rI ne va il si ti yb .

l e

The words of

R BUCKMINSTER
FULLER
The design of

Fernando Padilla
R Buckminster Fuller: Essays

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Essays & interviews
R. Buckinster Fuller

p.Accelerating Acceleration
p.Big Picture Thinking
p.Earthian’s Critical Moment
p.Only Integrity is Going to Count

Writings courtesy of
The Buckminster Fuller Institute
http://www.bfi.org/
4 R Buckminster Fuller: Essays 5

ACCE
L ERA
TING
ACCE
LERA
TION
6 R Buckminster Fuller: Essays 7

And we’re at a point Not tourist. Just re- My father was in the leather
importing business in Boston,
sponding to requests to Massachusetts, in the United States,
where I now have what appear here and there, and he imported from two places,
to lecture at universities apparently--Buenos Aires and India,

would seem absolutely or design some struc-

for bringing in leather for the shoe
industry, which was centered in that
ture, or whatever it may
incredible to generations be. So that is in the
time in the Boston area. His mail, or
a trip he would like to make to Ar-
gentina, took two months each way.
before. I’ve now everyday pattern, that I
am circuiting that earth.
His trip to India, or the mail, took
exactly three months each way.
completed thirty-seven
circuits of our Earth-kind
of zig-zagging circuits, Certainly makes
evidence that we are
dealing in totality of
not straight around. humanity not the--up to
my generation-
completely divided
humanity, spread very
far apart on our planet.
8 R Buckminster Fuller:
It seemed absolutely logical to humanity when
early in this century Rudyard Kipling, the Eng-
lish poet, said “East is east and west is west,
and never the twain shall meet.” It was a very,
very rare matter for any human being to make
such a travel as that, taking all those months.
There were not many ships that could take
him there.
All that has just changed in my lifetime,
to where I’m not one of the very few making
these circuits of the Earth, but I am one of
probably getting to be pretty close to twenty
million now who are making, living a life like
that around our planet. And very much the
whole young world is doing so. I keep meeting
my students of various universities from around
the world half way round the world again.
They’re all getting to be living as world people.
This is a very sudden emergence of some
new kind of relationship to our Universe being
manifest. None of it was planned. There was
nobody in the time of my father, my mother, in
the time I was brought up, prophesying any of
the things I just said.
The year I was born, Marconi invented the
wireless, but it did not get into any practical
use until I was twelve years of age, when the
first steamship sent an SOS, when it was in
distress, by wireless. Think of it. Great many
miles--and the world began to know the ship
The impossibles were happening
was in distress, and a ship then rushed to its
aid. Absolutely unexpected. My father and
mother were saying, “Wireless? Nonsense!”
And, when I was three the electron was
discovered and nobody talked about that;
it wasn’t in any of the newspapers. Nobody
was interested in the electron, they didn’t
know what was the electron or whether it was
discovered. I was brought up that humanity
would never get to the North Pole. Absolutely
impossible. They’d never get to the South
Pole. On Mercator maps, it didn’t even show
anything up--the northernmost points were a
very rugged kind of a line, if you see it, with
nothing beyond that. When I was fourteen,
man did get to the North Pole. When I was
sixteen, he got to the South Pole. The “impos-
sibles” were happening.
Like all other little boys, I was making paper
darts that you make at school--boys must’ve
been making them for a very long time. And
we were hoping it might be able to get to
flying. Parents would say, “Darling, it’s very
amusing for you to try that, but it’s inherently
impossible for man to fly.” So when I was
seven, the Wright brothers suddenly flew, and
my memory is vivid enough of seven to re-
member that, for about a year, the engineering
societies would try to prove it was a hoax, that
it was absolutely impossible for man to do that.
Essays
So then, not only was there radio, but when
I was twenty-three--which I guess many in this
room are not twenty-three yet,--when I was
twenty-three, the human voice came over the
radio for the first time. That’s an incredible
matter. I was forty-five when we had our first
television. It couldn’t be a more recent matter,
and yet, nobody thought at that time, they
didn’t know you were going to have transis-
tors. They didn’t know man was going to have
satellites going around the earth, they didn’t
know we were going to have radio relay satel-
lites, with programs coming out of any part of
the Earth to any other part of the Earth. Not
one of these steps was ever anticipated by any
of the others.
So having experienced that, I also expe-
rienced living with my fellow human beings
who, I find, no sooner does it happen, says “I
knew it all the time. I’m not one of those to be
surprised; I was totally in on it, you know, I was
a little bit responsible.” There’s a strange van-
ity of man, I think the vanity that he has was
essential to his being born naked and helpless
and having to make the fantastic number of
mistakes he had to make in order to really
learn something. I think he is so disgruntled,
so dismayed by the mistakes and the errors
that he would never have been able to carry
on--would’ve been absolutely discouraged.
9
So he was given this strange vanity to say--to
continually make himself exempt, that he was
some kind of privileged and always in, and he
is able to quite clearly deceive himself a great
deal. So I find everybody today--let anybody
do that unless it is absolutely simple
and logical.
The first census of the population of the
United States was taken in 1790, just after
the war was over. In 1810, the United States
Congress decided we ought to have a census
of the wealth of America, so the Treasury
Department had a very large survey made
