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The words of

R BUCKMINSTER

FULLER

The design of

Fernando Padilla

I n v i s i b l er e a l i t y .


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Design & photography Copyright Fernando Padilla, 2010

essays courtesy of Buckminster Fuller Institute, 2010made and printed in Berkeley California

by Fernando padilla and copy central

set in Helvetica Nueu and helvetica bold.

ISBN 0-13-618623-3


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TABLE OF CONTENTSEssays & interviewsR. Buckinster Fuller

1.Accelerating Acceleration9.Big Picture Thinking

15.Earthians Critical Moment

19.Only Integrity is Going to Count


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ACCEL ERA

T I N G


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R B u c k m i n s t e r F u l l e r : E s s a y s

ACCE

L E R A

T I O N

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Not tourist. Just re-sponding to requests to

appear here and there,to lecture at universitiesor design some struc-ture, or whatever it maybe. So that is in theeveryday pattern, that I

am circuiting that earth.

Certainly makes

evidence that we are

dealing in totality of

humanity not theup

to my generation-

completely divided

humanity, spread very

far apart on our planet.

And were at a point

where I now have whatwould seem absolutely

incredible to generations

before. Ive now

completed thirty-seven

circuits of our Earth-kind

of zig-zagging circuits,

not straight around.


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My father was in the leather

importing business in Boston,

Massachusetts, in the United States,

and he imported from two places,apparentlyBuenos Aires and India,

for bringing in leather for the shoe

industry, which was centered in that

time in the Boston area. His mail, or

a trip he would like to make to Ar-

gentina, took two months each way.

His trip to India, or the mail, took

exactly three months each way.

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was in distress, and a ship then rushed to its

aid. Absolutely unexpected. My father and

mother were saying, Wireless? Nonsense!

And, when I was three the electron was

discovered and nobody talked about that;

it wasnt in any of the newspapers. Nobodywas interested in the electron, they didnt

know what was the electron or whether it was

discovered. I was brought up that humanity

would never get to the North Pole. Absolutely

impossible. Theyd never get to the South

Pole. On Mercator maps, it didnt even show

anything upthe northernmost points were

a very rugged kind of a line, if you see it, with

nothing beyond that. When I was fourteen,

man did get to the North Pole. When I was

sixteen, he got to the South Pole. The impos-

sibles were happening.

Like all other little boys, I was making paper

darts that you make at schoolboys mustve

been making them for a very long time. And

we were hoping it might be able to get to

ying. Parents would say, Darling, its very

amusing for you to try that, but its inherently

impossible for man to y. So when I was

seven, the Wright brothers suddenly ew, and

my memory is vivid enough of seven to re-

member that, for about a year, the engineering

societies would try to prove it was a hoax, that

it was absolutely impossible for man to do that.

It seemed absolutely logical to humanity when

early in this century Rudyard Kipl ing, the Eng-

lish poet, said East is east and west is west,

and never the twain shall meet. It was a very,

very rare matter for any human being to make

such a travel as that, taking all those months.There were not many ships that could take

him there.

All that has just changed in my lifetime,

to where Im not one of the very few making

these circuits of the Earth, but I am one of

probably getting to be pretty close to twenty

million now who are making, living a life like

that around our planet. And very much the

whole young world is doing so. I keep meeting

my students of various universities from around

the world half way round the world again.

Theyre all getting to be living as world people.

This is a very sudden emergence of some

new kind of relationship to our Universe being

manifest. None of it was planned. There was

nobody in the time of my father, my mother, in

the time I was brought up, prophesying any of

the things I just said.

