Trimtab
This is Trimtab, a publication to explore how we bring together the many voices of those who have been inspired by Buckminster Fuller, architect, inventor, polymath, designer, and writer.
We are already a vibrant community of people who have connected with each other through the Buckminster Fuller Institute, Trimtab Space Camp, Design Science Studio, re:build, Trimtab Book Club, World Weavers, 52 Living Ideas, and others who have been inspired by the vision of Buckminster Fuller to “Make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.”
Call Me Trim Tab
Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Elizabeth — the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there’s a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab. It’s a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trim tab. Society thinks it’s going right by you, that it’s left you altogether. But if you’re doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go. So I said, “Call me Trim Tab.”
The truth is that you get the low pressure to do things, rather than getting on the other side and trying to push the bow of the ship around. And you build that low pressure by getting rid of a little nonsense, getting rid of things that don’t work and aren’t true until you start to get that trim-tab motion. It works every time. That’s the grand strategy you’re going for. So I’m positive that what you do with yourself, just the little things you do yourself, these are the things that count. To be a real trim tab, you’ve got to start with yourself, and soon you’ll feel that low pressure, and suddenly things begin to work in a beautiful way. Of course, they happen only when you’re dealing with really great integrity.
— Buckminster Fuller, quoted by Maria Popova at The Marginalian
Learn, Connect, Share, Act
This publication was created with the intention of offering a public way of connecting with the many people and communities who have been inspired by Buckminster Fuller. We hope that we can facilitate ways to learn, connect, share, and act—to communicate, cooperate, collaborate, coordinate, and co-create as members of this living earth and this living universe.
This Trimtab publication is not (as of yet) officially affiliated with or endorsed by the Buckminster Fuller Institute. This publication is not intended to be a replacement for the official Trimtab blog of the website of the Buckminster Fuller Institute, which we highly recommend, but a supplement and an experiment in spontaneous cooperation.
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We are looking for people who would like to share their ideas, articles, projects, art, poetry, and stories about their connection to Buckminster Fuller and how they were inspired or how their lives were affected by this one person—or any ideas about how to make a world that works for all life. Subscribe to become part of our growing and active community. And reach out in the chat to become a contributor to this collective writing project. We would like to feature as many contributors as we can.
Gratitude
We are grateful to the designers and developers of Substack, with which this publication has been created. To find out more about the company that provides the tech for this newsletter, visit Substack.com.