Buckminster Fuller

16 Black Mountain College

16  Black Mountain College

2 Ruth Asawa

3 It was the beginning of the June 1948 Black Mountain Summer College. It was humid and hot. You could hear the high-pitched sound of the cicadas in the heat of the day and at night the croaking of the tree frogs. Guests were beginning to arrive. Some needed a ride from the train station, some came by car. Richard and Louise Lippold and their two daughters arrived in an old black hearse.

4 My summer job was working in the laundry room checking out sheets and towels and preparing beds and rooms for summer guests like Elaine and Willem de Kooning, R. Buckminster Fuller, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, and Charles Burchard.

5 We were waiting in front of the dining hall for our evening lecturer, Buckminster Fuller. He arrived in a yellow Studebaker pulling a dome-shaped aluminum trailer. He jumped out of his car, introduced himself as Richard Buckminster Fuller, but put us at ease by adding, ‘‘Call me Bucky.’’ We all helped him unload his trailer, which was packed full of materials for the summer project and models of all sizes. He had not yet built a dome, which was going to be his summer project.

6 After dinner the lecture began. At midnight Bucky was still talking to students who had signed up for his class. This was his first teaching assignment. My study, which was an army barrack, faced the meadow where the dome would be built.

7 I volunteered to be the college barber that summer, although I had never cut anyone’s hair. (As a child I had watched my father cut our hair.) Bucky needed a short %-inch haircut. After the haircut he decided I needed a barber pole. He immediately went to his study and produced a red-and-yellow barber pole out of the Venetian blinds. He then nailed it up on the porch of my study. Before I knew it I was in business.

8 At Black Mountain College each of us was given an 8-by-8-foot cubicle called a ‘‘study’’ in the studies building. We could paint it whatever color we chose.

9 For an evening’s diversion the students and faculty drove a few miles to Peek’s Tavern for beer and folk dancing. Bucky was fascinated by the folk dancers’ dance patterns. He made diagrams of the dance steps. On the way back from Peek’s in Albert’s Model A, Elaine de Kooning, eating a candy bar, sang out loud, ‘‘Oh, I have eaten all the almonds out of my joy! ’’ The townspeople surely must have thought that we were strange.

10 In 1948, as a twenty-two-year-old student, I did not see the significance of that summer. But looking back fifty-one years, it was a magical time: We were there to witness the first Bucky Fuller dome experiment, which didn’t work on the first try. (He returned the following year with several solutions.) Merce Cunningham was thinking about forming his own dance company. John Cage was composing music for the prepared piano. Willem de Kooning and Josef Albers were exhibiting in New York to a cool reception, and Richard Lippold was working on new sculptures in wire rods.

11 It was that summer that helped me decide to take charge of my own life. It did not bother Fuller that I could not understand his books—‘‘Darling, never mind.’’ Just as it did not bother Max Dehn, mathematician and philosopher, that I slept through his first philosophy class. He said, ‘‘Let her sleep, she was up all night.’’ When Albert asked him i£ he was disappointed that he had so few serious mathematics students, Dehn replied, ‘‘At my age’’—seventyseven—‘‘I’m not interested in mathematicians.’’

12 Since the enrollment at Black Mountain was small, everyone had to do several things. Besides the job to provide fresh laundry every week, I took my weekly turn at dishwashing, setting tables, sweeping the dining-hall floor, picking up trash, and other jobs. We did our chores with some of the faculty, who took community service seriously. The faculty and students ate together. We had lively conversations. They analyzed problems and proposed solutions.

13 Bucky thought it was wonderful that Albert Lanier and I were getting married. I asked him to design our wedding ring. Mary Jo Slick, a student at the Institute of Design, made it from a black stone that Bucky had picked up on the beach of Lake Huron. (We married in 1949. In 1999 we celebrated our fiftieth anniversary with our six children and ten grandchildren.) His only advice to us was ‘‘The world is your oyster.’’