The year I was born, Marconi invented the

wireless, but it did not get into any practical

use until I was twelve years of age, when the

rst steamship sent an SOS, when it was in

distress, by wireless. Think of i t. Great many

milesand the world began to know the ship

The impossibles


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So then, not only was there radio, but when

I was twenty-threewhich I guess many in

this room are not twenty-three yet,when I

was twenty-three, the human voice came over

the radio for the rst time. Thats an incredible

matter. I was forty-ve when we had our rsttelevision. It couldnt be a more recent matter,

and yet, nobody thought at that time, they

didnt know you were going to have transis-

tors. They didnt know man was going to have

satellites going around the earth, they didnt

know we were going to have radio relay satel-

lites, with programs coming out of any part of

the Earth to any other part of the Earth. Not

one of these steps was ever anticipated by any

of the others.

So having experienced that, I also expe-

rienced living with my fellow human beings

who, I nd, no sooner does it happen, says I

knew it all the time. Im not one of those to be

surprised; I was totally in on it, you know, I was

a little bit responsible. Theres a strange van-

ity of man, I think the vanity that he has was

essential to his being born naked and helpless

and having to make the fantastic number of

mistakes he had to make in order to really

learn something. I think he is so disgruntled,

so dismayed by the mistakes and the errors

that he would never have been able to carry

onwouldve been absolutely discouraged.

So he was given this strange vanity to sayto

continually make himself exempt, that he was

some kind of privileged and always in, and he

is able to quite clearly deceive himself a great

deal. So I nd everybody todaylet anybody

do that unless it is absolutely simpleand logical.

The rst census of the population of the

United States was taken in 1790, just after

the war was over. In 1810, the United States

Congress decided we ought to have a census

of the wealth of America, so the Treasury

Department had a very large survey made

of people to determine their wealth. In 1810,

there were a million families in America. In

1810, there were a million human slaves in

America. Its a very sad and very dramatic fact

to be revealed if you go back into the records.

It looks like every family having a human slave;

that was not correct. Very few families owned

a slave, comparatively. But the point is that

kind of a gure.

So I found that in 1940, in contradistinction

to that kind of condition, there were a number

of energy-slaves working in the economy

rather than human slaves. And I found that

you can go back and look at Fortune Magazine

10th Anniversary Issue, 1940, and youll

nd the number of energy slaves operating

per each person, per family. The number of

were happening

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to see what was really beneting the family. So

then, I found out how many net energy slaves

were really supporting a peaceful life of human

beings in America. What I found was one hun-

dred energy slaves per family, approximately

I came to two hundred at the time, and abouthalf of them were really working for the human

family itself; the other half were getting ready

for war.

I took the criteria of a hundred energy slaves

per family as being the criteria for what I call

a have family. This represented people who

were enjoying a really comfortable standard

of living. So my criteria for a have family: a

hundred energy slaves per family.

Now in 1900, taking the total human popula-

tion, far less than one per cent were in what I

called industrial have family. So less than one

per cent of humanity in 1900. As a conse-

quence of World War II, and the technology

I spoke about that was introduced in World

War II, it came out four per cent of all humanity

were suddenly industrial haves which was a

very big jump from nothing. In 1951, I was tak-

ing a new point on the curve, and I found wed

gotten up to twenty eight per cent of humanity.

I now had enough points on my curveI had

three pointsto be able to discover, theres a

radius of change, so I made a constant radius

of change, and I extended that radius. And

energy-slaves operating in the United States

per person was thirty-nine energy slaves per

person. Every individual, if you have a family

of ve, you come pretty close to two hundred

slaves working for each family. But energy

slaves are really inanimate, in contradistinction

to a millionone slave per familyof human

slaves. Suddenly you have two hundred non-

human slaves doing the work. An enormous

step up in the standard of l iving is represented,

as well as doing away with the inhumane idea

of the human being being the muscle machine

to be commanded. That that change had tak-

en place in such a short period of timeabout

a hundred and thirty year changeI felt I was

discovering something very, very dramatic.

