Subject: Bucky Fuller's Vision

From: [email-masked] (Doctress Neutopia)
Date: 15 Jun 1994 00:44:34 GMT

THE DESIGN REVOLUTION OF R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER

                    OUTLINED BY LIBBY HUBBARD                     
                       
                      aka Doctress Neutopia

                          December 1988

     R. Buckminster Fuller was a magnanimous man of the  
Twentieth Century.   He was an inventor, architect, poet,  
scientist, futurist, and why he was never selected to be 
Secretary of Energy is only a reflection of the irresponsible,
short-sighted, and corrupt government under which we live.  He not
only spoke to America, the continent to which he was born in 1895,
but to the entire "SpaceShip Earth," the planet he loved and worked
to help save.  This essay will focus on the text from his final  
book, _Critical Path_.  From the text I will explore his creative 
vision for the future.

     In 1927, at the age of thirty-two, after failing to succeed  
in the business world, Bucky Fuller decided to dedicate his life 
to improving our environment both physically and metaphysically 
(human thoughts, generalized principles, and customs) by 
providing protection and support of all humanity.  He saw the 
creation of a world management system that would distribute our 
physical substances in a just way.   His dedication was to all 
humanity, not just committing his efforts to the exclusive 
advantages of himself, his dependents, his team, or his country. 

     Fuller sought to understand the principles of the Universe  
"and to discover human functioning therein, thereby to discover 
nature's governing complexes of generalized principles and to 
employ these principles in the development of the specific arti-
facts that would benefit humanity's fulfillment of its essential 
functioning in the cosmic scheme" (126). In other words, Fuller 
sought to discover our cosmic human order;  if we can comprehend 
how nature is design and governed, we will be able to organize 
humanity in a similar pattern.  In finding this cosmic, holis-
tic perspective and working with it, instead of against it, we 
will have found our ultimate human freedom and survival.  In 
order to achieve this new pattern of life, Fuller feels we need 
to diligently work to mistress and master a design revolution.

     Fuller predicted that by 1989, the youth who have lived their 
entire lives in the Space Age, will be of age to command and 
execute a world-embracing design science revolution. This will 
result in the "conversion of all humanity into an integrated, 
omniharmonious, economically successful, one-world family" 
(xix).  The science design revolution is a strategy for governing
the development of artifacts.  The revolution will melt all
weaponry and use those metals for livelihood.  This would raise the
standard of living for everyone never before experienced on Earth. 
People will"live comfortably and luxuriously on daily energy  
income from the Sun in its many derivative phases" (254). His
message to the peace movement is that peace will come through a
design revolution, restructuring the economy so that all have an
equal chance at self-actualization. 

     For him the world is the self, which means that our fate 
lies with personal integrity.  He writes, 

     You can deceive others, you can deceive your brain-self, 
     but you can't deceive your mind-self for mind deals only in
     the discovery of truth and the interrelationship of all the
     truths. The cosmic laws with which mind deals are
     noncorruptible (xxxviii).

     Humanity's fate rests in the individuals who dare to steer  
their course only by truth, as "strange as the realized truth may 
often seem-wherever and whenever the truths are evidenced to the  
individual-they may lead, unfamiliar as the way may be" 
(xxxvi).  He states that only God is exact truth. And we can 
come closer to God by seeking and loving truth.  For him, truth 
seeking can become blocked by loyalties to mother, friends, 
college fraternity, bosses, and nations.  By seeking personal 
truth one can plainly see we critically need to achieve a
planethood consciousness by creating a design revolution, or face
extinction through nuclear war or environment degradation.

     Humanity has been evolving to this present state of 
technological process for thousands of years.  Now, Fuller feels it
time for a world revolution which can harness technology making it 
work for the good of humanity by allowing everyone access to its
fruits.  He knows that a bloody revolution is not the kind of 
revolution the world needs, for a bloody revolution could 
escalate to world war.  We will all win if there is a design 
revolution, "one that, instead of revengefully pulling down the 
top fortunate few, will elevate all the heretofore unfortunates 
and the fortunate alike to new and sustainable heights of 
realized life far superior to those previously tenuously attained 
by the most privileged few" (200). 

