Architect and theorist Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller speaks on the discovery of the eternal pattern operative in the universe.
This recording was made available through a grant from the National Historical Publications & Records Commission.
Architect and theorist Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller speaks on the discovery of the eternal pattern operative in the universe.
This recording was made available through a grant from the National Historical Publications & Records Commission.
SPEAKER: Well, I'm just going to say a few things about the exercises that I give myself in trying to get myself into the right frame of mind to be useful in my thinking. Number one, I try to think about what do we know about man in universe, humans and universe. Our planet Earth, 8,000 miles in diameter. Our highest mountain, five miles above sea level. Deepest ocean, five miles below sea level. 10-mile differential between the outermost and innermost aberrations of our sphere.
And 10 miles in relation to 8,000 miles has become so inconsequential a magnitude. That as we now see coming in from the moon to the Earth, the astronauts photographs where there's not too much cloud cover, you can see our planet. And it looks like a polished marble ball of blue where the water is and brown. But no, you can't see any possible mountains at all.
On that little planet there, you and I are averaging between childhood and grown up, five feet. So I'm going to take an average height of five feet for all of humanity. It takes approximately 5,000 feet to a mile or to take 1,000 of us lying out on the ground head to foot to make a mile or if we could stand on one of those heads to make that.
So it would take 10,000 human beings to make the difference between the highest mountain and the deepest ocean. And we've already seen that that's an invisible magnitude as anybody-- just looking at that globe. So you and I are 1/10,000 of invisible on that globe. So we're fairly tiny.
Now our globe is a very small planet amongst the planets of the sun. And our star, the sun, is a very relatively small star amongst the stars. As for instance, it's very easy for us to see Orion's belt. In Orion's belt, there are two quite bright stars and the brightest is usually Betelgeuse. And Betelgeuse diameter is greater than the diameter of the orbiting of the Earth around the sun, to get an idea of a large star.
So our star, sun, is one of the hundred billion stars in our galaxy. And we now know with the Palomar sweep out of a billion such galaxies. We multiply those kind of numbers a billion times-- a hundred billion. And let's take the surface of a sphere, as I've often done in trying to work out geodesic domes and so forth studying spherical trigonometry, and the number of points that I would have on it that I might be interacting to make triangles. I'm talking about then a sphere which you'd have that many points.
And once you realize then that you and I making our observations from our little planet using the Palomar telescope, we then obviously have a spherical sweep out. In the spherical sweep out, the magnitude of the number of stars out there is really pretty much equivalent if we had a steel ball outside, there's a steel shell ball, then the numbers of atoms would be in that steel shell around us. Otherwise, we are-- and we don't know at all what the shape of universe is, or if there is any shape. Really assume there isn't any shape. But this is the little we now know about it.
And obviously in that kind of an array with the diameter of the swept out area 22 billion light years, radius of 11 billion light years, our little planet then making-- where we make these observations, couldn't be more negligible little point in the universe, almost negligible in this matter content. And you and I are even more negligible.
I'm quite confident that in that great arrangement that the sun is not saying to other stars, I'm not going to keep life going on that planet anymore. They haven't paid their bill. I'm quite confident that the universe is not saying, we can't afford another one of those galaxies. I'm quite confident the kind of language we hear, the way we look at problems on our planet is not in any way characterizing the way universe is really operating, and became extremely interesting to try to speculate, if I could, on how and why human beings are here on our planet.
Because despite our minitude, we have been able with our minds discovering principles to discover a very great deal as such as the data I just gave you. And we now have an inventory of the relative abundance of all the chemical elements, 92 regenerative chemical elements, present in all that great array, very reliable kind of an inventory.
So that little humans with that tiny stature physically, their metaphysical stature is very great. And that there could be-- I want to think about human beings and other biological species and amongst all the living species we know of, we find that human beings about halfway between the biggest and the littlest. But what is important about them is that all the other species other than the humans have some built-in capabilities, built-in tools to fit them out for a special excellence in unique environments.
As, for instance, a bird has the wings to fly, and the fish has its gills and its fins to do its swimming, but the fish can't come out and walk around on the land. And what man has, he doesn't have this built in equipment, but he does have own about a great many of the creatures who have brains. He has a brain and quite a large one, but it is-- what he has is mind. And I make a complete differentiation between brain and mind. And we don't find this mind characteristic in any of the other creatures, though they do have brains. And I'll give you, just as quickly as possible, this differentiation.
I think it's essential to trying to understand, if possible, how and why humans are on our planet, because we can find out why humans are on our planet. If we really are necessary to Universe, it's very important for us to know so. And we may really have an important function. And the quicker we learn about what that is, the better. In fact, we may just be growing into position where we can be asking such questions and get any kind of an important answer, but they didn't have enough information before to accruing to make it possible.