And now I went into the gures in 1940 even

more deeply because by then World War IIwas thoroughly looming, and a great deal

of the energy being generated in the United

States was going toward war production. So

I deducted from the total energy that I would

be considering any energy that could be

identied as going toward anything that had

to do with war. To see then how much energy

was actually beneting the family, the human

beings; if the energy was producing a highway

for them to go on, I made that primarily for

them and not for the war, whatever that might

be. I made as strict an accounting as I could

moreofhumanity


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a very new relationship.

In 1951, I marked on my chart, the critical

year would be 1970. Using my acceleration it

could be somewhere between 1970 and 1975

The most accelerated point would be 1970

and the least accelerated would be 1975. Thisis the critical period and the curve really did get

exactly there at 1970. So we crossed, weve

been going through a very, very critical time

right now. Because this is the point where, I

say, it is now being clearly demonstrated to

humanity that something is going on, if he is

not so myopic and shortsighted as not to really

look at such curves. I am really astonished at

how little people will l ook at them.

This kind of awareness that made me want

to develop what I called a World Game to try

to make it as quickly as possible to make it

clear to all humanity what its options were,

that changes are going on. There are very big

things going on in nature here. I spoke to you

about our all coming out of some common

womb of permitted ignorance, with enough

cushion of resources by which, by trial-and-

error to make mistake after mistake, to learn

what were learning. And this is a very extraor-

dinary moment, I nd; suddenly there isall

around the worldliteracy. This wasnt there

when I was young.

I found that curve was increasing so rapidly

that the curve in exactly 2000 AD, we came to

100% of humanity would be enjoying a high

standard of living. I saw that that curve could

be accelerated, so I made an acceleration

curve on my 1951 publishing of this curve andwhen I took the slower rate, the constant rate

of radius, and I found that (this 1951), as of

1970, the curve went through fty per cent

of humanity.

Historically, ninety-nine per cent and more

of humanity were have-nots they were in

dire need, and revolution was really rampant.

The many would say the fewer are enjoying

unfairly, and we have to get up and do some-

thing about it. When you go by fty per cent,

I saw for the rst time in history, the majority

begins to be haves, rather than have-nots.

This would bring about a different way of

looking at things. Those who were haves

would probably nd much more information

than they ever had before, found they really

couldnt enjoy that have-ness as long as they

had awareness of the dire have-not-ness of

the others. At any rate, this would be a critical

point where, for the rst time, you would not

have the majority rising up to pull down the

top. You might really have, then, the tendency

of the majority, being on top, to pull the bottom

up. This seemed to be, probably,

werehavenots

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B I GP I C

T U R E


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THIN

K ING

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THINKING

DISCIPLINE

Fuller: I am going to review two or three ways

in which I discipline myself to try to get myself

thinking in a little more adequate manner

concerning what we know of our Universe and

what may be going on in a larger way, and to

try to get things a little better proportioned. As

for instance, I would like to have a picture of

our Milky Way galaxy may I have that picture

please?

MILKY WAY

Were looking at an array of starsyou can

see the Milky Way running through the stars.

The number of stars you are looking at is about

18,000, and they comprise approximately

1/6,000,000 of all the stars in our Milky Way

galaxy. We now know, and we have been able

to get our great telescopes trained on other

galaxies and so forth; we now have taken

photographs and are aware of a billion such

galaxies of a hundred billion stars each*.

LITTLE EARTH

Were looking at an exploding phenomenon. I

spoke about those hundred million galaxies* of

a hundred million stars each. 99.9% of them

are invisible to our naked eye, but their sizesare of great, great magnitude. To get a little

idea, our own star Sunour Earth is 8,000 of

miles in diameter and the diameter of the Sun

is just a hundred times that, so our little Earth

looks very tiny against that enormous big ball.

