Buckminster Fuller: Personal integrity is essential for humankind to survive

*/

“If humanity does not opt for integrity we are through completely. It is absolutely touch and go. Each one of us could make the difference.” - Buckminster Fuller

Although Bucky Fuller first made this statement sixty plus years ago, it is more relevant than ever. Today, as we find ourselves engulfed in a period of intense change and severe global challenges, each and every person can and must consciously choose to be in personal integrity as often as possible. More important, we each need to increase the amount of time that we are in integrity until personal integrity becomes a constant. Only then will integrity become the norm and society began to approach Bucky’s vision of a peaceful “world that works for everyone.”

Buckminster Fuller on why he was "successful."Buckminster Fuller on why he was "successful."

To do this, we must stop listening to and following “leaders” who almost always have a personal agenda that focuses on getting and having more for themselves and their associates at the expense of the majority. We need to look deep within our core to discover, as Bucky did, our personal values and how do we follow them in all aspects of our daily lives. This is the integrity that Bucky knew to be essential on both a personal and societal level.

Integrity is not an easy habit to cultivate, but, as Bucky demonstrated and documented, it can be done. It is easier if you know one of the simplest definitions of integrity that Bucky created. It is is …

Any thing (or person) that has integrity will hold its shape.

This definition seems straightforward, but it covers a great deal. Specifically, if a person lives with integrity, he or she knows his or her “shape.” In other words, the person is clear about their core values, and they adhere those values on a daily basis.

That’s what we need from each and every person on Spaceship Earth in order for our species to survive and thrive. Without such integrity, our species is doomed to failure and most likely extinction.

For most of his adult life, Bucky talked about humankind being in our “final exam” to see if we are an experiment worth continuing. He would say that he felt it was “touch and go” whether or not we would survive, but in the last weeks of his life he did say that he felt like we were going to make it if each of us held on to our personal integrity.

That is the message. Know who you are and what you stand for. Then, live your life from that stance of integrity, and you will discover and share your unique contribution to the success of all life on board Spaceship Earth.

May we all find our natural integrity and live our daily lives from that powerful stance.