     Fuller states, "I sought to reform the environment, not the 
humans."  But Fuller fails to realize that by giving us a new  
environmental plan, he is also reforming our beings.  Fuller 
gives us a new philosophy, social system, psychology, and economy 
so that we may harmonious live together in the new environments.  
Without a new social structure, that is, a new relationship people 
have with each other, there can be no environmental utopia, on 
the other hand, one can not build a social utopia without having 
an environment plan.  Nevertheless, Fuller must have realized the 
connection between environmental reform and reform of human social
relationships since he gives us a image of a new world government 
and economic system based on a world energy grid.  He gives us a 
blueprint to build leaders who are responsible for managing 
Spaceship Earth.       

     There can not be a design revolution without the use of the 
computer.  In Fuller's revolution the computer is the all-knowing 
mind, storing date from all over the world. The world government
could not be possible without the use of a "world-around,
satellite-relayed, and world-integrated computer accounting
system." The information obtained from the computer 
will be able to persuade a world audience that by melting down 
the metals from weaponry and putting it into "livingry" and by 
building new cities with them, we will "now have four billion 
real-wealth billionaires." (Since the book was published in 1981, 
the population figure has risen to five billion.)  

     Wealth is defined by Fuller as the "technological 
ability to protect, nurture, support, and accommodate all growth 
needs of life" (xxvi).   The computer will show us that at least 
70% of jobs in Western private-enterprise countries are work that 
creates no life support, therefore no real wealth. Examples of 
these jobs are:  "inspectors of inspectors, reunderwrites of 
insurance reinsurers, Obnoxico promoters, spies and counterspies, 
military personnel, gunmakers, etc" (xxxiv).  It is more 
economical to pay these people to stay at home and not drive 
their cars into work since it cost "nature well over a million
dollars to produce each gallon of petroleum" (xxxv). Fuller writes,

     We find all the no-life-support-wealth-producing 
     people going to their 1980 jobs in their cars or buses, 
     spending trillions of dollar's worth of petroleum daily to get
     to their no-wealth-producing jobs. It doesn't take a computer
     to tell you that it will save both Universe and humanity
     trillions of dollars a day to pay them handsomely to stay at
     home (xxxv).

     The computer will help us distribute the wealth.  Gold will 
be exclusively used as a "supreme electromagnetic conduction-and 
reflection medium."  Everyone will have "only-computer-readable
credit cards, whose constant living, travel, and development use
will continually integrate all the production starts and holds on 
world-wide coordinated supplying of the needs of a world-around 
dynamically dwelling humanity" xxvii.

     Fuller warns us not to be afraid of technological inventions,
but to employ them to liberate us.  He thinks automation is natural
to the human species.  He uses our bodies as an example: our bodies
function automatically like the digestion and elimination of food
without any conscious effort.  Society should be run on the same
principle and now with the invention of computers and robotics we
have the know how to make society run as unconsciously as our
bodies.  This automated society will eliminate the Protestant work
ethic and change our perspective on work which in turn will change
our economy and what we consider to be socially valuable.

     Automation will also increase the free time necessary 
to find our truly creative syntropic selves.  People will be able 
to choose what work they love to do and they will find out that 
they love to be self-disciplined at what they do best to
demonstrate their competence to others (266).  As the sun shines
for free so will we labor for free;  no one will be paid for work.
Fuller writes, 

     It would be like qualifying for the Olympic team to be allowed
     to do what you want to do.  You would have to prove that you
     could do the job you wanted to do better than anyone else
     available to get onto the production teams.  Permission to
     serve on the world's production teams will be the greatest
     privilege that humanity can bestow on an individual...Those
     who are real craftsmen and are good at developing the
     tools-that-make-tools and love their work will be the heart of
     the production teams. There will be no need to earn 
     more because your fellowship will always get you more than you
     want.  You won't be able to buy any nonconsumerables-you will
     only be able to rent.  If you are renting more than you can
     use, the system will call the excess back (266-267).

      But automation will not work for everyone unless we are
build our cities to function with high technology as its ally not 
as its suppressor enslaving us with a high-tech police forces who 
are ruled by the rich few as in our modern cities.
       