of people to determine their wealth. In 1810,
there were a million families in America. In
1810, there were a million human slaves in
America. It’s a very sad and very dramatic fact
to be revealed if you go back into the records.
It looks like every family having a human slave;
that was not correct. Very few families owned
a slave, comparatively. But the point is that
kind of a figure.
So I found that in 1940, in contradistinction
to that kind of condition, there were a number
of energy-slaves working in the economy
rather than human slaves. And I found that--
you can go back and look at Fortune Magazine
10th Anniversary Issue, 1940, and you’ll
find the number of energy slaves operating
per each person, per family. The number of
10
energy-slaves operating in the United States
per person was thirty-nine energy slaves per
person. Every individual, if you have a family
of five, you come pretty close to two hundred
slaves working for each family. But energy
slaves are really inanimate, in contradistinction
to a million--one slave per family--of human
slaves. Suddenly you have two hundred non-
human slaves doing the work. An enormous
step up in the standard of living is represented,
as well as doing away with the inhumane idea
of the human being being the muscle machine
to be commanded. That that change had tak-
en place in such a short period of time--about
a hundred and thirty year change--I felt I was
discovering something very, very dramatic.
And now I went into the figures in 1940 even
more deeply because by then World War II
was thoroughly looming, and a great deal
of the energy being generated in the United
States was going toward war production. So
I deducted from the total energy that I would
be considering any energy that could be
identified as going toward anything that had
to do with war. To see then how much energy
was actually benefiting the family, the human
beings; if the energy was producing a highway
for them to go on, I made that primarily for
them and not for the war, whatever that might
be. I made as strict an accounting as I could
more of humanity were “have-nots’”
R Buckminster Fuller:
to see what was really benefiting the family. So
then, I found out how many net energy slaves
were really supporting a peaceful life of human
beings in America. What I found was one hun-
dred energy slaves per family, approximately--I
came to two hundred at the time, and about
half of them were really working for the human
family itself; the other half were getting ready
for war.
I took the criteria of a hundred energy slaves
per family as being the criteria for what I call
a “have” family. This represented people who
were enjoying a really comfortable standard
of living. So my criteria for a “have” family: a
hundred energy slaves per family.
Now in 1900, taking the total human popula-
tion, far less than one per cent were in what I
called “industrial have” family. So less than one
per cent of humanity in 1900. As a conse-
quence of World War II, and the technology
I spoke about that was introduced in World
War II, it came out four per cent of all humanity
were suddenly “industrial haves” which was a
very big jump from nothing. In 1951, I was tak-
ing a new point on the curve, and I found we’d
gotten up to twenty eight per cent of humanity.
I now had enough points on my curve--I had
three points--to be able to discover, there’s a
radius of change, so I made a constant radius
of change, and I extended that radius. And
Essays
I found that curve was increasing so rapidly
that the curve in exactly 2000 AD, we came to
100% of humanity would be enjoying a high
standard of living. I saw that that curve could
be accelerated, so I made an acceleration
curve on my 1951 publishing of this curve and
when I took the slower rate, the constant rate
of radius, and I found that (this 1951), as of
1970, the curve went through fifty per cent
of humanity.
Historically, ninety-nine per cent and more
of humanity were “have-nots’” they were in
dire need, and revolution was really rampant.
The many would say the fewer are enjoying
unfairly, and we have to get up and do some-
thing about it. When you go by fifty per cent,
I saw for the first time in history, the majority
begins to be “haves”, rather than “have-nots.”
This would bring about a different way of
looking at things. Those who were “haves”
would probably find much more information
than they ever had before, found they really
couldn’t enjoy that “have-ness” as long as they
had awareness of the dire “have-not-ness” of
the others. At any rate, this would be a critical
point where, for the first time, you would not
have the majority rising up to pull down the
top. You might really have, then, the tendency
of the majority, being on top, to pull the bottom
up. This seemed to be, probably,
11
a very new relationship.
In 1951, I marked on my chart, the critical
year would be 1970. Using my acceleration it
could be somewhere between 1970 and 1975
The most accelerated point would be 1970
and the least accelerated would be 1975. This
is the critical period and the curve really did get
exactly there at 1970. So we crossed, we’ve
been going through a very, very critical time
right now. Because this is the point where, I
say, it is now being clearly demonstrated to
humanity that something is going on, if he is
not so myopic and shortsighted as not to really
look at such curves. I am really astonished at
how little people will look at them.
This kind of awareness that made me want
to develop what I called a World Game to try
to make it as quickly as possible to make it
clear to all humanity what its options were,
that changes are going on. There are very big
things going on in nature here. I spoke to you
about our all coming out of some common
womb of permitted ignorance, with enough
cushion of resources by which, by trial-and-
error to make mistake after mistake, to learn
what we’re learning. And this is a very extraor-
dinary moment, I find; suddenly there is--all
around the world--literacy. This wasn’t there
when I was young.
12 R Buckminster Fuller: Essays 13