14 I have asked Albert to write about the dome project, since he worked with Bucky that summer, and this is how he remembers it:

15 ‘‘Fuller, the most optimistic, positive-thinking man I ever met, showed us a beautiful model of the frame for a dome. It must have been 3 or 4 feet in diameter. With his directing us we were going to lay out and erect the frame of a big dome maybe 44 feet or more in diameter. Very precise calculations would be made and, with these dimensions, we lay out the actual members, which would be made from the slightly curved aluminum used in the manufacture of Venetian blinds. The measuring, color coding, punching of holes was very tedious and endless. Mr. Fuller did warn us that it might not work. (We did not believe him for a minute.) His definition of success was the point at which failure no longer occurred. We punched, coded, coiled the strips, and prepared for the most important performance of that performance-rich summer, the erection of the first geodesic dome. The day finally came—overcast, maybe a slight drizzle. We went to the field selected for the raising of the dome with all the parts and the few simple tools we would need for assembly. Every man, woman, and child at the college that summer gathered on a slight bluff to watch this miracle. We uncoiled the members, we bolted them together, we kept expecting the thing to rise. It didn’t. It lay there in the field supine like a giant’s plate of spaghetti. We students were devastated. But not Bucky. ‘Next time,’ he said, ‘we must use stronger material or reduce the size.’ And Elaine de Kooning affectionately named it the Supine Dome.’’

16 M. C. Richards translated the Erik Satie play The Ruse of Medusa from French. Bucky resisted playing the role of Baron of Medusa in the play. He had never acted before and was quite unhappy with the way it was going. Arthur Penn, then a student, stepped in to direct the play. He had Bucky jumping around the dining hall to loosen him up. They finally did two versions of the play. Bucky ad-libbed the ending of the second version. Elaine de Kooning played his daughter and Merce Cunningham played the mechanical monkey. Students Mary Phelan, Albert Lanier, Ray Johnson, Forrest Wright, and I made costumes for the performance; Willem de Kooning made the main set.

17 That summer I took Albers’s ‘‘Color and Design’’ classes and Merce Cunningham’s dance class, worked on props for the Erik Satie play, volunteered to be the college barber, watched the students working with Bucky’s domeproject, and watched Bucky practicing his part as the Baron with student director Arthur Penn in the dining room.

18 We also tried Bucky’s experiment about new sleeping patterns. He finally divided the day into four parts, six hours of work followed by thirty minutes of cat-napping, which added up to two hours of sleep per day.

19 After Albert and I were married in San Francisco in 1949, we saw Anne and Bucky nearly every time they came to the Bay Area or when Bucky was on his way to India to discuss India’s transportation plan with President Indira Gandhi. While in San Francisco he would make time to visit a high school, a middle school, or an elementary school to teach the children how to make a great circle with twelve bobby pins and four paper plates and the DNA pattern by folding a piece of typing paper. He also gave advice on a student-built dome of wood and plastic.

20 When I asked him about youth boredom, he told me a story about a young Japanese protester who came to one of his lectures, Bucky told him, ‘‘Don’t waste your time in the streets protesting. Learn as much as you can and become a useful citizen.’’ This young man went on to develop many new ideas.

21 When I asked him about education, he said, ‘‘Create an environment so learning can take place.’’ In 1968, a group of parents started a program in San Francisco’s public schools to bring artists and children together and empower parents.

22 Josef Albers was a genius at bringing unlike minds together to work. Neither Albers nor Bucky was trying to produce artists. They were not interested in trends, movements, or what was popular. Their advice to us was simple: be truthful, be honest to yourself, don’t be afraid of failure, study nature’s way, and learn its principles. Perhaps that is a lesson from Bucky Fuller that I impart to students for the millennium.

23 It was the experience of that unique summer that set the course of my life as an artist, as a parent, and as an active member in our community.

24 What I Am Trying to Do

25 from And It Came to Pass—Not to Stay

26

27 Always excitedly acknowledging The a priori infinite mystery

28 Implicitly revealed

29 As that which

30 Though relevant

31 Always remains

32 Undiscovered and unexplained

33 And is popularly overlooked altogether

34

35 In the momentary excitement of preoccupation Only with that which is discovered

36 And especially with realizations

37 Of the new human advantaging significance

38 Of each great scientific discovery

39 Wherein for instance

40 Isaac Newton discovers

41

42 The rational geometrical rate of change Characterizing the Interattractiveness

43 Of any two celestial bodies

44 While their relative distances apart Vary only at an arithmetical rate Which interattractiveness itself Let alone its inversely varying

45 Second power rate of gain

46 Is neither manifest nor implied

47

48 . By any of the constant physical characteristics Of either of the interattracted celestial bodies When either is considered only separately And only in the unique terms Of one or the other’s

