via wires and a computer was an expensive tool that was available only to a few. Today, most average people have access to these and other tools that allow us to be much more effective and efficient in finding and sharing our gifts.

Bucky realized that every person is a gift and has skills that she can share with others. That is the “average” that he recognized and championed throughout his life, and in an abundant society we no longer have to put a price on that service. All average people can now give of themselves freely knowing that if what they share is genuinely from the heart with no strings attached, Nature / Universe / Source / Greater Intelligence will support them in all aspects of their lives.

This is the challenge that “we the people / average women and men” face today. We must confront our fears and a society dominated by a few individuals who want us to believe that there is not enough to support all life and that we must fight for our “share.” Nothing could be further from the truth, and Bucky was one of the first people to recognize this paradigm shift and campaign for all of us to wake up to our natural birthright.

We “average” people are the ones who will humbly create Bucky’s vision of “a world that works for everyone.” And we’ll do it with great compassion, joy, love, grace, and integrity. That’s how we must behave if we are to pass the period Bucky labeled our “final examination.”

Average people doing what needs to be done with great integrity and imagination. That’s our formula for success during this unique period of evolution.

2.3 “It is not for me to change you. The question is, how can I be of service to you without diminishing your degrees of freedom?”

By Greg Voisen

GUEST COMMENTATOR

Bucky Fuller’s quote has significant meaning for me, especially because of my chosen vocation and calling. I am a transformational leader in the personal growth, spirituality, and wellness space. I have interviewed hundreds of personal growth / mastery authors, and the above quote resonates with my lifelong personal passion for learning and for teaching others.

Our role as teachers, learners, and mentors is not to change others but to nurture the inherent wisdom that resides within and to allow this intelligence to illuminate from our souls. In being of service our opportunity is to help others find the magic elixir, the flame of passion that resides within, and to encourage the release and expression of this intelligence. The learners transform emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, and psychologically, and they are immediately released to be free from any bonds they may have placed on themselves inhibiting their unique expression and an opportunity for personal transformation and growth.

Awareness, authenticity, and the genuine expression as an alive and free soul is the most beautiful aspect of all human life. No barriers, no bars or obstacles can prohibit one from his or her unique expression. This newfound freedom becomes a critical link in the chain of all humanity, especially as it relates to being courageous, compassionate, caring, and kind. Manifesting these qualities are what heals our souls and the collective consciousness of the fellow travelers on this planet.

The philosophies and ideas of Bucky Fuller were first unveiled to me by author and speaker Mark Victor Hansen. I remember attending a meeting in the early ’80s, listening to Mark speak so enthusiastically about how Bucky transformed his life through his ideas and teachings.

Mark had the privilege of assisting Bucky Fuller at the peak of his career. He dedicated a significant segment of his speech to discussing the inventions of Bucky Fuller, such as the Geodesic Dome and the Dymaxion automobile. I was personally transformed and influenced by Mark’s amazing stories and today, some thirty years later, I frequently speak about the history, lessons, and ideas that Bucky gifted to humanity.

As Bucky stated, we are here not to diminish the freedom of another nor are we here to change people. Our role is to be the guiding light illuminating the way for others to find authentic expression, and in so doing make a contribution to the greater good for all humanity.

GREG VOISEN is an author, speaker, blogger, and the founder of Inside Personal Growth. Inside Personal Growth is dedicated to providing listeners with engaging, dynamic, and transformational interviews with authors in the personal growth, mastery, spirituality, and wellness genres. To learn more about Greg Voisen and his dedication to spreading the message of human potential, please visit his website at www.InsidePersonalGrowth.com.

SERVICE TO OTHERS WAS A CRITICAL ASPECT OF BUCKMINSTER Fuller’s life. He was born into a family of ministers and lawyers at a time when ministers and lawyers were respected, and his father was a global importer at a time when few people traveled farther from home than they could ride on a horse in one day. Thus, Bucky grew up within an environment where contributing to others and a global perspective were important even though few of his peers or elders appreciated these concepts.

Bucky eventually melded these two ideas to create his vision of all resources being used to support all humankind. That vision morphed into the idea of “a world that works for everyone.” In this abundant, sustainable world, we each need to be of service to others without attempting to change them.

Within this context, it is up to each of us to understand that nothing we do or say will change another person. They will do what they will do regardless of our efforts. Trying to change another person usually escalates the problem for everyone involved.

Bucky understood that the only way to create change in another is to transform their environment. One of the easiest ways to change another person’s behavior is to change your own. As Gandhi said, “Be the change.”

Another way to change another person’s environment is through artifacts. You can either create new environment-changing artifacts such as a geodesic dome or this book, or you can share existing artifacts such as this book or other websites with another person. In either case, the person’s environment will have changed because we can’t learn less. In other words, when we are exposed to something, we learn from it, and we can’t unlearn that information. Thus, a person’s environment (internal and external) is changed with the inclusion of new “information.”

