When I learn this I go backstage to see if new plans have been made. Bucky isn’t in his dressing room. I find him tired, lost, and confused among theatre flats backstage. Bucky has given his all. Morgan and I take him to a restaurant in Sausalito for his favorite: steak and potatoes. When his strength returns, he makes Morgan sing “Great Grandfather” a cappella! He doesn’t care that the restaurant is packed with people.
1983
I am with Bucky a few days before he dies a conscious death. His wife, Ann, is ill and goes into a coma. She has told Bucky she is afraid of going first and so Bucky has promised her that he would go first and meet her on the other side. He sits with her, holds her hand, and then dies. She dies shortly thereafter.
In Boston, I attend the double funeral ceremony in the country’s oldest cemetery where I learn of Bucky’s great love for Ann. He had built the great Montreal dome—his Taj Mahal—for her. Later when I tell friends about it, I keep having a kind of Freudian slip: I say, “I was in Boston at a wedding,” because that’s how it felt to me.
2011
I am no longer a young man. Without knowing exactly when it happened I’ve become an elder and find I have to step up to all that this entails. I think of Bucky, how he’d taken me under his wing, allowed me access, and mentored me. What an opportunity.
I meet 18-year old Simon Olszewski in a ceremony in the Peruvian Amazon. He comes from Australia and is interested in plant medicines and filmmaking. He is open and curious about everything, and ready to learn. He reminds me of me. It will be his generation that will shape our future. I invite Simon to Bali to assist on a film I am making about Balinese taksu (divine inspiration). We pass where Bucky’s dome once stood but it is no longer there. The insects, the rain, and sun have recycled it. Everything is dynamic and changing. Bucky certainly marveled at these great natural and cosmic forces and embraced them in his synergetics.
As my daughter navigates the changes of her teenage years, I know that the “reality” that my generation sees will not be the reality she sees. Hopefully, as Bucky would have wished, it will be more in keeping with Nature’s principles.
It is thrilling to see the spontaneous cooperation that arose when Steven Sieden put forth the notion of this book. The dozens of “commentaries” that you will read are testimony to the staying power of Bucky’s ideas and the love we all share with him.
These contributors are all powerhouses in their own fields, visionaries and sages, who carried Bucky’s torch, then made it their own. Their work and our children’s work are Bucky’s unfolding legacy. We can create a prosperous world for everyone, if we will just—as Bucky used to say to me—“pay attention dear boy.”
MICHAEL WIESE is a publisher and filmmaker. His company, Michael Wiese Productions (mwp.com), has impacted filmmaking worldwide by publishing a line of over 150 “how-to” books on filmmaking and screenwriting that are used by all the major studios and in over six hundred film courses around the globe. The company has launched a new imprint—Divine Arts (divineartsmedia.com)—which publishes books on art, spirit, and culture. Michael’s recent “personal journey” documentaries include The Sacred Sites of the Dalai Lamas (Tibet), The Shaman and Ayahuasca (Peru), Talking with Spirits (Bali), and the upcoming Taksu: Power, Creativity, and Divine Inspiration in Bali.
INTRODUCTION
A MANIFESTO OF AWAKENING, HOPE, AND ABUNDANCE FOR ALL
THIS BOOK IS SOMETHING THAT I SAW NEEDED TO BE DONE for you the reader as well as for future generations, and no one else seemed to notice the need. I watched and waited for many years as I studied Buckminster Fuller’s vast archive while teaching and using what I learned throughout my life. Eventually, I realized that even though people continued to reference Bucky’s wisdom, nobody was stepping forward to do the job of interpreting his vision and bringing it to the next generations. So, I followed Bucky’s mandate and acted when the “perfect storm” conditions occurred that facilitated the final writing and publication of this material.
A Fuller View is a manifesto of awakening, transformation, and abundance not focused on Bucky but on you. I hope that it supports you in also following his mandate to do the things that need doing that you see need to be done. It’s about what you can do to find and share your gifts and to have others support you. It’s about the fact that there is now enough to support all life on Earth. And it’s about each of us having the courage to follow in the footsteps of this great man while doing what he suggested we all do—create and follow your own path based on your personal experience regardless of what others say.
My path working with Fuller and the two Fuller books I have completed thus far did not begin with such lofty aspirations because no one had done the task of distilling Bucky’s wisdom down to an essence. My journey began on Laguna Beach, CA in 1981.
I had just devoted a year of my life to a very draining but rewarding job, and I needed to replenish my depleted energy and spirit. Years before, I had been inspired by Bucky’s vision and passion, and in 1981 I took my copy of his latest book, Critical Path, to the beach every day for three months.
In that pristine setting, I studied every page and learned as best I could. Then, I discovered that at the age of eighty-six Bucky was still active and lecturing and had a home in Southern California. I also found out that his grandson had started the “Friends of Buckminster Fuller Foundation” not far from where I was living.
On that beach I also initiated my own “experiment” to determine how many of Bucky’s ideas and life strategies resonated with my personal experience and were useful to me. My experiment has now continued for over thirty years, and it has provided me with some amazing insights that I share with you throughout these pages.
I offer these insights as a tribute to Buckminster Fuller and what I have found to be true. Only after I had validated them as spot on and useful was I willing to share them with others. The fact that this book contains only insights and ideas I have found to be valid, viable, and practical is because of my personal experiment to determine and document the most vital aspects of Bucky’s life and teachings.
That, however, is no reason for you to accept or believe anything written by me or our guest commentators. Do as Bucky did and check them out against your personal experience. See if they fit for you. If something works, use it. If it doesn’t, let it go and move on. This is the advice Bucky constantly gave his audiences, and I feel that he qualifies as a sage elder worthy of consideration and respect. That’s the path I have chosen, and I invite you to consider joining me on this exploration to create Bucky’s vision of “a world that works for everyone.”
People living today know Buckminster Fuller as a wise elder, but the wisdom of our elders is missing in the majority of “modern, developed” cultures. In 1995, after studying and teaching about Bucky’s ideas for more than a decade, I realized that few elders were being recognized and admired as role models. Bucky Fuller was one of several such men and women who had served as role models and teachers for myself and many people, but I was concerned that my children did not have popular public archetypical elder leaders and mentors.
When I saw Bucky speak to thousands of people (mostly under the age of thirty)