Self- Disciplines of Buckminster Fuller 141

Figure 21

The big question remained: How do you obtain the money to live with and
to acquire the materials and tools with which to work?
The answer was "precession." What precession is, and why it was the an-
swer, requires some explaining.
When we pull away from one another the opposite rigid-disc ends of a
flexible, water-filled rubber cylinder, the middle part of the overall cylinder
contracts in a concentric series of circular planes of diminishing radius per-
pendicular (at right angles) to the line of our pulling.
When we push toward one another on the two opposite ends of the same
flexible, water-filled, rubber, rigid-disk-ended cylinder, the center of the cyl-
inder swells maximally outward in a circular plane perpendicular (at right
angles) to the line of our pushing together.
When we drop a stone in the water, a circular wave is generated that
moves outwardly in a plane perpendicular (at right angles) to the line of

stone-dropping the outwardly expanding circular wave generates (at nine-

FlGURE 22.


142 Critical Path

ty degrees) a vertical wave that in turn generates an additional horizontally

and outwardly expanding wave, and so on.
All these right-angle effects are processional effects. Precession is the effect

of bodies in motion on other bodies in motion. The Sun and Earth are both
in motion. Despite the 180-degree gravitational pull of the in-motion Sun
upon the in-motion Earth, precession makes Earth orbit around the Sun in

a direction that is at ninety degrees i.e., at a right angle to the direction

of the Sun's gravitational pull upon Earth.
The successful regeneration of life growth on our planet Earth is ecologi-
cally accomplished always and only as the precessional right-angled
"side effect" of the biological species' chromosomically programmed indi-

vidual-survival preoccupations the honeybees are chromosomically pro-

grammed to enter the flower blossoms in search of honey. Seemingly
inadvertently (but realistically-precessionally) this occasions the bees' bum-
bling tail's becoming dusted with pollen (at ninety degrees to each bee's lin-

ear axis and flight path), whereafter the bees' further bumbling entries into
other flowers inadvertently dusts off, pollenizes, and cross-fertilizes those

flowers at right angles (precessionally) to the bees' operational axis so, too,

do all the mobile creatures of Earth cross-fertilize all the different rooted
botanicals in one or another precessional (right-angled), inadvertent way.
Humans, as honey-money-seeking bees, do many of nature's required
tasks only inadvertently. They initially produce swords with metal-forging-
developed capability, which capability is later used to make steel into farm
plows. Humans in politically organized, group-fear-mandated acquisition
of weaponry have inadvertently developed so-much-more-performance-
with-so-much-less material, effort, and time investment per each technologi-
cal task accomplished as now inadvertently to have established a level of
technological capability which, if applied exclusively to peaceful purposes,

>

Figure 23.
Self-Disciplines of Buckminster Fuller 143

V, ( f *
~*
( Sun I < O Eartn

Figure 24.

can provide a sustainable high standard of living for all humanity, which
accomplished fact makes war and all weaponry obsolete. Furthermore, all
of this potential has happened only because of the at-ninety-degrees-realized
generalized technology and science "side effects" or "fall-out" inadvertently
discovered as special case manifest of the scientifically generalized principle
of precession.
At the 1927 outset of project "Guinea Pig B" I assumed that humanity
was designed to perform an important function in Universe, a function it

would discover only after an initially innocent by-trial-and-error-discovered

phase of capability development. During the initial phase humans, always
born naked, helpless, and ignorant but with hunger, thirst, and curiosity to
drive them, have been chromosomically programmed to operate successfully
only by means of the general biological inadvertencies of bumbling "honey-
seeking." Therefore, what humans called the side effects of their conscious
drives in fact produced the main ecological effects of generalized technologi-
cal regeneration. I therefore assumed that what humanity rated as "side ef-
fects" are nature's main effects. I adopted the precessional "side effects" as

my prime objective.
So preoccupied with its honey-money bumbling has society been that the
ninety-degree side effects of the century-old science of ecology remained
long unnoticed by the populace. Ecology is the world-around complex in-
tercomplementation of all the biological species' regenerative intercyclings
with nature's geological and meteorological transformation recyclings. So-
ciety discovered ecology only when its economically sidewise discards of un-
profitable substances became so prodigious as to pollutingly frustrate
nature's regenerative mainstream intersupport. Society's surprise "discov-
ery" of ecology in the 1960s constituted its as-yet-realistically-unresponded-
to discovery of nature's main effects ergo, of precession. It is a safe guess
144 Critical Path

that not more than one human in 10 million is conceptually familiar with
and sensorially comprehending of the principle of "precession."
In 1927 I reasoned that if humans' experiences gave them insights into
what nature's main objectives might be, and if humans committed them-
selves, their lifetimes, and even their dependents and all their assets toward
direct, efficient, and expeditious realization of any of nature's comprehen-
sive evolutionary objectives, nature might realistically support such a main
precessional commitment and all the ramifications of the individual's devel-
opmental needs, provided that no one else was trying to do what the pre-
cessionally committed saw needed to be done. Precession cannot be
accomplished competitively. Precession cannot respond to angularly redun-
dant forces. It can, however, respond to several angularly nonredundant
forces at a given time.
Since nature was clearly intent on making humans successful in support
of the integrity of eternally regenerative Universe, it seemed clear that if I

undertook ever more humanly favorable physical-environment-producing

artifact developments that in fact did improve the chances of all humanity's
successful development, it was quite possible that nature would support my
efforts, provided I were choosing the successively most efficient technical

means of so doing. Nature was clearly supporting all her intercomplemen-

tary ecological regenerative tasks ergo, I must so commit myself and must
depend upon nature providing the physical means of realization of my in-

vented environment-advantaging artifacts. I noted that nature did not re-

quire hydrogen to "earn a living" before allowing hydrogen to behave in the

unique manner in which it does. Nature does not require that any of its in-

tercomplementing members "earn a living."