They remain as free as they were prior to learning this new thing, but that freedom has altered. They now possess more refined yet expanded views, which usually prevents them from taking actions that will be harmful to themselves or other living beings. And, thus, the person who introduced the change to their environment has been of great service to them and increased their freedom.

2.4 “Humanity is taking its final examination. We have come to an extraordinary moment when it doesn’t have to be you or me. There is enough for all. We need not operate competitively any longer. If we succeed, it will be because of youth, truth, and love.”

By Hazel Henderson

GUEST COMMENTATOR

I remember being with Bucky in Philadelphia for a World Game session, organized by Medard Gabel, who is still furthering Bucky’s vision with his Big Picture presentations at the United Nations and worldwide. Bucky and I both left to catch the same USAir flight up to Boston for another group of his followers led by John Todd, who with Nancy and Jack Todd created the New Alchemy Institute. Among their famous alumni are Gary Hirshberg, founder of Stonyfield Farms and their yogurt products, and Sim Van der Ryn, pioneer green architect.

Bucky and I were lucky enough to find seats together, and I was awed with the privilege of having one hour in his august company. Intuitively attuned to Bucky’s daring naïveté and technical brilliance, I was imbibing his expansive consciousness almost through the pores of my skin.

Looking closely at Bucky, I realized he was tired. So I took his outstretched hand, and we both agreed to take a nap. We awoke as our plane landed in Boston. Bucky, fresh as a daisy, and I, still bemused at my good fortune, arrived at the next conference. I sat in the front row and drank in another virtuoso Bucky presentation.

Since then, I often use Bucky’s deepest statement on education for our time of whole-system transition on planet Earth:

“Humanity is taking its final examination. We have come to an extraordinary moment when it doesn’t have to be you or me. There is enough for all. We need not operate competitively any longer. If we succeed, it will be because of youth, truth and love.”

and its corollaries:

“It is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a higher standard of living than any have ever known. It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary. War is obsolete. It is a matter of converting the high technology from weaponry to livingry.”

“We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims. The challenge is to make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time, with spontaneous cooperation and without ecological damage or disadvantage of anyone. How can we make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological damage or disadvantage to anyone?”

For me, these truths led to my lifelong interest in technology and our levels of competence in understanding the planet’s geology and biological mantle of life forms, including humans, and how we all share the same atmosphere, water, and climate.

I saw the great transition still underway from fossil-fueled industrialism to the wiser, cleaner, greener societies in my Politics of the Solar Age (1981). Bucky identified all these challenges of this transition and our new abilities to provide for 100% of the human family—by redesigning our cities, societies, cultures, and beliefs.

Most crucially, Bucky knew we would have to design our systems of money-creation and credit-allocation beyond their basis in scarcity, fear, and competition. These tasks are now at the top of the human agenda and even army generals are seeing war as futile and military approaches as less effective than diplomacy.

Recent financial crises have demonstrated the corruption and collapse of our global money circuits. The future lies not in cries to return to the gold standard but to acknowledge real forms of wealth beyond money: healthy, wise humans interacting with the planet’s ecosystems, using the free daily photon shower from our sun as effectively as plants do in photosynthesis.

So, for me, Bucky Fuller lives on in my “Love Economy” research and in our Ethical Markets Green Transition Scoreboard®, our Transforming Finance initiative, the Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators, and our Beyond GDP work and surveys with Globescan.

Yes, Bucky. “Love is that metaphysical gravity” that keeps us all one human family. And I continue to “Dare to be naïve.”

HAZEL HENDERSON, D.Sc.Hon., FRSA, is President and Founder of Ethical Markets Media (USA and Brazil). She is a futurist, evolutionary economist, and author of the award-winning Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy and many other books. Her editorials are syndicated by InterPress Service, and her articles appear in journals worldwide. She leads the Transforming Finance initiative, created the Green Transition Scoreboard®, tracking global private sector investment in green tech, and developed with Calvert Group the widely used alternative to GNP, the Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators. In 2010 she was honored as one of the “Top 100 Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business Behavior 2010” by Trust Across America.

By T. J. Mackey

GUEST COMMENTATOR

Buckminster Fuller was a teacher and now I am a teacher. I work in a system of education that uses competition as its vehicle. If your only goal is to find out who is the best, then this system seems to make sense. But if you value something else then it would make sense to call this system into question.

Many feel that our education system is broken, or at least pretty far off track. Yet we often hear a cry to increase accountability. The way we do that, we are told, is more testing, hence more competition. Creating competition between students, between teachers, between schools, between districts, and even between states.