And thinking about then I said, mind being the prime of prime importance here, I find that also physically, if I would take-- how many of the 92 regenerative chemical elements are present in various biological species? We're finding the amoeba very few. And we find a little more in an oyster. But when we come to the human being, we find 91 of the regenerative chemical elements present or are-- those acceptability of the other chemical elements may not be present. But we find that human beings are a complex of principles chemically.
And in other ways, as gravitationally, radiationally, the human being has only really one counterpart in universe for its complexity, and that is the universe itself. Human being seems to be-- when I take relative abundance of chemical elements and other functions, I find that human being is the only thing in any way matches with universe itself. We seem to be almost miniature universes, that there should be such a fantastically minimal stature physically complex.
Embracing all these principles present on our planet would make you think-- we had to think about this quite attentively because it's just too complex and too important to have to be disregarded. Suddenly, I'm confident we're not here to be amused and to all the other stars just to be decorations for you and I for pleasant evening. And I'm quite confident that if we keep at this subject, we may find out [INAUDIBLE]. So now I'll come back to the differentiation of brain and mind.
The way I differentiate between brain and mind is as follows, [? Fowler's ?] experiment shows brains are always and only apprehending and remembering and recalling each special case experience. That's the man I saw sitting down there on that day at that place. And maybe I can remember it. That's what brain is dealing in. But mind and mind alone has a capability to discover relationships existing between the special cases where the information relative to any of the special case does not disclose such a relationship.
I'm going to give you-- going to really the beginnings of very important great classical science to the astronomical discoveries of Copernicus, Kepler, the experimental work done by Galileo on falling bodies and so forth. And coming to Isaac Newton's deep desire and drive to understand what the inter-attractions of these astronomical bodies might be that Kepler had indicated. And thinking about himself throwing a stone and seeing that he sent in this direction, but it was pulled towards the Earth.
He might throw it a little harder and go a little further before the Earth took it over, but Earth took it over very importantly. And he felt that this inter-attraction of Kepler's seemed to be in some way proportional to the mass involved, that the Earth was very powerful here. And he could see that the Earth and the moon had a very powerful interpull between them to pull the water of the Earth and the tides daily.
So he's then working on the hypothesis that one the most prominent things were the relative mass in the inter-tracks of any two bodies. He then worked out a hypothesis. It was great first law of motion, where he assumed that a body would continue in a straight line, except as affected by other bodies.
Then thinking particularly about the moon and the Earth where you have a lot of data about them, and he then developed a hypothetical line at which the moon would escape from the Earth and the Earth's mass was suddenly annihilated, suddenly releasing it to continue in a straight line. And figuring out against the astronomical data for a known evening a few weeks ahead for a given moment in that evening, he then figured a theoretical path at which the moon would travel if the Earth was suddenly annihilated.
Then on that particular evening at that time, he then measured the rate at which the moon was falling away from the theoretical line into the Earth, and found that the moon was falling into the Earth at a rate that exactly agreed with Galileo's observations and falling bodies, what you call accelerating acceleration. That is the number is multiplying itself. It is a second power acceleration-- we're talking about accelerating acceleration is a second power, rate of gain.
Therefore, Newton hypothesized that you first would multiply the mass of the Earth times the mass of the moon to get the relative inter-attraction in comparison to the inter-attraction between a potato and a golf ball. Then he found that apparently Galileo's rate of rate and his finding observation of the moon falling into the Earth, that apparently every time you halve the distance between the two masses the attraction increased fourfold. There was a second power.
And his observation then resolved-- made it possible to write such a formula. And as time went on, astronomers found this, did then explain astronomical behaviors in general. And later on, unexpect by him, as we got into the nuclear phenomena when there were no electromagnetics involved, the mass and attractions were predicted by Newton's law.
We have then-- there is nothing in the mass of the Earth by itself or the mass of the moon by itself that says the rate of inter-attraction is going to change. And suddenly, it doesn't say they're going to change at a rate of the second power. This is simply observationally discovered.
Our mind and mind alone has this ability to discover these relationships that are not predicted by any of the characteristics and the past is considered separately. That's all I'm getting at. And all the great generalized principles discovered by man as scientists and generalized principles in science mean discovering a behavior that has no exception is ever observed.
Therefore, if they really are qualified as a generalized principle, they apparently are inherently eternal, no exceptions. And you and I, as brain dealing in all the finite, the temples, the finishable conditions, suddenly mind has this ability then to deal and discover the eternal. And as we get to discover all those generalized principles, they all are characterized by the second or third or other powers of interrelationship that never predicted by parts taken separately.
