Post on 09-Apr-2018
transcript
8/7/2019 fuller bleed-pages
1/28
The words of
R BUCKMINSTER
FULLER
The design of
Fernando Padilla
I n v i s i b l er e a l i t y .
8/7/2019 fuller bleed-pages
2/28
Design & photography Copyright Fernando Padilla, 2010
essays courtesy of Buckminster Fuller Institute, 2010made and printed in Berkeley California
by Fernando padilla and copy central
set in Helvetica Nueu and helvetica bold.
ISBN 0-13-618623-3
8/7/2019 fuller bleed-pages
3/28
TABLE OF CONTENTSEssays & interviewsR. Buckinster Fuller
1.Accelerating Acceleration9.Big Picture Thinking
15.Earthians Critical Moment
19.Only Integrity is Going to Count
8/7/2019 fuller bleed-pages
4/28
ACCEL ERA
T I N G
8/7/2019 fuller bleed-pages
5/28
R B u c k m i n s t e r F u l l e r : E s s a y s
ACCE
L E R A
T I O N
2
8/7/2019 fuller bleed-pages
6/28
Not tourist. Just re-sponding to requests to
appear here and there,to lecture at universitiesor design some struc-ture, or whatever it maybe. So that is in theeveryday pattern, that I
am circuiting that earth.
Certainly makes
evidence that we are
dealing in totality of
humanity not theup
to my generation-
completely divided
humanity, spread very
far apart on our planet.
And were at a point
where I now have whatwould seem absolutely
incredible to generations
before. Ive now
completed thirty-seven
circuits of our Earth-kind
of zig-zagging circuits,
not straight around.
8/7/2019 fuller bleed-pages
7/28
R B u c k m i n s t e r F u l l e r : E s s a y s
My father was in the leather
importing business in Boston,
Massachusetts, in the United States,
and he imported from two places,apparentlyBuenos Aires and India,
for bringing in leather for the shoe
industry, which was centered in that
time in the Boston area. His mail, or
a trip he would like to make to Ar-
gentina, took two months each way.
His trip to India, or the mail, took
exactly three months each way.
4
8/7/2019 fuller bleed-pages
8/28
was in distress, and a ship then rushed to its
aid. Absolutely unexpected. My father and
mother were saying, Wireless? Nonsense!
And, when I was three the electron was
discovered and nobody talked about that;
it wasnt in any of the newspapers. Nobodywas interested in the electron, they didnt
know what was the electron or whether it was
discovered. I was brought up that humanity
would never get to the North Pole. Absolutely
impossible. Theyd never get to the South
Pole. On Mercator maps, it didnt even show
anything upthe northernmost points were
a very rugged kind of a line, if you see it, with
nothing beyond that. When I was fourteen,
man did get to the North Pole. When I was
sixteen, he got to the South Pole. The impos-
sibles were happening.
Like all other little boys, I was making paper
darts that you make at schoolboys mustve
been making them for a very long time. And
we were hoping it might be able to get to
ying. Parents would say, Darling, its very
amusing for you to try that, but its inherently
impossible for man to y. So when I was
seven, the Wright brothers suddenly ew, and
my memory is vivid enough of seven to re-
member that, for about a year, the engineering
societies would try to prove it was a hoax, that
it was absolutely impossible for man to do that.
It seemed absolutely logical to humanity when
early in this century Rudyard Kipl ing, the Eng-
lish poet, said East is east and west is west,
and never the twain shall meet. It was a very,
very rare matter for any human being to make
such a travel as that, taking all those months.There were not many ships that could take
him there.
All that has just changed in my lifetime,
to where Im not one of the very few making
these circuits of the Earth, but I am one of
probably getting to be pretty close to twenty
million now who are making, living a life like
that around our planet. And very much the
whole young world is doing so. I keep meeting
my students of various universities from around
the world half way round the world again.
Theyre all getting to be living as world people.
This is a very sudden emergence of some
new kind of relationship to our Universe being
manifest. None of it was planned. There was
nobody in the time of my father, my mother, in
the time I was brought up, prophesying any of
the things I just said.