What if we stepped back for a minute and asked a different question? What if our schools were based on cooperation rather than competition? What if students had to work together to answer complex problems and not race to win a standardized exam?

The geese fly faster and farther working together to form their “V.” The fish find safety working together as a school. Evolution welcomes efficiency.

Buckminster proved over and over again that the Earth can and will provide. Man must cooperate in order to share in it, but we must also provide for the needs of others. Hungry students don’t learn well. Students who are not safe or are alone can’t focus. Students consumed with chasing material gains or accolades don’t aspire to new challenges. By meeting the needs of those around us we all move forward together. Schools can and should be teaching that, not competing for funding.

In my classrooms, we use inquiry. We listen for the questions, both teacher and student. We seek depth rather than the quick and easy information on the surface. Students figure out how to work together to reach their goals, not ones handed down from above. Classrooms can allow for creativity and tangential thinking if they are not slaves to deadlines. “Deadline” seems appropriate, because it often leads to a dead line of thinking when students are marched on to the next topic. Students can learn to listen to each other; they can learn to work to support each other too.

T. J. MACKEY is Middle School Head at Seattle Country Day School.

WELCOME TO OUR FINAL EXAMINATION. YOU HAVE ALL THE resources to succeed, and so does everyone else taking this exam. There will be no grades. The time allotted for this test is as long as you need, or more correctly as long as you and all your fellow travelers on Spaceship Earth survive.

This is a “pass/fail” test, and everyone must pass if humanity is to continue on Earth. This exam is a “team sport,” and every living person is on your team. Please pick up your pencil and begin. The clock is ticking!

Buckminster Fuller often pointed out the seemingly simple answer to this test when he explained that we must shift our resource usage from weaponry to livingry. In other words, we live in abundant Universe on an abundant planet, but we need to stop trying to kill each other and start feeding, housing, educating, and clothing people.

This is the mandate of “youth, truth, and love” that Bucky so adamantly championed. The “adults” of the world have made a mess of our tiny, fragile Spaceship Earth, using lies, half-truths, and fear to dominate and control. Some have made a small change in humanity’s quest to destroy the planet and all life forms, but we need the majority of “we the people” to stand up for truth and love.

As Bucky found, the people who most care about this overriding issue are the “youth,” no matter what their physical age. Although most are physically young in years and somewhat idealistic, Bucky also seemed like a youth for most of his life, and the younger generations flocked to his marathon “thinking out loud” lectures.

They saw the truth and passion in his words, and they respected the fact that he had “done his homework” and found that the human experiment could succeed. They bought into his vision of “a world that works for everyone,” and they were among the first who would stand with Bucky and “dare to be naïve.”

Now is the moment for all of us to declare our youthfulness, for us to stand together as one people living on one planet that has the ability to support us all. Now is the time, and we are the people. We’re all in this together, so we might as well get with the program and follow Nature’s guidance. It’s a universal issue that each of us gets to explore during our individual and cultural “final exam.” As Bucky so often reminded us, “The cosmic question has been asked. Are humans a worthwhile to Universe experiment?”

Bucky said “yes,” and I agree. Still, we have to work together to pass this test. The clock is ticking, so let’s get started.

2.5 “All children are born geniuses. 999 out of every 1,000 are swiftly and inadvertently degeniused by adults.”

By Anna Beshlian

GUEST COMMENTATOR

Recently, my Language Arts teacher read Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince to us, and I am struck by how closely related Bucky’s quote is to the beginning scenes of the story. The narrator, as a young child, draws the silhouette of a boa constrictor eating an elephant and shows it to his parents. With just a glance and no hesitation, they identify it as a hat, and bluntly state that they see no resemblance whatsoever to a boa constrictor digesting an elephant.

The narrator’s discouragement grows and eventually develops into self-doubt that pervades his mind and obliterates his dreams of being an artist. He instead becomes a pilot, flies across the Sahara desert, and crashes. His dreams of being an artist are rekindled when he meets the Little Prince in the middle of the desert; he understands the narrator’s drawing of the boa constrictor eating an elephant. The narrator eventually travels with the Little Prince to different planets, each habitant being a different character symbolizing faults in adults’ behavior and decisions.

If asked to comment on his quote, I imagine that Bucky would basically say—in his creatively cryptic way, of course— that older generations must let new generations grow up without any degrading aspects of life that “degenius(es)” them. I wonder what Bucky would have to say if he saw our modern-day society. Our society of adults, similar to the narrator’s parents, is unknowingly responsible for gradually depleting the sense of genius innovation that the younger generation is born with.

Individuals able to gracefully transcend rules in our society are rare. As children mature, they are constantly bombarded with examples of proper behavior, limitations, and rules (first introduced by their very own parents) about how their genius innovation should work.

