The Genius and Resilience of Buckminster Fuller

Christina Sarich, Contributor
Higher Perspective

It is hard to believe that ‘Bucky’ as he is affectionately known, or Buckminster Fuller, ever suffered a day in his life, with ideas bigger than most of us have ever imagined holding in our heads, let alone sharing with the world, and an affable calm that made him everyone’s friend and confidant. The truth is that Buckminster Fuller, inventor, genius, and visionary, once was a drunk who thought of committing suicide in a dark night of the soul following his 4-year old daughter’s death, the loss of his job, and facing the hard fact that he’d run our of money to raise his mourning family.

What followed these events is a metaphor for what we are all about to experience, following our own hero’s journeys, as Joseph Campbell, another brilliant individual, would coin the phrase. Each of us have our monomyth, and Fuller was no different. What transpired shortly after his lowest moments, is nothing short of miraculous, and certainly awe inspiring.

“Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them.” ~ Richard Buckminster Fuller

Fuller had a spiritual awakening. It was subtle, but beyond profound. He decided to give up worldly concerns and see just how much he could change the world for the better, trusting that the Universe would take care of his every need, even if he couldn’t see how. Much like a meditating monk, he then entered two years of seclusion and pondered a rather large question: how can one commit 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?”

In my mind, this shift in thinking is already pure genius. After all, how many of us truly trust the Universe to provide all we need, in such abundance that people everywhere could enjoy limitless prosperity?

His ideas were radical and creative. He relied on his own observations of nature and divine geometry to come up with radical inventions and architectural wonders. As one writer eloquently puts it, his ideas made Frank Lloyd Wright look positively bland.

He postulated that the geodesic dome could house more people at lower costs, due to structural integrity. Not only is this design quite beautiful, since it relies on divine geometry, but it has been proven to be one of the strongest structures on earth.

“When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty... but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.” ~ R.B.F.

Fuller came up with countless other grand ideas, ranging from modes of transportation to methods of creating energy. He was awarded twenty-eight US patents, forty-seven honorary degrees (this for a man who didn’t believe in relying on formal education), the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1983, and innumerable accolades. A senior fellow from Stanford calls Fuller the ‘Leonardo do Vinci of our century.”

There is an archive posted of Bucky’s videotaped ideas, and hours of them, on the MIT website. He catalogues everything he ‘knows’ about the world. Here are a few highlights:

·      Fuller believed that science and nature should work in tandem, not at odds with one another in order to ‘aggressively, and comprehensively’ solve humanity’s biggest problems. He believed that as our consciousness as a society developed we could emerge from the ‘dark ages’ where people are starving, poorly-sheltered, and living out of harmony with the planet, and emerge into an incredibly prosperous age. Some have called this the Golden Age, and Fuller may have intuited this in his two years of seclusion.

·      Fuller believed that the masses would use technology to fight the oligarchy, that has taken over good-hearted and high-minded individuals the world over. This can be seen today with the rise of alternative media and the growing grass-roots action taken by people who no longer want to be subjugated to Big Pharmaceutical, Big Corporations and Big Government. He knew that these institutions could not continually obfuscate the masses – that we would wake up and take our planet back. He was exactly right. This is what is happening right now.

·      The visionary man also believed that there exists a ‘cosmic accounting system.’ It is essentially Fuller’s ideas of how to get rid of the current “New World Order’, and equalize wealth. In this system, people are no longer enslaved by the elite. They don’t have to ‘work’ for al living, but instead enjoy limitless freedom by utilizing the ‘currency’ that is already overabundant on our planet. To make the idea simple, all people would be paid well, with no skewed distribution of resources that leaves some rich, and some poor. The cost of all goods and services depends on how much ‘energy’ it takes to create them. There are volumes of information on this singular idea that explain it in detail. Within this system, we all become stewards of this planet connected in cosmic grid that leaves no one out. 

·      Perhaps most importantly, Fuller saw himself, as well as humankind, as a part of a Universal oneness. He speaks of the ‘physical limit’ and the ‘metaphysical absolute’ meaning that while we are visiting this planet in an evolutionary expression of the Grand Cosmic Infinite, we are not relegated to a purely material existence.

Fuller’s ideas could take a lifetime to explore, they were so unconventional and prolific, but more importantly, even a cursory look, shows us that we can pick ourselves up from the darkest moments we’ve all endured, and forge a completely different outcome for our futures, utilizing our God-given creativity and expanded conscious awareness to create one of the numerous more beatific possibilities.

“We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody.” ~ R.B.F.