The year I was born, Marconi invented the
wireless, but it did not get into any practical
use until I was twelve years of age, when the
rst steamship sent an SOS, when it was in
distress, by wireless. Think of i t. Great many
milesand the world began to know the ship
The impossibles
8/7/2019 fuller bleed-pages
9/28
R B u c k m i n s t e r F u l l e r : E s s a y s
So then, not only was there radio, but when
I was twenty-threewhich I guess many in
this room are not twenty-three yet,when I
was twenty-three, the human voice came over
the radio for the rst time. Thats an incredible
matter. I was forty-ve when we had our rsttelevision. It couldnt be a more recent matter,
and yet, nobody thought at that time, they
didnt know you were going to have transis-
tors. They didnt know man was going to have
satellites going around the earth, they didnt
know we were going to have radio relay satel-
lites, with programs coming out of any part of
the Earth to any other part of the Earth. Not
one of these steps was ever anticipated by any
of the others.
So having experienced that, I also expe-
rienced living with my fellow human beings
who, I nd, no sooner does it happen, says I
knew it all the time. Im not one of those to be
surprised; I was totally in on it, you know, I was
a little bit responsible. Theres a strange van-
ity of man, I think the vanity that he has was
essential to his being born naked and helpless
and having to make the fantastic number of
mistakes he had to make in order to really
learn something. I think he is so disgruntled,
so dismayed by the mistakes and the errors
that he would never have been able to carry
onwouldve been absolutely discouraged.
So he was given this strange vanity to sayto
continually make himself exempt, that he was
some kind of privileged and always in, and he
is able to quite clearly deceive himself a great
deal. So I nd everybody todaylet anybody
do that unless it is absolutely simpleand logical.
The rst census of the population of the
United States was taken in 1790, just after
the war was over. In 1810, the United States
Congress decided we ought to have a census
of the wealth of America, so the Treasury
Department had a very large survey made
of people to determine their wealth. In 1810,
there were a million families in America. In
1810, there were a million human slaves in
America. Its a very sad and very dramatic fact
to be revealed if you go back into the records.
It looks like every family having a human slave;
that was not correct. Very few families owned
a slave, comparatively. But the point is that
kind of a gure.
So I found that in 1940, in contradistinction
to that kind of condition, there were a number
of energy-slaves working in the economy
rather than human slaves. And I found that
you can go back and look at Fortune Magazine
10th Anniversary Issue, 1940, and youll
nd the number of energy slaves operating
per each person, per family. The number of
were happening
6
8/7/2019 fuller bleed-pages
10/28
to see what was really beneting the family. So
then, I found out how many net energy slaves
were really supporting a peaceful life of human
beings in America. What I found was one hun-
dred energy slaves per family, approximately
I came to two hundred at the time, and abouthalf of them were really working for the human
family itself; the other half were getting ready
for war.
I took the criteria of a hundred energy slaves
per family as being the criteria for what I call
a have family. This represented people who
were enjoying a really comfortable standard
of living. So my criteria for a have family: a
hundred energy slaves per family.
Now in 1900, taking the total human popula-
tion, far less than one per cent were in what I
called industrial have family. So less than one
per cent of humanity in 1900. As a conse-
quence of World War II, and the technology
I spoke about that was introduced in World
War II, it came out four per cent of all humanity
were suddenly industrial haves which was a
very big jump from nothing. In 1951, I was tak-
ing a new point on the curve, and I found wed
gotten up to twenty eight per cent of humanity.
I now had enough points on my curveI had
three pointsto be able to discover, theres a
radius of change, so I made a constant radius
of change, and I extended that radius. And
energy-slaves operating in the United States
per person was thirty-nine energy slaves per
person. Every individual, if you have a family
of ve, you come pretty close to two hundred
slaves working for each family. But energy
slaves are really inanimate, in contradistinction
to a millionone slave per familyof human
slaves. Suddenly you have two hundred non-
human slaves doing the work. An enormous
step up in the standard of l iving is represented,
as well as doing away with the inhumane idea
of the human being being the muscle machine
to be commanded. That that change had tak-
en place in such a short period of timeabout
a hundred and thirty year changeI felt I was
discovering something very, very dramatic.