Now I find then human mind discovering generalized principles and then being very highly specialized, not tending to philosophize much about generalized principles across an interaction or a complex of generalized principles. But if you begin to study them yourself, you'll discover then that none of the great generalized principles contradict one another.
Not only do they not contradict one another, they are all inter-accommodative and they can be all inter-accommodative sequentially and in all kinds of time different relationships. And many of them are inter-accommodated at inter second power or higher power inter-augmentation. When we have a complex inter-accommodation, Omni inter-accommodation, I would call that a design that one is in view of the other.
So I say, human mind is gradually beginning to discover apparently an eternal pattern that is operative in the universe of which you and I has yet know relatively little. Because each one of the discoveries we made has never said you're going to make another discovery. And each of these discoveries has come from the previously unknown.
The complete source of all this is previously unknown, which now becomes known. Once we have that experience of the knowing, the discovering, that becomes then a special case of experience and is recalled by brain as a special case that happened, but the intuiting and the apprehending occurs by the mind in the way I gave you.
Now discovering human beings and having this kind of capability that no other living creature has, I'm trying to think about the function of man in universe. I then said, well, here is a very extraordinary capability. And I want to call your attention, also the usability, the employability of these generalized principles.
Man discovered the generalized principle of the lever. You must realize the lever then is nothing without a fulcrum. The fulcrum is nothing without a mass inertia against which it work. And there then has to be the load to be lifted and the effort to be applied. So it is a complex of events. It is not predicted by just a stone, which might be used for a fulcrum.
Now in discovering such principles as that, man then is able to generalize the mathematical relationship of going out in the lever arm giving distances. And as you go out even distances, you get one-- you get to two distances, you get two to one advantage, three distances, three to one and so forth. We have then man understanding a generalized principle, and he can employ it. But when he wants to employ it, he has to design a special case lever. There's no such thing as a generalized lever. So it has to be a wood or of steel and so forth.
So we find that while man has ability then, his brain apprehends subjectively the special case experience. Mind finds a generalized principle. Mind allows him to think about it to employ it. But when it comes to his realizing it, it has to come back to special case again. So all of our physical experiences are in the special case area, but our minds seem to be operating metaphysically in this eternal generalization, which is very extraordinary, difference between anything we know of behaviors of any other creatures.
When we then have experimental evidence of creatures behaving in various ways, I do not take-- when they say there is fundamental enmity seeming they demonstrated by some creatures, I do not then assume that this then is as supreme as a fundamental principle in relation to human beings, because they do have this mind and can understand principle and understand the effects of destructiveness and so forth.
And now then take the things I've been saying so far thinking about the function of man in universe and observing as we may now at this point in the 20th century the fact that Boltzmann's law, that there are importing and exporting going on pulsating throughout the universe. And stars are giving off radiation. And finally, that star cries down, and there are energy collections elsewhere. And this pulsating of energy giving off and being collected.
I can see that our planet Earth is a very extraordinary kind of a place because so far, man hasn't been able to discover any of the importing centers around the universe, except for our own planet, where we know that a great deal of the surface of our Earth, the top soils and so forth or outer crust are primarily inventoried from chemical elements that have come from elsewhere landing on our planet as stardust and so forth. We're receiving radiation and keeping life going on our planet.
And it's a characteristic of all the energies being exported going off radiation that they tend to take up more room and seem to be increasing in their disorder. But where energy would be collected, it'd be very interesting to find out whether the order increases. And I find that the energy receipts from the sun and other stars are very random and the frames of the sun seem to be very random. But the radiation receipts get processed by the biosphere, by the outer ionic belts, the Van Allen belts first.
There are refractions of the radiations. And coming through the atmosphere refracted into our red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, we will see it rise into the sky in the dust. And those bendings then sort out the random receipts. And the radiation that gets impounded as heat in the surface of the three-quarters of Earth, which is covered by water, and begins to then foster by heat the biological growth.
And all the vegetation is impounding all that radiation by photosynthesis and converting the random receipts into beautiful orderly molecular structures. And all the biologicals begin to multiply these orderly molecular structures. And they get buried deeper and deeper as fossil fuels and coal and petroleum and so forth.
We are quite clearly where nature was trying to definitely accomplished an importing area where the energies are converted to order from disorder. And we find then amongst all the biologicals all then making these beautiful orderly molecular structures and their species are very orderly and they're fundamental in their patterning behaviors. We find then amongst all the biologicals no creature that we know of that has quite the propensity that human beings have for trying to convert disorder to order.
