Tag Archives: Buckminster Fuller

July 17, 2012 · 10:14 pm

Buckminster Fuller- Still ahead of the times, and he’s been dead for 30 years

This (pictured at right) popped up on my facebook page the other day and I’ve been meaning to write about it but got bogged down in politics.  So, I’m writing about it now.  Not enough people read Buckminster Fuller any more.

More than 50 years ago, he explained to mankind how we could turn this planet into a utopian paradise, ending hunger and homelessness and all other aspects of poverty.  He was ahead of his time then and he is still ahead of our time now but I’m convinced he was absolutely right.

A couple of years ago I decided to reread one of his books (I Seem To Be a Verb, I believe it was) and realized one sad fact.  Despite being a brilliant engineer, scientist and visionary, he really wasn’t a great writer.  Too many big words and perhaps a bit more concerned with proving what a genius he was than actually communicating his point clearly.  Whatever.  It’s the ideas that count, and his ideas were brilliant.

Allow me to attempt to explain.  For thousands and thousands of years, people slaved away, working long hours just to survive and dying young of a variety of diseases and that was understandable.  That was life.  You only got enough to eat if you were skillful enough to obtain it, and some people weren’t.

Then along came these things called science and technology and medicine and eventually the industrial revolution and tools and machines were invented that made human life easier, and one machine could do the work of 10 men, and then 100 men.

So, logically, the non-stop work week should be down to about a 10 hour work week by now, and everybody should have enough to eat.  Obviously, it’s not working out like that, but it should be.

Fuller wasn’t talking about communism vs. capitalism, he was talking about making the world a better place, a nice place to live for everybody, because it really could be.  I can understand that we all have different ideas about how to reach that utopian goal and to some extent we even have different versions of what an Edenic world would consist of.

The problem is, and this becomes clearer and clearer to me the older I get, is that there are a whole lot of people out there who do not share that goal.  It is not enough for them to succeed, they want to make sure other people do not.  I don’t know why they think like that but it’s clear that they do.

Because there is absolutely no  reason why everybody on earth shouldn’t have a home, enough to eat, access to good health care and a good education, clean air and clean water.  We have the technology.

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July 4, 2011 · 7:36 pm

Riches Beyond Your Wildest Dreams

Archaeologists have discovered over $12 billion worth of gold, diamonds and other shiny stuff at a Hindu temple in southern India, Sree Padmanabhaswamy.

It's as if they suddenly discovered Aladdin's cave

 

I am reminded of the scene in “Spirit of St. Louis” where Jimmie Stewart (as Charles Lindbergh) is contemplating the fly in his cockpit, and wondering if the fly adds to the weight of the plane and, if so, is there a difference whether the fly is sitting on the dashboard or is flying in the air within the cockpit.

The connection is this: Does this $11 billion add to the total of the world’s wealth or is it somehow absorbed within it? If we were to discover 1,000 more such temples, would that end the world economic crisis? What if that amount of valuable stones were suddenly found, under ground? What if some modern day alchemist were to discover a way to turn lead into gold (really, we can see beyond the edge of the galaxy, we can build robots who mimic human speech and movement, almost – isn’t it time we revisited the transmutation of elements?), would that add enough money into the world’s coffers that everybody could have a million dollars? What is wealth? What is money? And how much of it exists in the world?

I’ve heard all about this supply and demand stuff, how things are only valuable if they are rare, and I think it’s all bullshit.  Fresh drinking water is valuable.  Food is valuable.  Education is valuable.  The services of a doctor are valuable.

We need to rethink the way we compute wealth.  Buckminster Fuller, who not enough people read any more, had a formula.  I forget what letters he used, but let’s say W= RxTxE, meaning that wealth equals resources times technology times energy.  Resources, of course, means everything that planet earth either has or is capable of producing.  Now, anybody who has ever walked down a row of vegetables on their knees, back hunched, and looked down that row to the horizon, and looked to their left and right and seen a long row of people doing the exact same thing, knows that this old earth can produce enough food to feed everybody.

Technology is the amazing part of this equation, because it keeps increasing.  In other words, if wealth were calculated according to Fuller’s formula we would all be constantly getting richer all the time.  We would have an economy of abundance instead of one based on scarcity.

The 3rd part is energy which of course includes manpower, as well as all those other forms of energy which are increasing by the middle factor of T.  And there’s plenty of available manpower on earth.  I have never understood how we can have so much unemployment when there is so much work that needs to be done.

Anyway, go read some Buckminster Fuller. 

He said it better than me.

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