An Average Human

Striving To Make A Difference

Bucky Fuller was an average human being. In almost every one of his “thinking out loud” talks, he would emphasize that he was simply an average human being, and that everyone could accomplish all that he had done and more. This is essentially the same statement made by Jesus and other spiritual teachers, and I have found that it holds true for us all. Not that I claim to have achieved anything like Bucky was able to accomplish in his brief 87 years of life or his 56 year experiment to determine and document what one individual could accomplish that could not be achieved by any organization, corporation or institution no matter how large or powerful.

Still, like most people, I strive to make the greatest difference that I can while recognizing that I, too, am an average human being – no better or worse than the next person but with my own unique set of God given skills and talents. Each of us has such gifts and we have been put here to discover and share them our fellow crewmembers on the fragile planet that Bucky labeled Spaceship Earth. And at no time in the known history of humans is this more important than right now as we stand on the verge of what Bucky labeled “humanity’s final examination.”

We have to the ability to choose Utopia or Oblivion (another of Bucky’s terms and the title of one of his books), and the ones who will make that decision are not corporate, military or government “leaders.” It will be the average humans like you and me because we are in fact the majority of the population of the planet, and we have unique talents and gifts that can contribute greatly to the success of all humankind.

This may sound strange given the news and popular culture that we are fed through our media, but we have to realize that such information is controlled by a small group of individuals who operate on the same principle that those in power have used to govern for most of human existence. Bucky explained it quite simply – divide and conquer and to keep conquered keep divided.

As long as we believe that we are separate and that we need to fight for our share of the planet’s resources, we will continue to be divided and conquerable. Once we recognize that we have in fact reached a point in human evolution where there are enough resources to support everyone on Earth and begin acting on that premise, everything will shift. Then, you and I as average humans will begin to see just how important we really can be and how much of a contribution we can make with our God-given talents. More important, we can share those talents without the burden of having to put them in the marketplace for the highest bidder. The average human then becomes just as significant as the corporate CEO or governmental head of state because each of us has something important to offer.

Bucky realized this in the late 1920’s when he began his experiment using himself as “Guinea Pig B.” Since he had no money or connections, he had to find something that an average human being had access to that was not available to any organization or institution. That “something” is the ability to think and to take action. Only individual humans can do these two vital things, and he used that simple insight to make an enormous difference even though he always referred to himself as an average human.

The same can be true for you or me except that technology has provided us with even more power and potential than Bucky had available to him. Even during the last few years of his life few people could communicate quickly or massively as is true today with the Internet. Also, not many average humans had access to affordable travel that could take them anywhere in the world in less than a day.

Some people did have the use of telephones, televisions and airplanes, but just a couple decades ago even the most wealthy people did not have the ability to do what we are doing right now - communicating globally on a massive scale from one individual to another. In 1987 when I wrote my book Buckminster Fuller’s Universe, the only way to make it available to the mass market was through a major publisher, and few new authors were able to break through the commercial barriers that kept their books from audiences.

Today, however, any average human with access to the Internet can create a website or blog and begin to share their ideas. Those ideas may or may not be accepted by other people, but they have the potential to make a major difference in the lives of millions of people. We need only consider phenomena such as The Secret, Chicken Soup for the Soul or Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus to realize how quickly a seemingly obscure idea can become an icon of popular culture that makes an enormous impact.

What most people fail to realize is that each of those concepts started out as the idea of a single average human. No corporation, religion, institution or organization came up with the idea or the new spin on the idea that caught hold of the public’s imagination. Certainly, as these and other such ideas moved into the spotlight, corporations entered into the picture, getting on the bandwagon of profit. But even the idea of getting involved with an up and coming concept does not come from an organization. It comes from an average individual within that organization.

It’s people just like you and me who make things happen – both good things and bad. We have the ability to make a positive impact on all humankind with the simplest of ideas if we follow through with our action. That’s what Bucky did. His ideas were not instantly accepted. In fact, many of them have yet to be accepted or adopted even today as we find more and more of his predictions coming to be true.