Because I could see that this precessional principle of self-employment
was a reasonably realistic possibility (though to the best of my knowledge
never before consciously adopted and tested by others), I resolved to adopt
such a course formally, realizing that there would be no human who could
authorize my doing so nor any authority able to validate my decision so to
do. I saw that there would be no humans to evaluate my work as it pro-
ceeded nor to tell me what to do next.

I went on to reason that since economic machinery and logistics consist

of bodies in motion, since precession governs the interbehaviors of all bodies

in motion, and since human bodies are usually in motion, precession must
govern all socioeconomic behaviors. Quite clearly humans do orbit at ninety

degrees to the direction of their interattractions orbiting elliptically

around one another's most attractively dominant neighbors, as do also gal-

axies within supergalaxies and all the stars, moons, comets, asteroids, star-
dust particles, unattached molecules, atoms, and the electrons within the
Self-Disciplines of Buckminster Fuller 145

atoms. All orbit their respectively most interattractively dominant nuclei of

the moment. I recognized that overall interproximities vary and that New-
ton's law of system interattractiveness varies inversely at a second-power
rate of the mathematical distances intervening as well as in respect to the
product of the masses of any two considered bodies. All of the foregoing
evolutionary intertransformings I observed would occasion frequently
changing interdominances.
I assumed that nature would "evaluate" my work as I went along. If I

was doing what nature wanted done, and if I was doing it in promising
ways, permitted by nature's principles, I would find my work being econom-
ically sustained and vice versa, in which latter negative case I must quick-
ly cease doing what I had been doing and seek logically alternative courses

until I found the new course that nature signified her approval of by pro-
viding for its physical support.
Wherefore, I concluded that I would be informed by nature if I proceeded
in the following manner:

(A) committed myself, my wife, and our infant daughter directly to the de-
sign, production, and demonstration of artifact accommodation of the
most evident but as-yet-unattended-to human-environment-advantag-
ing physical evolutionary tasks, and
(B) paid no attention to "earning a living" in humanity's established eco-
nomic system, yet
(C) found my family's and my own life's needs being unsolicitedly provid-
ed for by seemingly pure happenstance and always only "in the nick
of time," and
(D) being provided for "only coincidentally," yet found
(E) that this only "coincidentally," unbudgetable, yet realistic support per-
sisted, and did so
(F) only so long as I continued spontaneously to commit myself unreserv-
edly to the task of developing relevant artifacts, and if I

(G) never tried to persuade humanity to alter its customs and viewpoints
and never asked anyone to listen to me and spoke informatively to oth-
ers only when they asked me so to do, and if I

(H) never undertook competitively to produce artifacts others were devel-

oping, and attended only to that which no others attended

then I could tentatively conclude that my two assumptions were valid:

(1) that nature might economically sustain human activity that served

directly in the "mainstream" realization of essential cosmic regenera-

tion, which had hitherto been accomplished only through seeming
146 Critical Path

"right-angled" side effects of the chromosomically focused biological

creatures; and (2) that the generalized physical law of precessional be-
haviors does govern socioeconomic behaviors as do also the general-
ized laws of acceleration and ephemeralization.

The 1927 precessional assumptions became ever-more-convincingly sub-

stantiated by experiences only the "impossible" continued to happen. I be-
came ever more convinced that I must go on developing artifacts that would
make possible humanity's successful accomplishment of survival activities
so much more logically and efficiently as to render the older, less efficient
ways to be spontaneously abandoned by humanity. I resolved never to at-
tack or oppose undesirable socioeconomic phenomena, but instead commit-
ted myself to evolving and cultivating tools that would accomplish
humanity's necessitous tasks in so much easier, more pleasant, and more ef-

ficient ways that, without thinking about it, the undesirable ways would be
abandoned by society. (I liked the popular 1944 song, "Accentuate the Pos-
itive, Eliminate the Negative.")
All the foregoing was, then, the precessional course I deliberately adopted
in 1927. I had only the remaining days of my life to invest. It involved swift

sorting out of the complex of design, production, testing, and demonstration

tasks to be performed. What was the order of inherent priorities and suc-
cessively overlapping interdependencies?
Socioeconomic precession by environment-controlling artifacts was a
strategic course that obviously could be steered only by maximum reliance

on our intuitive sensibilities, frequent position determination and course

correcting, plus constant attendance upon the thoughts evolvingly generated
by our commitment and its moment-to-moment, experience-produced new
insights into the relative significance of the whole family of evolving events.
It involved swift recognition and correction of all errors of judgment. It re-
quired being always "comprehensively considerate."

As navigational aids and "high-seas life-preserving devices" wisely to be

employed in sailing such a course in heretofore-uncharted socioeconomic
seas, I have patented every one of what seemed to me to be strategically im-

portant items amongst my inventions, and have done so as they occurred

in all economically relevant countries around the world. This has cost three-
fold any and all royalties ever accruing to those patents. I did so for the fol-

lowing reasons:
Having no academically earned scientific degrees I could not qualify for
membership in any scientific societies and could therefore not publish my