Liftoff

Years ago I read a book by R. Buckminster Fuller titled "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth." Fuller purposefully traced the big arcs of human history and discovered something along the way. He discovered that often when humankind found itself at some fork in the road, it took the left fork or the right fork without much real thought or decision making. Years or centuries later it would be discovered that the fork taken was the wrong choice. Yet, we never go back and correct our mistakes... even the gargantuan ones.

The results of this unthoughtful approach to existence are all around us. A planet of abundance where many still starve every day. A planet of diversity where we expend huge amounts of energy in various stages of trying to anhilate each other. A planet where we've become incredibly efficient with our deadly games and are still unfathomably inefficient in the way we use the planets resources. A planet where our true wealth should be measured by the resources we have combined with the ever-growing wealth of human knowledge of what can be accomplished with them. A planet that grows wealthier and wealthier with each new thought and idea but behaves as if the exact opposite were true.

The big questions are still with us and still carry great weight. Where do we come from? Where have we been? And most importantly, where do we go from here?

I think it's about time that I participate.