49 Integral dimensions/mass/chemistry

50 And independent electromagnetic properties

51 And though Newton’s mathematically stated law

52 Of exponentially differing rates

53 Of inversely covarying

54 Mass-distance interattractiveness

55 Of independent celestial bodies

56 Was thereafter found by science

57 To be always unfailingly operative

58 In all macro or micro cosmic

59 Constellating

60 As well as in

61 The dynamic interpositioning

62 Of all individually remote bodies

63 Of all complex movements

64 Newton’s discovered law

65 Never explains

66 Why

67 The interattractiveness

68 Of the remote-from-one-another bodies

69 Occurs or exists

70 Nor does it even suggest

71 What

72 The invisible interattractiveness

73 Is

74 Though whatever it is

75 Is so comprehensively embracing in importance

76 As apparently to guarantee

77 The eternal integrity

78 Of omni-complexedly

79 And everywhere ceaselessly

80 Intertransforming Scenario Universe

81 And even though we give that unexplained behavior

82 The name gravity

83 The name does not explain the mystery

84 For gravity

85 Like all scientifically generalized principles

86 Is inherently synergetic

87 And synergy means the unique behaviors manifest

88 Only by whole systems

89 Consisting at minimum

90 Of two independent variables

91

92 Whose unique system behaviors Are entirely unpredicted

93 By any behaviors or characteristics Of any of the system’s components When each is considered only separately Wherefor it is ever experimentally demonstrable That the unpredicted synergetic behaviors

94 Of stricdy assessed system components Constitute scientific manifest

95 Of the a priori mysterious

96 Cosmic integrity context

97

98 Within which major scientific discoveries occur Which context itself always remains unexplained By such discoveries as Newton’s

99 Of the first power arithmetical Vs. the second-power geometrical

100 Constandy intercovarying

101 Gravitational interattractiveness

102 Of separate bodies in Universe

103 And to the best

104

105 Of our experientially derived knowledge Only humans’ minds can discover

106 These nonsubstantial interrelationships

107 Existing only between

108 And not of or in

109

110 Any of the synergetically behaving system’s Plurality of independently orbiting components

111 For it is also experientially demonstrable That in contradistinction to humans’ minds

112 Humans’ brains always and only

113 Inventory differentially

114 The succession of separate

115 Definitively sensed-in

116 Special case inputs and recalls

117 Characterizing each and every

118 Separate and terminalled experience Whose separate special case data Never contain integral physical clues Explanatory of the synergetic behaviors

