FAITH IN THE FUTURE

...They hadn't begun to take weight into consideration...

...All of Fuller's theories in every area became reality before our eyes...

...Taking advantage of the synergetic possibilities of technological development (synergy means whole-system behavior un-predicted from the separate parts) is the key to Fuller's plan which he initiated in 1927 to "comprehensively protect, support, and advantage all humanity instead of committing my efforts to the exclusive advantages of my dependents, myself, my country, my team...

...Like the Transcendentalists he so much resembles, Fuller believes that humankind will respond correctly when the truth is perceived...

...Magoo, was always skeptical about politics and politicians...

...But this great-nephew of Margaret Fuller, the Transcendentalist colleague of Emerson and Thoreau, has already declared that the only choice we have is between Utopia and oblivion...

...I wish I could feel as certain that Ob-noxico and Ronald Reagan won't solve the problems for us first in one blinding flash...

...We always knew when he was around because geodesic domes would suddenly begin to sprout on the quadrangle like metallic mushrooms...

...He showed sketches which illustrated the theoretical bases for this new structure of his which, as a conventional engineer exclaimed, made the I-beam obsolete...

...But Fuller points out that now for the first time in history we can use the "metaphysical weightless mind of humans" to overwhelm a mechanically oriented philosophy that maintains there will never be enough to go around...

...Humanity's present rate of total energy consumption amounts to only one four-millionth of one per cent of the rate of its energy income...

...Aggression," he insists, "is a secondary behavior of humans...

...It's what we used to think America was all about, and it's the degree of success Fuller has achieved that makes Critical Path so important a deterrent to the greed and xenophobia of the present Administration...

...Even in those Minnesota days Fuller, looking like a cross between the Buddha and Mr...

...Those few educators who love teaching can help to create the programs...

...Fuller's solution for an educational systern that "degeniuses" children is to do away entirely with schools and allow students to use a two-way television set (quite practical now through the use of satellites) to educate themselves...

...Nature has no pollutions—it has very valuable chemistries that function only under special conditions, so the critical path strategy is to get all the money-maker-unwanted chemistries shunted into all their syntropically functioning routes...

...He always lauded the interdisciplinary approach of American Studies, pointing out that in evolutionary terms overspecializa-tion always led to the destruction of species...

...Fuller's language is sometimes difficult for readers to manage...

...Fuller still excels in looking in one direction in order to see what's "trending" elsewhere...

...And like Emerson, Fuller is convinced that "in the vast majority of humans there is an innate inclination, propensity—even drive—to make sense and to produce order in consonance with universal order...

...He continues to maintain that "our grand strategy is based on producing the artifacts that will induce the right behaviors rather than depending on politically enacted and enforced reforms...

...I am certain that none of the world's problems," he insists, "have any hope of solution except through total democratic society's becoming thoroughly and comprehensively self-educated...

...The electronic ."invisible" revolution, the science of alloys (which constantly gives more for less), the ability to recycle endlessly, the technical feasibility of a worldwide energy grid to provide power everywhere economically—all these need to be played against inaccurate claims of profit-hungry businesses (he calls the typical corporation "Obnoxico") that we are doomed to spend our lives in continuous Cold War...

...Nature, Fuller notes, is always a better guide for us than the power companies: When it builds an atomic energy plant (like the sun) it puts it where it belongs—93 million miles from human beings...

...In the next years when he returned we saw slides of the actual structures (ultimately as the Ford dome, radomes, the Montreal exhibit of the United States, and most recently a plan to enclose the entire city of East St...

...He has documented the energy needs and the resources of the world and convincingly demolished the Malthusian' proposition that we are destined to compete for survival...

...At a time when the Reagan Administration demands that we lower the expectations of the majority in order to underwrite the rapacity of the rich and their special-interest allies, Fuller's message sounds hopelessly Utopian...

...It's partly because Fuller likes to make up his own words, playBOOKS r ingwith etymologies and metaphorical possibilities...

...Fuller once cracked up an architectural meeting by asking Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, and others how much their buildings weighed...

...If Reaganemia has you wondering what happened to the United States we used to believe in—the one devoted to political and economic equality—then your best tonic can be found in R. Buckminster Fuller's latest book, Critical Path...

...He likes to chide scientists for using such obsolete and inaccurate terms as sunrise and sunset when they know that his terms Sunsight and Sunclipse express reality...

...In earlier times, there did seem to be an enormous gap between human productivity and population growth...

...The geodesic dome, he explained, encloses the greatest volume with the least surface and gives the strongest structure per weight of the materials employed...

...He himself, he often explained, was born cross-eyed, which forced him to see comprehensively at first rather than in the more specialized way most of us begin looking at the world...

...Despite his awareness that we are in an ever-deepening crisis, he remains firmly convinced that nature is "irrevocably intent upon completely transforming omnidisinte-grated humanity from a complex of around-the-world, remotely-deployed-from-one-another, differently colored, differently credoed, differently cultured, differently communicating, and differently competing entities, into a completely integrated, comprehensively interconsiderate, harmonious whole...

...Only thereby will society be able to identify and intercommunicate the vital problems of total world society...

...He always agreed to take the time from his tenure as visiting professor of "creative engineering" to talk about his latest plans to promulgate "livingry" (as against weaponry and "killingry...

...Fuller maintains that "humanity's cosmic-energy income account consists entirely of our gravity-and-star-distributed cosmic dividends of waterpower, tidal power, wavepower, windpower, vegetation-produced alcohols, methane gas, vul-canism, and so on...

...I first met Bucky Fuller (as he prefers to be called) in the early 1950s when, as a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, I used to invite him to attend meetings of the American Studies club on campus...

...Space Ship Earth is one of his best-known coinages, and he calls its inhabitants Earthians...

...But they could as easily be punching up Einstein and classical Greek...

...Fuller has put together a summa at age eighty-five which is as optimistic and exhilarating as his earlier books in which he began to chart a new course for Space Ship Earth...

...Gene Bluestein (Gene Bluestein, a specialist in folklore and folk music, teaches literature at California State University in Fresno...

...Dymaxion" means something like maximum, dynamic, compression, tension—there is a dymaxion house as well as a dymaxion map, the most accurate cartographic projection yet developed...

...Louis, Illinois) which ironically, in the early years, were most fully utilized by the military, especially the Marine Corps...

...It is no surprise that kids are zonkers for electronic games...

...Fuller argues that it will be cheaper to give the rest fellowships for the rest of their lives than to maintain a system of buildings and services which are less and less effective...