And now I went into the gures in 1940 even
more deeply because by then World War IIwas thoroughly looming, and a great deal
of the energy being generated in the United
States was going toward war production. So
I deducted from the total energy that I would
be considering any energy that could be
identied as going toward anything that had
to do with war. To see then how much energy
was actually beneting the family, the human
beings; if the energy was producing a highway
for them to go on, I made that primarily for
them and not for the war, whatever that might
be. I made as strict an accounting as I could
moreofhumanity
8/7/2019 fuller bleed-pages
11/28
R B u c k m i n s t e r F u l l e r : E s s a y s
a very new relationship.
In 1951, I marked on my chart, the critical
year would be 1970. Using my acceleration it
could be somewhere between 1970 and 1975
The most accelerated point would be 1970
and the least accelerated would be 1975. Thisis the critical period and the curve really did get
exactly there at 1970. So we crossed, weve
been going through a very, very critical time
right now. Because this is the point where, I
say, it is now being clearly demonstrated to
humanity that something is going on, if he is
not so myopic and shortsighted as not to really
look at such curves. I am really astonished at
how little people will l ook at them.
This kind of awareness that made me want
to develop what I called a World Game to try
to make it as quickly as possible to make it
clear to all humanity what its options were,
that changes are going on. There are very big
things going on in nature here. I spoke to you
about our all coming out of some common
womb of permitted ignorance, with enough
cushion of resources by which, by trial-and-
error to make mistake after mistake, to learn
what were learning. And this is a very extraor-
dinary moment, I nd; suddenly there isall
around the worldliteracy. This wasnt there
when I was young.
I found that curve was increasing so rapidly
that the curve in exactly 2000 AD, we came to
100% of humanity would be enjoying a high
standard of living. I saw that that curve could
be accelerated, so I made an acceleration
curve on my 1951 publishing of this curve andwhen I took the slower rate, the constant rate
of radius, and I found that (this 1951), as of
1970, the curve went through fty per cent
of humanity.
Historically, ninety-nine per cent and more
of humanity were have-nots they were in
dire need, and revolution was really rampant.
The many would say the fewer are enjoying
unfairly, and we have to get up and do some-
thing about it. When you go by fty per cent,
I saw for the rst time in history, the majority
begins to be haves, rather than have-nots.
This would bring about a different way of
looking at things. Those who were haves
would probably nd much more information
than they ever had before, found they really
couldnt enjoy that have-ness as long as they
had awareness of the dire have-not-ness of
the others. At any rate, this would be a critical
point where, for the rst time, you would not
have the majority rising up to pull down the
top. You might really have, then, the tendency
of the majority, being on top, to pull the bottom
up. This seemed to be, probably,
werehavenots
8
8/7/2019 fuller bleed-pages
12/28
B I GP I C
T U R E
8/7/2019 fuller bleed-pages
13/28
R B u c k m i n s t e r F u l l e r : E s s a y s
THIN
K ING
1 0
8/7/2019 fuller bleed-pages
14/28
THINKING
DISCIPLINE
Fuller: I am going to review two or three ways
in which I discipline myself to try to get myself
thinking in a little more adequate manner
concerning what we know of our Universe and
what may be going on in a larger way, and to
try to get things a little better proportioned. As
for instance, I would like to have a picture of
our Milky Way galaxy may I have that picture
please?
MILKY WAY
Were looking at an array of starsyou can
see the Milky Way running through the stars.
The number of stars you are looking at is about
18,000, and they comprise approximately
1/6,000,000 of all the stars in our Milky Way
galaxy. We now know, and we have been able
to get our great telescopes trained on other
galaxies and so forth; we now have taken
photographs and are aware of a billion such
galaxies of a hundred billion stars each*.
LITTLE EARTH
Were looking at an exploding phenomenon. I
spoke about those hundred million galaxies* of
a hundred million stars each. 99.9% of them
are invisible to our naked eye, but their sizesare of great, great magnitude. To get a little
idea, our own star Sunour Earth is 8,000 of
miles in diameter and the diameter of the Sun
is just a hundred times that, so our little Earth
looks very tiny against that enormous big ball.