My own experience of being “degeniused” was prominent in my mid-childhood, when I attended my neighborhood public elementary school. While I received a good, solid education, it wasn’t the inquiry-based type that my brain desired. Rather than explaining how or why things worked, facts were fed to me in textbooks, out of which I would frequently read, memorize the material, and spit back answers.

Questions that would jump-start my thinking process were rarely asked. I also highly disliked my teacher’s responses when I would ask her a question that I considered vital to my understanding of that topic.

If her answer was no, I would then proceed to ask why she said no. Her second answer would be something along the lines of “that’s just the way it is” or “because whoever wrote the story wanted it to be that way.”

Of course, perhaps “that’s just the way it is” is a legitimate answer, because maybe there is no explanation for how something is. And maybe whoever wrote the story indeed “wanted it to be that way” for a mysterious reason unknown to the general public. Still, their behavior astounded and angered me, and I was left alone in the dark corner of my doubtful mind, unable to see her reasoning.

How do we solve degeniusing? Perhaps we can’t, as most of us prefer to be in control of our lives, and to harmonize with those surrounding us. Maybe children need to be “degeniused by adults,” in order to function well in our society and be successful.

Or maybe introducing a little creativity into our lives never hurt anyone, and we need to learn to accept ourselves for who we are. Let’s not change anyone’s personal identity, nor let anyone change ours.

ANNA BESHLIAN is in the eighth grade at Seattle Country Day School.

By Stephen Garrett

GUEST COMMENTATOR

I have always admired Buckminster Fuller’s genius, his creative force and productivity. I chose this quotation because by being himself he demonstrated that there is a way to maintain the genius throughout a lifetime.

I resonate with this quotation, as I have long “known” that we are all magnificent potential waiting to get out—all that has happened is life! We are often reminded about all our apparent deficiencies, all that we are in negative ways. We are seldom reminded of our natural genius or greatness. Bucky is right—we get degeniused!

A study done several years ago with two-year-old children revealed the following very shocking information. Researchers spent twenty-four hours with the average two-year-old and monitored two things:

1) Negative comments the child received, and

2) Positive affirmations about the child.

Here are the results! Negatives in twenty-four hours: 432. Positives in the same period: thirty-two.

That is a 13:1 ratio of negatives over positives! Any wonder self-esteem is our nation’s number one problem in my estimation. So get this—a child sixteen years of age has heard approximately two-and-a-half-million times how bad, wrong, not good enough negatives about themselves and only 186,880 positives!

This is exactly what Bucky is speaking about. The genius gets drowned in a sea of negatives; lost in the illusion of these negatives, is it any wonder most of us are not living a great life to our full and magnificent potential. Is it any wonder that we are all seemingly stuck in the matrix?

What I have discovered over the years of my own personal growth is that these negatives can be transformed back into our natural genius with simple and profound techniques that require only a willing client and a deeply loving therapist. With some therapeutic skill and technique and a lot of “heart-art,” the uncovering of the dormant genius can be simply and gracefully accomplished. The negative illusions that were so unceremoniously implanted in us can be removed, freeing the real one we are to live a life of freedom, passion, and love.

Once the genius of each of us has emerged and we are once again able to live as that genius there is no limit to what we can create on the planet. This is just the point Bucky is making in the quotation—“Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them,” and more, the point of his life.

Gandhi once said “Be the change.” Perhaps we can combine Bucky and Gandhi and use this quotation as a mantra—“Be the genius you were born as.” If we can get the job of reclaiming the genius in each of us done there is nothing we cannot accomplish.

So I would recommend that we all take on the fun and playfulness of reclaiming our own natural genius. There are some way-showers out there that are the real thing and will gladly help others remember who they are at their core, at their source and essence. Find them, be with them as long as you need, and then set out on your own to pay the genius of you forward. It’s very much spiritual anarchy—come play. It is so much fun!

STEPHEN GARRETT is an author, trainer, coach, and guide. In 1988, he woke up from a deep sleep called the North American Dream and has since been devoting his time, dynamic energy, and life to helping people wake up to their own personal power and essence and learn to live their lives based on their heart’s wisdom. He has written two books, Men Read This—A Spiritual Guide for the Regular Guy and Monks Without A Church—Life Beyond Religion. He owns and operates Just Alive Consulting with his wife Sonora, and they offer retreats and yearlong coaching programs designed to support others in reclaiming their own genius and then living from it. You can find him at www.stephengarrettnow.com

BUCKMINSTER FULLER DEVOTED A GREAT DEAL OF HIS young life resisting being “degeniused,” and in his early adulthood he “re-geniused” himself. He was fortunate to have been raised in a family that valued education, even though they tended toward traditional New England values that dominate the way people lived and thought.