OUR SMALL SUN

But our star Sun is a small star. Most of you

are familiar with Orions Belt. In Orions Belt,

one of the two bright stars is reddish in colorand this is Betelgeuse. Betelgeuses diameter

is greater than the diameter of the orbit of the

Earth around the Sun. So thats a good

size star.

andyouand I are


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HUMANS ARE INVISIBLE

So, we are a little planet of a rather inferior star

which is one of a hundred bil lion stars in our

galaxy and we know of billions* of galaxies. So

you get an idea of our little planet, and you andI are utterly invisible on it. We take pictures of

our planet coming in from the moon, when you

can see through the cloud cover, you can see

the blue of the waters and brown of the l and,

but you cant make out a human being. You

cant even make out a mountain, let alone a

human being.

MOUNTAINS ARE

INVISIBLETheres absolutely no visibility of a mountain

because the aberration of the deepest water

ve miles below sea level, ve miles above

to the mountain topten miles aberration in

8,000 miles is so meager that a polished steel

ball is probably rougher than that.

WE ARE REALLY SMALL

So we are absolutely invisible on a really

negligible little tiny planet of a rather negligible

star, which is one member of a hundred billion

of known million billion such stars. So you

multiply the billion times a hundred billion and

youll get an idea.

BURSTING

PHENOMENON

As we look at things at great distances, this

picture that I have of the this is of a bursting

phenomena in the heavens which looks like a

tiny little light and it keeps remaining like a tiny

light. Its such a distance, and the distances

involved are so great. This particular phenome-

non is expanding at a velocity of 3 million miles

an hour. For instance, the distance between

the earth and the sun is 92 mill ion. So in 30

hours, just a little over a day, this expands the

complete distance between the earth and the

sun. Yet it remains for the thousands of years

we may be looking at it like a little tiny speck

there in the sky. You get a li ttle sense of the

size and deceptiveness to us in the magnitude

of the information we are really dealing

in today.

utterly invisible

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SEEING 11.5 BILLION

TIMES 6.5 TRILLION

MILES

I am quite condent, this is as far as you and

I have been able to when I say you and I, I

mean all our fellows the human beings who

have been born naked and helpless and nally

discovered principles of the refraction of li ght

and developed the telescope, and have been

able to make a sweep-out. We are getting

information tiny as we are, we have informa-

tion of an approximate spherical sweep-out of

observation of eleven-and-a-half billion light-

year radius. A light-year is six and one-half

trillion miles; when you get to eleven-and-a-half

billion times six-and-one-half trillion, you get alittle idea of the distance you and I are getting

information from reliable information. We get

the rate at which this thing is expanding.

SPECTROSCOPE

And through the spectroscope we learn about

refraction of light. Through the spectroscope

we are able to take the li ght from all those

observations. And each chemical element has

its unique frequencies when incandescent,

and we have been able then to l ittle human

beings on our planet have been able to take

inventory of the relative abundance of chemical

elements in the sweep-out of eleven-and-a-half

billion light-year observation.

SIGNIFICANCE OF

HUMAN BEINGS

That we have that kind of capability, despite

our absolutely negligible magnitude physically,

that we can we deal with our minds in such

magnitudes and do so quite reliably gives us a

hint that human beings must have some very

great signicance in the scheme.

INFORMATION

INCREASE

Just making a little jump in information. As

humanity on board of our planet entered

into what it called World War I, the scientists

around the world had ways of reporting to one

another ofcially. Chemists have what they

call chemical abstracts. Chemical abstracts

are methodical publications of anything and

everything any chemist nds that he publishes

information regarding, it becomes a chemical

tinyasweare we


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abstract. As the world entering World War I,

in what we call the 20th century (which is a

very arbitrary kind of a counting matter), we

had some 100 - Im doing this off the top of

my head from my memory - about 175,000

known substances, possibly almost a quarter

of a million substances, by the time the United

States came into the war, known to chemistry.

But we came out of World War I with almost

a million substances known. By the time we

entered World War II, we were well up to 10

million and weve come out of it now, where

the gure is really getting to be astronomical.

We cant really keep track of the rate at which

we are discovering more, just talking about

differentiable substances, chemically distinct

from one another.