119 Of the omni-interaccommodative

120 Mathematically generalized principles

121 Always demonstrably governing

122 The complexedly overlapping episodes

123 Of Scenario Universe’s

124 Nonsimultaneous

125 Multifrequenced and magnituded

126 Differentially covarienced

127 Ever intertransforming

128 Aberrationally limited complementations

129 And energetic transactions

130 And being also acutely aware

131 Of our own corporeal limitations

132 Yet ever renewably inspired

133 By personal rediscoveries

134 Of the cosmic integrity

135 Which only intuitively suggests

136 Imminent discovery of further synergetic potentials

137 Innate and gestating in Scenario Universe

138 First hints of which

139 Are realistically noted and sorted

140 Only within our subconsciously operative faculties

141 Which subconscious sortings it seems

142 Once in a while inadvertently produce

143 Synergetic relationship insights

144 News of the arrival of which

145 Are teleo-intuitively communicated

146 To our consciousness

147 Only as spontaneous urges

148 To look again in certain directions

149 Or to reconsider certain

150 Tentative concepts

151 And aware that those subconscious faculties

152 May be intuitively programmed

153 To search consciously

154 For a reliable and orderly means

155 Of inducing systematic conceptualizing

156 Of the significant import to humanity

157 Implicit in the synergetically gestating events

158 At the earliest possible system moment

159 Consciously apprehendable

160 By truth-coupled human minds

161 And also assuming that such conceptualizing

162 Can be directionally oriented

163 In respect to the environmental geometry

164 Of self’s momentary circumstances

165 As the conceptualizing relates angularly

166 To self’s head-to-toe observer’s axis

167 And realizing that the dawning sense

168 Of significant import

169 Gestating in the subconscious

170 Which is suddenly emerging

171 As a discernible generalized principle

172 Together with spontaneous recall

173 Of other already proven principles

174 All of which may be frequency tuned

175 And discretely quantated

176 Into special case realizations of now

177 Thus to serve as a communicable means of entry

178 Into constructively competent participation by humans

179 In the strategic decision making

180 Concerning the special case

181 Formulative options 1

182 To be selectively and successfully realized

183 And employingly managed

184 Within the relevant set

185 Of generalized principles

186 Governing humanity’s

187 Own evolutionary trending options

188 While also thereafter permitting humanity’s

189 Responsibly followed-through

190 Anticipatory design science accomplishments

191 Of ever more effective and satisfying

192 Human life support artifacts

193 Ever increasing those artifacts’ functional performances

194 Per each unit of resource reinvestments

195 As stated in physical measures

196 Of work or structure produced

197 Per each ounce of matter

198 Each second of time

199 And each erg of energy therein invested

200

201 And employing only

202 The unique and limited advantages Inhering exclusively in those individuals Who all by themselves

203 Take and maintain the economic initiative

204 By inventing artifacts

205 Developing their production prototypes And proving the latters’ capabilities And safety of use

206 All conducted responsibly

207 On behalf of all humanity

208 As well as on behalf

209 Of the integrity of Universal regeneration itself The individual initiatives being always undertaken In the face of the formidable

210 Physical capital and credit advantages

211 Of the massive corporations, foundations Trade and other special interest unions And political states

212 All of whom seek entropically to turn All such syntropically potential gains Of Advantage for all

213 To their own exclusively special advantage

214 And deliberately avoiding

215 Political ties and tactics

216 As well as all negative activities Social movements and reforms

217 While also concurrently endeavouring

218 By experiment, exploration and published data To inductively excite

219 All individual Earthians’

220 Awareness of all humanity’s

221 Syntropically multiplicative potentials And techno-economically feasible options As well as humanity’s awareness That only by use of such options Can humanity effectively cope with And divest itself

