A Day In the Mind of Buckminster Fuller

I’ve lived on this earth for 22 years and some change. In the last week and a half though, I have begun to see my planet in a light that I never have previously. Until this point, it has been a stretch for me to say that I even put the places where I go about my daily toils  in much of any context. If I do happen to have a moment where I step back and see the Earth as anything along the lines of a provider, or a part of something much larger, I usually give myself a nice intellectual pat on the back.

But the past few days I’ve actually skipped some of the preliminary stages of appreciation to a more radical view that I can’t shake. I see the world around me as a spaceship, and it’s all because of one man. Mr. Buckminster Fuller. His ‘Spaceship Earth’ theory has begun to permeate my thoughts and actions as if I were wearing a ‘What Would Bucky Do?’ bracelet. Maybe it is more appropriate though to consider, ‘What would Bucky have done?’ since many of his ideas that have been disregarded for one reason or another were created many years ago, but would prove just as practical, if not more, in today’s society. So as I go through the motions of my day, I will show you where I see Bucky. Where he gets in my brain. And what the world would look like if more people had taken the eccentric, everything-man and his ideas more serious.

“When one realizes, on the other hand, that we all are in fact on the surface of a very tiny spherical spaceship on a long and seemingly inexplicably purposed journey, our proximity to each other becomes clear, and the absurdity of many of our conflicts becomes evident.”  -B.F.

The following is a my own Fuller-inspired "Chronofile" which illustrates just how many of these conflicts I encountered in one day, and just how absurd they are.

 

  Sweet Dreams 6:30 am

                                  

As the alarm on my phone goes off at 6:30 a.m. I am in a stuper that only a sharp interruption of the deepest kind of sleep can create. In my dream state each morning my brain tends to assign more hopeful meanings to the tones. I am often hearing a buzzer as I win a gameshow or the lottery. It makes the realization that it is simply a call to get out of bed that much more dreadful. I pull myself up each day though, partly because I am responsible for getting four others to my destination. If the decision only affected me and my good standing, my attendance might be a different story.

            As I do a warm-up jog and get into the routine of calisthenics, form drills and pilates, all three of which distance runners do a horrible injustice, I wake up a bit. The activity gets my blood flowing and buys me an hour or so afterwards where I am attentive and functional. But then it sets in. It’s the kind of sleepiness that amplifies gravity, sending me slumping down into my classroom seat.  Usually I feel there is nothing I can do, but these past few days, Buckminster Fuller has permeated my sleep-starved brain with his revolutionary solution to one of my biggest dilemmas: a sleepiness so severe that I often suspect myself a carrier of some kind of undiagnosed chronic fatigue syndrome. Fuller proposed that if I want to feel more rested, I would just have to sleep less. Two hours a day to be exact. Of Course.

            Fuller’s sleep experiments led him to the adoption of a system where he napped at the immediate onset of any sign of fatigue, which he found to be about every six hours. Then it’s time for a 30 minute cat nap to revitalize the system. The body’s store of energy was more easily replenished than commonly thought, according to Fuller, so long as rest comes as soon as that store has ran out. (Time) Fuller lived for two years like this with much success until he finally deemed the practice impractical simply because his schedule remained incompatible with others with more regular sleep habits. (Time) So the first conflict of my inefficient day is thus solved by the wisdom of Fuller. I can’t wait to take advantage of my 22-hour days and become socially isolated.

Spinning My Wheels

   

It is before I even get to my early morning practice, and old Bucky already has my wheels turning about something else. My wheels. As I fire up my VW Jetta, I can’t help but lament the movement of the needle on my gas gauge. It’s the kind of jump that makes me wonder if “Jenny the Jetta” has been going out for Sunday joy rides without me. But instantly I have to think about the principles Fuller implemented in the early 1930’s that would make my tansportation more efficient even by today’s standards.

              Fuller's Design Puts Jenny the Jetta To Shame

It was in 1933 that Fuller unveiled is dymaxion car, a vehicle that would make modern car designers touting their new fuel efficient hybrids as the next big thing, turn red with embarrassment. And maybe a little envy.  Without hybrid technology, only the use of aerodynamics and aggressive design, the vehicle was a model of efficiency. Carting up to 12 passengers, and topping out at speeds of 120 mph, the dymaxion car still hovered around 30 miles to the gallon: a feat my 1999 Jetta can’t even hit on a good day of Athens driving. I try to take solace in my shiny red paint coat.