     It is important here to discuss entropy and syntropy.  
Fuller explains, "The entropic stars exporting energy as radiation;
and the syntropic loci in Universe where energy is being imported
and converted from radiation to matter" (275).  Earth is a
syntropic energy importing place.  The planet imports random 
radiation in which the syntropic photosynthesis produces chemical
ordered molecules which create vegetation and other creatures, 
which then consume the vegetation thereby growing physically by 
themselves.  The generous, compassionate tendencies of most human 
beings are syntropic.  Nature made us syntropic so that we may 
keep the universe regenerative.  The use of soft energy, wind, 
wave, or solar power is syntropic.    

     Our selfish characters are entropic. Fuller writes, "The 
drive to make money is inherently entropic, for it seeks to 
monopolize order while leaving un-cope-with-able disorder to 
overwhelm others" (276).  Entropy also works on the assumption that
there is not enough wealth to go around, that there "exists a 
lethal inadequacy of life support on our planet," a theory founded 
by Thomas Malthus in 1810 after he was the first person to analyze 
the world's vital and economic statistics.   His theory 
suggests that it is either you or me who will survive but there is 
not enough for both of us. The entropic character also fits with 
Darwin's theory that the survival of the fittest is the rule of 
evolution, therefore one better get as much as one can before 
your sister or brother beats you to it.

     Fossil fuels play into these entropic theories since there is
a limited supply on the earth.  Fuller considers them to be 
"nature's own savings account, deposited in our "Earth Bank" and 
not be be stolen by exploiters" (223).

     The Sun does not make us pay for the energy the Earth 
imports.  It wants to us succeed in the cosmic scheme by using 
what Fuller calls "cosmic costing accounts." Cosmic accounting 
can ever go bankrupt, since the sun is always shining, accept 
when humans make the mistake of withdrawing our critical "capital" 
assets as we are doing presently with fossil fuels.  So one can 
see how we are living in a bankrupt state of affairs, wasting our 
fossil fuels and burning fusion and fission nuclear energy which 
Fuller says is "burning our terrestrial production equipment," 
when we should be living syntropically by the sunlight being 
imported to Earth.

     When we begin living in a syntropic way on a "cosmic-energy
wealth income" by wind, wave, and solar power, big businesses  
will see no way for putting a meter on these forms of energy to  
run their bureaucracies and war machines.  The national governments
and big business continue to use up "nature's energy savings
account" that is fossil fuels and by atomic energy which is
"Spaceship Earth's physical hull," even though scientist can 
find no solution to the problem of nuclear waste. (Fuller thinks 
we should rocket the waste back into the sun). But because of 
our intuitive wisdom strongly forming an anti-nuclear energy 
movement, the energy owners have turned back to the coal and shale 
mines to convert them into meterable and pipable liquid fuels.  
Fuller writes, "this selfishly exploitable energy fuel strategy 
will inexorably destroy the atmosphere's capability of supporting 
biological life on planet Earth" (112). 

     Fuller feels we can phase out our use of fossil fuels and 
nuclear energy by the development of a "omni-world-integrating 
electrical-energy network grid" which will put all humanity's 
energy into a "Earth Bank" forming a commonwealth accounting 
system.  We already have the technologies to transfer energy 
thousands of miles enabling us to create the grid.  Fuller says, 
"Windmills installed around the world converting their direct
current into alternating current and feeding the electric energy
into the world network can harvest the planet Earth's prime daily
energy income source-the wind--and adequately supply all the
world's energy needs" (208). The problem-solving computer will
integrate the night-into-day, day into-night hemisphere exchange of
energy.  The grid will deliver "electric energy anywhere, to
anyone, at any one time, at one common rate."

     Fuller explains the grid, "From the Bering Straits, Europe 
and Africa will be integrated westwardly through the U.S.S.R, and 
China, Southeast Asia; India will become network-integrated 
southwardly through the U.S.S.R. Central and South America will be
intergrated southwardly through Canada, the U.S.A., and 
Mexico" (206).
      
     There will be a common energy-value system expressed in 
kilowatt-hours, watt-hours, and watt-seconds of work. This 
replaces "top-power-system-manipulable monetary systems" making 
our complex lives easier and materially equal.  Fuller writes,

     The time-energy world accounting system will do away with all
     the inequities now occurring in regard to the arbitrarily
     maneuverable international shipping of goods and the top
     economic power structure's banker-invented, international 
     balance-of trade accountings. It will eliminate all the tricky
     banking and securities-markets exploitations of all the
     around-the world-time-zone activities differences in operation
     today, all unbeknownst to the at-all-times two billion humans
     who are sleeping" (xxxiv).

