Hero #055: Buckminster Fuller … (04/09/16)
Richard Buckminster Fuller was an American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, and inventor. Fuller published more than 30 books, coining or popularizing terms such as “Spaceship Earth” and “synergetic.” He also developed numerous inventions, mainly architectural designs, and popularized the widely known geodesic dome.
In 1927, at age 32, in a remarkable response to the darkest period of his life (in which he lost a daughter to polio, lost his job, headed towards bankruptcy, took to drink, and was considering suicide in order to allow his family to have access to his life insurance policy), Fuller decided on a noble path instead of a despondent one, stating that he would dedicate himself to making the rest of his life “an experiment, performed to determine how much a single individual [could] contribute to changing the world and benefiting all humanity.” Thereafter, he resolved to think independently, which included a commitment to “the search for the principles governing the universe and help advance the evolution of humanity in accordance with them… finding ways of doing more with less to the end that all people everywhere can have more and more.”
Fuller also became an early environmental activist, and proved to be a pioneer in thinking globally; exploring principles of energy and material efficiency in the fields of architecture, engineering and design. He was concerned about sustainability, including the feasibility of human survival under the existing socio-economic system, and yet remained optimistic about humanity’s future until the end. He knew that the accumulation of relevant knowledge, combined with the quantities of major recyclable resources that had already been extracted from the Earth, has long since already attained a critical level, such that competition for necessities is now essentially unnecessary. For Fuller, cooperation had completely replaced competition as the optimum survival strategy – if not the only survival strategy — for humankind.
“Selfishness is unnecessary and henceforth unrationalizable … You do not belong to you. You belong to the Universe. Your significance will remain forever obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your role if you apply yourself to converting your experiences to the highest advantage of others.” ~ Buckminster Fuller
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