B I G
P I C
TU R E THIN
K ING
14
TH IN KIN G
DIS C IP LINE
Fuller: I am going to review two or three ways
in which I discipline myself to try to get myself
thinking in a little more adequate manner
concerning what we know of our Universe and
what may be going on in a larger way, and to
try to get things a little better proportioned. As
for instance, I would like to have a picture of
our Milky Way galaxy may I have that picture
please?
MILKY WAY
We’re looking at an array of stars—you can
see the Milky Way running through the stars.
The number of stars you are looking at is about
18,000, and they comprise approximately
1/6,000,000 of all the stars in our Milky Way
galaxy. We now know, and we have been able
to get our great telescopes trained on other
galaxies and so forth; we now have taken
photographs and are aware of a billion such
galaxies of a hundred billion stars each*.
and you and I are utterly invisible
R Buckminster Fuller:
LITTLE EARTH
We’re looking at an exploding phenomenon. I
spoke about those hundred million galaxies* of
a hundred million stars each. 99.9% of them
are invisible to our naked eye, but their sizes
are of great, great magnitude. To get a little
idea, our own star Sun—our Earth is 8,000 of
miles in diameter and the diameter of the Sun
is just a hundred times that, so our little Earth
looks very tiny against that enormous big ball.
OU R S M A L L SU N
But our star Sun is a small star. Most of you
are familiar with Orion’s Belt. In Orion’s Belt,
one of the two bright stars is reddish in color
and this is Betelgeuse. Betelgeuse’s diameter
is greater than the diameter of the orbit of the
Earth around the Sun. So that’s a good
size star.
Essays
HUMANS ARE INVISIBLE
So, we are a little planet of a rather inferior star
which is one of a hundred billion stars in our
galaxy and we know of billions* of galaxies. So
you get an idea of our little planet, and you and
I are utterly invisible on it. We take pictures of
our planet coming in from the moon, when you
can see through the cloud cover, you can see
the blue of the waters and brown of the land,
but you can’t make out a human being. You
can’t even make out a mountain, let alone a
human being.
MOUNTAINS ARE
INVISIBLE
There’s absolutely no visibility of a mountain
because the aberration of the deepest water
— five miles below sea level, five miles above
to the mountain top—ten miles aberration in
8,000 miles is so meager that a polished steel
ball is probably rougher than that.
WE ARE REALLY SMALL
So we are absolutely invisible on a really
negligible little tiny planet of a rather negligible
15
star, which is one member of a hundred billion
of known million billion such stars. So you
multiply the billion times a hundred billion and
you’ll get an idea.
BURSTING
PHENOMENON
As we look at things at great distances, this
picture that I have of the -- this is of a bursting
phenomena in the heavens which looks like a
tiny little light and it keeps remaining like a tiny
light. It’s such a distance, and the distances
involved are so great. This particular phenome-
non is expanding at a velocity of 3 million miles
an hour. For instance, the distance between
the earth and the sun is 92 million. So in 30
hours, just a little over a day, this expands the
complete distance between the earth and the
sun. Yet it remains for the thousands of years
we may be looking at it like a little tiny speck
there in the sky. You get a little sense of the
size and deceptiveness to us in the magnitude
of the information we are really dealing
in today.
16
SEEING 11.5 BILLION
TIMES 6.5 TRILLION
MILES
I am quite confident, this is as far as you and
I have been able to -- when I say you and I, I
