Chapter 2: The Manual

Part 6 – Synergetics

Why Humans: Pollution:

Bucky was questioning if human beings had any necessary function in universe, like gravity does. If they had a function what would be and could they live up to it to prevent extension.

This thought is as provocative as the age old question, “What is the meaning of life?” Are we to break this down and ask ourselves, “What is the meaning of my life, your life, what is our primary function to the universe, to this planet? If we have “mind” then maybe we are here to not serve ourselves but to serve over the other animals that cohabitate on this planet that do have functions. It seems to me we were there to create a circular chain of life, ever sustaining each other.

Mo Money:

Interestingly, Bucky pointed out when these “Great Sovereigns” miraculously, all of a sudden, were able to spend lots of money applied to warfaring, which was many times greater than their previous idea of what they could afford. It was completely illogical to him, that we would have vast magnitudes of wealth for WAR and nothing for peace.

I spoke earlier about the sensitivities Bucky had and experienced with economic inequalities, but it was also very apparent how passionate he was in concerning our cells with another “Great” problem, pollution; pollution to the air, pollution to the water, and even pollution to knowledge, which seems to persist to this very day from a far. I wonder if we have learned anything at all.

In a kind of twisted and sick joke, Bucky would present the problems, explained that there was a solution, and then provides you with the response of others. Back then they knew they could control or at least mitigate the pollution that was going into the atmosphere from factories, plants and vehicles; and he would ask, “Well, why not get on with it?” and their reply was, “But it costs too much.” That had learned how to desalinize salty sea water to drinkable water by the 1930’s and he’d ask, “Well, why not get on with it?” and their reply was, “But it costs too much.”

He thought, “Well what WILL it cost when we don’t have air or water?” You could sense his frustration and anger right from the start with the “Great Sovereigns” common response of stupidity. And so it seemed to Bucky, that in the end, nothing would be solved by the “Great Sovereigns”, not because they didn’t know how, but because “it cost too much” or even if they knew of the problems, by fact, and created a law to correct it they would then state, “there are no funds presently known to be available with which to implement the law.”

-Buckminster Fuller at MIT - Spaceship Earth - 1979

Why Wealth: Energy:

Bucky has an idealistic and dark viewpoint on wealth; he basically believes wealth is worthless. He tells a good story of a rich man on a ship, takes all of his gold far out to sea, but then the ship catches fire, sinks and there are no lifeboats. If the man holds onto any of his gold, he will sink pretty fast, thus he dies and the gold was worthless. Even if he can convince to trade that gold with another passenger that had a life raft for one, he would become penniless, struggle to stay alive in an ocean of sharks, or die because he gave the life preserver to his partner to hopefully live longer. And then the other guy dies immediately for the glory of less than a second to be all rich and powerful. Wealth makes no cents.

Bucky defines “wealth as the number of forward days for a specific number of people we are physically prepared to sustain at a physically stated time and space liberating level of metabolic and metaphysical regeneration.”

Bucky understood that real wealth was not in gold, but rather in our natural regenerative systems, the Sun and the Moon; radiation energy from the sun and gravitational forces from the Moon.

It was imperative that we harness these sustainable resources to rid ourselves from the corrupting fossil fuels. We needed to integrate mass photovoltaic arrays, wind farms and we needed to capture energy from the tides as the moon pulls them in and out. If we use our fossil fuels up they won’t have the materials necessary to create the products to harness the sun and moon.

Toward the end, the fossil fuels were gone, the reserves were spent and there was nothing left to create machines to capture energy. They tried to recycle every drop of used oil to build one photovoltaic cell at a time, and supply synthetic oils for the wind and hydroelectric turbines, but they simply just spent it all, and then all of humanity became dark.

Conclusion:

Like I said, I will never tell you what to think, I will never tell you to be quiet, and I will never tell you to be insensitive. I only ask for you to pay attention to these stories, very closely, so that you may go off and think for yourself and understand what the consequences will be if your nature results in selfishness. There is no money that can give you the wealth you’ll need to design a synergistic and sustainable life in collaboration with nature and our new Spaceship.

Your ancestors traveled across time, to find this new home, and yet the cycle has broken. I leave you with his words and his partially recovered burnt manual. So, it is up to you now to figure out how to resolve the rest.

We know there cannot be any poverty or the inability to have proper food, clothing and shelter. We know there cannot be any classes of wealth that are so vast, which would segregate the haves and the haves not; there shall be a resemblance of equality in our standards of living for health, safety and welfare. We know that we cannot prohibit education or withhold it or only offer it to the few; but must release it, in all its abundance and full transparency so that your new civilization can thrive indefinitely through cohabitation with your new Spaceship.

We know you cannot have or create any boundaries, we know you cannot have enemies; as we know this only leads to war and annihilation. Do not be secretive with your knowledge or skills, for everyone needs to be a Leonardo. Have your new civilization be determined to learn all things and not just focus on one for each person now needs to understand the entirety of things, as specializations are a thing of the past. Help each other learn, build and sustain yourselves amongst these new animals and natural habitat.

When the time comes to supply yourselves with energy for illumination, neglect ideas of burning resources and focus strictly on capturing sustainable and regenerative energy from our star, our wins and our seas in conjunction with the moon’s, for we cannot use finite resources for such things, as they are intended to be used for something far more efficiently than wasteful burning.

As you reinvent digital technology, do not allow it to take over your minds. Let it do the work you already know how to accomplish with your hands, so that you may expedite your know-how tasks so that you may have time to prepare to learn something new. Do not let the technology become the specialist in all things. Let it be nothing more than a tool.

It is imperative that you must constantly search for the most efficient method in resolving problems and to always do as much as you can with the least amount of matter or energy. Learn from his geometric ideology and applied to all things synergisticly.

This is your function, we can’t fail again.