All the games we play are then taking-- if somebody knocks out a ball, then you must convert disorder to order as rapidly as possible. We have then human beings through all history, one thing common to all of them that we have any history at all is problems, problems, problems. We are clearly here to be problem solvers. And we have a proclivity to solve the problems.
Now, if you and I were designing a great-- say, that's a Boeing 747, we would have to have, of course, the pilot's cabin. You have to have an enormous number of instruments to indicate whether the number three engine is overheating or whatever it may be. And then there are things on the board there that you can do regarding information that would be turned to disadvantage if it were not attended to.
However, there are a number of information come in over the instruments to the pilot and where there is no device that he can turn, but where he has to act himself personally and when, if he didn't act in an appropriate way, the ship would be lost. And the way he operates in an appropriate way is by virtue of his knowledge of generalized principles. That is, he has reference to eternal laws of our universe by virtue of which he can make a satisfactory action of himself that saves the ship.
Everything I say to you, I want to say to you in view of what I continually also remind myself of the fact that all human beings are born naked, absolutely helpless for months. Beautiful equipment, but no experience, therefore, absolutely ignorant. We are all born ignorant, helpless. That we've been able to then find our way, by virtue of the equipment we have given, by trial and error, to discover some of those great principles.
So as to get as far as we have, it seemed to be a very phenomenal matter. And we've changed our relationship to environment as none of the other species have by virtue of this kind of a capability. So I just want to always go back then to this naked wilderness start. So we'll have then some of these human beings that are successful and finding themselves invaded by others. This is part of the trial and error of learning. And the rate, somebody seems to have to die. And we've had wars through all those ages.
And the concept that there is not enough to go around is still prevalent around our planet Earth. Absolutely completely prevalent, bureaucratically and ideologically in the great governments, which is manifest by the fact that, the last decade, United States, NATO, Russia, China appropriating some totally all of them, $200 billion a year getting ready for how to kill. All the highest capabilities of man being focused on this final Armageddon concept.
It has to be-- not enough for both. Yours or mine. So we find this is the most highly classified of all information, great weapons development because you would not let the other man know what you're doing. Just wait till it finally came to the contact of war. So this began to then govern the doing more with less on the scene. And then, finally, one little aeroplane sinks great armored battleship. You're doing much more with less.
So as we went into the air then, had to do even more with less. So the technology of man then really like the bumblebee having his drive, going after things in the terms he is hungry, and he has people depending on him, and fear. He's able to organize, to do things technically when there was enough fear that everybody's going to be annihilated.
Therefore, then you said you can afford to do it. But otherwise, people wouldn't do these things in the peaceful time. It seemed the only kind of drive they had was to take on this technology for the purpose of the killing. But we understand how and why because it seemed it had to be yours or mine.
And the rate, technology had developed to such an extent after World War I we then have farm machinery being instituted, and the farm machinery becoming very, very effective. And technology in general changing the whole pattern of the farm. We have suddenly a condition where, in the last 30 years, man who had to be near the food or it would rot, he had to be there near it where it grew on the tree or he would perish because it would rot. Suddenly, it would not rot anymore. It could reach him anywhere around the world. And suddenly, he found he wasn't needed on the farm.
So we have all these great cities which are becoming empty due to there no longer being used, and the East, West traffic, and all the humanity flowing into those cities completely unemployed and wondering how they're going to get on. And that is a condition we are really up against right this minute. And it is a very interesting kind of picture. But obviously, something highly transitory-- and I'm interested in where it might go from there.
Because the next thing I became really intrigued with way back in my Navy days in 1917 was awareness that we were doing much more with less. And I saw, even then, there was a possibility that you might be able to do so relatively much with so relatively little. You might really be able to take care of all of humanity. And if you did, then the fundamental raison d'etre that it had to be you or me would be invalid.
In 1927, I undertook then studies to see whether this might not be increasing, and found, by 1927, yes, we did have refrigeration in the homes. We were doing a great deal more with very much less. And we suddenly had the communication by radio and that was very much less than the having to go by foot, or a coach, or a horse. And we got very much faster. I saw a man who was really doing much more with very much less.
So by 1927, I undertook a number of calculations and saw it could possibly be feasible if I then expect much improvement in transportation where you were doing considerable by virtue of the tonnage reductions of travel. But I saw in the world of building where 99% of humanity were living that they were not thinking at all in the terms of such technology.
