Spontaneous Cooperation

Making the world work for all life

Geodesic dome by Buckminster Fuller. United States pavilion for Expo 67, Montréal. Photo in public domain: POET ARCHITECTURE on Flickr.

The first question that might come up about this publication is that there is already an organization dedicated to the work of Buckminster Fuller, the Buckminster Fuller Institute, and they already have a blog called Trimtab. Are we spreading ourselves too thin to start using yet another platform?

My initial response is to recognize that these official channels for the community are definitely one of the best places to start, when we want to learn about Buckminster Fuller and the impact one person can have in the world by becoming an experiment, Guinea Pig B, in the impact one person could have in the world by embodying the metaphor of a trim tab.

Buckminster Fuller at his Black Mountain College studio with models of geodesic domes, 1949. Photo in public domain: POET ARCHITECTURE on Flickr

However, we might miss the article by Maria Popova in her publication, The Marginalian, The Magic of the “Trim Tab”: Buckminster Fuller on the Greatest Key to Transformation and Growth.

We might not know about Trimtab Space Camp and the Design Science Studio and the re:build conference and the 52 Living Ideas.

We might not realize that there is a Trimtab Book Club that meets at 9am Pacific Time every second Saturday, hosted by Curt McNamara. Or that the World Weavers group meets on the alternating Saturdays at 8am Pacific Time, hosted by myself, to share conversations on social tensegrity, metaphysical gravity, conscious linguistics, collective flow state, truth and reconciliation, quantum physics, chaos theory, and Bohmian dialogue.

For now, it takes an email to Curt McNamara or to myself to be added to the Google Groups for each of these Zoom meetings.

We might not know that Steven Leavitt, creator of The Language of Creativity podcast, is making a podcast to interview participants of Trimtab Space Camp about their projects, called Spaceship Earth Mission Log.

We might not be aware of the work of Richard Ramsay in social tensegrity. Or the writing of Ganga Devi Braun on metaphysical gravity. Or my proposal for the Living Systems Collaboratory to design an interface for navigating metaphysical gravity.

Yesterday, members of the BFI, participants in Trimtab Space Camp, and members of the Design Science Studio met in Welo for a monthly gathering. A common problem was raised around how to connect in between these monthly gatherings. I suggested we could use Substack as a way to facilitate conversations in chat, share notes, post events, publish articles, send email newsletters, and collaborate on projects together.

This publication is about the many people who have been inspired by Buckminster Fuller and his vision of a design science revolution, in contrast to a violent revolution, livingry instead of weaponry, utopia rather than oblivion.

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

How might we meet the many challenges and crises we are facing at this moment, including poverty, homelessness, hunger, war, environmental degradation, and the climate crisis?

Buckminster Fuller proposed a World Game instead of war games. He suggested a comprehensive anticipatory design science could address these issues with ephemeralization by doing “more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing.” He outlined a World Design Science Decade.

The objective of all of these efforts was 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.

That is what we hope to do with this publication on Substack. We are using the tools we now have available to us to engage in spontaneous cooperation.

Part of that process is an acknowledgement that we are updating and transforming ideas through interaction with each other. We can acknowledge that the vision as originally stated might have been a little too anthropocentric. We are shifting from human-centered design to life-centered design, to make a world that works for all life.

Slowing down, resting, and healing may be the best thing that we can do for ourselves and for the planet. How can we do the inner work necessary to integrate what we are doing as a human species with a living earth?

This is the place where we can slow down and ask these beautiful questions about how we can realize the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible. We begin from the inside out.

Gravity is what fires the reaction that creates the light of the sun. It is metaphysical gravity that brings us together to bring light to the world. And, as Buckminster Fuller put it, love is metaphysical gravity.

This publication is not intended to be a replacement for the official site and blog of the Buckminster Fuller Institute, which we highly recommend, but a supplement and an experiment in spontaneous cooperation.

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.