OUR SMALL SUN
But our star Sun is a small star. Most of you
are familiar with Orions Belt. In Orions Belt,
one of the two bright stars is reddish in colorand this is Betelgeuse. Betelgeuses diameter
is greater than the diameter of the orbit of the
Earth around the Sun. So thats a good
size star.
andyouand I are
8/7/2019 fuller bleed-pages
15/28
R B u c k m i n s t e r F u l l e r : E s s a y s
HUMANS ARE INVISIBLE
So, we are a little planet of a rather inferior star
which is one of a hundred bil lion stars in our
galaxy and we know of billions* of galaxies. So
you get an idea of our little planet, and you andI are utterly invisible on it. We take pictures of
our planet coming in from the moon, when you
can see through the cloud cover, you can see
the blue of the waters and brown of the l and,
but you cant make out a human being. You
cant even make out a mountain, let alone a
human being.
MOUNTAINS ARE
INVISIBLETheres absolutely no visibility of a mountain
because the aberration of the deepest water
ve miles below sea level, ve miles above
to the mountain topten miles aberration in
8,000 miles is so meager that a polished steel
ball is probably rougher than that.
WE ARE REALLY SMALL
So we are absolutely invisible on a really
negligible little tiny planet of a rather negligible
star, which is one member of a hundred billion
of known million billion such stars. So you
multiply the billion times a hundred billion and
youll get an idea.
BURSTING
PHENOMENON
As we look at things at great distances, this
picture that I have of the this is of a bursting
phenomena in the heavens which looks like a
tiny little light and it keeps remaining like a tiny
light. Its such a distance, and the distances
involved are so great. This particular phenome-
non is expanding at a velocity of 3 million miles
an hour. For instance, the distance between
the earth and the sun is 92 mill ion. So in 30
hours, just a little over a day, this expands the
complete distance between the earth and the
sun. Yet it remains for the thousands of years
we may be looking at it like a little tiny speck
there in the sky. You get a li ttle sense of the
size and deceptiveness to us in the magnitude
of the information we are really dealing
in today.
utterly invisible
1 2
8/7/2019 fuller bleed-pages
16/28
SEEING 11.5 BILLION
TIMES 6.5 TRILLION
MILES
I am quite condent, this is as far as you and
I have been able to when I say you and I, I
mean all our fellows the human beings who
have been born naked and helpless and nally
discovered principles of the refraction of li ght
and developed the telescope, and have been
able to make a sweep-out. We are getting
information tiny as we are, we have informa-
tion of an approximate spherical sweep-out of
observation of eleven-and-a-half billion light-
year radius. A light-year is six and one-half
trillion miles; when you get to eleven-and-a-half
billion times six-and-one-half trillion, you get alittle idea of the distance you and I are getting
information from reliable information. We get
the rate at which this thing is expanding.
SPECTROSCOPE
And through the spectroscope we learn about
refraction of light. Through the spectroscope
we are able to take the li ght from all those
observations. And each chemical element has
its unique frequencies when incandescent,
and we have been able then to l ittle human
beings on our planet have been able to take
inventory of the relative abundance of chemical
elements in the sweep-out of eleven-and-a-half
billion light-year observation.
SIGNIFICANCE OF
HUMAN BEINGS
That we have that kind of capability, despite
our absolutely negligible magnitude physically,
that we can we deal with our minds in such
magnitudes and do so quite reliably gives us a
hint that human beings must have some very
great signicance in the scheme.
INFORMATION
INCREASE
Just making a little jump in information. As
humanity on board of our planet entered
into what it called World War I, the scientists
around the world had ways of reporting to one
another ofcially. Chemists have what they
call chemical abstracts. Chemical abstracts
are methodical publications of anything and
everything any chemist nds that he publishes
information regarding, it becomes a chemical
tinyasweare we
8/7/2019 fuller bleed-pages
17/28
R B u c k m i n s t e r F u l l e r : E s s a y s
abstract. As the world entering World War I,
in what we call the 20th century (which is a
very arbitrary kind of a counting matter), we
had some 100 - Im doing this off the top of
my head from my memory - about 175,000
known substances, possibly almost a quarter
of a million substances, by the time the United
States came into the war, known to chemistry.