Because I saw then-- I must ask you, if anybody in this room will tell me quickly what this building weighs? Will anybody tell me within a million tons? You don't talk about buildings in weight. But you do talk about the Queen Mary and 85,000 tons, or the Boeing 747 and 100 tons, and the new oil tankers at 200,000, or 400,000, 500,000 now tons.
You know exactly what you're getting out of what you invest in the way of weight of material, amount of energy and time. If you don't know what performance you're getting, obviously, you don't know what you have. If you don't know what your buildings weigh, you obviously don't-- are not thinking in the terms of performance of how you can do more.
I just want to indicate how really very ignorant we still are regarding what our real potentials are. When we begin to talk about energy emergencies such as we say we have today, I realize that we are making great mistakes because we're using up the fossil fuels, which are supposed to be a savings account. You ought not to live on your savings account. You're supposed to live on your income.
And there are ways in which you can impound sun radiation. And just the vegetation does, converting to alcohols, converting wind power and so forth, water power. Yes, we have the waterfall, using it that way. But we haven't had any harnessing the great waves and those other motions which are very, very powerful, and are available, and can be turned to advantage.
But they haven't been for the moment highly monopolizable and therefore have not been pursued as subjects by just the drive to then-- if you're going to have to survive, then make any hold of money makes it easier to survive. So we have humanity getting to-- many of humanity getting tremendously focused on organization, how do you make money, rather than really how do you make our world work. And it gets to be a very blinding, shortsighted preoccupation.
So I find then the next thing we considered here is what the principles are of the doing more or less and what they can really bring about in relation to environment controlling the ecologies and then the non-wasting, finding, for instance, that of all the energy that we are consuming, for instance, as petroleum, using it in our reciprocating engines, which are only 15% efficient. Whereas rotary engines are 30% efficient, and jet engines are 60% efficient, and fuel cells get up to 80% and 85% efficiency.
We are operating very low level. And furthermore, the way we use our technology is so very inefficient that the overall realization of work out of the energy we consume is just about 5%. Which is to say that, out of every 100 barrels of petroleum we import, we put 95 down the flush.
And so which isn't really an energy crisis. It's really a crisis of relative ignorance and inertias, fears, not knowing just what to do. Great, fine disposition of humanity, but greatly stymied by intending to leave it to somebody else and electing some political leader to say, now, you solve the problem rather than getting at how we solve problems ourselves.
So we do come out of the era of the pharaoh and the great masses do not know what's going on. We have an era of great nobles and we have era of a middle class of 1% knowing what something is about, but the great 99% not knowing. We're coming a completely new era now of all of humanity being on all the information.
And we have then-- must not be impatient, but we really are-- that's what's going on in this meeting here-- really the reason-- I'm sure that you're asking me and that's my response today. I feel that we really do have to examine what is it all about so we can really get at the answers ourselves.
So I'm going to now point out to you that there are these relative efficiencies of technology and we're using our energy very badly. And if we use the energy in efficient ways, the income energies could take care of our accounts very well. But I want to talk about something I do know a whole lot about that I find is not familiar to general society. That is about environment controlling where we do live, the buildings we need, and so forth.
And I find then that there are now almost 100,000 geodesic domes around the world. Most of those are pretty small, but there are quite a few big ones. And I know that, where we have the big ones, they have to pass engineering codes and so forth. And we've had to overbuild them in order to meet the codes and the relative ignorance is still dominant.
And so there I can tell you that they are enclosing space for a given Arctic snow loads, hurricane loads, or earthquake loadings. They're enclosing that space at only 3% of the weight of materials necessary for the same task by any known alternative engineering strategy than omni-triangulated spheres.
So I can tell you that the new generation of geodesic coming along are going to be able to have 200 buildings for one. Now, inasmuch as society does not really know what buildings are, I really do now know. I've gotten in the same way into what really-- how much it really takes to reprocess what's been called human waste at a very valuable chemistries and so forth.
The more I get into these studies, I can really come now to tell you that I really know, experimentally, it is highly feasible with the resources we now have and thinking about those metals which, even last year, the Club of Rome report indicated the metals are something get consumed used up.
The metals don't get used up. The metals simply get recirculated. And they didn't know that. But for instance, then we take the steel coming out of old, early locomobile. And you melt it up and you get two Cadillacs. And melt up a Cadillac, and you get two Chevy's. Melt up a Chevy now and you get two Japanese cars. Each time you melt up the metal, you know a little more and you reuse it to take care of more people. That's all.
And the same rate which we do that in technology with the copper for the copper wires is phenomenal, the rate in which we're gaining there. When I began to get into the rates of gain of doing more with less, and the per capita resources of our Earth, and how to take care of everybody, I can now really tell you absolutely safely it is highly feasible to take care of all of humanity at the highest end of living than anybody has ever known.
