Wield Your Mighty Keyboard – Page 2

Bucky’s hope for humanity

Buckminster Fuller’s vision for the future has one thing few other futuristic visions do: It is entirely pragmatic. Absolutely doable. The only trick is that each of us must actually focus on the task of making it happen.

This begins with one subtle shift in focus — a conscious shift in our perception. Instead of perceiving a world based on scarcity, as we were taught in classic economics, we instead accept abundance, that there are ample resources available to serve all people, and all life on Earth. There is plenty for all.

“If we simply covert our weaponry to livingry, all of Humanity could be enduringly successful.”

In other words, just by focusing on the idea of abundance, we can bring it about. This may not be easy. It requires we become a class one species, which is one that puts the good of the whole above that of the individual. We do this because we know that putting others first is the best thing we can do for ourselves, so we still get to be selfish.

Once we make this conscious evolutionary leap, Bucky said, we would begin to do all the right things for all the right reasons. Or, as he put it, with a big grin:”Humanity will always do the right thing, but only after exhausting every other possibility.” Thirty years ago, Bucky said that humanity was beginning its final examination. He said that whether or not we made it would depend on the integrity of the individual. This final exam. he said, also requires that we wean ourselves off fossil fuels. It is clear now that we have all the technology we need to transition to clean energy. It is only the will which is missing.

Whether we find our will, even when against entrenched interests are working against us, is key to humanity’s final exam. We must tap into the abundant and free “vast cosmic” energies, which await our easy harvest of them, as they have fro decades.

“We must each find the courage to go along only with the truth.”

We must demand responsible climate action from our global leaders, as well as demand only decisions which bring about greater peace and justice.

“Only the individual is free enough to take the initiative.”

The more people who think and speak like Bucky, the better our chances of passing this damn final examination! Only knowledge can raise humanity up to the potential Bucky and many others saw. Amazing things are possible. But we have to have the courage to go along only with the truth.

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How to Think Like Bucky

This amazing book continues to provide the most useful access to the mind and heart of Buckminster Fuller of anything I have found.It is surely the most valuable Bucky thinking available today, and in true Bucky style, it is linked here, for free.

BOOK REVIEW:
AFullerExplanation By Amy Edmondson

For years I worked to wrap my head around some of Bucky’s ideas, and then one day I picked up this book and the veil was thrown off. Amy Edmondson’s A Fuller Explanation opens up the mind and heart of Buckminster Fuller better than anything I have found. It can truly show you how to think like Bucky, and in true Bucky style, it is made available to you free by clicking here.

This book is a study of Bucky’s major discoveries and ideas. It also deciphers Bucky’s most important two books: Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking and Synergetics 2: Further Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking.

Together these two volumes (also available free by clicking) are over 1400 pages. Their length, along with Bucky’s exquisitely accurate, but often awkward version of the English language, have been barriers for many seeking to understand Bucky’s timeless concepts. But Amy Edmondson changes all that, making even Bucky’s mind blowingly brilliant concepts about synergetic geometry and the geometry of thinking accessible.

From the Preface: “Synergetics, in the broadest terms, is the systematic study of space, and as such is an inherently comprehensive discipline. Designers, architects, and scientists can easily find connections to their work; however, the larger significance of Fuller’s geometry may be less visible. Experience with synergetics encourages a new way of approaching and solving problems. Its emphasis on visual and spatial phenomena combined with Fuller’s holistic approach fosters the kind of lateral thinking which so often leads to creative breakthroughs. Moreover, familiarity with synergetics facilitates recognition of significant patterns that might otherwise be missed.

The recent discovery of C60—a carbon molecule that’s a tiny replica of Fuller’s geodesic dome—provides an apt illustration. In naming this new molecule “buckminsterfullerene”, scientists Harold Kroto and Richard Smalley have lightheartedly acknowledged a debt to Fuller for enabling them to identify this geometric configuration occurring on a scale far too small to be seen directly. As a result, almost a decade after Buckminster Fuller’s death, his name can be found in some newspaper or magazine on a weekly basis, due to C60’s far- ranging implications for science and industry. Scientists have speculated that “buckyballs” may revolutionize industrial lubricants, plastics, and even lead to superconductors that carry electricity without resistance. Buckminsterfullerene’s structure is what Harvard’s Arthur Loeb has called a “truncated icosahedron”; Bucky called this particular geodesic shape the “hexapent dome”. The rest of us call it a soccer ball! Whatever the label, this structure is characterized by inherent stability and the efficient use of space. And so, if Nature were doing her job, buckminsterfullerene would be the only logical choice for structuring C60. Discovering the shared principles behind structures of all materials, shapes and sizes is what synergetics is all about.”

