SustainabilityKey To Physical SuccessSustainability is more important to the physical welfare of humankind and every living being on Earth than almost anything else. We have passed the “point of no return” regarding our survival and success on the tiny sphere Bucky labeled Spaceship Earth. He created that term after being constantly bombarded with technical and philosophical questions regarding his opinion on the possibility of space travel. Even back in the 1930’s his answer always revolved around the reality that we are all currently space travelers on a perfectly designed vessel.Although we are traveling at thousands of miles per hour on a planet / vessel designed to take care of our every need on a sustainable basis for tens of thousands of years, most of us do not realize or remember that basic fact. We believe that we are stuck in whatever location we find ourselves, when, in fact, nothing could be farther from the truth. Our planet is constantly traveling and spinning in a perfectly choreographed dance of life with other planet-beings and space objects. Bucky was continually reminding people of that broad perspective in his words and actions. And he was reminding us that Nature (God, Great Spirit, Source, Higher Power or whatever term you choose to use) had designed our Earth to sustain life, both human and in other forms. Nature is the perfect design engineer, never using too much or too little resources to accomplish a task. There is not one sliver of waste in Nature’s sustainable designs, and those are the designs that Bucky sought to emulate. He was constantly designing and preaching sustainable design in which nothing is wasted and every resource is recycled. More important, he didn’t begin his sustainability crusade toward the end of his life (1970’s – 83) when others were starting to realize the wisdom of his thinking and actions. Instead he began talking about sustainability in the 1930’s when almost everyone believed that we could forever continue mining our planet for resources. For most of Bucky’s life, that was a very strange concept to espouse. People simply did not realize that we were using up Nature’s savings account, which seems to have been stored up for our development but not for our continued growth and unconscious greed. Bucky was constantly striving to better the life of every crewmember traveling onboard Spaceship Earth, and a sustainable, autonomous life was and remains key to that vision. Each of us needs to be interdependent rather than independent or codependent. Either as communities or individuals, we need to get ourselves disconnected from every “grid” that charges us for services be it electricity, sewage, water, natural gas or even connectivity to the Internet. All this and more was provided at no charge by the Source that created us and this perfectly designed planet. Just because humans have developed the resources that were already prevalent and abundant in Nature for our own use does not mean that those who wield power should be allowed to charge those who don’t have great power for access to those resources and make them less viable to sustainability. The resources are as bountiful as air and connecting people up to them to make money is simply not in the best interest of everyone. People in power have yet to figure out a way to charge for the air we breathe, but they would if they could, just as they have done with water.
In a sustainable society, everything will be recycled and charges will not be levied on anyone for the necessary resources of life. This may appear to be a fanciful dream, but it was the world that Bucky and many futurists envision. In fact, a great many people are now coming to the realization that this is the only option we will survive much less to thrive. We have reached the point where it has to be a win for everyone or no one. This is the time when we are being forced to create “a world that works for everyone,” and Bucky’s vision of a sustainable society is critical to that creation.
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