And it's possible to do that without having anybody deprived, run advancing at the expense of another. And it's possible to do the whole job by 1985. This was the resource that we now have and the knowledge we now have. I guess, very exciting. Therefore, I have to say I now know it is not a fundamental that there is not enough to go around.
In economics-- because social sciences would like to have some of the generalized principle competence that the hard sciences have, chemistry and physics-- in the social sciences, they thought the economics were really found an absolute or generalized law, which is not enough to go around. The fundamental model of all economics is inherent scarcity.
And that is the whole grand strategy of all of our ideologies. And they're all based on not enough for everybody, but we have a fairest way of dealing with inadequacy, the most intelligent way of dealing the inadequacy. This is all a working assumption. Man is supposedly a failure. And a whole the rest of the universe, a hydrogen atom designed to be complete success, I now see that we were really designed to be a success. And we just didn't know it because we were born ignorant. All that's very, very reasonable.
[APPLAUSE]
But in view of what I just said to you, there is something else that is very relevant to our times. When you found that it had to be you or me, and you're going to die by the weapon or by salvation, then human beings, I'm sure, never wanted to kill. But you're a leader of a great group. And the other man was the leader and said, well, we don't let our whole people mix it up. Why don't we just have a duel? And whichever one of us lose, the other people has to go.
That often happened. But they didn't like really killing. So he said, there's something I could do outside of killing that man. He's got what we need for my family, for my people to live. What we could do is to save him. We'd get him out of the way and then take it away from him, steal him. Steal it from him by trickery.
In other words, deception became then a weapon in the working assumption, it has to be you or me. And this means lying became a weapon. Now, the lying was something you don't do for yourself-- that was immoral-- but something you do for all the people depended on you. You don't like to do it, but that's how you've got to do.
So lying became a fundamental weapon of human survival. And the way knew how to do it in the most adroit way and most deceptive way, but lie, lie, lie. It's a very extraordinarily horrible matter, but you can understand how man got there. The very words loyalty then was that you have to do that.
Now, when you discover there is enough to go around, which means then the weapon is obsolete, then the lie is obsolete. And you say, well, what does that mean? Well, one thing is it really means something to me is the following. I see the little child is born then with his apprehending senses. You and I don't invent them. Little child says, that's what I smell. You say to the child, darling, you better not say that. That man you said smelled is your father's boss. He'd lose his job.
Little kids said, what should I say? They go down and you just say it this way, you know. So you teach the children to prevaricate, to lie, to alter in order then to keep them out of trouble. Lying is taught and it is not innate. That's the most important thing I can see.
And I find then the young world then being born and spontaneously truthful, and the conditions that I talked to you about becoming more and more near the surface where I can really measure it. But intuitively, a young world is saying, if we can go to the moon, we obviously will be able to do a whole lot of other things we're not doing.
We have a very young world-- each child being born in the presence of very much less misinformation and each child being born in the presence of very much more reliable information than those before. This always happens with each child, each level, and each day. So I have the young world being thrown about a whole planet where the compassion of the young world for all of humanity, not for the local way it used to be.
I want you to realize what a big, abrupt jump this is all from that inherent condition of when I was young. It is so sudden, it is not easy to get on. But all the customs, everything we do is tied up with that inherent remoteness and has to be used or the other. And suddenly, this new map where suddenly it's going to be everybody or nobody, and that's the way it really is.
We're suddenly being integrated. And we now have this awareness it can be done. Therefore, I'm saying to you because telling the truth is spontaneous and the information is so great of the young world, it begins to have great confidence in what it does see and what it does smell.
And long ago, in the last few years, the last decade, suddenly, saying, we really see that the older people don't realize that thing may not be the way they think it is. Not having enough experience to say that that really is so, but just intuiting that things are inadequately considered, and that the older world may be preoccupied in ways that are absolutely fatal lesson, which is really true.
So I see then this young world coming through. And I'm beginning to get letters from eight and 10-year-olds that are absolutely astonishing to me in the competence of their information, they start in basic information, and the sense of responsibility about all of humanity.
So I would say then, I am I'm confident that we have an option that humanity doesn't seem to think it didn't have, which is that we do have the capability to make it, to be a success. And I find then that this nature evolutionarily is having each of the children then better informed. They don't have better equipment, but the equipment they have is not being overloaded, and misused, and suppressed.
Therefore, it is very active and they are spontaneously truthful. So I see coming through then a new propensity of young world to really say, this is the way it is and to follow through in the kind of data that I give you, which, very soon, will make things really very evidently possible to be accomplished.