mean all our fellows -- the human beings who
have been born naked and helpless and finally
discovered principles of the refraction of light
and developed the telescope, and have been
able to make a sweep-out. We are getting
information -- tiny as we are, we have informa-
tion of an approximate spherical sweep-out of
observation of eleven-and-a-half billion light-
year radius. A light-year is six and one-half
trillion miles; when you get to eleven-and-a-half
billion times six-and-one-half trillion, you get a
little idea of the distance you and I are getting
information from -- reliable information. We get
the rate at which this thing is expanding.
SPECTROSCOPE
And through the spectroscope we learn about
refraction of light. Through the spectroscope
we are able to take the light from all those
observations. And each chemical element has
its unique frequencies when incandescent,
tiny as we are, we have information
R Buckminster Fuller:
and we have been able then to -- little human
beings on our planet have been able to take
inventory of the relative abundance of chemical
elements in the sweep-out of eleven-and-a-half
billion light-year observation.
SIGNIFICANCE OF
HUMAN BEINGS
That we have that kind of capability, despite
our absolutely negligible magnitude physically,
that we can we deal with our minds in such
magnitudes and do so quite reliably gives us a
hint that human beings must have some very
great significance in the scheme.
INFORMATION
INCREASE
Just making a little jump in information. As
humanity on board of our planet entered
into what it called World War I, the scientists
around the world had ways of reporting to one
another officially. Chemists have what they
call chemical abstracts. Chemical abstracts
are methodical publications of anything and
everything any chemist finds that he publishes
information regarding, it becomes a chemical
Essays 17
abstract. As the world entering World War I,
in what we call the 20th century (which is a
indicates that something is going on here right
now that is utterly unprecedented.
very arbitrary kind of a counting matter), we
had some 100 - I’m doing this off the top of
my head from my memory - about 175,000
known substances, possibly almost a quarter
TRANSITION TO A NEW
of a million substances, by the time the United RELATIOSHIP WITH
States came into the war, known to chemistry.
But we came out of World War I with almost
UNIVERSE
a million substances known. By the time we And there is such an indication of an accelera-
entered World War II, we were well up to 10 tion of experiences of human beings, the inte-
million and we’ve come out of it now, where gration of the accelerated experience to pro-
the figure is really getting to be astronomical. duce awareness that are indicative of humanity
We can’t really keep track of the rate at which going through some very, very important kind
we are discovering more, just talking about of transition into some kind of new relationship
differentiable substances, chemically distinct to Universe, I’d say, the kind of acceleration
from one another. that occurs after the child has been formed in
the womb, taking the nine months, then sud-
denly begins to issue from the womb out into
ACCELERATION an entirely new world. I think we are appar-
ently coming out of some common womb of
OF INFORMATION AND designedly permitted ignorance.
EXPERIENCE
Those are typical of the information release at
a bursting rate now, I’m speaking now in rela-
tionship to my own life. One life in the extraor-
dinary numbers of lives there must have been
on board of our planet. That the information is
multiplying at that rate during just one lifetime
18 R Buckminster Fuller: Essays 19