ACCELERATION

OF INFORMATION AND

EXPERIENCE

Those are typical of the information release at

a bursting rate now, Im speaking now in rela-

tionship to my own life. One life in the extraor-

dinary numbers of lives there must have been

on board of our planet. That the information is

multiplying at that rate during just one lifetime

indicates that something is going on here right

now that is utterly unprecedented.

TRANSITION TO A NEW

RELATIOSHIP WITH

UNIVERSE

And there is such an indication of an accelera-

tion of experiences of human beings, the inte-

gration of the accelerated experience to pro-

duce awareness that are indicative of humanity

going through some very, very important kind

of transition into some kind of new relationship

to Universe, Id say, the kind of acceleration

that occurs after the child has been formed in

the womb, taking the nine months, then sud-

denly begins to issue from the womb out into

an entirely new world. I think we are appar-

ently coming out of some common womb of

designedly permitted ignorance.

have information

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EARTHIANSCRITICAL


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M OM

E N T

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The following transcripts were taken from a dialogue

while playing World Game (Integrity Day, June 1983).

RBF: We nd that the averagethere are a number

of different size atomic bombs. The total devastation

at varies, but they average on this map here 5/16 of

an the inch total devastation. There are now 50,000bombs waiting to go. We nd that the little, i n the

game of bingo, the little pink lozengetransparent

lozenge chipsand they are just 5/16th of an inch,

or the size of the average devastation of the atomic

bombs. There are 50,000 ready to go.

So were going to put the 50,000 here. Were not

putting them on the water. Were only putting them

in the dry land where the people can be. This is one

of them.

Youve got a crew? Five or six people?

Participant: Were all ready.

RBF: All right, lets go.

Participant: So youve got 50,000 of these things?

RBF: Yeah. Only on the dry land. Only on the dry

land. Dont put them on the North Pole. We need

more over here. If they are expertly spread out,

youll nd we get really complete coverage of all

humanity. In other words, the capability to kill all

humanity in half an hour, because really when the

bombs start off, the automated responses are just

going to mean all of them going off. The idea about

limited atomic warfare is absolute junk, a complete

lie to humanity. These are all doubled up pretty

much. At any rate, you get a good feeling now of

the utter devastation. If we hadnt had all the people

standing up there now, youd see what youve

got. You have a way of brushing these up, Jaime?

Youve got brushes ready? Will you remove

them now?

Participant: Somebody said its easier to drop them

than to pick them up.

RBF: You bet. Heres our world absolutelyits

gone, and thats why Im talking to you today about

integrity. I think if the individual humans as an inven-

tion are incapable of demonstrating integrity, then

the invention human is going to turn out to be an

unreliable invention, and the Universe will not need

it anymore. So, if this happens, its simply because

weve failed as individuals in being able to pass the

examination, which we are all entering into now.Were already in it. The crisis is already on us. You

see how really terribly thick they are here.

As of 1970, keeping track of all the environment

controlling, all the logistics of thinking about total

planetfor Spaceship Earth, in 1970, we passed

a threshold where it could be demonstrated,

engineering-wise, that if we took all the metals going

into armaments and put them into what you call

livingry, instead of killingry, that within a design revo-

lution of only ten years we could have all humanity

living at a higher standard of l iving than anybody

had ever known, on a completely sustainable basis,while phasing out forever all further use of fossil

fuels and atomic energy. We could live entirely on

our energy income. Now this is absolutely clear in

1970, we passed that threshold. For the rst time in

history, I knew it Obsolete did not have to be you or

me! That war was obsolete!

But howbecause of the invisibility of all these

things Im telling youhow difcult it is for me to get

you to understand just tensegrity structures. How

quickly can I get humanity all the information neces-

sary in this invisible reality, with all the specializa-

tion, where no specialist is standing up there in the

university saying, The mans right. Fullers right.

Theyre all so specialized - they dont deal with

things comprehensively the way I do.