But we came out of World War I with almost
a million substances known. By the time we
entered World War II, we were well up to 10
million and weve come out of it now, where
the gure is really getting to be astronomical.
We cant really keep track of the rate at which
we are discovering more, just talking about
differentiable substances, chemically distinct
from one another.
ACCELERATION
OF INFORMATION AND
EXPERIENCE
Those are typical of the information release at
a bursting rate now, Im speaking now in rela-
tionship to my own life. One life in the extraor-
dinary numbers of lives there must have been
on board of our planet. That the information is
multiplying at that rate during just one lifetime
indicates that something is going on here right
now that is utterly unprecedented.
TRANSITION TO A NEW
RELATIOSHIP WITH
UNIVERSE
And there is such an indication of an accelera-
tion of experiences of human beings, the inte-
gration of the accelerated experience to pro-
duce awareness that are indicative of humanity
going through some very, very important kind
of transition into some kind of new relationship
to Universe, Id say, the kind of acceleration
that occurs after the child has been formed in
the womb, taking the nine months, then sud-
denly begins to issue from the womb out into
an entirely new world. I think we are appar-
ently coming out of some common womb of
designedly permitted ignorance.
have information
1 4
8/7/2019 fuller bleed-pages
18/28
EARTHIANSCRITICAL
8/7/2019 fuller bleed-pages
19/28
R B u c k m i n s t e r F u l l e r : E s s a y s
M OM
E N T
1 6
8/7/2019 fuller bleed-pages
20/28
The following transcripts were taken from a dialogue
while playing World Game (Integrity Day, June 1983).
RBF: We nd that the averagethere are a number
of different size atomic bombs. The total devastation
at varies, but they average on this map here 5/16 of
an the inch total devastation. There are now 50,000bombs waiting to go. We nd that the little, i n the
game of bingo, the little pink lozengetransparent
lozenge chipsand they are just 5/16th of an inch,
or the size of the average devastation of the atomic
bombs. There are 50,000 ready to go.
So were going to put the 50,000 here. Were not
putting them on the water. Were only putting them
in the dry land where the people can be. This is one
of them.
Youve got a crew? Five or six people?
Participant: Were all ready.
RBF: All right, lets go.
Participant: So youve got 50,000 of these things?
RBF: Yeah. Only on the dry land. Only on the dry
land. Dont put them on the North Pole. We need
more over here. If they are expertly spread out,
youll nd we get really complete coverage of all
humanity. In other words, the capability to kill all
humanity in half an hour, because really when the
bombs start off, the automated responses are just
going to mean all of them going off. The idea about
limited atomic warfare is absolute junk, a complete
lie to humanity. These are all doubled up pretty
much. At any rate, you get a good feeling now of
the utter devastation. If we hadnt had all the people
standing up there now, youd see what youve
got. You have a way of brushing these up, Jaime?
Youve got brushes ready? Will you remove
them now?
Participant: Somebody said its easier to drop them
than to pick them up.
RBF: You bet. Heres our world absolutelyits
gone, and thats why Im talking to you today about
integrity. I think if the individual humans as an inven-
tion are incapable of demonstrating integrity, then
the invention human is going to turn out to be an
unreliable invention, and the Universe will not need
it anymore. So, if this happens, its simply because
weve failed as individuals in being able to pass the
examination, which we are all entering into now.Were already in it. The crisis is already on us. You
see how really terribly thick they are here.
As of 1970, keeping track of all the environment
controlling, all the logistics of thinking about total
planetfor Spaceship Earth, in 1970, we passed
a threshold where it could be demonstrated,
engineering-wise, that if we took all the metals going
into armaments and put them into what you call
livingry, instead of killingry, that within a design revo-
lution of only ten years we could have all humanity
living at a higher standard of l iving than anybody
had ever known, on a completely sustainable basis,while phasing out forever all further use of fossil
fuels and atomic energy. We could live entirely on
our energy income. Now this is absolutely clear in
1970, we passed that threshold. For the rst time in
history, I knew it Obsolete did not have to be you or
me! That war was obsolete!
But howbecause of the invisibility of all these
things Im telling youhow difcult it is for me to get
you to understand just tensegrity structures. How
quickly can I get humanity all the information neces-
sary in this invisible reality, with all the specializa-
tion, where no specialist is standing up there in the
university saying, The mans right. Fullers right.
