User:Mathijs van Oosterhoudt/rwrm/spaceship

BUCKMINISTER FULLER - OPERATING MANUAL FOR SPACESHIP EARTH

1968

1. comprehensive Propensities

we tend to think that for a given situation the solution which was previously used might currently be the solution to that same problem, where better solutions might already exist.

We tend to stick to our own common problems in life, and leave bigger issues at hand up to other people, namely politicians. The article wants to confront the reader with as many of our problems he can foresee in the future. From experience, Fuller has determined that his forecasts of our world last about 25 years fully, while some might reach further. This is the same as one generation of inventions, after which said interventions or tools will be superseded. Currently one of our biggest issues is that half of the earth's population lives in poverty, prematurely doomed. One of the issues in our thinking is the thought that specializing in something will help us further, when this makes it hard to see the overall advantages possible.

This harkens back to when we walked our earth, and humans thought they where specialized as dry-land walkers, as fish are specialized in swimming, and so forth. Leadership would further focus us on specialization, making sure there were farmers, hunters, etcetera. When people learned to build boats, these leaders on sea discovered the world, and quickly understood that every place had different goods to offer, which might be more valued elsewhere. The specialized seaman on the same ships where ignorant to this, focusing only on their specialized tasks. By shipping these goods and selling them, these few leaders became even richer and more powerful. These seaman would focus on the world, whilst now, in 1969, we are still focused on our own places, or own country, which leads to even further specialization and personalized classification. Meaningless questions such as "Where do you live?" "What are you?" "What religion?" "What race?" "What nationality?" are thought today as logical questions, but by the 21st century will be thought of as absurd and anti-evolutionary.