Foreword
3Memories of Bucky
Norman Cousins
4 Once, when we were members of an American delegation in Moscow for the purpose of exploring outstanding issues between the two countries, Bucky Fuller gave a talk on the human future that no one who heard him soon forgot.
5 What happened was that one of the Russians had suggested that, as a relief from our regular conference sessions, we might stage a debate on what the world would be like in the year 2000. We agreed. Their debater would be Eugene Fyodorov, the famous meteorologist and futurist. Invariably, for our forensic gladiator we picked Buckminster Fuller, architect, inventor, cosmic chronicler, philosopher, and poet.
6 I groaned when I learned the ground rules set up by the Russians. Each debater would have fifteen minutes, precisely. I had never heard Bucky speak publicly for less than two hours. When the rigid time limitation was explained to Bucky, he merely shrugged, giving us the impression that fifteen-minute talks were a matter of casual routine.
7 Professor Fyodorov spoke first. Systematically, and methodically, he presented a checklist of all the factors that he believed would have a bearing on the world economic situation in 2000. He extrapolated figures with respect to world population, world food supply, world supply of vital resources, and other parameters. I looked around at the Russians as their champion spoke. It was obvious that they were pleased with the coldly scientific and comprehensive nature of the presentation.
8 After fifteen minutes, give or take ten seconds, Professor Fyodorov completed his talk and sat down. Substantial applause from all present.
9 Bucky started to speak. Within three minutes, he cast a spell over the entire group. The Russians sat forward in their seats. The world’s greatest resources, he said, were to be found in human intelligence, ingenuity, and imagination. He then identified the principal problems of the riders on Spaceship Earth and gave the basis for his belief that these problems were well within human capacity. His earnestness, enthusiasm, creativity, and knowledge were beautifully blended.
10 Bucky sailed through the fifteen-minute barrier with the ease and confidence of Roger Bannister going through the four-minute mile.
11 As chairman of the evening session, I started to rise for the purpose of informing Bucky his time had expired. I felt a restraining hand on my arm. ‘‘Please let Mr. Fuller continue,’’ Professor Fyodorov said. ‘‘He is magnificent, absolutely magnificent. You must not stop him.’’
12 I settled back in my seat. Bucky continued for almost an hour. The Russians were mesmerized. In the midst of the applause following his talk, Professor Fyodorov whispered in my ear.
13 ‘‘It was no contest,’’ he said. ‘‘Mr. Fuller is the winner. Never in my life have I heard anything so wonderful. I am sorry he stopped so soon. Tell me, what did he say?’’
14 The professor was not being sarcastic. Audiences all over the world have had the same experience. They may not have known or understood quite what Bucky was saying, but they felt better for his having said it. He gave people pride in belonging to the human species. He gave them confidence in their innate abilities to overcome the most complex prob-lems. He made them feel at home in the cosmos.
15 Bucky made love to his audiences. And they loved him back. Well into his eighties, he maintained a travel schedule that seemed well beyond human capacity. He bounced back and forth through the time zones with the frequency of an airline pilot. I doubt that he gave fewer than an average of 125 lectures each year during the last quarter century of his life. Even after his 1981 hip operation, he continued his global one-man Chautauqua.
16 Very early in his life he discovered the secret of perpetual curiosity and spent the rest of his life trying to give the secret away. Of all his attributes, none was more compelling than his ability to transmit to others his kinship with the universe. The goodwill that radiated from him, his enthusiasm for new directions and options, his capacity for liberating the human imagination from earthbound concepts and for propelling human
17 beings into a new relationship with the world around them---all this lit up the minds of his listeners.
18 His hold on human beings was the product of many things. He was felt, and not merely heard. He created new energies in people by connect-ing them to the finite and the infinite. His uniqueness as a teacher in these respects was that he saw poetry in everything. Fuller viewed physics, astronomy, chemistry, and other sciences as much through the creative imagination as through equations and formulas.
19 In so doing, he refuted C. P. Snow’s notion of the gulf between the ‘‘two cultures.’’ Bucky Fuller regarded science and the fine arts as exten-sions of each other, as manifestations of an integrated reality.
20 The affection of students for Bucky Fuller offered the strongest pos-sible evidence that young people are responsive to the values that give affirmative energy to a society. What they understood through him was that the main end of science is not to answer questions but to generate new ones; not to relieve curiosity but to enlarge it and ignite it; not to build better machines but to enable people to run them and control them. I have known very few people who came away from Bucky who did not forever after have an enhanced sense of sublime wonder when looking at a starlit sky.
21 If we turn to Buckminster Fuller solely for information, we will obtain information, but we will be cheating ourselves. We should study him for the increased respect he gives us for human potentiality; for helping us to learn that there are no boundaries to the human mind, which he celebrates above all else.The great poets have attempted to describe the human mind and spirit, but I doubt that any of them have been able to do so more provocatively than Bucky. The reason perhaps is that Bucky was not only inspired and nourished by the weightless and all-embracing entity called the human mind; he had a way of opening our minds to the phenomena within it. In this way, he introduced us to ourselves.