Bucky often said that he was working fifty years ahead. Many of the ideas discussed in this book were from the 1960’s or earlier, so they are right on time for 2016. You will see that most of Bucky’s insights and discoveries have aged very gracefully, and that they are eternal. You will understand that as we gain clarity about what they mean, we can be inspired toward further discoveries to help solve problems on Spaceship Earth.

Maybe we will even pass the ‘final examination’ Bucky said was underway. The more of us who read and think like Bucky, the better our chances. Only knowledge can save humanity from itself.

Read A Fuller Explantion.

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DENIERS ON THE RUN. CAN PARIS BE WON?

Deniers are on the run in Washington D.C., as illustrated in this hilarious photo and story linked here from the Onion. They are newly feral creatures sensing the gig is up. Exxon is under investigation. Oil prices are on a roller coaster. Bill McKibben’s divestment movement is a big success. The application for the Keystone XL pipeline is being withdrawn. Americans are wising up. Our eyes are opening to the dysfunction of our present model of government. We know war is waged for profit. We know we have all the technology we need to create clean energy. And we know that we can get the money out of politics.

With either Bernie or Hillary as our new president, America’s hope for an actual renewal is good. Maybe this was the change Barack Obama was promising? But what really matters now, and matters most, is what happens in Paris this December.

This next climate gathering is surely humanity’s last best chance to turn things around. World leaders will gather and choose to come together and work to get our ecosystem back into balance with nature, or blow it for good, by waiting too long and doing too little.

To help make sure it happens, Bucky would say that we must each dare to speak about it, and demand it. Dare to demand Climate action now. Support Clean energy development. Now. Enough with the fossil fools being allowed to place their measly mortal profits ahead of the welfare of not just all of humanity, but of all life on Earth.

How dare they? How could we have been so blind for so long?

#DEMANDCLIMATEACTION #350.org #RaiseHellSleepWell

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http://www.theonion.com/…/vicious-feral-house-republicans-r…

Why 1980s Were The Despicable Decade

Now we know for sure: Starting in the 1980s, the fossil fuel industry intentionally misled the world about its beliefs regarding climate change. In order to protect their measly mortal profits, they lied. They discredited the science they knew to be correct. For decades. If you haven’t seen the latest on this, read the story in The Guardian: Fossil Fool Racketeering Report

There is some satisfaction in having been right all these years about the shenanigans of the industry/government alliance that formed in the 1980’s, but mostly there is anguish and an increasing sense of hopelessness. Maybe the Baby Boomer generation should be renamed The Bamboozled generation. How could we have been so blind?

Bucky knew this intentional deception was going on when I met with him in 1982. He said (and I paraphrase, but these ideas are also found is his books): “The industry is working very hard to stop renewables. Because they cannot find a way to place a meter on the sun, profit-only-motivated interests are stopping solar from happening. I say this is the greatest crime ever committed against humanity.”

President Jimmy Carter at installation of solar panels on White House. President Ronald Reagan removed them in 1980, the kick of to an awful decade in American history. — 1980 kicked off the worst decade in American history. President Jimmy Carter had recently installed solar panels on White House. President Ronald Reagan removed them, calling them folly, and fairy dust. Reagan and his crony corporations had already gotten together to create socialism for them and trickle down capitalism for the rest of us. This created the greatest transfer of wealth in our country’s history. All the wealth went straight to the top, strangling the middle class and the poor. Bucky wrote about this in his book GRUNCH of Giants.

The moment that best characterizes the awful decade of the 1980s was the day the solar panels on the White House were removed by President Ronald Reagan. The metaphor is perfect, as he was simultaneously dismantling all government support of clean energy development, which he and his big oil cronies knew was not only possible, but inevitible, eventually. They wanted a few more decades of mind-blowing wealth before the spigot got turned off.

Now, here we are again. Many younger people do not realize we have been here before.

Each of us must demand the clean renewable energy we know is both possible and necessary. With many voices, we will become one, and they will have no choice but to reckon with us.

Let’s give those racketeering oil executives a choice: support clean energy development now, or go to jail for the rest of your life. You have committed great crimes against humanity; at the very least, it is time to stop. End all fossil fuel subsidies now. Those pipeline projects are government projects. They are using our own taxpayer dollars to subsidize our own demise.

Today’s generation may be our last chance.

We will either learn from history, or be doomed to repeat it.

Bucky’s ‘WORLD LIVINGRY SERVICE INDUSTRY’ — An idea whose time has come?