I'm saying to you then that I think that we really are coming to the end of the lie. And if we think about the universe the way I talked about it at first, the whole of that universe is operating in the terms of the gravitational effects, the radiation effects. Everything is going on. Most extraordinary things are made possible. You and I are present here. You and I comprise of all these chemical elements, these extraordinary principles, most extraordinary technology in universe by which you and I can hear each other and process information, recall it.
That we have this capability, that these evolutionary changes are taking place makes me feel then that I would say, what can you and I do to make as quickly as possible visible to all of humanity what it is all about? I think one of the most important tasks we have then is how do we get everybody to know what it is all about. Because when everybody begins to know what it is all about, we're all going to behave in very logical ways.
And I have great experience in the accelerated what everybody knows what it's all about being a sailor on a ship. And sailors on ships where there are no passengers and it's simply a matter of you and nature, those sailors get to know their ship and their task in a fantastically competent manner. And when things go wrong, nobody has to tell anybody else what to do. Everybody just starts doing the right things. And this is absolutely spontaneous.
And it's a very extraordinary matter then to realize how sailors and at sea continually, constantly aware of great danger when they get to a condition where their own ship in a great storm is in considerable peril, but is still under control. And they learn this other ship over here is out of control and the people are going to be lost, they come out and they'll give their lives to save those other people. And I don't find people doing anything like that on the dry land. When somebody's by the side of the road, they just go by.
It's a very extraordinary matter. I find the spontaneity of humanity, when they really know what it's all about, personally, they really feel it, how they really act. I expect society to behave in very different ways than the political way. It isn't a matter then of electing some headman to tell you what to do, like the old pharaoh. It's a matter of knowing what to do.
And I, again, was brought up in some islands in Maine. About 10 miles offshore, there were fisherman farmer. And there was no government. There never will be in the government. There never need be in the government because people know what they're doing. A boy grows up watching how you do your fishing work, sailing. And you have confidence. And when there's somebody's in trouble over there, you just go and take care of them. You just don't need government.
This gets to be really quite exciting to me, but it seems to be inevitable. Now as I begin to get into all of these kinds of things I've talked to you about, quite clearly, we're in for-- first place, all the great sovereignties have to go. Because it is the absolute sovereign entity of a veto, of a great power, so I won't corroborate. I'm going to have my guns because I don't trust you.
I'll point out to you that, if we get two great party dictatorships or individual dictatorships, of which we have a number around the world, a dictator at least can say, I'm going to agree to something. He doesn't have any opposition. He's quieted his opposition. But in the democracies such as ours, when the ins say, I will agree to give up our sovereignty, the outs are going to always say, obviously, you're traitors. You're giving up that beautiful sovereignty of ours. We're going to have a civil war.
The most difficult country in the world, really, to give up its sovereignty would be the United States. So I want you to understand that in view of I'm sure that if man survives, it's because the sovereignty is going to go. This is one of the most difficult ones. Let's realize that what we call a nation because we talk about ourselves as a nation. We're not a nation.
A nation is anthropologically a group of human beings who have been isolated for thousands of years geographically from any other human beings. And they've inbred, developing special physical characteristics that are suitable for survival under those special conditions. Russia had 148 different nations to cope with where they've been really developed over the thousands of years in that way. They look differently. They spoke differently. They really were nations like in Indian nations.
But we are just the opposite. We are a crossbreeding world man on this continent. We're just anticipating a nation, so there's really no nation to be lost. We're simply crossbreeding-- we're world people and going to have to then join up with other world people. And that's what's going to happen.
So if you see things deteriorating, older patterns, obviously, everybody who has any kind of tie up yesterday, he's not doing his own thinking, and he feels security. He's going to feel very insecure. We're really up against a very tough psychological conditions ahead.
All this is going to take place, I'm quite confident. The curves of evolutionary acceleration that I've been studying over these years as such that the things I'm talking to you about great transition will already occur probably within the next 10 to 15 years when we'll have a completely new relationship with humanity, with the universe itself. We would be thinking about universe in a different way altogether with nothing to do with how do you survive. That's absolutely taken for granted.
We say to the little child when the child is born, we don't say, how are you going to earn a living? Better get back in there. But we used to say, when I was young, they were still saying, but you've got to go to work at 6:00 AM. Go to the mine or the mill. Then we began to say, the have nots, the oppressed saw that the successful seem to have more information. There's something about education, so we want to have our kids have education.
So we said, now, Don, we're going to try to arrange for you to go through preparatory school. And then we're going to try to go to high school. And it's really just yesterday that we said, you're going to college. And now you say, you've got a PhD. You don't have a PhD, you're not going anywhere at all. So everybody's got to have a PhD.