At any rate, you understand my sense of responsi-

bility when you trust me with your time. I do know,

now, the time has come, it is now there, and its

up to you, its a matter of i ntegrity, to really check

up on what Im saying, to really nd out, yes, it istrue, and how do you get word to humanity quickly

enough so those who are making decisions in great

political systems, which are very emotional, before

they do then say, It has to be you or me, and

whos going to push that bomb?

We have very little time before we blow ourselves off

the Earth to really discover that invisible integrity of

Universe, that we do have a new phase of potential

existence operating. It has nothing to do with any-

body earning a living ever again. Its a matter of how

do each one of us, really. . . . Each human being

has a drive to demonstrate competence. How do

we then let humanity really gratify itself, not equatingwork with earning a living? Because everybody has

atomic warfare


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a living, youre not worried about that at all. Where

its a question, How could I be allowed to be in the

production team? and so forth. How can I be part

of the creation? So I see that as a great new phase

that will come in if we dont blow ourselves up.

So I feel your personal responsibility is why I felt we

must get to Integrity Days. Because we must really

examine what you can do individually, as a human

being, if you really understand somethingyou do

have the cogency now to really understand what Im

saying. It does not have to be you or me, for the rst

time in history! Its not something about people be-

ing wrong before. This is an evolutionary stage!

Many, many times in history when clearly there

was nowhere nearly enough to go around, all kinds

of circumstances in which that could occur, and

if there was also, many times when that occurred

there were a great many people who were dying or

would like to get out of the game, and I said, under

those circumstances I can see how it was really

integrity for the head of a healthy family to look out

for his family, to be -in other words, you could really

ndselshness could be rationalized under condi-

tions where there was nowhere nearly enough to

go around and you were looking out for your family.

You say God gave you that responsibility and you

think your family are really worthy to be survivors.

I also said that when we get to the point where we

now know on our planetwhich I have been trying

to make very clearthere is now enough to go

around, for everybody to live at the highest standard

of living weve ever had. Therefore, from now on,selshness is no longer integrity!

Looking at it as the spaceship that it is, theres just

one spaceship here. Its the only one were going

to get. What are the total known resources, and

what is the total knowledge, and how do we use

those total resources and knowledge for everybody

on board this ship? Absolutely give no attention

whatsoever to nations ever again. It must be really

how to make it work for everybody. Thats what Im

talking about. Were now talking about making it

work for everybody.

Where there is really adequate food, at the present

timefor instance, in relation to food, every day of

the year, year around, if you think about a stadium

of 75,000 people, its really quite a l arge crowd,

isnt it? Every day 75,000 people die of starvation

despite the fact that we have plenty of food for eve-

ryone. Our distribution systems, our nations, all the

different kind of separatenessit blocks the whole

thing. Just think of itsimply because were badly

organized, were not taking care of it. That would be

typical then.

So Im talking about everybody having proper suste-

nance. Im talking about everybody being properly

protected, clothing-wise,

building-wise, sanitary-wise, everything you need

physically, taken care of, and a very great deal of

accommodation of your wants, over and above your

absolute needsyour travel capability and so forth.

Thats what Im talking aboutstandard of living in

that way.

Im not saying whether youre going to be happy ornot. But Im saying youre gaining this capability not

at the expense of others. Youre gaining it by virtue

of using our minds and our knowledge and our

experience to make it work for everybody.

You will not equate work with earning a living. This

is very important. Every human being has a deep

drive within them to demonstrate competence to

themselves and to others. Its going to be the great-

est privilege of all in a new kind of world like that,

to be allowed to be on the production team. It will

have nothing to do with earning a living, nothing to

do with upset.

Were talking about a new kind of socialism, a so-

cialism of four-and-a-half-billion billionaires. Its not

a socialism of pulling the top down and sharing the

misery, its a matter of pulling the bottom up and do-

ing so, only because we now can do so much more

with each pound of material, each erg of energy,

each second of time. The increase has been about

99-fold. Thats the only thing that makes it possible.