On Buckminster Fuller’s last day, in July of 1983, he left on his desk a proposal for a World Livingry Services Industry. Written for a conference at Waseda University in Tokyo, Bucky describes his “alternative to politics and its ever more wasteful warring, and inherently vain attempts to solve one-sidedly all humanity’s basic economic and social problems.”

Thirty two years have passed since Bucky authored this paper. He always said he worked fifty years in the future. This might mean it will take another eighteen or so years for his thinking to actually take hold in humanity’s ever evolving mind. But it could happen sooner, depending on how many people share Bucky’s great ideas with the world.

“War has taught man that it is all right to use our scarce resources to dominate and kill people. We must now make the decision to reallocate those resources, to help people live better. If we only prepare for war, that’s what we will know. We must also prepare for peace, by converting some of our weaponry to ‘livingry’.”

Take a look at his brilliant proposal for how to put our energies to work of all of humanity, and then, please share Buckyworld.

Here’s the link.

Let’s get this revolution started!

My task is to bring back Bucky’s ideas and serve them up in bite size pieces so that you can use them to make change happen in your world. Bucky’s genius works toward any cause that ‘arcs with the truth’, and it is all actually quite simple.

Take Einstein’s E = mc2 for example. It’s super easy to understand if it’s explained simply: E represents units of energy, m represents units of mass, and c2 is the speed of light squared, or multiplied by itself. Because the speed of light is a very large number, and then you multiply it by itself, you can see the point that this equation shows how even the tiniest amount of matter can release a huge amount of energy, as in a single atom splitting in a nuclear reaction.

Or, as in one person writing to a president, or creating a meme that goes viral.

Bucky’s Synergetic Geometry explains that a triangle is the fundamental building block of the universe, the strongest structure in existence. Modern science is proving him right, as understanding of physics and biochemistry continues to grow.
Social Media creates a perfect triangle. It connects you, to others, through it — a three-sided phenomenon. A de facto digital democracy.

Bucky also called on us to reconnect to nature. Nature, after all, is the perfect designer. She has been at it for billions of years. If a living thing doesn’t abide by nature’s rules, nature expels it like a kidney stone. This is the pathway the human race is currently strolling down while we stare at beautiful behinds on our i-phones. Once we understand how nature works, we can do the same. If we simply set out with the right objective, we can accomplish Bucky’s suggested mission: “To make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.”

To get there, he called for an ‘Anticipatory Design Science Revolution’, which sounds like an monster of an idea, but breaking down the genius makes it simple:

Anticipatory – Figuring out which way things are headed.
Design – Creating technologies and artifacts that maximize current technology.
Science – Accepting the truth of the necessity to adapt to nature’s principles.
Revolution – Turning things upside down to make it happen.

The first three are underway. The question is whether or not the “revolution” part is happening quickly enough. Most scientists say it’s not, at least not yet. The fact that we still allowing, even subsidizing, more and more desperate measures to extract fossil fuels from the ground (through Fracking and Tar Sands and building huge pipelines across continents) is surely ample evidence that the revolution has not yet begun.

It is long past time for it to start.

Bucky’s words, first said in 1965, should infuriate us all: “Because our tax-hungry government and our money hungry corporations (which run our government) have not figured a way to place a meter between us and the sun, we are not allowed to enjoy the vast supplies of free (solar, wind, geothermal, wave, etc) energy that could be powering the world.

The technology exists to create a clean energy economy. We only have to demand it happen.

Only the individual has the power to do and say exactly what he believes. No matter what your age or station in life, you, as an individual, have the power to influence others.

We take power into our hands every time we pick up our phones. We can voice our opinions louder, quicker and easier than ever before. We can demand our government create a clean energy economy. We can demand our government develop a better relationship with our boss, mother nature. We can demand they stop “burning up the house to keep the family warm.”

I think if Bucky were alive today, he would ask us to make it a daily habit. Every day: Brush your teeth, comb your hair, read up and then and speak out about something you care about. Put some time every day into doing something for your fellow man. Focus on the environment, or peace and justice, children’s rights, whatever you care most about. If only a small percentage of the seven plus billion of us would start doing this, the revolution would ram right through the current nonsense of today like a herd of wild elephants.

Just like Einstein’s law, such a big concentration of even something very small could release a huge amount of energy.

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How ‘Bucky’ are America’s top colleges?

Please share Buckyworld. c 2015 — Please share Buckyworld.
c 2015

Something just shifted. Things are getting better.

Am I just detoxing or does 2015 seem to be brimming with possibilities for all of humanity?

