Our media reports that the Rio+20 conference was a bust because our so-called leaders could not decide on a purpose much less any significant results. This seems like a very predictable outcome given Buckminster Fuller's perspective of politicians and corporations (which he referred to as the GRUNCH -- Gross Universal Cash Heist). He also reminds us that "all politics are not only obsolete but lethal."
Today, we need only look at the comments of environmental activist Dr. David Suzuki when talking about the participants at Rio+20 to hear an expert carrying the same message and pleading with us to wake up and take action. In a Democracy Now! interview Dr. Suzuki this about the two Rio gatherings:
"There should be a category of intergenerational crime. You come here 20 years later, how many of the political leaders that were here in 1992 are now here again? Very, very few, if any. So, these guys come, they make a lot of nice words and they say, we care about this, we're going to do that. Nobody holds them accountable because they go out of office, they go on to become billionaires or whenever they do. But who is accountable for the lack of any kind of profound activity?"
The people who came to Rio in 1992 and again in 2012 did so with the best of intentions, but few could resist the call of the GRUNCH. Money and power overwhelmed most of them. Following a very different drummer, Bucky Fuller lived a disciplined life in service to all living beings on the planet he named Spaceship Earth. He was not interested in money, and walked a path devoted to answering a single question:
"How do we make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological damage or disadvantage to anyone?"
Had the people who gathered in Rio last week or 20 years ago simply posted this question on billboards, brochures, programs, banners and everywhere they could find, they might have come up with a far different result. They might have begun to consider the issues not from their limited perspective representing a specific country, organization or entity, but from the universal perspective that Bucky championed. They also might have viewed our precarious situation on our tiny fragile Spaceship Earth with a great deal more compassion and personal concern.
Those people may have been high-ranking representatives, but they were (and still are) individuals who have the privilege to live and thrive on our Mother Earth. Or as Bucky reminds us about himself, "the most important thing about me is that I am an average human.
We are all average humans with special gifts to share. And sharing those talents and skills will, in fact, answer Bucky's Big Question (which was also his Mission Statement). We can "make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological damage or disadvantage to anyone" if each of us remembers that we are unique, talented, interconnected individuals with something important to share. When we each come to that realization for ourselves, as Bucky did in 1927, we can fully accept responsibility for our individual piece of the challenge faced by our global species and contribute our unique piece to the solution. Only then will we each begin to experience Bucky's vision of "a world that works for everyone" and have our planet to be a welcome home for all.