We might think of the planet Earth as a vessel moving through stormy seas. Each of us can be a trimtab by acting on our commitment to serve the greater good with our gifts, talents, experience, and confidence that we do make a difference.
Bucky was all about doing more with less. In the face of all that needs doing, I remind myself that I don’t need to do everything; however, I do need to do something. So, I apply the trimtab factor to find what I can do that takes the least amount of effort, which will give me the most leverage. It is the way nature works: the way rivers flow; the way the wind blows. I don’t have to feel overwhelmed by pushing against the momentum of my own life or even that of society. I need to find the trimtab that is mine, apply it and trust the difference it makes to the whole.
Whenever Bucky began a conversation with a new acquaintance, or even a group of people, he’d have to set the context from which all else would flow. This would include the entire history of civilization, and could take several hours or even several days. The last time we sat down with Bucky for our radio series, the format had been squeezed from four hours to one hour.
We were a bit worried how this conversation would go, knowing that Bucky would, no doubt, be setting the context. Bucky’s book Critical Path was just off the press, and sure enough he launched into the history of civilization. After about forty minutes, he finished and there was a back and forth dialogue between him and Michael covering many other subjects. After the interview Bucky smiled, put a fatherly hand on Michael’s shoulder, and said, “Michael, I got it down to forty minutes just for you.”
It was our deepest pleasure knowing and being with Bucky through those last years of his life. His ideas and hope for humanity and his confidence that each of us is a trimtab for good lives on.
JUSTINE WILLIS TOMS is co-founder, host, and managing producer of New Dimensions Radio/Media, which has been broadcasting continuously since 1973, producing and distributing life-affirming, socially significant, and spiritually relevant programming throughout the world. She is the author of Small Pleasures: Finding Grace in a Chaotic World. Learn more about her work at www.newdimensions.org.
Some cultures call this phenomenon leverage. The Buddhists refer to it as skillful means. It’s the process of doing more with less that Bucky championed throughout his “56-Year Experiment” to determine and document what one individual could accomplish.
Regardless of the label, trimtab is how every person’s action can make the most difference. It’s also how “we the people” will redirect the path of human evolution from our current state in which we are dominated by war, competition, scarcity, and fear to our natural state of peace, cooperation, abundance, and love. And it’s a tool that anyone can use to create the life they desire and “a world that works for everyone.”
If you want to use the trimtab principle to create success with the least effort and resources, all you need to do is discover how to achieve more with less. And as you increase your “more with lessing,” your project (and probably you) becomes more of a trimtab on many levels.
For example, I could (and often do) talk about Bucky with friends, family associates, and strangers, and I am more than willing to share what I understand with anyone who is interested and wants to learn. These one-on-one encounters are usually productive and enjoyable, but they’re not very efficient. When I make similar presentations to groups of people, the event is more of a trimtab because I am achieving more with the same amount of effort. A group is also a trimtab for results because each person brings unique experience and insights to share. And the larger the group the greater the effect and the greater the trimtab factor.
Taking this analogy one step farther, by writing this book I again increase the effect as the book can reach many more people than I can in my personal engagements. I can continue that trimtab effect by recording my presentations and sharing those recordings on the Internet as well as in hard copy DVDs or mp3s. Further increasing the trimtab effect, these artifacts will continue to be of use to others long after I have died.
So, I say to you—“Call me Trimtab.” And I challenge you to look for ways that you can be a trimtab for positive change in your life and on behalf of all sentient beings. That’s the only way we humans are going to survive and thrive as a species and as individuals.
This is also true on a global scale. Most people believe that governments, corporations and other organizations can successfully steer the great ship that Buckminster Fuller named Spaceship Earth, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Our planet currently has hundreds of government, corporate, and religious leaders trying to do that, and they are failing because their actions are akin to people all trying to push a huge ocean liner from different places along its hull. Very few people understand that as Bucky explained, “We need one captain, and that captain must have as much timely data as possible in order to make the most effective decisions regarding the course of our ship (global society).” No single human or group of people can perform this duty because it is simply too enormous and no person can act from a completely unbiased perspective. No matter how noble our intentions, we all have prejudices.
Bucky often pointed out that only an impartial computer system can make the most effective, efficient decisions on behalf of all life. Once the computer makes these decisions, they can be implemented by a single captain or group of appointed officials who are chosen to do that job because they have excellent administrative skills in a particular area.
Such “leaders” are exceptional administrators who work in a position because of their skill and not as a result of the money they used to win an election. In other words, they are paid administrators not the elected politicians that got us into our current mess and who are in fact obsolete players working in an obsolete system called politics.
Bucky spent most of his adult life advocating that each of us follow what he had learned and become trimtabs for the causes and solutions that will create his vision of “a world that works for everyone.” It was his final message to us, and it remains carved in stone as a reminder to us all.
1.5 “We now have the resources, technology and knowhow to make of this world a 100% physical success.”
By Barbara Marx Hubbard
GUEST COMMENTATOR
Buckminster Fuller evolved my life in so many ways. The first was when I read his book Utopia or Oblivion in the 1960s. I was on a search for answers to two questions that arose in my mind after the U.S. dropped the atomic bombs on Japan. “What is the meaning of all our new powers that is good? What are positive images of the future equal to these powers?”
In my search I read through religion, philosophy, and technology. I found this quote from Utopia or Oblivion, and it changed my life and gave me the clue to the answer to my question. Bucky offered his Design Science Revolution as an answer. He had probed deeply into the way nature works. He said, “Humanity is undergoing a viability test …” At that time he told us we had fifty years to demonstrate our viability … or fail.
This is exactly what is happening. It’s about fifty years since I read it. His insights galvanized me to try to understand how we could work with nature to transform the world.
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