President Obama has promised to veto KXL and has crafted a plan with China to reduce emissions. Awareness that there are solutions to the carbon problem is growing. Awareness of the problem itself is growing. Environmentalists and scientists are receiving more and more support in their battle for a clean, healthy and just environment.

Could the long awaited transfer to clean energy finally be happening?

It has been an awfully long wait since the 1970s, when the need to wean ourselves off fossil fuels was first acknowledged and discussed publicly. Ever since, BIG OIL, backed by corporate America and a complicit government, has worked diligently to disable these efforts.

It is time to call them what they are: greedy, selfish, nihilistic criminals. They commit crimes against humanity. Every day.

They know climate change is real. You can find proof of that right here on this site. They refuse to act because doing so would interfere with their financial profits. This is the problem with giving corporations the same rights as people. They are not people. They are androids focused soley on financial success. The government leaders in bed with them are even worse, because they have vowed to be otherwise.

As Bucky would still be saying today, it remains the job of every individual to learn into the truth and then to speak the truth. Whether or not humanity passes its final examination is an individual decision.

Do not be afraid to call out the hypocrisies and scandalous behaviors of the oil industry, and all those who call themselves leaders, but who clearly are not.

The stars are aligned for revolution. There is momentum for a clean energy economy as well as an open, acknowledged pursuit for peace and justice — for 100% of humanity.

Your actions and inactions will make the difference. There is safety in numbers. We should all speak truth to power now.

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Protected: Bucky’s Message to Humanity

Alpha Males Running Amuck on Planet Earth

Whether it’s mankind’s insane propensity for war, his growing gun violence, his abuse of women and children, his militarized police, or even big oil’s excessive greed, the root of many of our problems is one and the same: There is too much alpha male energy running things on Spaceship Earth.

It is time for leaders to emerge from either gender who use more highly evolved qualities — such as compassion, cooperation and a sense of community — to right the ship.

New Feminine Paradigm Needed.

The National Geographic movie entitled Stress offers much needed enlightenment on this issue. It tells the story of how, for decades, Stanford researchers studied a tribe of baboons, which live much like humans do; in nuclear families, caring for their children, men going off in search of food and coming home. They wanted to understand how they dealt with stress. The Alpha male came home empty handed from the hunt. Frustrated, he would swat his wife and their children. His stress becomes their stress; and before long they’re all running around biting each other on the bottoms. Much like life in America today. Stress not managed begats more and more stress.

One day in the Baboons’ backyard, a load of meat poisoned by disease was inadvertently dumped. The alpha males fought off all the others and got to the meat first. They all died. Without them, an entirely new kind of community emerged. Women took over, supported by the beta men. More time was spent grooming and raising children, a sort of utopia came to be.

Buckminster Fuller’s wisdom about the overall superiority of women to rule the world – or for a new feminine paradigm of leadership – was published in a 1968 McCall’s Magazine article, entitled “Why Women Will Rule the World”.

Bucky said a world run by women would refute the outdated notion of scarcity, and set out instead to provide for 100% of humanity. Our abundantly advanced technology and all our new knowledge has brought us to the point where it no longer needs to be “us versus them”, but instead the objective could be “to make the world work for 100% of the people, without harm to the environment.”

We must get control of the alpha energy that’s running amok. We must demand a new more intelligent government. We must make it clear to all of our leaders that war is no longer a sustainable activity. We must demand the transition off fossil fuels happen now. We must demand justice and equality for all peoples, and the environment.

How can women lead the way to make this happen?

Maybe we could get creative and take a lesson from the war-weary women of Sudan who staged a sex strike for peace. Somehow, whatever it takes, we must all find the courage to demand a world where “governance equals nurturance”. As corny as it may sound, love really is the answer. And once humanity demands a compassionately-attuned-to-other world we will get it. As Bucky said, “When there is a strong enough will, there can be no other way. Whatever we think is what will be.”

It doesn’t have to be women who lead, just people who have traditionally feminine values and approaches to problem solving. For example, Bernie Sanders. With his focus on caring for people and the planet, he could have been more of a woman president than Hillary. Elizabeth Warren thinks like a mom. What’s fair? How do we make it work for everybody? And, of course everyone by now everyone knows that Barack Obama is, at heart, already our first feminine paradigm president.

Read Bucky’s article below to get your own vision of how good life might be with a more feminine paradigm of leadership in place. Share it with the women you know who might make great leaders if they had a little encouragement.

Here’s a link to the full McCall’s article by Buckminster Fuller, courtesy of Brent Reitzel at Univ of Illinois, Carbondale.

Find the courage to speak truth to power NOW. Wield your mighty keyboard. And please share Buckyworld.