So its a new moment in the history of humanity.

Thats what is difcult to get over. If I can get to you

in enough so you can personally look into it a little

more, then part of your integrity then will be for you

to do your best to get other people to realize what

Im saying is so! Youre going to nd theres an

enormous number of people who dont know this is

so, that we actually have the option to make it.

is absolute junk

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ONLYINTE-

GRITY


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IS GOING TO COUNT

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Excerpt from interview February 26, 1983

Interviewer: If or when we accomplish a

hundred percent physically successful world,

what is the next step? Can we rely on humans

to progress without physical need?

RBF: I would like to come back to my earlier

questions of myself of why were humans

included in the Universe? I think I did discuss

that earlier, didnt I?

Interviewer:Yes.

HUMANS AS LOCAL

PROBLEM SOLVERS

RBF: I didand that we are here as local

information harvesters, local problem-solvers

in support of the integrity of eternally regen-

erative Universe. The fact that we get away

from physical problems doesnt mean we go

away from problems. The problems are really

rarely physical. Much greater involves just the

integrity of problems. The question of integrity

will get ner and ner and more delicate and

more beautiful.

Interviewer: Next question. A study of one

thousand adolescents in Boston showed that

seventy per cent are extremely pessimistic

about the future, to the point where they dont

expect to have any future. In your travels, have

you sensed this kind of pessimism among

young people, and do you have any sugges-

tions on how to convey to them your convic-

tion that we are capable of making the world a

hundred per cent physical success?

RBF: Well, I told you I nd people only listen

to you when they ask you to talk to them, and

I do travel around speaking a very, very great

deal, and I have certainly been back to Boston

many, many times.

UNDERSTANDING

DESIGN REVOLUTION

It certainly is true, I nd audience after audi-ence did not know we have an option to

make it. There is no way they could, unless

theyIve said its so difcult, because, in the

rst place, you have to get into technology very

deeply to understand what I call the design

revolution. They have to be involved where Ive

told you just aboutknowing what the uses of

tin are and where it is.

weredealing in


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INVISIBLE REALITY

And so I nd, because were dealing in an

invisible reality and humanity is so specialized,

it is very difcult for them to understand from

one person to another.

At any rate, when I have an audience, I never

have an audience that doesnt come outvery

rarely, youve been with me many timesthey

almost always give a standing ovation. In other

words, I nd the audiences very excited. But

then they come and say to me, Your optimism

has brushed off on me. I didnt know we had

an option. I feel so much better. They say,

Your optimism. And I am not optimistic or

pessimistic. I feel that optimism and pessimism

are very unbalanced. I am a very hard engi-

neer. I am a mechanic. I am a sailor. I am an

air pilot. I dont tell people I can get you across

the ocean with my ship unless I know what Im

talking about.

WE HAVE THE OPTION

TO MAKE IT

So, I think its absolutely touch-and-go

whether were going to make it. But the point

is, for me to tell you that you have an option is

not to be optimistic.

But in real answer to that question, time and

again, of course I am running into millions who

dont know we have the option, because its

invisible, and I feel I have tremendous respon-

sibility. So when people ask me to come and

talk to them, I do my best to let them know

they do have the option. Of course theyre

pessimistic, not knowing that. Incidentally, I

dont mean to be sitting up here like a great

wisdom. These are questions Im answering

the best I can.

Interviewer: How would you, right now in

your life, dene integrity?

COURAGE: A COMPONENT

OF INTEGRITY

RBF: I nd that I have to use the word cour-

age, due to the circumstances of humanity.

The courage to cooperate or initiate are based

entirely on the truth, the whole truth, and

nothing but the truth as the divine mind within

you tells you the truth is. It really does require a

courage and a self-disciplining to go along with

that truth. Thats the way I dene it.

