by Flemming Funch
It is a well-known story, but can always bear being told again. Here's a quick summary a key turning point in Buckminster Fuller's life. From here, written by Amy C. Edmondson.The inventor of the geodesic dome—a structure light enough to be lifted by a helicopter yet strong enough to withstand hurricanes—achieved his eventual acclaim by never breaking a bargain he made with himself in 1927 as he teetered at the edge of suicide. A series of business failures, compounded with lingering grief over the death of his daughter five years earlier, had made Fuller increasingly despondent. Then he was fired from his job as president of a construction company he had founded with his father-in-law, and a second daughter was born. Overwhelmed by a sense of failure, he felt he must get himself out of the way, ensuring that relatives would take care of his wife and their baby.
He went to Lake Michigan, intending to swim out to his death. Then he was struck by what he called a vision, in which he saw that he didn’t have the right to do away with himself. “You do not belong to you, you belong to the universe,” he was later to explain; for all his mistakes, he was the custodian of a unique package of experiences that just might have some utility for mankind. He would trust the “anticipatory intellectual wisdom which we may call God” and allow himself to live, and he would never forget that he was a “throwaway.”
Thus began the fifty-six-year experiment of “guinea pig B”—for Bucky—in which “an average healthy human being” resolved to become a problem solver “on behalf of all humanity.” One can only imagine the reactions of family and friends when the thirty-twoyear-old Fuller announced this. He further determined to dispense forever with the idea of “earning a living,” which to him meant advantaging oneself at the expense of others; if he concentrated on doing what needed to be done, funding would take care of itself. He decided to devote himself, broadly, to the technology of “livingry,” as opposed to weaponry.
Fuller moved his wife, Anne, and infant daughter, Allegra, to a one-room apartment in a Chicago slum, withdrew completely from all friends and social contact, and vowed not to speak again until he really knew what he thought. And then he began to think. His virtual silence lasted for almost two years and was the beginning of what he one day called “a blind date with principle.” That is usually presented as sort of a "Wow, he's special!" kind of thing, like something crazy that one in a billion individuals might do, and it actually will work. Where Bucky's point was exactly that he wasn't all that special, but he just chose a different perspective: that of being of service to all of humanity. Which doesn't just necessarily mean that you become a monk, sitting around being nice, eating rice and beans, if somebody gives them to you. No, the point is the different perspective, of actually working on humanity's problems.
My reason for mentioning that is also personal, in that I notice that I personally tend to do better when I focus on crazy big global things than if I try to act normal and make a living. I'm not Buckminster Fuller, and I haven't considered jumping into Lake Michigan, and I'm not going to be quiet for two years. I simply notice that things tend to flow better for me in periods of time when I focus on bigger things, like the problems of humanity, and things flow worse when I try to do what I'm "supposed to do". You know, get a job, pay your taxes, plan your retirement, drive within the speed limit. I'm not very good at those things in either case, but they tend to sort themselves out better if there's something else that really is more important to me.
And I notice that recently, as I've tried to be more "normal", that isn't particularly working great for me. I'm not sure I know how. I don't even have much to say when I'm just being normal. So, just an observation that maybe I should think a bit bigger again.
Btw, the global climate might be more suited for that now than when Buckminster Fuller was around. You know, the Internet. It is a lot more feasible now for somebody to solve some little piece of what humanity needs, and communicate and distribute it to others easily, and more likely that they incidentally will be remunerated for it. The open source kind of thinking. Solve something that needs solving, solve it really well, and give it away, and most likely you'll indirectly see some kind of benefit from having done that.
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