     Another critical aspect to the grid is regarding the  
population explosion.  From graphs of our 150 nations one can 
see how the birthrate decreases when electrical energy increases. 
Therefore, Fuller feels that "the world's population will stop 
increasing when and if the integrated world electrical energy 
grid is realized" (206).

     Through forming the electrical grid which works on the same 
economic accounting and value system throughout the world, the 
need for nation states will be eliminated.  In order to achieve a 
planetary equality we must abolish national sovereignty and live 
as we are "one family of humans aboard Spaceship Earth."

     Fuller realizes that our largest and most powerful 
religious, political, and financial institutions long ago became  
transnational.  An example he uses to show the way transnationalism
came to power is seen through religious institutions.  Wealthy
religions financially backed missionaries to travel to foreign 
countries to set up establishments strengthening their own power. 
Big idealogies like "socialism" and "free enterprise" have also  
become transnational. 

     The 150 nation states are now being manipulated from 
outside by big transnational businesses which operate under a 
supranational state, while the nations are left in "150 pens to 
struggle with all the disadvantages of 150 mutually opposed 
economic policies" (218).  The flow of "lifeblood" metals are 
being blocked by the 150 nations.  Without this flow we "cannot 
realize the increasing know-how of all humanity" (286). Fuller
stated to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee May 22, 1975,
"Very soon the nation-state sovereignties will have to be 
eliminated, or humanity will perish" (286).

     Now we have 150 chiefs, each in their head quarters 
directing their private islands of sovereignty, trying to destroy 
the other one's island knowing that if they are successful at 
their enemies demise, they too will sink. For they are on the same 
ship, that is Spaceship earth.  At this point, we have an 
international anarchy, where our true visionary captains, like R. 
Buckminster Fuller, are denied to use their natural abilities to 
steer the ship on the cosmic high-tech greenworld peace path. 

     Fuller sees that the United States system doesn't even allow 
a president to in any why foster the idea of desovereignizing. If 
they discussed it at all they will be immediately impeached 
since the first oath of office is to defend the national 
sovereignty against all foreign intrusion.  Consequently, Fuller 
foresees the evolutionary forces freeing us from national 
sovereignty by "putting the U.S.A. out of business through   
international bankruptcy" (287).  He writes, "Bankruptcy need not
be the end.  It is simply nature's way of ridding the planet of the
most powerful of yesterday's sovereignties and thereby setting off
a chain of 149 additional desovereignizations, altogether removing
the most stubborn barrier to the free circulation of the Earth's
world around metals, foods, and income energy supplies and people"
(287).

     When we finally rid ourselves of the 150 national 
sovereignties and form a world energy grid and a free credit 
system, we will "have a recirculatory, interaccommodative, world
around democratic system," run by the World Management Committee.

     As an artist/scientist, Fuller understands the way power has 
controlled the direction of creativity.  An example he gives to 
illustrate the relationship between political power and creative 
genius is the building of the Egyptian pyramids to house the body 
of the dead pharaoh and his faithful servants.  

     There was so much misery in the ancient Egyptian life that 
it was thought that the more one suffered, the greater the rewards
in afterlife.  So the building of the great pyramids were in
preparation for a land of paradise in the afterlife where  
after the pharaoh reached there, he could then deliver this  
people.

     It was the artist/scientist who designed the pyramids and the 
first one to discover the use of the lever to move rocks.  The 
next creative genius for the pharaoh came up with the idea of 
using wood-log rollers, and wood-log tracks to move rocks and so 
on.  Fuller expresses, "The technological inventiveness of the 
pharaohs' respective scientist-artist-architects became 
evolution's comprehensive environment advancers" (51).

     Therefore, it is the artist/scientist/architect who is the 
mover of history.  Under our present nation-state system, the 
artist/scientist/architect is enslaved in a world where the 
politicians are entropically concerned with their own fragmented 
power and wealth.  The visionary is unemployed and finds it 
difficult it fit into the rigid educational system that is 
becoming more financially exclusive each semester.

