Buckminster Fuller Speaks on Integrity
By Buckminster Fuller
I want you to think about this as individuals. An individual will say to me, “What can I do? What can I do? I’m just a little tiny guy.”
And, I say, what you can do -- I’m repeating something I said to you earlier -- that we are really in the final examination -- I did get, last night, to you that we are a function in the universe. We’re here for local universe information gathering, local problems solving in support of the integrity of an eternally regenerative universe.
But integrity is the essence. In an invisible world there’s no visible aesthetics. In an invisible world the only aesthetics is integrity. It’s our great computer world we’re going into.
So I simply say, I am really confronting you with the way -- I’ve lived through all that - because I was a comprehensivist, I’ve kept the records; that’s the only reason I’m able to say all these things to you I am up to. I am giving you a very faithful record of what’s going on economically.
So I simply say, what you can do personally is commit yourself to what is the truth. That’s all.
You have to remember that we didn’t invent -- design the universe, and we’re not running
the universe.
I’m absolutely willing to give credit to -- to the -- I like what the Indians say “The Great Spirit.” The word “God” tends to infer a human being’s form, so I say “The Great Spirit” so you realize that I don’t mean anthropomorphic when I say “God.”
But, if you operate with integrity, God wants to know right now whether human beings have the courage to go along with their own minds, or do you have to go along with the crowd? Do you have to go evenly with the game, or are you going to dare?
If we really dare to go with our minds, we’ll stay here. We’ll go into an entirely new era in humanity.
It will not be a matter of earning a living. You’ll be doing what you see needs to be done because you’ll feel you’ll want to do it -- you’ll want to qualify to be able to serve one another. There will be nothing -- you will have no question at all about earning a living.
At any rate, personally then -- we’ve got two minutes to this session --it comes back to each one of you, as the numbers multiply of individuals who are willing to commit themselves to integrity -- whatever the truth may be -- and really commit themselves to making all humanity a success.
You have to ask yourself the question, “Are my reflexes so conditioned that I resent someone else enjoying themselves? Am I really willing to really love my humanity, my fellows?
If you do that, we will win. If you can do it, if it is spontaneously arousable in you to operate with integrity and really go along to love -- to love comprehensibly. That’s it.
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Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment.Interview (30 April 1978)The most important thing to teach your children is that the sun does not rise and set. It is the Earth that revolves around the sun. Then teach them the concepts of North, South, East and West, and that they relate to where they happen to be on the planet's surface at that time. Everything else will follow. |