Interviewer:A lot of what we are all asking

is, what do we do, what do we need to do, to

have an impact on bringing about the realiza-

tion of a successful world?

an invisible reality

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INTEGRITY IN THE LITTLE

THINGS

RBF: No. Integrity, for my part is, I can, my

experience is such and such, I have such and

such a memory. I have various conceptionings,everybody else has that, and my integrity i s

something else. Its, for instance, the terribly

simple little things. If Im going to be able to

keep on being able to be usefulbecause I

see I have a lot of things still to be donethere

are still several more books to write. Twenty-

four books have been nished. Theres more

technology to be done, there are all kinds of

things I can see where I could really be useful

if Im around.

WEAPONRY TO LIVINGRY

As we make various transitionsif we can get

to the point where the Boeing Company, Lock-

heed, and so forth, begin producing livingry

instead of a great deal of ghting ships and so

forth. So, I say, Ive got to stay healthy. And I

mustnt get fat. So just not eating that mouth-

ful of that is part of that i ntegrity all the time.

Youre always up against it, and its not as if

anybody else can come in and do any scoring.

Youre really doing your own scoring. We know

DOING YOUR OWN

THINKING

RBF: Darling, I say I never try to tell anybodyelse what to do, number one. And number

two, I think thats what the individual is all

about. Each one of us has something to

contribute. This really depends on each one

doing their own thinking, but not following any

kind of rule that I can give out, any command.

Were all on the frontier, were all in a great

mysteryincredibly mysterious. Each one pos-

sesses exactly what each one is working out,

and what each one works out relates to their

particular set of circumstances of any one day,

or any one place around the world.

Interviewer: In that way, do you nd for

yourself, that integrity is almost a guide for you

in the sense of, by feeling an integrity in a situ-

ation, is that a guide for you towards knowing

when you have a set of options, or when you

have to make decisions, does that play a part

in knowing what you need to do next?

in some kind of


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about thatabout every little detail of our life

whether this is the thing we really ought to be

doing. Thats it, darling.

HUMANITY IN OUR

FINAL EXAM

So I have to say, I think that we are in some

kind of nal examination as to whether human

beings now, with this capability to acquire in-

formation and to communicate, whether were

really qualied to take on the responsibili ty

were designed to be entrusted with. And this

is not a matter of an examination of the types

of governments, nothing to do with poli tics,

nothing to do with economic systems. It has to

do with the individual. Does the individual havethe courage to really go along with the truth?

INTEGRITY OF

THE INDIVIDUAL

Now you have the ability to communicate, you

dont have to say, I didnt know what was

going on because I was illiterate. I do know

whats going on and I have very much of a

sense of what is really validwhat my life tells

me works or doesnt work, this is the truth or

not the truth. So it is this matter of the integrity

of the individual, the courage, the courage to

go along with the truth as you personally really

see itor are you going to be swayed by the

crowd? Are you going to be scared about

your job, or whatever it may be? Thats why I

talk about integrity. Integrity of the individual is

what were being judged for and if we are not

passing that examination, we dont really have

the guts, well blow ourselves up. It will be all

over. I think its all the difference in the world.

GROWTH OF LITERACY

MEANS MORE RESPON-

SIBILITY

When I was born, humanity was 95 per cent

illiterate. Since Ive been born, the populationhas doubled and that total population is now

65 per cent literate. Thats a gain of 130-fold

of the literacy. When humanity is primarily

illiterate, it needs leaders to understand and

get the information and deal with it. When we

are at the point where the majority of humans

them-selves are literate, able to get the infor-

mation, were in an entirely new relationship

to Universe. We are at the point where the

integrity of the individual counts and not what

the political leadership or the religious leader-

ship says to do.

NEW MOMENT

OF INTEGRITY

Its a matter now of humanity getting to the point where

its now qualifying to make some of its own decisions inrelation to its own information. Thats why weve come to

a new moment of integrity.

final examination

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