“Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong” (Joel 3:10 KJV)
Dedicated to the memory and life work of Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller, 1895-1983, inventor, futurist, philosopher, philanthropist
Among his many contributions, Buckminster Fuller sought to reshape the linguistic and philosophical map through the invention of words to more accurately represent his concepts. Among these is the term livingry, contrasted with its opposite, warfare (or killingry), which this post will explore.
Linguistic change has been introduced into the current American landscape. The Secretary of Defense is now called the Secretary of War, as is the Defense Department, the War Department. Even its recruiting website is now War.gov, and our troops are called warfighters. This has unbalanced the role of our military preparedness. It flies in the face of our national symbol, the eagle, which appears with a clutch of arrows in one set of talons and an olive branch in the other—a balanced notion of a nation that desires peace, but is willing and able to defend itself. In fulfillment of President Eisenhower’s prophetic warning, the defense industry has mushroomed beyond all reasonable proportions, creating incredible wealth for weapons manufacturers. Conflicts are entered into with poor strategic aims, continuing the shameful downward trend since World War II. U.S. forces have been sent to over 100 countries. Unfortunately, the physical and mental care given to those returning has not matched the zeal with which they were sent. The tragic toll continues beyond the battlefield.
This is not to say that conflict is not justified, unavoidable, or inevitable. Witness the Russian incursion into Ukraine in its quest for additional territory. What is shocking is a proposed solution granting them additional territory, along with attempts to discredit the hard-won alliance of the free nations of Europe. It is strangely reminiscent of the 1938-39 German invasion of Czechoslovakia, despite assurances to the contrary. Winston Churchill’s The Gathering Storm documents the failed attempts to placate Germany as too little, too late. “Peace in our time” at this point was a failed illusion. Soon Poland and Eastern Europe were to follow. The consensus is that decisive action by England and France at an earlier stage could have prevented German expansion altogether at a time when their rearmament was not complete. It is even possible that the European conflict could have been prevented altogether. By his own admission, Hitler would not have taken action if France had marched and England had intervened [Hitler to General Keitel, 1942]. History will be the judge.
Our political culture is now infected by a wave of immigrant hatred. To be honest, it has always existed, but is now here with a renewed virulence. To quote professor Eddie Glaude, our society is “awash in a discourse of dehumanization”. The culture of cruelty is expanding its grip. Our deportation mania is proclaimed to attendees of the midterm convention as a proud achievement. It has reached fever pitch as parents are ripped from children. Armed militias roam the streets at will, executing warrantless arrests. American citizens are “denaturalized” and deported, along with asylum grantees and green card recipients, to countries they have never known. Deportees are kept in subhuman conditions, denied medical support and communication with their families. Haitians and other refugees have been stripped of their protected status and are prepared for removal to a country our own State Department has advised against travel. A Haitian honor student with many proud achievements chose to commit suicide rather than be deported, dying with the ankle monitor he and others have been forced to wear. Afghan immigrants who aided us in the war effort are prepared for deportation into the hands of the Taliban. DACA recipients who have never known another country are being removed, along with their potential to benefit our nation. Most recently, an Iranian woman was marked for deportation despite her Christian faith, where she will certainly risk death upon her arrival. Millions have lost health care coverage or have seen their premiums skyrocket. Child and adult hunger increases as supplementary food programs are slashed in the name of “waste, fraud, and abuse”. Anti-Muslim as well as anti-Semitic hatred has been inflamed by the anti-immigrant hatred which is a main trend. An increasing number of active duty service members are requesting discharge for conscientious reasons, citing blatant violations of the Geneva Accords in both the Iran war and the operations in the Caribbean where civilians have been executed with no proof of their role as drug couriers.
