Buckminster Fuller

Bucky On War

"Society neither hears nor sees the great changes going on. Either man is obsolete or war is. War is the ultimate tool of politics. Political leaders look out only for their own side. Politicians are always realistically maneuvering for the next election. They are obsolete as fundamental problem-solvers."

" If you have enough to go around war becomes murder."
Since it is now physically and metaphysically demonstrable
that the chemical elements resources of Earth already mined
or in recirculation, plus the knowledge we now have, are
adequate to the support of all humanity and can be feasibly
redesign-employed by 1985 to support all humanity at a
higher standard of living than ever before enjoyed by any
human, war is now and henceforth murder. All weapons are
invalid. Lying is intolerable. All politics are not only obsolete but lethal."

"War represents the uniformed hospital and operating room phase of an overall remedial pathology in treatment of man's affairs. In this inherited scheme of life, science and technology are invoked directly by society only at the eleventh hour to arrest the malady fostered by laissez faire, ignorance, opinion, shortsightedness, prejudice and egocentricity. Formally declared war is the final spectacular and open chapter following the prolonged and far more sanguinary private and non-spectacular chapters of strife under the guise of 'Peace'."

" Livingry implements life; weaponry Implements death."

" Success for all is the only way of overcoming the need to kill, either in the swift death of official war or in the slow slum death of unofficial war, mistakenly labeled Peace--when the lack of knowledge of how to provide for all includes lethal competition as vast numbers are shunted into poverty and a far more protractedly painful and humiliating slow death. Then you will learn in due course that their idealistic compassion and hope to eliminate lethal warfaring cannot be gratified by political action means, for the last resort of politics is always inherently to physical force, be it actively waged with guns or passively provoked by sitdown blockades."

" He (all humanity) was given enough cushion of resources, and so by trial and error he could gradually discover that his mind was much more important than his muscle; and that his probable functioning was metaphysical and not physical. We are all of us at that extraordinary moment where the totality of humanity is beginning, to realize these things. Rather than a few leaders leading ignorant and helpless humanity.

When we have man in great fear, when he is ignorant and also fearful, he can panic officially and war has been an enormous official panic: great mandates to employ that which mind has already discovered. To build up weapons. Under the aegis of the great mandate of fear. The only way the administration really has any great powers is war powers: then they can really undertake anything. If evolution really wanted man to acquire these capabilities, he could only be really motivated to do these things through fear.

I hope we are coming to a breakthrough point where we are beginning to do things for logical reasons - and it is in longing rather than fear. You have to find some way to motivate him until he begins to get off this self-starter and to get on to the main engines of his mind."