As the president of the United States stands ready to create yet another military incursion into yet another foreign nation, it might be good to consider the words of R. Buckminster Fuller when he wrote, "Either war is obsolete, or men are."
America is at another crossroads as a nation. We can continue on the same path or turn away from the wants and needs of a very few individuals who believe that they can colonize the world and hoard resources for themselves. Now is a time when we can recognize that creating Bucky Fuller's vision of "a world that works for everyone" requires cooperation and a new vision of ourselves as crewmembers onboard the planet he named Spaceship Earth.
We also need to consider the money / resources required to take any military action. The United States seems to have money to invade any country at will, but not the funds to make sure all our citizens have adequate health care, education, housing, food and other basic necessities of life. We have plenty of money for weaponry, but never enough for livingry (a term Bucky coined as the opposite of weaponry).
Most Americans (and other citizens on the world) have bought into the lie that there is not enough to support all life on Earth, so we continue to kill and try to conquer in order to make sure that we have our "fair share" and that we are "safe." Meanwhile, we are causing enormous damage to the very planet that supports our existence.
As one of the first people to recognize and prove that we have enough resources to support all life on Earth, Buckminster Fuller became an avid champion for the idea of all humans surviving and thriving. Thus, on the brink of another military disaster, his words and wisdom seem more important than when he was alive (1895 - 1983).
Asking, "What would Bucky do in this situation?" the following quote of his comes to mind:
"If the success or failure of this planet and of human beings depended on how I am and what I do, how would I be. What would I do?"
We are all responsible, and we can take actions on behalf of ourselves, our fellow crewmembers onboard Spaceship Earth and future generations.
The two quotes both recognize a basic truth and the individual actions required. The reality is that if a smaller and smaller group of people continues to hoard resources and use most of them to kill other humans, we will vanish as a species. We don't need to try saving the Earth because the Earth will survive with or without humans. She successfully survived the extinction of dinosaurs, and she will survive the extinction of humans.
We, however, have more choice than the dinosaurs. We have abundant resources at our disposal and the ability to take actions without the consent of our politicians or business leaders. The question remains -- do we apply our know-how and resources toward weaponry or livingry?
This possibility has not been a viable option until recently, and Bucky Fuller was the first person to statistically prove it to be so. He began this quest in the early 1930s when working with Fortune Magazine and Phelps Dodge Corp. Those two institutions provided him with access to data about all Earth's major resources (metals like copper and iron, potable water, food, etc.), and he used that data to calculate the amount of resources available to humans at that time as well as in the past.
In his calculations, Bucky found that every time resources were reused (we now say recycled), we added something special to them. That "something" is knowledge, and by adding knowledge, we can do much more with far less resources. Bucky then decided to expand his data into the future and see if he could determine the time when we would be doing so much more with so much less resources that we could successfully take care of all life on Earth.
He calculated that date to be approximately 1976, which is the year we now know to have become critical in the area of food. Many organizations including Worldwatch Institute and The Hunger Project have calculated that in approximately 1976 we reached a point where there was enough food on Earth to feed all humankind, and this remains true today. Still, approximately 50,000 people will die of starvation today... and tomorrow... and the day after that... etc., etc., etc.
Just as Bucky predicted, we are now finding that there are actually enough of all resources (both physical and metaphysical) to support all life on Earth. That being the case, fighting over or hoarding resources is simply not logical or viable. If you have all that you want and need, does it matter to you if people in Syria or Iran also have all that they want and need?
So, why would we waste valuable resources trying to conquer and kill people in those lands halfway around the world? The simple reason is that some (actually most) people have yet to get the memo that there is enough for everybody.
In that reality, war becomes obsolete as does politics and politicians. In that reality, everybody has all the she or he wants and needs, so they no longer have to do something that they don't want to do (working for a living) in order to survive. In that reality, our military is transformed from a gigantic killing machine to a gigantic feeding, healing, educating machine that provides livingry to all sentient beings on our tiny Spaceship Earth.
This is a possibility worth contemplating and manifesting. In Bucky's opinion (and that of many others), this is not something open to debate. It's our only option if we want to survive, thrive and leave a viable planet and legacy for future generations.
May all people get realize that there enough for everyone to thrive.