EARTH
IAN’S
CRITICAL
M OM
ENT
20 R Buckminster Fuller: Essays 21

The following transcripts were taken from
a dialogue while playing World Game
(Integrity Day, June 1983).
RBF: We find that the average--there are a
number of different size atomic bombs. The
total devastation at varies, but they average on
this map here 5/16 of an the inch total devas-
tation. There are now 50,000 bombs waiting to
go. We find that the little, in the game of bingo,
the little pink lozenge--transparent lozenge
chips--and they are just 5/16th of an inch,
or the size of the average devastation of the
atomic bombs. There are 50,000 ready to go.
So we’re going to put the 50,000 here. We’re
not putting them on the water. We’re only put-
ting them in the dry land where the people can
be. This is one of them.
You’ve got a crew? Five or six people?
Participant: We’re all ready.
RBF: All right, lets go.
Participant: So you’ve got 50,000 of these
things?
RBF: Yeah. Only on the dry land. Only on the
dry land. Don’t put them on the North Pole.
We need more over here. If they are expertly
spread out, you’ll find we get really complete
coverage of all humanity. In other words, the
capability to kill all humanity in half an hour,
because really when the bombs start off, the
automated responses are just going to mean
all of them going off. The idea about limited
atomic warfare is absolute junk, a complete lie
to humanity. These are all doubled up pretty
much. At any rate, you get a good feeling now
of the utter devastation. If we hadn’t had all the
people standing up there now, you’d see what
you’ve got. You have a way of brushing these
up, Jaime? You’ve got brushes ready? Will you
remove them now?
Participant: Somebody said its easier to drop
them than to pick them up.
RBF: You bet. Here’s our world absolutely--it’s
gone, and that’s why I’m talking to you today
about integrity. I think if the individual humans
as an invention are incapable of demonstrating
integrity, then the invention human is going to
turn out to be an unreliable invention, and the
Universe will not need it anymore. So, if this
happens, it’s simply because we’ve failed as
individuals in being able to pass the examina-
tion, which we are all entering into now. We’re already in it.
The crisis is already on us. You see how really terribly thick
they are here.
As of 1970, keeping track of all the environment controlling,
all the logistics of thinking about total planet--for Spaceship
Earth, in 1970, we passed a threshold where it could be
demonstrated, engineering-wise, that if we took all the metals
going into armaments and put them into what you call livingry,
instead of killingry, that within a design revolution of only ten
years we could have all humanity living at a higher standard of
living than anybody had ever known, on a completely sustain-
able basis, while phasing out forever all further use of fossil
fuels and atomic energy. We could live entirely on our energy
income. Now this is absolutely clear in 1970, we passed that
threshold. For the first time in history, I knew it Obsolete did
not have to be you or me! That war was obsolete!
But how--because of the invisibility of all these
things I’m telling you--how difficult it is for me to
get you to understand just tensegrity struc-
tures. How quickly can I get humanity all the
information necessary in this invisible reality,
with all the specialization, where no specialist
is standing up there in the university saying,
“The man’s right. Fuller’s right.” They’re all so
specialized - they don’t deal with things com-
prehensively the way I do.
At any rate, you understand my sense of
responsibility when you trust me with your
time. I do know, now, the time has come, it is
now there, and it’s up to you, it’s a matter of
integrity, to really check up on what I’m saying,
to really find out, yes, it is true, and how do
you get word to humanity quickly enough so
those who are making decisions in great politi-
cal systems, which are very emotional, before
they do then say, “It has to be you or me, and
who’s going to push that bomb?”
We have very little time before we blow our-
selves off the Earth to really discover that invis-
ible integrity of Universe, that we do have a
new phase of potential existence operating. It
has nothing to do with anybody earning a living
ever again. It’s a matter of how do each one of
us, really. . . . Each human being has a drive
distribution systems, our nations, all the differ- with earning a living, nothing to do with upset.
ent kind of separateness--it blocks the whole
thing. Just think of it--simply because we’re We’re talking about a new kind of socialism, a socialism of
badly organized, we’re not taking care of it. four-and-a-half-billion billionaires. It’s not a socialism of pulling
That would be typical then. the top down and sharing the misery, its a matter of pulling
the bottom up and doing so, only because we now can do so
So I’m talking about everybody having proper much more with each pound of material, each erg of energy,
sustenance. I’m talking about everybody being each second of time. The increase has been about 99-fold.
properly protected, clothing-wise, That’s the only thing that makes it possible.
building-wise, sanitary-wise, everything you
need physically, taken care of, and a very great So it’s a new moment in the history of humanity. That’s what
deal of accommodation of your wants, over is difficult to get over. If I can get to you in enough so you can
and above your absolute needs--your travel personally look into it a little more, then part of your integrity
capability and so forth. That’s what I’m talking then will be for you to do your best to get other people to
about--standard of living in that way. realize what I’m saying is so! You’re going to find there’s an
enormous number of people who don’t know this is so, that
I’m not saying whether you’re going to be we actually have the option to make it.
happy or not. But I’m saying you’re gaining this
capability not at the expense of others. You’re
gaining it by virtue of using our minds and our
knowledge and our experience to make it work
for everybody.
You will not equate work with earning a living.
This is very important. Every human being
has a deep drive within them to demonstrate
competence to themselves and to others. It’s
going to be the greatest privilege of all in a new
kind of world like that, to be allowed to be on
the production team. It will have nothing to do