Because he had essentially been an undiagnosed blind child for the first five years of his life, he was not subject to many of the usual factors that tend to “degenius” most of us. It was only after getting glasses that he could see clearly and was expected to follow the mandates of the adults who wanted all children to be seen and not heard and to follow a strict path toward becoming “good citizens.”

That path also tends to eliminate thinking for oneself, and Bucky continually rebelled at that notion. Without the benefit of sight during the first five years of his life, he had developed extremely efficient use of his other senses, and they connected him more deeply than most to Nature. He would attempt to taste, touch, smell and hear everything in the semi-rural environment of his home and the extremely rustic environment of Bear Island.

Yet, despite that advantage, he still fell into the trap of having to “become responsible” and follow the dictates of other people. That led him to try attending Harvard where he was expelled twice for not following the rules and to take several jobs that did not suit his freethinking nor his desire to experiment and contribute to the world.

In all those seeming failures, Bucky learned much about life and his role in the larger scheme of things. He also began to uncover the broad perspective that would eventually result in his vision of a viable “world that works for everyone.” Still, when he began to share that vision, he was seen as a crackpot, pie-in-the-sky dreamer rather than a wise prophet of the future.

In the later years of his life, when he was finally recognized as a genius with an important message, the primary audience were young people who, because of their age and the era in which they were raised, were more open minded than previous generations. They recognized a kindred spirit and wise elder in Bucky, and they intently followed his advice and his re-geniused life path.

Still, Bucky’s awakening was the result of many agonizing “learning experiences” (mistakes) including the painful death of his four-year-old daughter Alexandra in his arms. Eventually, he realized that society was and still is attempting to turn children into “productive citizens,” which essentially means training them to be cogs in an industrial complex that focuses on increased consumption, profits, greed, and war.

Bucky realized that learning to think for himself and trust his personal experience over the words of others was far more important than earning a living or, as he often called the process, “earning the right to live.” He recognized that our society is educating natural curiosity, comprehensive nature, cooperation, and talents out of our children in order to make them robotic, non-thinking, expendable pawns in the fear-based production machine we call developed modern culture.

Today, all adults need to “re-genius” themselves while stopping the process of “degeniusing” our children. Modern technology and our expanded consciousness have provided the tools and information required for this monumental restructuring—both as individuals and as a society. All we need to do is wake up, make a conscious choice and step forward on the path—internally and externally—right now.

2.6 “I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing—a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process—an integral function of Universe.”

By Velcrow Ripper

GUEST COMMENTATOR

We are all verbs. Not a one of us a noun. Not one a fixed identity. Thank you Bucky, for articulating something so critical, so crucial, so clearly. The liberating power of this deep understanding is a game changer.

Somewhere a few centuries back, we developed the fragmented, Newtonian worldview that haunts us still. With help from the new power of the zero, we accelerated our reduction of the world to facts and figures, cleaving it apart with a sword of Hubris. G~d died, or was killed, and in Her place we erected towers of steel and concrete. The ego made manifest, set in concrete, immobilized.

So different from the curving, integral sweep of Bucky’s geodomes. Our very perception shifted, as we fragmented ourselves, specialized ourselves, as we created a binary world of black and white, of us and them, of either/or. Nature and spirit a distant other. There was security in this view. A false sense of security.

Look up! The skyscrapers are falling. Rapid climate change, economic collapse, ecological collapse, political instability, and technological escalation: the only thing we can be sure about is radical indeterminacy.

In the face of this acceleration, we have choices to make. We can freeze in fear, becoming paralyzed. Static. Resistant. Frozen. We can buy stuff or watch stuff or eat stuff, anything to avoid feeling. There’s too much pain out there. We can fight like we’ve never fought before. If all else fails, we could always try bombing something. That usually works really well.

Or we can rise onto our surfboards and surf the power of this wave ~ particle ~ wave of change. This Tsunami of transformation. We can dive into the frothing waters with joy, celebration, and Love, following the currents, not fighting, not resisting, yet not succumbing ~ transforming poison into pearls.

Buckminster Fuller’s gravestone reads, “Call me Trimtab.” The Trimtab is the tiny rudder that trims the direction of great ships. We are not trying to shift the steel prow of the oil tanker that is industrial growth civilization, which is clearly on a collision course with limits, heading for the next spill. The next crash. The next dead end. Instead, we are becoming the collective Trimtab for Spaceship Earth. We are learning to meet the raging tides of this age of extinctions with radical grace.

We are schools of fish lost at sea, seeking to change course from the bottom of the ocean up. Slowly, then suddenly, with a committed wave of our million fins, we will steer the seemingly immobile forces of top down self-destruction back towards harmony, towards Love, towards an ever evolving universe story that is as ancient as light.