222 Of its entropically dissipative Dilemmas and compromises

223 I seek

224 Through comprehensively anticipatory

225 Design Science

226 And its reductions

227 To physical practices

228 In the form of inanimate artifacts and services

229 To participate in nature’s multi-optioned

230 Continuous and inexorable

231 Reforming of both the physical and metaphysical

232 Environmental events and circumstances

233 Instead of trying to reform

234 Human behaviors and opinions

235 Which latter is all

236 That history’s political powers

237 Have ever sought to do

238 For I am intent

239 Exclusively through artifact inventions

240 To accomplish prototyped capabilities

241 Of providing ever more performance

242 With ever less resources

243 Whereby in turn

244 The wealth augmenting prospects for all humanity

245 Of such design regenerations

246 Will induce their spontaneous

247 And economically successful

248 Industrial proliferation

249 By world around

250 Exclusively service-oriented industries

251 As the regeneratively escalating effectiveness

252 Of the latters’ responsible resource reinvestments

253 Per each unit of resources reinvested

254 Render comprehensively obsolete

255 Any and all economic necessity

256 To sell buy or own anything

257 While coincidently obsoleting as well

258 The economically degenerative practices

259 Of irresponsible one-way selling-off

260 Of the world’s resources

261

262 All of which chain reactions will trend

263 To ever higher performance attainments

264 Of the ever improving artifact instrumented services

265 And thereby will swiftly

266 Both permit and induce

267 All humanity

268 To realize full lasting

269 Economic and physical success

270 Plus enjoyment of all Earth

271 Without one individual interfering with

272 Or being advantaged

273 At the expense of any other humans

274 Now alive or henceforth to be born

275 And I purpose

276 Through such responsibly evolving

277 Performance improvements

278 Of exclusively service oriented

279 Artifact instrumented industries

280 To accomplish universal economic success

281 Well being and freedom of humans

282 Together with a sustained abundance

283 For all foreseeable generations of humans to come

284 Of all the human life-support essentials

285 Thereby to eliminate all reason

286 For further existence

287 Of any and all varieties of politics

288 Each of whose ideologies mistakenly say

289 ‘‘We have the best and fairest way

290 Of dealing with the fundamental inadequacy

291 Of life support

292 On our under-resourced

293 And lethally over-populated

294 Planet Earth’’

295 And with such design-science-attained

296 Sustainable abundance for all

297 Proven to be feasible

298 And attainable for all humanity by 1985

299 Will also come obsolescence

300 Of all the political powers’

301 Historically demonstrated

302 Ultimate recourse

303 To hot official

304 And cold guerrilla warfaring

305 And conscripted sacrifice

306 Of the lives

307 Of whole generations of youth

308 Upon the fallacious assumption

309 That war constitutes

310 The only means of proving

311 Which political system

312 Is the fittest to survive

313 In the misassumedly

314 Inherently lethal

315 Game of life

316 As we have been taught by history

317 That it must be played

318 And with such design science attainable

319 Elimination by obsolescence

320 Of all that humanity

321 Has learned by experience to be undesirable

322 Such as power corruptible

323 Politics and war

324 There will also come cessation

325 Of the history-long misassumed

326 Necessity for individuals

327 To earn their livings

328 That is to prove themselves to be

329 Extraordinarily valuable exceptions to the dictum

330 That humanity is meant to be a failure

331 And all the sovereign political states

332 Will also become obsolete

333 As will also all economic competition

334 For any special profit

335 For any state, corporation or individual

336 And the world will become preoccupied

337 With recirculating all its chemical elements

338 Which as they are totally recycled

339 At an average rate of every twenty-two years

340 Will be progressively reinvested

341 With the ever more effective

342 Interim gained ‘‘know how’’

343

344 Thus making also obsolete

345 One-way dead ended wastes

346 And scrap monger withholdings

347 To escalate price structures

348 And the most important obsolescence making

349 Will be the elimination

350 Of humanity’s most self-destructive weapon

351 The Lie

352 For Universe operates only on truth

353 And it is the most outstanding truth

354 Of this moment

355 That we have arrived at the threshold

356 Of new human functioning in Universe

357 Which functioning can only be effectively performed

358 With the prime struggle just to survive

359 Being completely disposed of

360 And with it all the debilitative fears

361 Attendant upon that long struggle

362 But midway of the threshold crossing

363 Comes the realization

364 That the only alternative to that success

365 Is the self-destruction of humanity

366 And whether we are to be

367 A complete success or utter failure

368 Is in such critical balance

369 That every smallest

370 Human test of integrity

371 Every smallest moment-to-moment decision

372 Tips the scales affirmatively or negatively

373 Wherefor we recognize that

374 It is both fear and ignorance

375 That delays popular comprehension

376 Of its historically unprecedented option

377 Of total human success

378 For fear secretly grips all wage and salary earners As well as all political and private bureaucracies Wherefor I realize that all humanity

379 Is plunging into an unprecedented state of revolution Which if proving to be predominantly bloody and physical Will probably terminate human occupancy of EARTH

380 Or if, predominantly, metaphysically coped with As a comprehensive design revolution

381 Will probably insure the presence of Earthians For millenniums to come

382 For the design revolution To which I am committed

383 Is the metaphysical and positively objective counterpart Of Mahatma Gandhi’s

384 Subjectively passive resistance And if design science wins Each human henceforth will function In predominandy metaphysical ways In our cosmically designed role As the most effective

385 Local Universe problem detector and solver In the spontaneous support

386 Of the vast complex reciprocal scheme Of celestial energy’s

387 Increasingly disorderly and expanding Local entropic stellar exportings And their elsewhere concomitant

388 Increasingly orderly and contracting Syntropic planetary importings

389 (As for instance here upon planet Earth) This being the now dawningly realized Cosmic function of Earthian humans