atomic warfare is absolute junk

22 R Buckminster Fuller: Essays 23

ONLY
IN T E -
GRITY
IS GOING TO COUNT
24
Excerpt from interview February 26, 1983
Interviewer: If or when we accomplish a
hundred percent physically successful world,
what is the next step? Can we rely on humans
to progress without physical need?
RBF: I would like to come back to my earlier
questions of myself of why were humans
included in the Universe? I think I did discuss
that earlier, didn’t I?
Interviewer: Yes.
HUMANS AS LOCAL
PROBLEM SOLVERS
RBF: I did--and that we are here as local
information harvesters, local problem-solvers
in support of the integrity of eternally regen-
erative Universe. The fact that we get away
from physical problems doesn’t mean we go
away from problems. The problems are really
rarely physical. Much greater involves just the
integrity of problems. The question of integrity
will get finer and finer and more delicate and
more beautiful.
Interviewer: Next question. A study of one
thousand adolescents in Boston showed that
seventy per cent are extremely pessimistic
we’re dealing in
R Buckminster Fuller:
about the future, to the point where they don’t
expect to have any future. In your travels, have
you sensed this kind of pessimism among
young people, and do you have any sugges-
tions on how to convey to them your convic-
tion that we are capable of making the world a
hundred per cent physical success?
RBF: Well, I told you I find people only listen
to you when they ask you to talk to them, and
I do travel around speaking a very, very great
deal, and I have certainly been back to Boston
many, many times.
UNDERSTANDING
DESIGN REVOLUTION
It certainly is true, I find audience after audi-
ence did not know we have an option to make
it. There is no way they could, unless they--I’ve
said it’s so difficult, because, in the first place,
you have to get into technology very deeply to
understand what I call the design revolution.
They have to be involved where I’ve told you
just about--knowing what the uses of tin are
and where it is.
INVISIBLE REALITY
And so I find, because we’re dealing in an
an invisible reality
Essays
invisible reality and humanity is so specialized,
it is very difficult for them to understand from
one person to another.
At any rate, when I have an audience, I never
have an audience that doesn’t come out--very
rarely, you’ve been with me many times--they
almost always give a standing ovation. In other
words, I find the audiences very excited. But
then they come and say to me, “Your optimism
has brushed off on me. I didn’t know we had
an option. I feel so much better.” They say,
“Your optimism.” And I am not optimistic or
pessimistic. I feel that optimism and pessimism
are very unbalanced. I am a very hard engi-
neer. I am a mechanic. I am a sailor. I am an
air pilot. I don’t tell people I can get you across
the ocean with my ship unless I know what I’m
talking about.
WE HAVE THE OPTION
TO MAKE IT
So, I think it’s absolutely touch-and-go
whether we’re going to make it. But the point
is, for me to tell you that you have an option is
not to be optimistic.
But in real answer to that question, time and
again, of course I am running into millions who
don’t know we have the option, because it’s
25
invisible, and I feel I have tremendous respon-
sibility. So when people ask me to come and
talk to them, I do my best to let them know
they do have the option. Of course they’re
pessimistic, not knowing that. Incidentally, I
don’t mean to be sitting up here like a great
wisdom. These are questions I’m answering
the best I can.
Interviewer: How would you, right now in
your life, define integrity?
COURAGE: A COMPONENT
OF INTEGRITY
RBF: I find that I have to use the word cour-
age, due to the circumstances of humanity.
The courage to cooperate or initiate are based
entirely on the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth as the divine mind within
you tells you the truth is. It really does require a
courage and a self-disciplining to go along with
that truth. That’s the way I define it.
Interviewer: A lot of what we are all asking
is, what do we do, what do we need to do, to
have an impact on bringing about the realiza-
tion of a successful world?
26
DOING YOUR OWN
THINKING
RBF: Darling, I say I never try to tell anybody
else what to do, number one. And number
