Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth – Bucky Fuller
As I have returned to serious reading again, am devouring the works of Bucky again, and understanding it in a whole new light. Bucky is a genius in the league of Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo. He was an architect, engineer, geometrician, cartograher, philosopher, futurist, inventor, inspirer.. you get the idea.
His work was very instrumental in my life and in almost everything I do, esp his emphasis on generalized principles. I got back to his classic work Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth after many years. This is an easy introduction to some of the bigideas of this brilliant man. IMHO his works shuold be required reading to every kid in high middle/high school.
If you have not read this book, you MUST READ IT! If I was making something a must read, this would definitely be one of the 25 books.
Key Ideas:
1. Speclialization is unnatureal
2. The great pirates were the origins of specialization, they profited from no one knowing the whole picture
3. Most people are unaware that we are still rules by the “great Pirates” who employ divide and conquer
4. Earth is a spaceship and the sun is the energy sourse
5. How big can we think is the real question – employ General Systems Theory
6. Synergy – whole is greater than the sum of its parts
7. Integral functions – wealth is expanded by development of tools which go beyond what was integral to man
Awesome Quotes from the book
Only our minds are able to discover the generalized principles operating without exception in
each and every special-experience case which if detected and mastered will give knowledgeable
advantage in all instances.
Society assumes that specialization is natural, inevitable, and desirable. Yet in observing a little child,
we find it is interested in everything and spontaneously apprehends, comprehends, and coordinates
an ever expending inventory of experiences. Children are enthusiastic planetarium
audiences. Nothing seems to be more prominent about human life than its wanting to
understand all and put everything together.
Pirates were the first interconnectors. And it followed that these Great Pirates came into mortal battle with one another to see
who was going to control the vast sea routes and eventually the world. Their battles took place
out of sight of landed humanity. The wider and more long distanced their
anticipatory strategy, the more successful they became.
Leonardo da Vinci is the outstanding example of the comprehensively anticipatory design
scientist. Finally, the sea-dwelling Leonardos became Captains of the ships or even Admirals of Fleets,
or Commandants of the Navy yards where they designed and built the fleets, or they became
the commandants of the naval war colleges where they designed and developed the
comprehensive strategy for running the world for a century to come.
Then came the grand strategy which said, “divide and conquer.” You divide up the other
man’s ships in battle or you best him when several of his ships are hauled out on the land for
repairs. They also had a grand strategy of anticipatory divide and conquer. Anticipatory divide
and conquer was much more effective than tardy divide and conquer
But specialization is in fact only a fancy form of slavery wherein the “expert” is fooled into
accepting his slavery by making him feel that in return he is in a socially and culturally
preferred, ergo, highly secure, lifelong position. But only the king’s son received the Kingdomwide
scope of training.
Extinction in both cases (biology and anthropology) was the consequence of over-specialization.
I’m sure that you don’t really sense yourself to be aboard a
fantastically real spaceship our spherical Spaceship Earth. Of our little sphere you have seen
only small portions. However, you have viewed more than did pre-twentieth-century man, for in
his entire lifetime he saw only one-millionth of the Earth’s surface. You’ve seen a lot more. If
you are a veteran world airlines pilot you may have seen one one-hundredth of Earth’s surface.
Spaceship Earth was so extraordinarily well invented and designed that to our knowledge
humans have been on board it for two million years not even knowing that they were on board
a ship. And our spaceship is so superbly designed as to be able to keep life regenerating on
board despite the phenomenon, entropy, by which all local physical systems lose energy. So we
have to obtain our biological life-regenerating energy from another spaceship the sun.
I define universe, including both the
physical and metaphysical, as follows: The universe is the aggregate of all of humanity’s
consciously-apprehended and communicated experience with the nonsimultaneous,
nonidentical, and only partially overlapping, always complementary, weighable and
unweighable, ever omni-transforming, event sequences
synergy is the only word in our language meaning behavior of wholes unpredicted by
behavior of their parts
It is obvious that the real wealth of life aboard our planet is a forwardly-operative,
metabolic, and intellectual regenerating system.
Wealth is anti-entropy at a most exquisite degree of concentration. The difference between
mind and brain is that brain deals only with memorized, subjective, special-case experiences
and objective experiments, while mind extracts and employs the generalized principles and
integrates and interrelates their effective employment. Brain deals exclusively with the physical,
and mind exclusively with the metaphysical. Wealth is the product of the progressive mastery of
matter by mind
Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth – Bucky Fuller
Bucky is a genius in the leauge of Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo. He was an architect, engineer, geometrician, cartograher,
philosopher, futurist, inventor, inspirer.. you get the idea.
