S+ Stimulant: Buckminster Fuller

 

“Something hit me very hard once, thinking about how much one little man could do. Think of the Queen Mary—the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there’s a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab. It’s a miniature rudder.

Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all.

So I said that the little individual can be a trim tab. Society thinks it’s going right by you, that it’s left you altogether, but if you’re doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go.

So I said: Call me Trimtab.”

—Buckminster Fuller

 

Seymour suggested reading:

Operation Manual for Spaceship Earth by Buckminster Fuller

 



One Comment

1. Katrina Howard Fairley wrote:

   January 8, 2013 at 18:29

   Photo of Bucky flying over the ASM International Headquarters in Ohio. Thomas C. Howard designed this geodesic dome in 1958. It was Bucky’s favorite.

   Reply