There is tremendous energy to be found in these days of quantum leaping. We are facing record-breaking weather around this trembling Earth—the hottest, the wettest, the coldest, the driest. But we are also seeing record-breaking vision arising everywhere in this season of transition. Millions of people around the world are creating a new story. We are the largest mass movement in humanity’s history, and we are a verb.

Welcome to the era of resilience. Of fluidity. Of flexibility. Balanced with the strength of right relationship, of clear intention. Free will in service to the Universe made manifest on Earth. Which is Us.

The rigid, the fixed, the unmovable—they will be moved, regardless. Most likely they will snap, crackle, crumble, unable to bend with the winds of evolution. Unless they (who are Us) learn that we are truly verbs. How beautiful this understanding that we are evolving. There is so much joy in this—so much meaning. How can we not help but be in awe of the stupendous fourteen-billion-year journey that has brought Us to this place of consciousness, of conscience, of self-aware Love? A miraculous mirror reflecting the infinite journey back to the creative life force Ourself.

I am in Love with Life. I can’t get enough of it. I am in Love with this pearl of a world. I am in Love with humanity. I am in Love with our wisdom—and our folly. To those who say the planet would be better off without Us, I ask that they reconsider. For we are integral to this planet. We are Earth.

We are in the midst of a great Love story, and part of that story currently involves a separation. Yes, we have lost our way. We have strayed far from our Love. But still we carry the torch, burning away, buried in our heart of hearts.

We are in a reckless mid-life crisis, spending all our resources on some useless, big red Ferrari, racing away from compassion and responsibility, lost in denial, searching for something we’ve always had. One day, may it be soon, we’ll crash the damn thing one last time, and come back home, to our true Love, to our true Life, with a much deeper appreciation for all we have left behind. Carrying new gifts, borne of the experience of separation. And in that return, we will Love like never before.

Love is a verb. It is something we do, something we live, something we are. Every dancing cell is alive with Love. The stars are burning with Love. The Earth gives birth to Love, night and day. Death is part of Love. Sadness is part of Love.

The whole spectrum is Love, in action, in motion. Even our illusion of rigidity—born of fear—is all about Love, about our vulnerability. Our human vulnerability. We are afraid of truly living, of truly Loving, for to Love is to accept that one day, the Lover will be gone. To open the heart is to be deeply vulnerable. But to be vulnerable is to flow, to be open, to give and receive.

Yes indeed—all is impermanent, all will be lost. And that is the ultimate source of liberation. So don’t hang on—but don’t let go. Breathe it all in! Don’t miss out by numbing down or dumbing down or running away. No matter what is happening, you are Loved, and you are Love. And it will all disintegrate, dissolve, decompose, be gone in a flash.

Don’t turn from the journey! The greatest show on Earth is this very moment. This very breath. This very heart beat. This endless Love. Welcome home to Planet Earth. May you Love the Life you Live.

VELCROW RIPPER is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, and public speaker, with dozens of films under his belt, including the acclaimed FIERCE LOVE TRILOGY of feature documentaries, an epic exploration of the global zeitgeist during the years 2000 to 2012. It began with SCARED SACRED, winner of the Genie Award (Canadian Academy Award) for best feature documentary. Part two is the newly released FIERCE LIGHT: When Spirit Meets Action. The trilogy will conclude with EVOLVE LOVE: Love in a Time of Climate Crisis. His films are released widely, in theatres, broadcast, and online, internationally. He can be reached at transparentfilm@warpmail.net or his website, www.velcrowripper.com.

By Thomas Myers

GUEST COMMENTATOR

The dynamic “verb” of a human body in motion is easily understood as an active tensegrity structure, always adjusting the forces of tension and compression so that they are perfectly balanced. When I studied World Game with Bucky in the late ’60s, I learned about tensegrity and helped build a dome or two, but the general systems work warmed me more than the engineering. In the early ’70s, I ran into Ida Rolf, whose able hands set me to work with the job I have held ever since: changing people’s posture toward greater efficiency, length, sturdiness, and balance.

I am told that Ida Rolf met Buckminster Fuller once, but that the meeting did not go well. “I stand up straight; I was in the Navy,” Bucky told her, completely misunderstanding her approach to spatial positioning. Some years later, Rolfing instructor Jim Asher gave Bucky a structural integration session late at night on Bucky’s hotel bed, after a lot of palaver getting him down to his skivvies. Bucky had a bad hip, but he was seen next morning in the hotel lobby, jumping up and down on it, delightedly saying, “See, it works! See, it works!”