Theyre all so specialized - they dont deal with
things comprehensively the way I do.
At any rate, you understand my sense of responsi-
bility when you trust me with your time. I do know,
now, the time has come, it is now there, and its
up to you, its a matter of i ntegrity, to really check
up on what Im saying, to really nd out, yes, it istrue, and how do you get word to humanity quickly
enough so those who are making decisions in great
political systems, which are very emotional, before
they do then say, It has to be you or me, and
whos going to push that bomb?
We have very little time before we blow ourselves off
the Earth to really discover that invisible integrity of
Universe, that we do have a new phase of potential
existence operating. It has nothing to do with any-
body earning a living ever again. Its a matter of how
do each one of us, really. . . . Each human being
has a drive to demonstrate competence. How do
we then let humanity really gratify itself, not equatingwork with earning a living? Because everybody has
atomic warfare
8/7/2019 fuller bleed-pages
21/28
R B u c k m i n s t e r F u l l e r : E s s a y s
a living, youre not worried about that at all. Where
its a question, How could I be allowed to be in the
production team? and so forth. How can I be part
of the creation? So I see that as a great new phase
that will come in if we dont blow ourselves up.
So I feel your personal responsibility is why I felt we
must get to Integrity Days. Because we must really
examine what you can do individually, as a human
being, if you really understand somethingyou do
have the cogency now to really understand what Im
saying. It does not have to be you or me, for the rst
time in history! Its not something about people be-
ing wrong before. This is an evolutionary stage!
Many, many times in history when clearly there
was nowhere nearly enough to go around, all kinds
of circumstances in which that could occur, and
if there was also, many times when that occurred
there were a great many people who were dying or
would like to get out of the game, and I said, under
those circumstances I can see how it was really
integrity for the head of a healthy family to look out
for his family, to be -in other words, you could really
ndselshness could be rationalized under condi-
tions where there was nowhere nearly enough to
go around and you were looking out for your family.
You say God gave you that responsibility and you
think your family are really worthy to be survivors.
I also said that when we get to the point where we
now know on our planetwhich I have been trying
to make very clearthere is now enough to go
around, for everybody to live at the highest standard
of living weve ever had. Therefore, from now on,selshness is no longer integrity!
Looking at it as the spaceship that it is, theres just
one spaceship here. Its the only one were going
to get. What are the total known resources, and
what is the total knowledge, and how do we use
those total resources and knowledge for everybody
on board this ship? Absolutely give no attention
whatsoever to nations ever again. It must be really
how to make it work for everybody. Thats what Im
talking about. Were now talking about making it
work for everybody.
Where there is really adequate food, at the present
timefor instance, in relation to food, every day of
the year, year around, if you think about a stadium
of 75,000 people, its really quite a l arge crowd,
isnt it? Every day 75,000 people die of starvation
despite the fact that we have plenty of food for eve-
ryone. Our distribution systems, our nations, all the
different kind of separatenessit blocks the whole
thing. Just think of itsimply because were badly
organized, were not taking care of it. That would be
typical then.
So Im talking about everybody having proper suste-
nance. Im talking about everybody being properly
protected, clothing-wise,
building-wise, sanitary-wise, everything you need
physically, taken care of, and a very great deal of
accommodation of your wants, over and above your
absolute needsyour travel capability and so forth.
Thats what Im talking aboutstandard of living in
that way.
Im not saying whether youre going to be happy ornot. But Im saying youre gaining this capability not
at the expense of others. Youre gaining it by virtue
of using our minds and our knowledge and our
experience to make it work for everybody.
You will not equate work with earning a living. This
is very important. Every human being has a deep
drive within them to demonstrate competence to
themselves and to others. Its going to be the great-
est privilege of all in a new kind of world like that,
to be allowed to be on the production team. It will
have nothing to do with earning a living, nothing to
do with upset.
Were talking about a new kind of socialism, a so-
cialism of four-and-a-half-billion billionaires. Its not
a socialism of pulling the top down and sharing the
misery, its a matter of pulling the bottom up and do-
ing so, only because we now can do so much more
with each pound of material, each erg of energy,
each second of time. The increase has been about
99-fold. Thats the only thing that makes it possible.
