We’re all crew on this ship
In these times of tumult, for mind and heart, words of Buckminster Fuller’s are a kind of psychospiritual re-alignment that opens a horizon of hope:
“I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am.
I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing – a noun.
I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process – an integral function of the universe.”
Bucky Fuller was deeply knowledgeable – and concerned – about sustainability, and also optimistic about humanity’s future.
He defined wealth as real and applicable knowledge that would also protect, nurture, support, respect and include the needs of all life here on what he called “Spaceship Earth”.
He suggested that humans had attained an “unprecedented state” at which accumulation of relevant knowledge, combined with quantities of major recyclable resources that had already been extracted from the earth had reached the level at which competition for necessities was no longer a necessary or a wise strategy.
Rather, he said, cooperation had become the optimum foundation for survival.
“Selfishness,” Bucky declared, “is unnecessary and hence-forth unrationalizable … War is obsolete.”
He also emphasized that truly viable views of humanity’s future need to include not only everyone’s needs, but their contributions as collaborators. On Spaceship Earth, we are all crew.