  Wasteful Waste

     

So I’m back from morning practice and my mind moves from my gas tank to my... well… gas. I have to go. Maybe it was too much salsa verde at Casa the night before mixed with the pushups and the planks, but I soon find myself on the porcelain throne where many men do their best thinking. So of course I am forced back to Fuller. This time I can’t help but cringe at the thought of how much of a waste our system of getting rid of waste is. We flush thousands of gallons of water each year  down our toilets. This is water that will undoubtedly be scarcer and more precious in coming years. Just ask the Southwest.

Fuller's take on the modern bathroom.

Fuller must have done some powerful thinking on the pot, because it is the source of one of his most heralded inverntion proposals. The dymaxion toilet, through a system of shrink-wrapesque processes and storage, would reduce one’s waste total for a year to a mere 10 gallons. In all honesty, if I stay hydrated properly throughout the day, I wouldl most likely hit that mark by day's end. Thanks Bucky. Now a man can’t even enjoy the mid-day bathroom break without building upon an already guilty conscience.

Dear Diary

One of the remaining journals of Buckminster Fuller. Logged in every 15 minutes.

The day is winding down and I log my run on a website that keeps track of mileage. It is such a chore and I sigh as our internet “drags along.” Then I remember that Fuller kept a file on himself in what he called a chronofile. Quickly, my internal bitch-and-moan directed towards the simple daily task seems childish as I recall his rate of journaling. Every 15 minutes. For 56 years. I begin to wonder if he fit updates in during his two hours of sleep a day as well. My guess is yes. At any rate, his self-monitoring makes me realize how much more I could learn and remember if I logged my experiences and thoughts a bit more rigorously than my daily mileage tally. This project is a start. But Bucky still wouldn’t approve, especially with the convenience of a keyboard at our lazy fingertips.

  A Higher Power

   

It continues like this until I’m back to where I started in bed which, by Guinea Pig B standards, gets about 400% too much use. Well maybe cut me a break for any sleep lost thinking about it. But it just never quits. As I close my eyes to avoid a shampoo sting, I have visions of Fuller's bathing/steam/fog gun contraption that would make my showers significantly less of a waste. I scour the kitchen for a midnight snack and there he is consolidating my refigerator unit and cupboards into his standard living model that gives humans everything they need to enjoy a comfortable life in a condensed unit that would make my apartment look like a small country of wasted space. I lay down and try to clear my head. A lapsed catholic, I turn to prayer for a distraction, a reprieve from these thoughts from God, anything. And there it is…His take on prayer. God help us. But with as little waste as possible.

EVER RETHINKING THE LORD'S PRAYER

Our God
Who art in we even
even we who know most intimately
of our own weaknesses, failures, faults
and outright sins
our selfishnesses, fears, and cupidity
our moments of jealousy, rage, and hate
secret cover ups, lies and self deceits
God even of we
our God
our intuitively apprehended
comprehensive admonisher
and Omni-experience is your Identity.
You have given us
because You are Omni-experience
overwhelming manifest:
of Your complete knowledge
(There is that Universe working there)
Your complete comprehension
Your complete concern
Your complete wisdom
Your complete responsibility
Your complete coordination
Your complete competence to cope positively with
any and all problems
And Your utter reliability always so to do
Yours, Dear God
is all the glory
(people talk about glory and say but without thisthis extraordinary Thing, how are there even words, even the word glory whatever it is awe, every credit, is completely God's we have nothing to do with it)
You are the utterly mysterious Integrity
Of omni-regenerative Universe
We have absolute confidence and faith in You
You are the Synergetic Integral of All Truths as
best we can see
And we worship You
awe-inspiredly,
thankfully
rejoicingly and
lovingly
For it is humanly feasible
To be in awe of Truth
humanly feasible to be thankful for
and to rejoice
and to love the Truth
(I found this very beautiful, this is when I knew I could really love that Truth so it isn't just vapid words)
All of which lead to Absolute Truth
beyond the comprehension of humans.