     In _Critical Path_, Fuller repeatedly warns us of the folly of
educational specialization.  For eons, the power structure has 
used the strategy of divide and conquer to keep the intellectuals 
and talented people academically and professionally divorced.  As
the specialist glimpses at the separate specialization she or he is
unable to focus on the generalized principles governing the
eternally regenerative Universe. (xxxi) Our species has realized
some of the generalized scientific principles ruling the universe,
however Fuller writes, "The synergetic integral of the totality of
all principles is God, whose sum-total behavior in pure principle
is beyond our comprehension and is utterly mysterious to us,
because as humans--in pure principle--we do not and never will know
all the principles" (159). Only mind can "apprehend, abide by, and
be led by truth". By turning to the synchronic forces we can
discover new principles. Fuller says that our purpose in life is to
"exercise the Universe-functioning of mind," and when the human
mind finally becomes in charge of human affairs the first task is
to "make it" (xxxvi).

     As for now, Fuller sees human affairs being controlled by 
"muscle, cunning, fear, and selfishness," dividing us into diff-
erent "speech patterns, skin color, religions, social customs,  
class or caste systems, political preferences, and all varieties  
of individually unique "troubles," suffering, and discontent"
(214).

     When the cosmic mind does come into to the power to direct 
human affairs the vast majority of people will be free to follow 
their innate drive "to make sense and to produce order in 
consonance with universal order" (276).  People all over the 
world will strive to serve on the World Production Teams.

     On Fuller's revolutionized Spaceship Earth children learn to 
educate themselves through connecting with the world-satellite- 
interrelayed computer and video-encycolpedia access.  A university 
education level lasting six years begins with the video call-up 
procedure at age eighteen.  At ago twenty-one, the student enters 
an internship at a production service which consist of forty-eight-
hour work weeks for fourteen years.  Their service to the 
production support of humanity ends at the ago of thirty-eight.  
>From then on, people are "free to initiate their own mind-informed 
commitments to the improvement of human functioning in support of 
the eternally regenerative integrity of Universe" (264).  Fuller 
says that the people will realize the joy of working for all 
humanity, and that no joy is equal to knowing you are doing your
best and doing it well to improve the lives of all human beings.  
Fuller writes, "Activities of this kind are reinspirational to a 
mystical degree" (267).

     Fuller's ideal human race abroad Spaceship Earth is governed 
not by socialism where basic human needs are provided by the state,
but by a meritocracy where basic human needs are provided for, but 
there is incentive for the individual to reach for their highest 
ideals.  

     Fuller explains, "Too long has such freedom of initiative 
been usurped either by the Communist party, representing only 1 
percent of the U.S.S.R. population, or by the Western world's 
private enterprise's utterly selfish exploitation for money- 
making rather than for common-sense-making" (196). The highest
achievement society rewards to an individual is to be selected to
be part of a Production Team.  

     An example of a Production Team is the Forestry Team, for 
people who are concerned with soil and land conservation and 
regeneration.  These people are responsible for reforesting the 
world. These people are concerned in a "major way with the planet 
Earth as a total crystalline, hydraulic, and pneumatic system.

     An idea for the Soil Science Team is to "harness great streams
and to let gravity pull water inward to the sea while returning 
and reducing the runoff of topsoil-carrying-water.  We can dam 
areas to recover washed-away topsoil as yet resident in fresh-
water lakes and streams and , using off-peak wind-power genera
tion, repump bottom *silts to dry land to enrich the soil's 
surfaces" (270).

     People who have valuable ideas to teach will work to qualify 
for the "subject-scenario-writing teams or on the video-cassette 
or disc production teams."  Great scholars will be allow to 
pursue their work whatever fields they are in.  Fuller writes,
"Vast numbers will discover that they are earnest, capable 
independent-research scholars.  What they have to say, if 
unique, can become the subject of a video-cassette, world 
satellite-relayed encyclopedia entry" (267).

     If someone desires to leave a place on a production team they 
are free to do so and seek a position on another team.  The 
engineering teams will be inspired to create more and better 
automation to further emancipate human beings from repetitive  
and "sterile muscle-and-sorting jobs." The society will not block 
the prospects of automation in order to save jobs.

     Of course, before there can be a successfully managed 
Spaceship Earth, there has to be a transitional period.  In the 
following outline I will attempt to show this transition obtained 
from Fuller's text.