For those who reference Bible verses to support anti-immigrant views, I would remind them of the “humane legislation” in the writings of the Old Testament prophets: “And if a stranger dwells with you in your land, you shall not mistreat him. The stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as [a]one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 19:33-34, KJV)
Killingry takes a passive form as well. The collapse of the USAID program led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands who depended upon this support. Reduction of necessary federal government programs has resulted in suffering and death from disease and poverty. The legislative system has been compromised as well. A Labor Department policy that lowered pay for foreign farmworkers in the H-2A visa program by about $7 to $5 an hour was enacted to save agricultural operators 24 billion dollars over the next decade. Fortunately, a federal judge has ruled it to be unlawful. Congress members and governors in states such as Texas have prohibited legislation establishing heat protection for workers
Nor are members of the animal kingdom immune from the culture of cruelty. Factory farm operators seek repeal of humane treatment legislation as pigs, cows, and other mammals scream in agony as they are killed. Poultry cages permit little movement. Killing of wolves, alligators, and other creatures is done in the spirit of sport. Accounts of animal cruelty abound despite activism on their behalf. Euthanasia of dogs and cats is carried out in overcrowded shelters. Wild horses are rounded up by our Bureau of Land Management and shipped to Canada for slaughter. The cruelty continues despite increased awareness, humane organizations, and legislation..
These accounts are national as well as personal tragedies. Is this the America we envisioned even a few years back? Our bigotry has always been there, but has become the norm. It is an economic blunder as well. The productivity of immigrants is lost to a nation with a declining native birth rate, along with their contributions to a Social Security system which is at risk of dying.
There must be a point at which we are sick of the death, destruction, and cruelty which has plagued our species from time immemorial. The pain of this alone should motivate us to propose, as Fuller did, a better way. Tools and systems dedicated to killing and destruction can be re-directed to utilize human ingenuity, technology, and resources to turn destruction and war toward sustaining and enhancing human life. Its means of accomplishment are innovations designed for “human-life advantaging” and “environment controlling”. Fuller argues that humanity already possesses the technological means to support everyone on earth at a high standard of living if we choose a design revolution over conflict. This redirection has the potential to make poverty, war, and environmental destruction obsolete by designing functional, regenerative alternatives. His inventions and proposals stand for themselves, and are worth examining in their entirety. His language is at times challenging, but the struggle to understand the concepts he presents is worth the effort. I have included some key quotations:
“The Dark Ages still reign over all humanity, and the depth and persistence of this domination are only now becoming clear. This prison has no steel bars, chains, or locks. Instead, it is locked by misorientation and built of misinformation. We are powerfully imprisoned … by the terms in which we have been conditioned to think. There is now plenty for all. War is obsolete. It is imperative that we get the word to all humanity — RUSH — before someone ignorantly pushes the button that provokes pushing of all the buttons.”
Nature itself is the model for the development of livingry: “Our experiencing of the coordinate integrity of nature’s pattern, of initiating the growth of myriads of ecologically intercomplementary biological species is scientifically sorted out. Nature’s method of trial-and-error evolvement of the successive biological types prospering most successfully under each unique evolutionarily progressive environmental change demonstrates that preferred environment technology eliminates survival only of the fittest.”
The means of this accomplishment is called “Design Science Revolution”. It employs “comprehensive, anticipatory design” to do more with less using fewer resources for maximum benefit .Imagine the result if a sizeable portion of our current billion-dollar war expense was re-directed to human benefit. Abundance versus scarcity is now a choice. “Rejecting the ‘you-or-me’ survival philosophy is possible because technology and synergy can provide for 100% of humanity. What makes this so difficult is that all major religions and political systems rely upon the ages-held, ignorantly adopted premise of the existence of an eternal inadequacy of life support inherent in the design of our planet Earth. All books on economics have only one basic tenet, the fundamental scarcity of life support. As a result, the reigning philosophy requires that those with financial advantage fortify themselves even further, reasoning that unselfishness is suicidal.”
In an autobiographical note, in 1927 Fuller foresaw that humanity’s most fundamental survival problems could never be solved by politics. “That was the year transatlantic phone service began, and that a human first flew alone across an ocean in one day. It was obviously the beginning of the swift integration of all humanity.” This universalized his world-view, which included “the integration of isolated separate nations whose existence results in a minority of selfish humans organizing themselves to exploit world crises.” To illustrate, note the emergence of far right anti-immigrant movements in the European nations, mirroring our own. He was convinced that “all of humanity on our planet would enter a period of unprecedented crisis. I could see that there was an alternative to politics and its ever more wasteful warring, and inherently vain attempts to solve one-sidedly all humanity’s basic economic and social problems”. Update: we are now here.