His work was very instrumental in my life and in almost everything I do, esp his emphasis on generalized principles. I got back to his
classic work Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth after many years. This is an easy introduction to some of the big
ideas of this brilliant man. IMHO his works shuold be required reading to every kid in high middle/high school.
If you have not read this book, you MUST READ IT!
Key Ideas:
1. Speclialization is unnatureal
2. The great pirates were the origins of specialization, they profited from no one knowing the whole picture
3. Most people are unaware that we are still rules by the “great Pirates” who employ divide and conquer
4. Earth is a spaceship and the sun is the energy sourse
5. How big can we think is the real question – employ General Systems Theory
6. Synergy – whole is greater than the sum of its parts
7. Integral functions – wealth is expanded by development of tools which go beyond what was integral to man
Awesome Quotes from the book
Only our minds are able to discover the generalized principles operating without exception in
each and every special-experience case which if detected and mastered will give knowledgeable
advantage in all instances.
Society assumes that specialization is natural, inevitable, and desirable. Yet in observing a little child,
we find it is interested in everything and spontaneously apprehends, comprehends, and coordinates
an ever expending inventory of experiences. Children are enthusiastic planetarium
audiences. Nothing seems to be more prominent about human life than its wanting to
understand all and put everything together.
Pirates were the first interconnectors. And it followed that these Great Pirates came into mortal battle with one another to seewho was going to control the vast sea routes and eventually the world. Their battles took place
out of sight of landed humanity. The wider and more long distanced their
anticipatory strategy, the more successful they became.
Leonardo da Vinci is the outstanding example of the comprehensively anticipatory design
scientist. Finally, the sea-dwelling Leonardos became Captains of the ships or even Admirals of Fleets,
or Commandants of the Navy yards where they designed and built the fleets, or they became
the commandants of the naval war colleges where they designed and developed the
comprehensive strategy for running the world for a century to come.
Then came the grand strategy which said, “divide and conquer.” You divide up the other
man’s ships in battle or you best him when several of his ships are hauled out on the land for
repairs. They also had a grand strategy of anticipatory divide and conquer. Anticipatory divide
and conquer was much more effective than tardy divide and conquer
But specialization is in fact only a fancy form of slavery wherein the “expert” is fooled into
accepting his slavery by making him feel that in return he is in a socially and culturally
preferred, ergo, highly secure, lifelong position. But only the king’s son received the Kingdomwide
scope of training.
Extinction in both cases (biology and anthropology) was the consequence of over-specialization.
I’m sure that you don’t really sense yourself to be aboard a
fantastically real spaceship our spherical Spaceship Earth. Of our little sphere you have seen
only small portions. However, you have viewed more than did pre-twentieth-century man, for in
his entire lifetime he saw only one-millionth of the Earth’s surface. You’ve seen a lot more. If
you are a veteran world airlines pilot you may have seen one one-hundredth of Earth’s surface.
Spaceship Earth was so extraordinarily well invented and designed that to our knowledge
humans have been on board it for two million years not even knowing that they were on board
a ship. And our spaceship is so superbly designed as to be able to keep life regenerating on
board despite the phenomenon, entropy, by which all local physical systems lose energy. So we
have to obtain our biological life-regenerating energy from another spaceship the sun.
I define universe, including both the
physical and metaphysical, as follows: The universe is the aggregate of all of humanity’s
consciously-apprehended and communicated experience with the nonsimultaneous,
nonidentical, and only partially overlapping, always complementary, weighable and
unweighable, ever omni-transforming, event sequences
synergy is the only word in our language meaning behavior of wholes unpredicted by
behavior of their parts
It is obvious that the real wealth of life aboard our planet is a forwardly-operative,
metabolic, and intellectual regenerating system.
Wealth is anti-entropy at a most exquisite degree of concentration. The difference between
mind and brain is that brain deals only with memorized, subjective, special-case experiences
and objective experiments, while mind extracts and employs the generalized principles and
integrates and interrelates their effective employment. Brain deals exclusively with the physical,
and mind exclusively with the metaphysical. Wealth is the product of the progressive mastery of
matter by mindOperating Manual for Spaceship Earth – Bucky Fuller
MUST READ IMHO
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