     I. World Bankruptcy:  the end of modern civilization due to 
using up "nature's energy saving account" by burning fossil 
fuels and nuclear energy, and the end of the nation state system 
which vital metals get trapped.

     II. Assemble world-wide windmill power which establishes 
an electric world energy grid.  This establishes the creation of 
an effective World Government.  Melt down all metals used in 
weaponry and put it into livingry.  Convert spy satellites into 
a world democracy electronic referendum satellites. 

     III. Give people life-scholarships to stay home from their 
non-wealth producing jobs and schools. 

         a. turn school buildings into taping studios for 
creating educational video cassettes.  Elementary education 
through video cassettes and neighborhood activities which teach 
"social experience and tool-handing education."

          b. set up Production Teams

     IV. Convert skyscraper office buildings into living spaces.  
     Fuller writes, 

     At present all the great new city office buildings have fancy
     plumbing (with which only the typewriters sleep) while a
     majority of city people sleep in inferior quarters with poor
     plumbing.  The moment we start giving everyone those 
     handsome life fellowships, we will find almost all the great
     new business buildings in the cities being depopulated in such
     an extent that we shall, in quick order, be able to turn those
     buildings into great apartment houses and hotels to
     accommodate the free-will residential convergencies of
     humanity in central cities (246).

     Next dome over the city to decrease energy lose.  Vertical, 
square, tubular-tower skyscrapers are the worst design for energy 
efficiency.  A two-mile-diameter dome over mid-Manhattan between
"Twenty-second and Sixty-second street and between the Hudson and 
East rivers, having a surface that is only one eighty-fourth that 
of all the buildings now standing in that midtown area, would 
reduce the heating and cooling energy requirement of that area 
eight-four-fold" (xxiv).

     V. Build new cities, demolition of the old buildings.

The new cities will be like great ocean passenger ships where all 
our human needs and social functions are met such as living, 
working, studying, and playing.  Consciously planning cities will 
give us the advantage of planning the best and safest (from 
earthquakes, etc.) places to build them and to explore new areas 
to live such as Fuller's designs for the floating tetrahedronal 
cities which float on the sea, submarine island cities, sub- 
dry-surface dwellings, or flyable dwelling machines.

     Air-deliverable small domes will be deployed in remote 
areas of the world to accommodate the needs of artists, skies or 
other wilderness athletes, geologist, and others involved in 
wildlife studies, work, or meditation in single-family, small 
groups, or individual units.

     How do we protect the people of the world from an abuse of 
power by the World Management Committee in Fuller's scheme?
Fuller informs us that each of us "generates a self-surrounding, 
ultra-ultra-high-frequency electromagnetic field" (314). The 
energy alternatives between negative and positive.  When a person 
is feeling positive he or she gives of positive electromagnetic 
energy.  

     The spy satellites of both the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. are 
sensitive to this human electromagnetic field, and they could be 
changed from  satellites of war and intrusion into satellites 
making a true world democracy possible.  The World Management 
Committee will inform people by broadcasting the "specific 
computer-derived problem-solution proposals" to them.  After an 
adequate time period, a referendum will be taken on how the 
people feel about the proposal.  When a 75% majority is 
"attained, the professional-management world committee will be 
authorized to put the proposition into the world-around 
industrial production and service" (342). Fuller writes, 

     Thus will begin the world's first real tamper-and
     corruption-proof democracy.  Humanity will make mistakes, but
     the minority, knowing that this is the first true democracy,
     will often go along spontaneously with the majority, knowing
     that if it develops that the majority has made a bad judgment,
     negative readings will swiftly occur as society discovers that
     it has chosen the wrong course (342).
     
     The electronic referendum will quickly make people think 
globally about our total knowledge and resources, and how we all 
can best live.  We will soon discover that we can no longer think 
strictly for ourselves, but all humanity.  Fuller says, 
"Selfishness is unnecessary and hence-forth non-rationalizable as 
mandated by survival.  War is obsolete" (xxv).

     Fuller's revolution puts a handle on the steam engine 
running the evolutionary process.  It opens the door to a new 
epoch beyond post-modernism.  It hurls us into a new human
dimension where love guides technology and where we are put on the
cosmic survival path.  His design revolution builds a new person,
from homo sapiens to hetero-techno sapiens, a world where
technology has freed us to explore our loving minds.