Elaborating on his previous theme, the problem is that “All previous revolutions have been political in them the have-not majority has attempted revengefully to pull down the economically advantaged minority. If realized, this historically greatest design revolution will felicitously elevate all humanity to unprecedented heights. Such a design initiative would be impossible of accomplishment by great nations, great religions or private enterprise no matter how rich or peacefully armed….Great private enterprises are capital gambles whose ‘ships must come in’ within a reasonably short time or their backers will go bankrupt. Enterprise, with its stockholders and money managers, is too narrowly focused and shortsighted too narrowly focused on moneymaking to be concerned with its side effects and too shortsighted to address those biggest, most important, and long range tasks that are vital to sustaining· humans on board our planet….I saw that there was nothing to stop me from thinking comprehensively about our total planet Earth, its total physical resources and most advanced total know-how. Nor was there anything to stop me from thinking realistically about how to operate this magnificent Spaceship Earth on a sustained basis for all the passengers on board.”
With our development of alternative energy sources it is “technically feasible to adequately service all humanity (solely) by the overabundance of solar, vegetation-produced alcohols, and windpower and wavepower. This makes it possible to phase out fossil fuels and atomic energy.” Fuller proposed a “critical path” strategy (contained in the book of the same name), a first-things-first program of necessary conversion.
Among the most pressing concerns is more efficient and affordable housing to benefit a greater number of people. His Dymaxion House, first designed in 1927, was an “autonomous, mass-producible, air-deliverable dwelling machine weighing only 3 tons which was only 3 percent of its conventional, single family dwelling counterpart. The basic hardware components will produce a beautiful, fully equipped, air-deliverable house that weighs and costs about as much as a good automobile. Not only will it be highly efficient in its use of energy and materials, it also will be capable of harvesting incoming Sun and wind energies.” This includes the ability to relocate it if necessary, recalling the age-old use of yurts by nomatic tribes. (A further discussion of the housing problems of humanity is contained in my previous post, Home.)
Other Fuller-originated inventions which have revolutionized engineering include the octet truss, invented in 1948 and utilized in structures such as the geodesic dome. Geometrically, it is a combination of eight-sided octahedrons and four-sided tetrahedrons in a double-layered framework. Used for flooring or roofing, it allows for unlimited spanning. Its use in construction is aerodynamic, reducing wind-drag on buildings which accommodates even hurricane-speed winds. Windmill systems powering turbines were successfully prototyped as a propeller-bladed system in 1960. These can be fed into electric utility power lines whenever wind blows as a backup to existing power sources.
The fundamental institutions we have come to depend upon are compromised and failing. Everything has become monetized, and is therefore corrupted. This includes land “ownership” in collusion with the legal system. Witness the current movement to prevent corporate landlords from artificially driving up rents. Fuller comments, “But what is new is that humanity has gone as far as it can go with this significant error and is in final examination as to whether it can free itself from its misconditioned reflex straightjacket in time to pull out of its greatest in all history, error-occasioned· tailspinning into eternity. We do have both the knowledge and the technical means to do so if we do it quickly enough. I also know that this can be realized only by a technological revolution involving total Spaceship Earth using all the resources and knowhow as an integrated regenerative system as in the design of any successful sea-going or space-penetrating ship, a great world-around service industry (even the greatest potential industry of all history), or of any biological organism.” What amazes me in that this was written nearly fifty years ago, and little has changed.
Livingry properly understood and rigorously applied can provide the solution. “Our more-with-Iess technology can now enable us to become an omni-integrated, majorly literate, unified Spaceship Earth society. It is a matter of converting the high technology from weaponry to livingry. The essence of livingry is human-life advantaging and environment controlling. With the highest aeronautical and engineering facilities of the world redirected from efficient housing) that render old, wasteful systems obsolete rather than fighting political battles weaponry to livingry production, all humanity has the option of becoming enduringly successful.”
(All quotations are Copyright by R. Buckminster Fuller, 1983)
We ignore livingry at our own peril. “For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind” (Hosea 8:7). A tidal wave of social repercussion is inevitable, both on the national and international scale. Hungry, destitute children become angry adults who may lash out in violence. The social cost of predatory economic policy will come due. Our nation and our world will risk its own destruction by ignoring this important principle. Livingry is not a luxury. It is a necessity. Achieve livingry or die.
Divinepersonhood 