But at any rate, the point where we're taking longer, longer. In fact, we're get to the point where it'll take-- a lot of people getting up to life expectancy when I was born. So then we say, well, now, you've got to retire also. In the meantime, life expectancy is doubled and you're not wanted around anymore.
So it's a very short span between when you got to go and work and you got to be retired. But that's just going to get down to actually be accelerated to nothing in a hurry. Now, the fact is then because of the fear, we're using the machinery and the productive capability to really support life. We run the machinery on eight hours a day. Machinery would run eight hours a day. It'd run 24.
It's like the ships at sea. The sea never shuts down. It's 24 hours. And we really could keep up this productivity for a man. But we have man then afraid of losing his job, organizing himself then to not be supplanted by machines. So this is fear. Fear, fear, fear. And this fear and people just earning their living say, it's professor, whatever it is, I'm not really going to yield because I'm just a specialist.
We're going to have to come back to complete integration of humanity. Everybody has to be on total information. How do you do that? There are these generalized principles. And generalized principles, generalized principles have to hold true in every case. What you do is learn your relatively few generalized principles. Then you're going to be able to understand what's going on in any special case.
Don't have to just go [INAUDIBLE] a special case, special case, never finding any generalized principles. This is a very, very severe reorientation that's going to occur in the general education of humanity because every child is born interested in the whole and everything must coordinate total information.
So I would simply say these are the kind of things-- all the education system is going to change. Sovereignty is going to go. I'm sure that the methods of dealing in exchange of goods like money, all this are going to change. The money, we've gotten to the point where the people even handling phenomena money and exchange don't know what it is in great, great quantities.
So I then would say to you, big thing of all, you cannot be a good thinker and have good and bad people. There is no such thing. The electron is not bad because it has a negative sign. You've got to understand how the complementaries of universe are and how universe does accomplish what she needs it to when people do not tend to do it consciously then she gets them to do it indirectly.
She gets them to acquire all these tools just in order to save himself, he thought. And we had him in a completely peaceful way. But everything here has to do then with all of us being in on things. Therefore, as Otto talked about introducing me here and about people paying attention to me, I just wanted to point-- it isn't a matter of somebody being right and telling everybody else what to do at all.
I was navigating. I want to see where to go and I want to know what to do myself. Therefore, I got into how to cut out weight and buildings and other things to really find out what is feasible. But the point is everybody has to be in on what it's all about. This is a great gestation. This is the most beautiful, extraordinary things going on.
So the troubles about human manners around the world today is really a part of enormous education, what it is all about. So I'd rather than being dismayed when trouble seems to occur, I'm terribly elated because I used to know that trouble is risk-- I thought I'd never get out in the open. The lying was in there.
And so I say I can see that humanity really does have an option. And I see evolution is trying very hard to make man a success despite himself. So we're up against then that fear. And the fear is not the individual for himself. The fear is really always for those people who are depended on him. That's what he's really afraid. He may not be able to take the people he loves. That's what he really cares about.
So I don't have good and bad people. I can understand how people are going to hold on to the conditioned reflexes of yesterday in very powerful ways. But it does look like things are coming through. The most important of all the things that all of us can really do with one another is certainly to be reasonable and thoughtful towards one another as each person has the right to learn his lesson.
We do all have to make those mistakes. And we are making plenty, but the rate, which we know about the mistakes is very great, rate acceleration. And the rate of all of you-- I'm very grateful you're coming. I'm now going to then sign off. But I think the most exciting of all is that it could be really possible that this great synergetic-- synergetics are the behaviors of wholes unpredicted by pasts.
I spoke about the [INAUDIBLE] finds. Here is this little child born absolutely helpless. And the only way they can possibly get on is because their mother really loves him. Stones don't love stones. It's a very extraordinary synergetic matter. But we're all so familiar with it, we don't really realize what extraordinary mystery it is. There is phenomenal love.
But I find then a young world today that is growing up not only spontaneously truthful, really very eager to know what it's all about, abhorring the lies and misrepresentation, but I find that young world full of the really spontaneous beauty of a real love. And I'm amazed how many really full grown size men will come up now and kiss me on my lips like a little child simply because he feels happy and loving that we've got the right information.
So I just I just say to you, truth, young youth, and love, and it looks to me as if man is supposed to and will probably come through. Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Let me speak here. Please. Listen. Thank you. Thank you. Again, as I started off, I want you to realize I don't take this as a personal matter. What I'm really happy about is that you're doing what you're doing because you're really saying to each other, it could be so. This is great news. Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
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