So its a new moment in the history of humanity.
Thats what is difcult to get over. If I can get to you
in enough so you can personally look into it a little
more, then part of your integrity then will be for you
to do your best to get other people to realize what
Im saying is so! Youre going to nd theres an
enormous number of people who dont know this is
so, that we actually have the option to make it.
is absolute junk
1 8
8/7/2019 fuller bleed-pages
22/28
ONLYINTE-
GRITY
8/7/2019 fuller bleed-pages
23/28
R B u c k m i n s t e r F u l l e r : E s s a y s
IS GOING TO COUNT
2 0
8/7/2019 fuller bleed-pages
24/28
Excerpt from interview February 26, 1983
Interviewer: If or when we accomplish a
hundred percent physically successful world,
what is the next step? Can we rely on humans
to progress without physical need?
RBF: I would like to come back to my earlier
questions of myself of why were humans
included in the Universe? I think I did discuss
that earlier, didnt I?
Interviewer:Yes.
HUMANS AS LOCAL
PROBLEM SOLVERS
RBF: I didand that we are here as local
information harvesters, local problem-solvers
in support of the integrity of eternally regen-
erative Universe. The fact that we get away
from physical problems doesnt mean we go
away from problems. The problems are really
rarely physical. Much greater involves just the
integrity of problems. The question of integrity
will get ner and ner and more delicate and
more beautiful.
Interviewer: Next question. A study of one
thousand adolescents in Boston showed that
seventy per cent are extremely pessimistic
about the future, to the point where they dont
expect to have any future. In your travels, have
you sensed this kind of pessimism among
young people, and do you have any sugges-
tions on how to convey to them your convic-
tion that we are capable of making the world a
hundred per cent physical success?
RBF: Well, I told you I nd people only listen
to you when they ask you to talk to them, and
I do travel around speaking a very, very great
deal, and I have certainly been back to Boston
many, many times.
UNDERSTANDING
DESIGN REVOLUTION
It certainly is true, I nd audience after audi-ence did not know we have an option to
make it. There is no way they could, unless
theyIve said its so difcult, because, in the
rst place, you have to get into technology very
deeply to understand what I call the design
revolution. They have to be involved where Ive
told you just aboutknowing what the uses of
tin are and where it is.
weredealing in
8/7/2019 fuller bleed-pages
25/28
R B u c k m i n s t e r F u l l e r : E s s a y s
INVISIBLE REALITY
And so I nd, because were dealing in an
invisible reality and humanity is so specialized,
it is very difcult for them to understand from
one person to another.
At any rate, when I have an audience, I never
have an audience that doesnt come outvery
rarely, youve been with me many timesthey
almost always give a standing ovation. In other
words, I nd the audiences very excited. But
then they come and say to me, Your optimism
has brushed off on me. I didnt know we had
an option. I feel so much better. They say,
Your optimism. And I am not optimistic or
pessimistic. I feel that optimism and pessimism
are very unbalanced. I am a very hard engi-
neer. I am a mechanic. I am a sailor. I am an
air pilot. I dont tell people I can get you across
the ocean with my ship unless I know what Im
talking about.
WE HAVE THE OPTION
TO MAKE IT
So, I think its absolutely touch-and-go
whether were going to make it. But the point
is, for me to tell you that you have an option is
not to be optimistic.
But in real answer to that question, time and
again, of course I am running into millions who
dont know we have the option, because its
invisible, and I feel I have tremendous respon-
sibility. So when people ask me to come and
talk to them, I do my best to let them know
they do have the option. Of course theyre
pessimistic, not knowing that. Incidentally, I
dont mean to be sitting up here like a great
wisdom. These are questions Im answering
the best I can.
Interviewer: How would you, right now in
your life, dene integrity?
COURAGE: A COMPONENT
OF INTEGRITY
RBF: I nd that I have to use the word cour-
age, due to the circumstances of humanity.
The courage to cooperate or initiate are based
entirely on the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth as the divine mind within
you tells you the truth is. It really does require a
courage and a self-disciplining to go along with
that truth. Thats the way I dene it.