Bucky always told his audiences, “don’t try to reform people, reform the environment and the people will reform themselves.” It is odd, remembering this idea, that I should take up the work of literally trying to “re-form” the most useful tool and proximate environment we will ever have—our bodies. I have termed this attempt to change body shape (and thus increase its syntropic behavior) “Spatial Medicine”—in contrast to the currently popular Material (or chemical) Medicine of drugs, herbs, and supplements, or the Temporal Medicine of psychotherapy or shamanism.

Other attempts to reform the body itself have focused either on shifting the bones directly (chiropractic and osteopathy, which have deep roots in folk culture but were only organized into sciences in the last century) or via training the muscles (whose most ancient forms are yoga, martial arts, and folk dance, though modern personal training methods such as Pilates, Alexander Technique, and the various fitness approaches clearly belong here also).

Ida Rolf’s method was uniquely different: she addressed the sinewy parts of the extra-cellular matrix of soft connective tissues, popularly known as fascia, strategically lengthening and reducing planar adhesions in this plastic medium, which in turn leads to shifts in the bony relationships and retuning of muscle tone across the body. The goal is to change our literal and figurative “attitude,” deliberately conflating the biomechanical with the psychosomatic.

Changing the relative position of the “struts” through adjustment of the “tension members” cried out for tensegrity modeling, though to this day I am unsure that the human body on this macro level fulfills the strict definition of tensegrity, despite the useful modeling that is coming out of applying this metaphor (see illustration).

At the atomic level, of course, the body is a tensegrity structure, as everything material is. Dr. Donald Ingber of Children’s Hospital in Boston (http://www.childrenshospital.org/research/ingber) has ably demonstrated tensegrity functioning in the inner working of our cells as well as the way that they are all suspended in the extracellular matrix via trans-membranous integrin connections. This has been dramatically rendered by John Liebler at XVIVO (http://www.xvivo.net/ the-inner-life-of-the-cell.)

The original and most forceful voice in favor of defining the body in terms of strict tensegrity has been the orthopedic surgeon Dr. Steven Levin (http://www.biotensegrity.com). His imagination has been ably rendered in sticks and bungee cord by designer and engineer Tom Flemons, inventor of, among other things, the tensegrity Skwish toy (www.intensiondesigns.com).

Model of human being as a tensegrity structure. Model and photo by Tom Flemons, www.intensiondesigns.com

 

Less tested but equally intriguing is the work of British osteopath Graem Scarr (http://www.scribd.com/doc/33438210/ Cranial-Vault-as-a-Tensegrity-Structure-by-Scarr) who has posited that the bones of the skull are held apart by a tensegrity configuration of the membranes around the brain across the wormian sutures.

Considering the body on a macro level—bones as struts, organs as incompressible but deformable balloons, and connective tissue as tension members with muscles to immediately adjust the tension and nerves to shorten and lengthen the muscles—the idea of utter and strict tensegrity is hard to assert.

To turn the leg into a tensegrity tower, Tom Flemons has struts from the upper member coming below the upper struts from the lower member—a requirement to support the upper member in tension rather than compression. Examining the actual human knee, it is hard to see that kind of mechanism at work: the tibial plateau simply does not extend high enough for any soft-tissue fiber to go down from there to the lower edge of the femur. Close examination (which I have made in the dissection lab) does not reveal any substantial fibers that could possibly support the weight involved. The finger and toe joints present a similar problem.

The shoulder and the spine are much easier to imagine as complete tensegrities; indeed, the shoulder simply cannot be modeled in the old leverage models, and the spine is a very poor continuous compression “column.” Any static tensegrity modeling will of course fall short of a living human body that continually adjusts in movement in response to psychosocial as well as biomechanical demands. Discussions of such issues can be found at http://floatingbones.com.

So if we ultimately cannot place the human body in the category of pure tensegrity, we can certainly place it firmly in the family of “tension-dependent” structures. Eliminate the soft tissues and the skeleton would clatter to the ground; it has no interlocking stability of its own. Like a sailboat or the mast-and-membrane structures of Frei Otto—which fail the pure tensegrity test, but are still tension-dependent—the body apparently makes use of a variety of engineering mechanisms in its daily rounds and extraordinary feats, from the leaf spring of the foot arches to the floating eyeball.

This imagery has very practical application to the world of rehabilitative manual and movement therapies, where chronic injury travels, and the area of binding may be far from the site of pain. Ida Rolf’s “Where you think it is, it ain’t” nails the body’s tensegrity, which is a strain distribution system, rather than a strain focusing system. The bones float, isolated struts in a sea of continuous tension. The body’s specific soft-tissue geodesics are outlined in the book, Anatomy Trains, which owes a good deal in both tone and substance to the expansive genius of R. Buckminster Fuller.

