My love affair with Bucky Fuller 6

A few days back, David posted a link about the Dymaxion Car, Bucky Fuller's ill-fated attempt to inject sanity in to Detroit. In 1933. Maybe I'm just being me, but I think David was trying to taunt me in to posting. I did, after all, pick a related title for my blog.

I should say that well before I read people like Amory Lovins, Buckminster Fuller had a profound effect on my thinking as an environmentalist and as a person generally. Some of his ideas were just downright wacky -- cities inside glass bubbles so large they float like hot air balloons, for starters -- but when it comes to sustainability, technological progress, and the relationship of humans to the Earth, I am a devoted Fullerite. (Not to be confused with Fullerenes.)

Fuller's key insights -- which are now commonplace, but weren't necessarily when he started writing -- centered on what would now be called end-use efficiency, or what Fuller called variously "doing-more-with-lessing" or "ephemeralization."

The Dymaxion car was a clear example of this philosophy, but so was his Dymaxion house. Both showed the benefits of efficiency and system design. Both died unlamented deaths. But both ideas -- high-efficiency cars, and zero-energy (prefab) homes -- are rapidly coming back in to the main.

Most importantly (and this really is crucial to my worldview), Fuller saw competition -- selfish, violent, zero-sum games -- as totally obsolete in the modern world.

Rather, Fuller believed (and, his acolytes would say, proved) that cooperation is not only morally superior, but pragmatically necessary. The forces of division, in a world with nuclear power, would only hurt us in the end, while the forces of unity would save us all. Or, as he put it:

Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment.

When I am in my foulest moods and convinced the world is doomed, that sentence gives me more serenity than anything Godly ever has.

John McGrath is an intinerant student and sometimes reporter currently living in Toronto, Canada. He mainly writes about Canadian and International Politics from an energy and climate perspective

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  1. sunflower's avatar

    sunflower Posted 11:00 am
    16 Aug 2006

    Bucky BallsYes, me too, read all of Bucky's books, built a 30 foot geodesic home, then a 30 foot geodesic glass mirror solar dish and got a geodesic paraboloid patent.  He saw himself as a latter day Great Pirate, and in fact stole the geodesic design from an East German optometrist and got a geodesic patent identical to the East German planetarium building.  I showed him the dish and he said he invented that too, but when pressed admitted he missed an obvious idea.  I really enjoyed his very fluid and somewhat narcissistic speeches.

    Don't carpool alone.

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  2. amazingdrx Posted 1:58 pm
    16 Aug 2006

    Pragmatic idealism"Fuller believed (and, his acolytes would say, proved) that cooperation is not only morally superior, but pragmatically necessary."
    I thought I invented pragmatic idealism, but obviously I stole it from Bucky.  It was an honest theft.

    http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

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  3. Misunder Posted 12:48 pm
    17 Aug 2006

    Music from Bucky's little domeBucky's ideas and inventions are such that the world has yet to catch up with his vision of the future though he's been dead for over twenty years.  I currently live near the only geodesic dome he and his wife Anne ever lived in in Carbondale, IL.  The dome has been granted historic landmark status and will hopefully become an museum of sorts but is in need of costly repair.  In order to raise money for the restoration, I was involved in recording a CD of Bucky-related music by a number of local and national musicians, using Bucky's old home as our recording studio. The ambiance was magical. We even got Bucky himself to sing us a tune! For more info go to: http://www.buckysdome.org/
    "If success or failure of this planet and of human beings depended

    on how I am and what I do...

    How would I be and what would I do?"
    R. Buckminster Fuller

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  4. mbarron Posted 4:57 am
    18 Aug 2006

    the buckminster fuller institutethanks for this great post!  if anyone wants to know more about bucky (here comes a shameless plug..wait for it...) please go to http://www.bfi.org the website of the buckminster fuller institute. we're dedicated to keeping bucky's legacy alive by providing this online information resource as well as conducting educational programs around the country.  come check us out!

    working to advance humanity's option for success

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  5. LloydSieden Posted 4:53 pm
    23 Aug 2006

    Weaponry to LivingryI wrote the book Buckminster Fuller's Universe in 1988.  At the time this concept was not as critical as it is now.  We no longer have the reources to make war while supporting all the people on our planet.  In fact, since 1976 when we proved that we have enough food and other resources to support all life on Spaceship Earth, war has been obsolete.  We don't have to fight over stuff anymore.  In fact, Bucky said we are each billionaires, but we don't know it.   There is enough....

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  6. Aklemm Posted 8:35 am
    13 Sep 2007

    Bucky & McDonoughThe famously big ego persona of William McDonough was asked at Bioneers in 2000, who else inspires your sustainability work?
    The answer McDonough gave - Bucky Fuller.

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