R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER:
The History [and Mystery] of the Universe
A one-man play created by D. W. Jacobs
(first performed in 2000 in San Diego, then San Francisco)
The following excerpts constitute one persons feelings of the play’s wisdom and inspiration that may
1. Gravity does not have to think before behaving in the most economical manner.
2. We now have the capability to take care of all humanity at a higher standard of living than we have ever known, but only if the sovereign fences are completely removed.
3. The physical wealth of universe cannot diminish, the metaphysical can only increase.
4. Learning the truth about all things, then the truth about combinations of things, that’s what you want to do.
5. If humanity knows what it needs to take care of all humanity, if it knows its physical resources, and where they are located, humanity needs no money. It needs physical and metaphysical accounting.
6. I don’t know what I am; I seem to be a verb.
7. Imagine yourself as these deployed elements that temporarily become your skin, hair, etc. then break off and get blown around as dust.
8. Man is the pattern integrity with which he is born; I call man a pattern integrity.
9. Take a piece of manila rope and splice onto it a piece of nylon rope and onto that a piece of cotton rope. Make the simplest knot I know—not tight—move it along the rope until it slips of the end of the rope, to where? The knot is not the manila, nylon, or cotton.
10. The knot had an integrity all its own.
11. I took off seventy pounds recently, who was that? It wasn’t me.
12. In 70 years have taken in over 1,000 tons of air, food, and water but I’m not any of that poundage at all.
13. When we die, our pattern integrity moves on—it’s somewhere else.
14. I began to think that all nature’s structuring was based on the triangle.
15. I was doing what a child was intended to do—using my imagination.
16. Where there is no otherness, there is no awareness.
17. We were going from tracked to trackless; from wire to wireless; from visible to invisible.
18. Ephemeralization—doing more with less.
19. In the navy impossible things were happening—in fact, it seemed like only the impossible happened.
20. Nature is not using pi.
21. I began looking to see how nature contrives her spontaneous associations.
22. Children verifying information from their senses.
23. Child’s initial experiments with gravity.
24. Trespasses—feedback of negatives, the realistic admission of which may eliminate the negatives.
25. You do not belong to you—you belong to universe.
26. I am thinking the truth.
27. Every child is born a genius and gets degeniused because parents and the environment are unable to recognize these faculties.
28. There must be a way to help others avoid the pain I was feeling.
29. Feelings—thinking, believing, knowing—is not feeling. When one thinks, believes, knows, one is a lot of other people, but no one individual can be taught to feel.
30. In 1927 I began a 50-year experiment to prove that man is not a failure but like nature, an extraordinary success.
31. What can the individual do to benefit all humanity? The Individual can take initiative without permission.
32. Only humans can discover principles of nature and act in this cosmically adequate manner.
33. I had to make a complete disconnect—start doing my own thinking.
34. I became convinced that we are here for each other.
35. … I must learn a great deal and unlearn a great deal more.
36. I had to rethink everything I knew—that was the most difficult discipline I took on.
37. Universe is a scenario built on generalized principles.
38. Man is the experimental initiative of universe.
39. Humans are local universe information gatherers and problem solvers.
40. Humans are guided by a phantom captain, which has no weight or sensorial tangibility.
41. No economist has written a chapter in any book about doing more with less—economists are specialists trained to look for only one thing.
42. Sailors must look for every clue nature gives and anticipate comprehensively.
43. We are traveling on a spaceship—a magnificently designed spherical spaceship.
44. We are all passengers on spaceship earth.
45. Spaceship earth did not come with an operating manual. We were not even told that it was a spaceship, we had to find it out for ourselves and we are still learning.
46. Why are our problems so resistant to solutions? Why does it take so long for us to make use of our discoveries? Our perceptions of the world are inaccurate and our brains are saddled with the weight of misconceptions.
47. Desalinization—the politicians can’t help, they cannot be long-range thinkers for projects that are costly and will take at least 10 years to complete—leave it to the next guy. What will it cost US if we wait?
48. We must push for a design science revolution.
49. I knew that if I could translate my ideas into actions and artifacts perhaps I could get people to listen to me.
50. I am not a reformer, I’m a new-former.
51. One must decide if one is going to make money or make sense, as the two are mutually exclusive.
52. If you bought a new house recently, you bought a house that is technically and scientifically 75 years behind the times. Do you think that the builders of your house used all known resources and state-of the-art technology to build the best house possible or were they trying to make money?
53. … man will not have to prove his right to live.
54. Man is designed like nature to be an extraordinary success.
55. We must saturate ourselves with information.
56. Nature operates on generalized principles that hold true in every case—never fail.
57. Brain and mind are quite different. The brain records experiences while the mind is engaged to discover generalized principles (i.e.: leverage, tension and compression, concave and convex, proton and neutron).
58. Man is a super galaxy of galaxies of slipknots.
59. If we could only find the coordinate system employed by nature herself then maybe we could bring together the chasm between the humanists and scientists and find the structure common to both physical and metaphysical universe.
60. Time is measured in cycles.
61. All phenomena in universe can be measured by angle and frequency change.
62. A square has no structural integrity—the triangle is the only stable structure.
63. I could see that if I was going to make something work-to really make it work—I would have to use all triangles.
64. Structure is a combination of energy events.
65. The basic structures in universe are the tetrahedron, the octahedron, and the icosahedron.
66. Synergy is the behavior of whole unpredicted by the behavior of the parts.
67. Two triangles taken as right-helix and left-helix fit together to form a tetrahedron with four triangular sides, thus, two triangles add up to four triangles. This is not a trick—this is the way atoms behave. True synergy.
