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VOLUME 21
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Happy New Year! All of us at The Mark of a Leader wish you health, happiness and abundance in 2007! Hopefully you have received the email notices about our book and ebook, which are available at our store at http://shop.themarkofaleader.com. The book is also available at Amazon.com. And the audiobook will be out very soon - it is being mixed as you read this. There will be many more new products this year as The Mark of a Leader expands outside the corporate conference industry. We sincerely hope you like them. And if you have read the book and liked it, please write a review at our store (just click on the book image at the store) or at Amazon. We thought we should kick the new year off with a genius. And it seemed appropriate to pick one who was focused on the long term sustainability of the human race. The environment, war, poverty, disease - it is hard not to have moments of doubt these days. This month's subject had many doubts. In fact, the impactful part of his life started in deep personal doubt. But he overcame it, and left an incredible mark on the world for all of us thereafter. We hope you like the amazing story of Buckminster Fuller.
Please visit our website at www.themarkofaleader.com |
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FEATURE
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QUOTABLE QUOTES The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it. Michelangelo |
BUCKMINSTER FULLER
Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them. In 1927, a 32 year old man stood alone by the shores of Lake Michigan. His business was bankrupt, his professional career discredited, and he had no money to provide the basic necessities of life for his family. His eldest daughter had died of pneumonia the previous winter, and he felt massive responsibility for her passing. His guilt drove him to drink, deep depression, and thoughts of suicide. Life seemed pointless. If it could all be taken away so easily and leave such biting emptiness as had happened with his daughter, what was the point?. But something happened to him by the lake that night. Whether he connected with a higher power, or with a power within himself, he had a change of heart. Instead of suicide, he decided he would make a difference. He would dedicate his life to exploring "what the little, penniless, unknown individual might be able to do effectively on behalf of all humanity." The man's name was Buckminster Fuller. And in the half-century to follow, he set out to change the world he occupied and the way it thought--about itself, its possibilities, and its future. 
Fuller was a genius, by any standard. A student of Einstein, he had awed academics with the power of both his linear and non-linear thinking. He could not believe that the earth - spaceship earth as he famously called it - was incapable of providing for all the needs of humanity. He believed that we were just not going about solving the "big" problems the right way. So he set out to tackle the biggies: Global resources. Population growth and shift. Food and housing. Ecological sustainability. Not just one of these - all of them. He looked for ways to meet the needs of the world's growing population, while reducing the amount of natural resources it consumes. |
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QUOTABLE QUOTES Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity, and in cold weather becomes frozen: even so does inaction sap the vigors of the mind. Leonardo Da Vinci |
He asked the questions no one else would, and came up with answers that defied rigid, conventional thinking. He did not think outside the box - he threw the box away. "What would it take to provide enough food, energy, and shelter for every member of humanity?" he wondered. One of the answers he developed was the Geodesic Dome. It uses a series of interlocking triangles to create a lightweight, sturdy spherical roof which needs no internal supports. It's the lightest, strongest, and most cost-effective structure ever made. 
One of his best known domes is the 20-story structure that acted as the U.S. Pavilion for Expo '67. But it's hardly unique. Today, over 300,000 domes dot the globe! They may not be on your street, but they're out there. Radar equipment stations in the Artic perimeter are protected by geodesic domes, and can withstand polar winds of up to 290 km/h. The U.S. Marines praised them as "the first basic improvement in mobile military shelter in 2,600 years." And Fuller's domes provide shelter to impoverished families in Africa, at an affordable cost. This was no small idea. For example, he conceived of a dome about 4 km in diameter that could enclose mid-town Manhattan in a temperature controlled environment. He said it would pay for itself in ten years from the savings in snow removal alone. Too "outside the box"? |
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QUOTABLE QUOTES It isn't the mountain ahead to climb that wears most people out. It is the pebble in your shoe. Muhammad Ali |
During the 50s and 60s, when the post WW2 boom was still driving the growth of the automobile and energy industries, he could see the fallacy of believing in unlimited fossil fuels. But he was scorned by a post-war boom generation that was in love with its gas guzzllng automobiles. He built a hybrid biofuel car in the first half of the century, but no one was interested. Fuller was a great believer in various types of renewable energy. He pushed for alternatives like solar, wind, hydroelectric, biomass, alcohol, and others, and created the plans for how they would work. 
He saw and preached that these alternatives, when developed completely, would not only replace the non-renewable, polluting, and dangerous sources that were becoming popular...they would give the world far more energy to work with. For instance, he showed that that fitting a wind generator to every high-voltage transmission tower in the U.S. would almost quadruple the country's total power output. Less pollution, more energy - forever. To him, the payoff was clear...and the logic inescapable. In Fuller's words, "There is no energy shortage! There is just a shortage of awareness of what is now possible. The crisis is a crisis of ignorance!" Had he been heard during his lifetime, our global environment would be in a very different position today. 
Buckminster Fuller saw clearly the truth that many have a tendency to forget - that the earth is a fragile spaceship, one that cannot sustain unlimited growth and consumption. But he was also deeply optimistic. He believed that if we put our minds to it, the human race is capable of developing unique, affordable, workable solutions that would solve all of our greatest problems. Like Da Vinci, he came up with many of the solutions himself, in 28 books, 25 different US patents, and countless inventions. |
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QUOTABLE QUOTES In the long run the pessimist may be proved right, but the optimist has a better time on the trip. Daniel L. Reardon |
Bucky was way ahead of his time when it came to networks and information. He would have been completely at home on the Internet. He was the ultimate net-worker, physically moving from place to place, making connections, and inspiring people everywhere he went. He expressed his ideas in fragments and in marathon lectures. He was magnetic, mesmerizing, and inspiring to those he made contact with, even if they did not understand what he was saying. 
A tireless performer, he delivered more than 2,000 lectures at 500 universities and colleges and made 48 trips around the world in the second half of his life. Today there are over 90,000 published references to this man's work - a testament to the far reaching power of his thinking. His influence is felt in virtually every sphere of scientific activity and breakthrough thought. If there ever was someone who lived the phrase "Think Different" it was him. During his 60+ years as an inventor, mathematician, philosopher and futurist, "Bucky" was labeled both a crackpot and a genius... but he was never ignored. And in hindsight, like so many geniuses, he was clearly just way ahead of his time. 
Buckminster Fuller spent his life looking for answers to questions most of us don't think to even ask. Whether the world will ever have the courage to put his answers to into action - that's up to us to decide. And maybe that is the mark of Buckminster Fuller. The questions we ask, and their answers, create our reality - our stories. Bucky showed that anyone can ask the big questions. The biggest question just may be: are we ready for the answer? |
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Please visit us at www.themarkofaleader.com. Copyright 2007 Mark of a Leader |
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