Imagine our planet as a spaceship, running its designated course through space.

Everyone on earth is on the passenger list, but is there anyone onboard who actually understands the intricate mechanisms of the ship? In order to help humanity, R. Buckminster Fuller wrote Operation Manual for Spaceship Earth (1978) – a list of instructions for the spaceship, including a brief history lesson.

One of Fuller’s key points is that in recent developments within academia and political leadership, focus has been on developing specialists.

Knowing everything there is about a niche topic has been considered admirable, and so academic departments, political advisors and even PhD programmes have become increasingly specialized. This, Fuller claimed, has had detrimental effects on society; in-depth knowledge has expanded at the expense of wider and more general knowledge.

Consequently, society is now filled with specialists incapable of seeing the bigger picture and are unable to connect the dots. Instead, we need more generalists and fewer specialists, so that more people understand how our spaceship works in its entirety:

“Spaceship Earth was so extraordinarily well invented and designed that to our knowledge humans have been on board it for two million years not even knowing that they were on board a ship. And our spaceship is so superbly designed as to be able to keep life regenerating on board despite the phenomenon, entropy, by which all local physical systems lose energy. So we have to obtain our biological life-regeneration energy from another spaceship – the sun.” 

Fuller was an American systems theorist whose life reads like a dramatic novel.

1927 was his most life-changing year, as this was when his daughter Alexandra passed away from polio and spinal meningitis, only four years old.

The tragedy led to a personal crisis, but when things seemed the most impossible, he had a religious epiphany, and decided to dedicate the rest of his life to changing the world in order to benefit humanity.

Fuller would go on to conduct research and teach at numerous universities, and was an influential force in developing new ways of thinking, in particular concerning the environment.

Aware of Earth’s finite resources, he wanted society to “do more with less”. This would be made possible through “synergetic” processes, which was a concept coined by Fuller that referred to the empirical study of systems in transformation. 

Fuller’s goal was to initiate a holistic and long-term shift in society, making everyone aware of the role we all play as both passengers and crew-members onboard Spaceship Earth, so that we can take responsibility and be part of the change necessary for the ship to continue on her journey through space, with everyone onboard – humans, animals and plants alike – happy and content. 

Further reading:

R Buckminster Fuller

Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth

Baden: Lars Müller Publishers, 2008 [1978]