TOM MYERS is the author of Anatomy Trains (Elsevier 2009), and Fascial Release for Structural Balance (North Atlantic 2010), and numerous articles for trade magazines and journals. Tom directs Kinesis, which offers continuing education to manual and movement therapists worldwide. Tom lives, writes, and sails on the coast of Maine with his partner Quan and her animals, and can be found via www.AnatomyTrains.com.

IF A PERSON BELIEVES HERSELF TO BE A THING (A NOUN), she limits herself to her physical body and reality. Buckminster Fuller contemplated this possibility at great length over many years before he made his now legendary, profound proclamation, “I seem to be a verb.”

Many people commented that Bucky was a very active verb. Even though he was a master at simply being, those who spent time with him realized that by being completely present to whatever was happening, Bucky created the space for others to have ah-ha awakening experiences.

Still, he was continually in action on a basic yet elevated level that exemplified being “an integral function of Universe.” By demonstrating rather than telling how to be a genuine citizen of the world and Universe, Bucky once provided a viable example that experience is far more important than explanation.

We humans are not things. We are constantly changing evolving entities who are much more than our physical bodies and the “stuff” we believe that we possess.

The physical me can see, smell, taste, touch, and hear, but it can’t experience emotions, take action, or come up with new ideas. The inactive noun perspective of life overlooks all the pleasure, pain, and activity that makes us human. The active verb perspective opens doors beyond what most of us can imagine.

By opening those doors for himself and others, Bucky was able to attain a perspective well beyond what most others can even imagine. Then, he brought much of that vast vision back into the realm of the noun/thing by creating artifact inventions that modeled non-physical reality.

From Bucky’s perspective, all people are verbs, and today many people are very active verbs. Being busy does not, however, make one an integral function of Universe like Bucky. Being busy simply makes a person active. The real challenge is to be consciously active as Bucky was.

He was not simply going faster to get more done. He was increasingly active in harmony with Nature and Universe and in support of all life. That was, and still is, the critical component we each need to cultivate if we are to make our unique contribution to humankind and all life.

We’re all doing a lot, and we’re creating much more than our ancestors imagined possible. We’re in the process of continually expanding our range of possibilities. We do, however, need to be aware so that we consciously evolve with and for all beings rather than selfishly do all we can to accumulate more for ourselves, our family, our nation, those who belong to our religion, or any other exclusive group.

Perhaps our new motto should be, “verbs of the Earth unite.” We have moved into a period when it’s everybody or nobody and being an “integral function of Universe” is no longer optional. It is mandatory for all of us to fully participate and share our talents and gifts just as Bucky did following his awakening to his “verbness.”

PURPOSE WITHOUT CONTROL

CHAPTER CONCLUSION

2.7 “Anyone who thinks that humans on this Earth are running Universe or that Universe was created only to amuse or displease or bore humans is obviously ignorant.”

JUST BECAUSE WE CAN, DOESN’T MEAN WE SHOULD _______. (Fill in a behavior you do out of habit and later regret.) Our actions have consequences, but humans are not running the show. After decades of personal study and thought, Buckminster Fuller was very clear that humans are a very tiny component of Universe. He recognized that Nature / God / Great Spirit / Higher Power / Allah / Greater Intelligence is running the show with a Grand Plan that is well beyond the scope of human understanding. He also realized that people who believe that they or any other humans have the power to fully control Universe are not fully aware.

Even such basic processes as breathing are not in our control. And we are certainly not in control of Universe, our tiny Spaceship Earth, or our environment. We can’t “own” anything, and we certainly can’t change anyone else’s behavior. We can, however, modify our own personal behavior to be in harmony with Universe, and that is precisely what Bucky Fuller was able to do. That is also how he was able to be so successful in making a huge difference in the lives of so many people.

Society now recognizes Bucky’s achievements far more fully than when he was alive. He realized that all Creation was not manifest to “amuse or displease or bore humans,” but we humans were manifest to serve all Creation, Universe, and the other life forms that are also manifestations of Universe. This perspective shifts the focus from me to you and the grand glory that you bring. It represents the manifestation of an awakened being who actually does unto others as he would have others do unto him.

Surely we can all gain much from looking to adopt this view more fully. It is the perspective that is most needed today as humankind continues on the path of our “final examination” to determine if we are a “worthwhile to Universe invention.” We are an invention of Universe, put here to be of value and use to a Greater Glory than we can possibly imagine. And we have been given the tools to do just that.

Each of us has this latent potential, but few of us have recognized—much less used—it. Fortunately, we have people like Bucky Fuller who have forged a path of awakening and service for future generations—like those of us who currently serve as the crew on board Spaceship Earth. Now, we need to wake ourselves up and begin freely sharing our gifts just as Bucky did. That is our mandate and path as we shift from a period of competition and war to an era of cooperation and peace for all people.