390 To solve locally evolving Universe problems Both physical and metaphysical

391 Thus locally fortifying the integrity Of eternally regenerative Universe

392 Whose cosmic omnicircumferential embracement Integrates as gravity

393 Gravity being thereby

394 Always more vectorally effective

395

396 Than the sum of all local and nonsimultaneous Radial disintegrations of radiation

397 Even as do a few barrel hoops

398 Successfully resist

399 The radially outward escape

400 Of the individual

401 Exclusively disintegrative

402 Crowded together

403 Individual staves of the barrel

404 As also myopically preoccupied

405 Ignorantly disintegrative humans

406 Are bound together upon our planet

407 By cosmically embracing benign laws

408 And necessities of Universe

409 Such as those guaranteeing the integrity

410 Of eternally regenerative Universe

411 Manifest in the invariable relationship

412 Of cosmically greater effectiveness of gravity

413 Than the disintegrative effectiveness

414 Of equally energetically endowed radiation

415 Which invariable superiority relationship

416 Is also manifest but ever more comprehensively

417 In the eternally greater

418 Cosmic-integrity-guaranteeing effectiveness

419 Of the always synergetic and syntropic

420 Metaphysical capabilities

421 Of comprehensively operative generalized intellect

422 Over the always energetic and entropic local

423 Physical capabilities

424 Which are exclusively operative

425 Only as local terminal special case episodes

426 All of which principles succincdy elucidate

427 The necessitous nature of Universe’s grand design strategy

428 For installing developing and maintaining

429 The complex problem-solving humans

430 And evolving their complex ecological support

431 Upon our local Universe monitoring planet Earth

432 And it is only

433 By elimination of all self-deception that the highest probability

434 Of humanity’s discovery

435 Of its metaphysical capabilities can occur

436 And do so within cosmic evolution’s critical time limits

437 And because it is also true

438 That only by elimination o£ all this self-deception

439 Can this self-discovery be accomplished

440 Because the a priori otherness

441 Inherent in the fact of self’s birth

442 And essential to the awareness

443 Of life itself

444 Wherefor comes full realization

445 Of the omni-interdependence

446 Of all humanity

447 Which if cultivated instead of frustrated

448 Will increase synergetically

449 To provide total physical success of all humanity Truthful self-discovery being the initial step Toward humanity’s ultimately qualifying

450 For its unique local-Universe-monitoring functioning

451 We humans were designedly born

452 Naked ignorant and helpless

453 Endowed with the few conscious drives

454 Of hunger thirst procreation curiosity and fascination

455 To learn only by ourselves

456 And only through millions of years

457 Of often painful trial-and-error experiences

458 And lonely realizations

459 That our muscles and physical power

460 Are utterly subordinate

461

462 To our mind’s Universe-embracing comprehensions Wherefor in the trial-and-error struggle for survival Lasting throughout the past

463 Millenniums of millenniums

464 Those exceptional individuals

465 Who have been fortunate enough

466 To be able to earn the right to live

467 Have had to do so

468 By proving that they had special capabilities

469 Which seemed functionally essential

470 To continuance of the successful heirs

471 Of those fortunate few

472 Who only by force of superior

473 Bodily size strength and cunning

474 Later augmented by arms

475 Had originally commandeered

476

477 The supposedly limited resources

478 And as yet have the superior weapons

479 With which to sustain those claims

480 However the spontaneous

481 Full life-support franchise

482 Which has always been accorded

483 By all humanity

484 To all new born children

485 Usually sustained in the past

486 Until the age of six

487 Has been progressively extended

488 In recent decades

489 First to include primary school years

490 After which came successively high school

491 And college years

492 Then post graduate and doctoral years

493 For those who wished them

494 And now with full life support becoming feasible

495 The scholarship franchise

496 Will soon become spontaneously extended

497 By revolutionary necessity

498 To cover all the living years

499 Of all humanity

500 And with life time fellowships for all

501 Will also come elimination

502 Of the defensive inferiority complexes

503 And the historical survival fears

504 Of all people of all circumstances

505 Which in the past

506 Have always frustrated

507 Humanity’s urge to learn for itself

508 By direct experience and observation

509 How most effectively to comprehend phenomena Instead of judging and guessing opinionatedly As a consequence of credos and dogmas