68. Vector equilibrium-the whole phenomenology of universe.
69. I began applying the principles of universe to the problem of shelter and designed the 4D tower house.
70. I was putting myself and my comfort ahead of my 4D tower house and I concluded, “You are not allowed to do that!”
71. Einstein—“Fear and longing are the fundamental motivations of man.”
72. Fusion verified Einstein’s E = MC2—change is normal.
73. I don’t know why I am asked to speak to people as ignorant as you, you teach your children information from eras when man thought the world was flat. Our problems spring from this era and our thinking that we got along, had a lot of fun, so let’s just leave it that way.
74. No scientist, no geologist, no physicist has ever found anything that could be called a solid.
75. Universe is all energy and energy events.
76. There are no solids; no straight lines; the wind does not blow, it sucks; there is no up or down in universe; there is no sunrise/sunset, the earth is revolving to obscure the sun.
77. Though sovereign fences may be coming down, we still have 200 admirals aboard spaceship earth with the 5 admirals whose staterooms are next to the oil, claim they own the oil, and the 5 admirals whose staterooms are next to the food, claim they own all the food, etc. and we have balance of trade with most having a trade deficit and no one is paying any attention to operating the ship.
78. The great pirates were the first comprehensively informed humans.
79. Men of the sea are inherently outlaws; the only laws that govern them are the tempestuous laws of nature.
80. There came a time when the out-pirates challenged the in-pirates with a whole new geometry of thinking: from below with submarines, and above from airplanes, and in the invisible realms of electronics and the great pirates became extinct, but all accounting practices in both capitalism and communism still hold to the principles of the great pirates.
81. The ideologies of Malthus/Darwin/Marx and all class warfare are mutually extinct, why? Because Malthus did not know about refrigeration. What else did he leave out? All modern technology.
82. The navy plays a war game; the real game is the world game where we do more with less—a design revolution not a political revolution where we get on by killing each other and see who survives.
83. We must remove all sovereign fences.
84. In 1969 mankind passed a threshold of doing so much more with so much less to be able to place a man on the moon and bring him safely back to earth.
85. The world can work for everyone if we reorient production from killingry to livingry.
86. You must do your own thinking, that’s what the individual is about—are you going to go along with the truth or be swayed by the crowd.
87. We are entering a new relationship with universe-when we thought there was not enough to go around, selfishness made sense—now selfishness has no integrity whatsoever.
88. When most of us were illiterate, we said, leave it to the power structure, they know best.
89. We must reform the environment not the man.
90. Only the individual can set aside greed and operate in a cosmically adequate manner.
91. WALL STREET LAWYERS—continue to manifest in our lives the entropic values of the great pirates.
92. I call the CIA “Capitalisms’ Invisible Army.”
93. Queen Elizabeth granted backers of enterprises limited liability so they could limit their losses.
94. Britain lost the revolutionary war but the East India Company moved right into the new US economy.
95. The East India Company became the first world around enterprise—the “empire upon which the sun never sets.”
96. My commitment is to cultivate the necessary tools and make their use so easy, pleasant, and efficient that the undesirable ways are simply abandoned.
97. G.R.U.N.C.H. (Gross Universe Cash Heist) GRUNCH did not invent universe, it didn’t invent anything—It is devoid of know why and know where and is as blind as its lawyers are mute.
98. GRUNCH could end starvation with only 3% of its gross annual earnings.
99. Power structures abhor idle people as potential troublemakers. Nature does not abhor seemingly idle trees, grass, snails, clouds, coral reefs ….
100. The power structure essentially forces us to adopt an artificial array of beliefs in order to please some boss.
101. Our subconscious prompts us to ask, “What was it I was thinking about when I was told to earn a living doing something someone else thought was important.”
102. What do I see that needs to be done that someone else is not doing and what do I have to learn to be more effective at doing it?
103. We are here for problem solving—we are local information gatherers and local problem solvers.
104. What do we mean by universe? The aggregate of all apprehended experience.
105. Everything going on in this room is metaphysical.
106. Understanding is purely metaphysical.
107. Unity is plural and at minimum two.
108. Montreal ‘67 dome and Taj Mahal—expressions of the architect’s love for his wife—Anne knew it was so.
109. Dare to speak the truth, and do so right now!
110. All humans have a private hot line to God.
111. Bright people are streamlined into being specialists.
112. No one is born a specialist—we are born with comprehensive abilities.
113. School tends to halt our comprehensive tendencies by orienting us to teachings unrelated to our own goals, interests, and integrities.
114. Based on the current cost of household electricity, it would cost nature over $1 million to produce one gallon of petroleum—if humans stayed home from their no wealth producing jobs it would save humanity and universe trillions of dollars a day.
115. No one picture will tell you that a caterpillar will turn into a butterfly and no one picture will tell you that that butterfly will fly.
116. Throughout history humans have essentially thought of instant universe, not realizing that the light from each star takes a different length of time to get here and that some of the stars we see aren’t even there any more.
117. Children need to be allowed to do their own thinking. We will make it on this planet because of youth, and truth, and love.
118. Mind is everything, muscle is nothing.
119. If we come out with mind in control it is going to be utopia, if muscle in control it will be oblivion.
120. Whatever we are does not really die.
121. A sailing ship opens the sea, but unlike a bulldozer, it doesn’t hurt the sea. It does not take any energy wealth out of universe.
122. Moving a tiny trim tab on the rudder of a ship or airplane creates low pressures that enable it to take an entirely new direction. Just call me trim tab.
123. People ask me if I am an optimist—I am a very hard realist.
124. You’re going to have to really know the truth.
125. You can deceive your brain-self but you cannot deceive your mind-self.
126. The mind deals only with the discovery of truth.
127. Humanity has the option to make it—it is touch-and-go since we also could destroy ourselves.
128. Don’t let up—keep with your integrity and we will make it!