two, I think that’s what the individual is all
about. Each one of us has something to
contribute. This really depends on each one
doing their own thinking, but not following any
kind of rule that I can give out, any command.
We’re all on the frontier, we’re all in a great
mystery--incredibly mysterious. Each one pos-
sesses exactly what each one is working out,
and what each one works out relates to their
particular set of circumstances of any one day,
or any one place around the world.
Interviewer: In that way, do you find for
yourself, that integrity is almost a guide for you
in the sense of, by feeling an integrity in a situ-
ation, is that a guide for you towards knowing
when you have a set of options, or when you
have to make decisions, does that play a part
in knowing what you need to do next?
INTEGRITY IN THE LITTLE
THINGS
RBF: No. Integrity, for my part is, I can, my
R Buckminster Fuller:
experience is such and such, I have such and
such a memory. I have various conceptionings,
everybody else has that, and my integrity is
something else. It’s, for instance, the terribly
simple little things. If I’m going to be able to
keep on being able to be useful--because I
see I have a lot of things still to be done--there
are still several more books to write. Twenty-
four books have been finished. There’s more
technology to be done, there are all kinds of
things I can see where I could really be useful
if I’m around.
WEAPONRY TO LIVINGRY
As we make various transitions--if we can get
to the point where the Boeing Company, Lock-
heed, and so forth, begin producing livingry
instead of a great deal of fighting ships and so
forth. So, I say, “I’ve got to stay healthy. And I
mustn’t get fat.” So just not eating that mouth-
ful of that is part of that integrity all the time.
You’re always up against it, and it’s not as if
anybody else can come in and do any scoring.
You’re really doing your own scoring. We know
about that--about every little detail of our life-
-whether this is the thing we really ought to be
doing. That’s it, darling.
Essays
HUMANITY IN OUR
FINAL EXAM
So I have to say, I think that we are in some
kind of final examination as to whether human
beings now, with this capability to acquire in-
formation and to communicate, whether we’re
really qualified to take on the responsibility
we’re designed to be entrusted with. And this
is not a matter of an examination of the types
of governments, nothing to do with politics,
nothing to do with economic systems. It has to
do with the individual. Does the individual have
the courage to really go along with the truth?
INTEGRITY OF
THE INDIVIDUAL
Now you have the ability to communicate, you
don’t have to say, “I didn’t know what was
going on because I was illiterate.” I do know
what’s going on and I have very much of a
sense of what is really valid--what my life tells
me works or doesn’t work, this is the truth or
not the truth. So it is this matter of the integrity
of the individual, the courage, the courage to
go along with the truth as you personally really
27
see it--or are you going to be swayed by the
crowd? Are you going to be scared about
your job, or whatever it may be? That’s why I
talk about integrity. Integrity of the individual is
what we’re being judged for and if we are not
passing that examination, we don’t really have
the guts, we’ll blow ourselves up. It will be all
over. I think it’s all the difference in the world.
GROWTH OF LITERACY
MEANS MORE RESPON-
SIBILITY
When I was born, humanity was 95 per cent
illiterate. Since I’ve been born, the population
has doubled and that total population is now
65 per cent literate. That’s a gain of 130-fold
of the literacy. When humanity is primarily
illiterate, it needs leaders to understand and
get the information and deal with it. When we
are at the point where the majority of humans
them-selves are literate, able to get the infor-
mation, we’re in an entirely new relationship
to Universe. We are at the point where the
integrity of the individual counts and not what
the political leadership or the religious leader-
ship says to do.
NEW MOMENT
OF INTEGRITY
It’s a matter now of humanity getting to the
point where it’s now qualifying to make some
of its own decisions in relation to its own
information. That’s why we’ve come to a new
moment of integrity.
Fe rn an do Pa dil la