510 Relayingly inculcated by others

511 And with all survival fears of all people eliminated By universal FULL-LIFE-SPAN Fellowships

512 To study Universe

513 And seek understanding

514 Of the cosmic functions of humanity

515 Humans will swiftly develop their innate urge

516 To demonstrate competence

517 Thus qualifying themselves to participate

518 In producing services to all humanity

519 Wherefor the most spontaneous

520 And popularly sought for privilege of individuals

521 Will be to qualify for membership

522 On humanity’s research and development teams

523 Or on its equally significant

524 Production and service teams

525 Just as humans now qualify

526 For participation in amateur athletics

527 Such activity having become

528 Completely divorced from

529 The concept of earning a living

530 And with the majority of humanity

531 Engaged in study and self disciplining

532 Direct experimental discovery

533 And familiarization with advantages to be gained

534 By understanding and use

535 Of the thus far discovered

536 Generalized scientific principles

537 Governing all Universe events

538 Will also come elimination

539 Of all wasteful daily travel

540 To the 90 percent of all jobs

541 Which are the non-wealth-producing

542 Specialized bureaucratic jobs

543 Which had been invented

544 By both private public and governmental

545 Power administrators

546 To keep people dependently obligated to them

547 As well as too busy to make trouble

548 For the power masters

549 Whose instincts said

550 ‘‘Divide to conquer

551 And to keep conquered

552 Keep divided’’

553

554 This having always been the prime strategy

555 Of all the grand strategies

556 Of all history’s power masters

557 And with such daily travel elimination

558 Will come vast reductions

559 In world energy resource consumption

560 The significance of which

561 Can be appreciated

562 When we recall (A) that science has standardized the quantifying

563 Of energy characteristics and behaviors

564 In terms of lifting a given weight

565 A given distance outwardly from Earth

566 In a given quantity of time

567 As for instance the work done

568 In lifting one pound one foot in one minute

569 I.e. in foot-pounds per minute

570 Or gram-centimeters per second

571 And (B) that it has also been discovered by geophysics

572 That each gallon of petroleum

573 Photosynthesized from Sun radiation

574 Into hydrocarbon molecules

575 Regeneratively proliferated by ecological organisms

576 Harvested and buryingly stored

577 As concentrated fossil residues

578 Within this Earth’s crust

579 By wind water and gravitational power investment

580 Is so long drawn out a process

581 Requiring so much energy

582 That it costs nature

583 One million U.S.A. 1960 dollars worth of energy

584 As combined work pressure and heat

585 And chemical interexchanging quantities

586 Stated in scientifically defined constants

587 Operatively sustained

588 Over the requisite millenniums of time

589 Necessary to produce each gallon of petroleum

590 When that much energy

591 For that much time

592 Is priced at the same rate

593 At which electrical energy is charged to us today By the public utility companies Stated on our monthly bills

594 In money units for each kilowatt hour Delivered to us of that much energy

595 Wherefor in Cosmic Costing Of the regenerative affairs Of Physical Universe

596 Wherein all metabolic interexchanging

597 Is meticulously accounted

598 To the last unit

599 Of electron-rest-mass value

600 Each average automobile commuter

601 Costs nature several million dollars each day To go to his ecopolitical-system-invented job For which work the economic system Usually pays these right-to-live earners Far less than one hundred dollars a day While less than 10 percent of them Produce any real wealth

602 Of direct human life support

603 Which means that a few humans

604 Who pooled together enough money

605 To buy enough machinery

606 To poke pipes deeply in the Earth Are tapping Universe’s progressive Local energy accumulating

607 Which when attaining a critical mass magnitude Some ten billions of years hence probably Has been designed to inaugurate a new star To replace others which have burned out

608 All of which energy accumulating

609 Cost Universe the one million dollars per each gallon Which the human needs exploiters

610 Misassume to have cost nothing Wherefor they take for themselves What the money-game calls "pure’’ profit

611 Over and above the cost of their mechanical operation

612 And sell a million dollars cosmic-cost-gallon For less than one cosmic-cost paper dollar Which million-£or-one is not difficult to do And dwarfs the historical folly Of the American Indians

613 Who sold the Island of Manhattan in New York

614 To the Europeans

615 For one botde of whiskey

616 And with the popularly proven adequacy Of life support for all humans And with Universal recognition That being born

617 Makes it mandatory upon world society

618 That each human is entitled

619 To healthful growthful lifelong support Constructive and instructive travel

620 And access to the full inventory

621 Of information and knowledge and news And all of the thus far accumulated wisdom 90 percent of humanity will spontaneously Disengage from their specious ‘‘jobs’’ And 90 percent of all the modern Fireproof business buildings of the world Will become vacated by the obsolete non-wealth-producing Exclusively money or political-kudos-making businesses Permitting those buildings’ conversion

622 Into dwelling studio facilities

623 Having all contemporary conveniences

624 Already installed

625 Most of which conveniences are utterly lacking Or are only inadequately provided

626 In the slum flats and squatteries

627 In which the majority of humanity now dwells

628 All of which foregoing changes

629 And their elimination of the survival fears Exploitation of which always has underlain All trade union management and political strategies Will permit technological automation