Interviewer:A lot of what we are all asking
is, what do we do, what do we need to do, to
have an impact on bringing about the realiza-
tion of a successful world?
an invisible reality
2 2
8/7/2019 fuller bleed-pages
26/28
INTEGRITY IN THE LITTLE
THINGS
RBF: No. Integrity, for my part is, I can, my
experience is such and such, I have such and
such a memory. I have various conceptionings,everybody else has that, and my integrity i s
something else. Its, for instance, the terribly
simple little things. If Im going to be able to
keep on being able to be usefulbecause I
see I have a lot of things still to be donethere
are still several more books to write. Twenty-
four books have been nished. Theres more
technology to be done, there are all kinds of
things I can see where I could really be useful
if Im around.
WEAPONRY TO LIVINGRY
As we make various transitionsif we can get
to the point where the Boeing Company, Lock-
heed, and so forth, begin producing livingry
instead of a great deal of ghting ships and so
forth. So, I say, Ive got to stay healthy. And I
mustnt get fat. So just not eating that mouth-
ful of that is part of that i ntegrity all the time.
Youre always up against it, and its not as if
anybody else can come in and do any scoring.
Youre really doing your own scoring. We know
DOING YOUR OWN
THINKING
RBF: Darling, I say I never try to tell anybodyelse what to do, number one. And number
two, I think thats what the individual is all
about. Each one of us has something to
contribute. This really depends on each one
doing their own thinking, but not following any
kind of rule that I can give out, any command.
Were all on the frontier, were all in a great
mysteryincredibly mysterious. Each one pos-
sesses exactly what each one is working out,
and what each one works out relates to their
particular set of circumstances of any one day,
or any one place around the world.
Interviewer: In that way, do you nd for
yourself, that integrity is almost a guide for you
in the sense of, by feeling an integrity in a situ-
ation, is that a guide for you towards knowing
when you have a set of options, or when you
have to make decisions, does that play a part
in knowing what you need to do next?
in some kind of
8/7/2019 fuller bleed-pages
27/28
R B u c k m i n s t e r F u l l e r : E s s a y s
about thatabout every little detail of our life
whether this is the thing we really ought to be
doing. Thats it, darling.
HUMANITY IN OUR
FINAL EXAM
So I have to say, I think that we are in some
kind of nal examination as to whether human
beings now, with this capability to acquire in-
formation and to communicate, whether were
really qualied to take on the responsibili ty
were designed to be entrusted with. And this
is not a matter of an examination of the types
of governments, nothing to do with poli tics,
nothing to do with economic systems. It has to
do with the individual. Does the individual havethe courage to really go along with the truth?
INTEGRITY OF
THE INDIVIDUAL
Now you have the ability to communicate, you
dont have to say, I didnt know what was
going on because I was illiterate. I do know
whats going on and I have very much of a
sense of what is really validwhat my life tells
me works or doesnt work, this is the truth or
not the truth. So it is this matter of the integrity
of the individual, the courage, the courage to
go along with the truth as you personally really
see itor are you going to be swayed by the
crowd? Are you going to be scared about
your job, or whatever it may be? Thats why I
talk about integrity. Integrity of the individual is
what were being judged for and if we are not
passing that examination, we dont really have
the guts, well blow ourselves up. It will be all
over. I think its all the difference in the world.
GROWTH OF LITERACY
MEANS MORE RESPON-
SIBILITY
When I was born, humanity was 95 per cent
illiterate. Since Ive been born, the populationhas doubled and that total population is now
65 per cent literate. Thats a gain of 130-fold
of the literacy. When humanity is primarily
illiterate, it needs leaders to understand and
get the information and deal with it. When we
are at the point where the majority of humans
them-selves are literate, able to get the infor-
mation, were in an entirely new relationship
to Universe. We are at the point where the
integrity of the individual counts and not what
the political leadership or the religious leader-
ship says to do.
NEW MOMENT
OF INTEGRITY
Its a matter now of humanity getting to the point where
its now qualifying to make some of its own decisions inrelation to its own information. Thats why weve come to
a new moment of integrity.
final examination
2 4
8/7/2019 fuller bleed-pages
28/28