Can you see it? Our planet, big and blue and permanently sustaining us is a spaceship. It’s in a orbit around our sun, Sol. Sol is spinning in our galaxy which is one of literally countless galaxies, spinning through the ages in an ever expanding series of ellipses. We are traveling millions upon millions of miles in all directions every second. The universe is beyond comprehension in it’s size. It’s expanding! and it is also arguable that there are an infinite number of universes on top of that, each representing other distinct possible realities.
And here we are, with our tiny little concerns, just plopping along like our lives are so crucial.
Years ago I read this book, Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth by Buckminster Fuller. When I did a little digging just as I started to think about writing this article, I found out that there’s even a ride at Epcot Center called Spaceship Earth. Interestingly enough, the big epcot dome is based on the Bucky Dome… yup the same domes we use at Burning Man. Yup, designed by the author. It got me thinking, as these things usually do.
Bucky is an interesting character. In 1927, at the age of 32, He’s bankrupt and jobless and on the very brink of suicide. He’s just lost his daughter. He’s deep in the booze. He’s wracked with guilt over his daughter and his failed business ventures. At the last moment, he decided instead to embark on “an experiment, to find what a single individual [could] contribute to changing the world and benefiting all humanity”.
He devoted his life to something bigger than himself, and lived a full life of design and greatness. 28 patents, many honorary doctorates, world travel, many books… he lived his life to the benefit of others and died complete. I know his book changed my life. It had me see the world in a totally new way, one where there is a synergy that is possible, and one that could work for everyone.
Which brings me back to Spaceship Earth. I feel that our country and our world is on that same suicidal precipice. We have nearly depleted all of our resources. We’ve lost countless sons and daughters. At times, it seems hopeless. And we can just give up, live life as we have, or take on a new way. We can engage in our own little experiment and for this I am going to steal lovingly from my man Bucky. Let’s take on his unanswerable question.
Does humanity have a chance to survive lastingly and successfully on planet Earth, and if so, how?
It’s going to mean taking on a whole different kind of way of looking at resources, energy and human relationships. The Spaceship Earth model also borrows from the Gaia Hypothesis which posits that our planet itself is an organism that we are just a part of. The planet has everything we need, but hoarding and greed will not work. We need to move more to what Kenneth E. Boulding calls a “Cowboy,” or “Spaceman Economy.” (I obviously LOVE this)
“The closed economy of the future might similarly be called the ’spaceman’ economy, in which the earth has become a single spaceship, without unlimited reservoirs of anything, either for extraction or for pollution, and in which, therefore, man must find his place in a cyclical ecological system.”
As we wait on the brink of financial upheaval, now is the time to seek out a new and more sustainable kind of monetary system, one that works for everyone without tearing apart large parts of our world. We need to start thinking of how we as a species can start to utilize our unique gifts to forward the Gaian biosphere on this Spaceship and onto others. We must start to think of what humanity will be about, beyond our lifetimes, beyond our nations’ lifetimes, beyond humanity-as-we-know-it’s lifetime.
It’s time to really think about being one world, beyond the obvious, and cliche ideas. Imagine if we really were one organism striving towards survival. We’re jut one little tiny blue spacecraft, ready to blossom.
An interesting perspective, no?