630 To produce at 24 hours per day Rather than for only eight hours

631 While computer automated travel facility booking

632 And video-automated matchings

633 Of all ‘‘availables’’ with all ‘‘wanteds’’

634 Will be operative as a 24-hour information services continuum

635 Eliminating all newspapers’

636 Personal want and merchandise advertising

637 With vast savings of the newsprint forests

638 And with satellite sensoring

639 Of each and all humans’ positive and negative

640 Individual electromagnetic field responses

641 To given problem solution propositions

642 Integratively read out

643 By computerized world monitors

644 And with world around Satellite relayed telemation

645 And universal cable TV feedback

646 And universal two-way TV

647 Beam and cable feedback

648 Humanity will come to know instandy

649 What all humanity’s

650 Reactions and dispositions are

651 In respect to each and all problems

652 As they arise

653 And all humanity will dare to yield spontaneously

654 To the will of the majority ,

655 For if the majority

656 Makes a wrong judgment

657 The effect will be swiftly manifest

658 And the majority can immediately alter the course

659 Without any negative scapegoating

660 All of the foregoing and

661 Its many similar ramifications

662 When compounded with our now proven capability

663 To house and service all humanity

664 At higher standards than

665 We heretofore have ever experienced

666 Plus our organized knowledge

667 Of how to provide all humanity

668 With an annual energy advantage

669 Equivalent to the U.S.A.’s of 1972

670 And do so by 1985

671 While simultaneously phasing-out

672

673 All use of fossil fuels and atomic energy

674 And deriving our sustainable energy supply

675 Entirely from our annual energy income

676 Of Sun power and gravity effects

677 Ever operative around our planet

678 As wind water wave tidal

679 Sun methane alcohol

680 Eruptive and thermal sources

681 All of which foregoing

682 Design science revolution

683 Will phase out warfare

684 And release all of humanity’s

685 Highest production technology

686 From killingry into livingry production

687 And a world around computerized

688 Integrated life support system

689 And with all the foregoing events

690 Humanity will be reoriented

691 From its one way entropic

692 Me-first energy wastings

693 To its syntropic circulatory

694 Synergetical you-and-we

695 Cosmic ecology regenerating functions

696 All of the foregoing will release

697 Our minds to perform their unique

698 Universe searching

699 Inventing capabilities

700 And information conserving

701 In support of which functioning

702 We humans alone

703 Amongst all known organisms

704 Were given conscious intellectual access

705 To the family of exclusively mathematically stateable

706 Metaphysical principles

707 Ever demonstrably governing

708 The cosmic integrity

709 Of eternal regeneration

710 And because the meaning of design

711 Is that all the parts are interconsiderately arranged

712 In respect to one another

713 And because all the generalized principles

714 Are omni-interaccommodative

715 Which is to say

716 That none ever contradict any others

717

718 The family of thus far scientifically discovered Generalized principles constitutes a cosmic design To which human mind has

719 The only known access

720 Other than that

721 Of the comprehensive

722 Absolutely mysterious

723 Intellectual integrity context

724 Of Universe itself.

725 In 1996, three chemists, Dr. Harold W. Kroto from Great Britain's University of Sussex and Dr. Robert F. Curl and Dr. Richard E. Smalley from Rice University in Houston, Texas, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. They made their discovery by zapping graphite with a laser beam and mixing the resulting carbon vapors with a stream of helium. They found the molecules made up of sixty carbon atoms arranged like a soccer ball in a geodesic sphere that resembled R. Buckminster Fuller's well-known geodesic dome. At Kroto's suggestion, they graciously named their discovery, C60, "buckminsterfullerene"—the "buckyball" for short. Their work opened an entirely new branch of chemistry and gave scientists a greater understanding of how nature bonds carbon atoms together.

726 Robert F. Curl wrote to me after notification of the trio's Nobel Prize, "I have never had the pleasure of meeting R. Buckminster Fuller in person, but no aware person could live for decades in the twentieth century without meeting him many times in his work."

727 Sir Harold W. Kroto, in addition to being a co-recipient of the 1996 Nobel, has received the Longstaff Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Hewlett Packard Europhysics Prize, and the Moet Hennessy/Louis Vuitton Science pour I'Art Prize. He has spoken at the Buckminster Fuller Institute in California.