Buckminster Fuller: We are an interconnected, interdependent species

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“Unity is plural, and at minimum two.” - Buckminster Fuller

This seemingly simple statement contains some deep insights into the nature of our relative, physical reality and, once again, suggests that Buckminster Fuller was a Bodhisattva who manifested some amazing teachings. The corollary to “Unity is plural, and at minimum two” is another of Bucky often restated quotes, “No otherness, no awareness.”

In other words, both these quotes say that without an “observer” (other), we would not be aware and consciousness. We need this “observer” in order for anything to exist or happen, even if that observer is some another aspect of ourselves that we label our consciousness or ego, our soul or something else.

This brings up the often-considered question, “If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, does that incident make a sound?”

Buckminster Fuller bio.Buckminster Fuller bio.

Or as George Carlin once said, “If a man speaks in the forest and there is no woman to hear him, is he still wrong?”

Without another, we can’t know existence / awareness / consciousness. In this most interesting “game” that Universe has created here on Earth, we need each other to exist. No single person can exist without others. We are interconnected and interdependent. Without you, I would not exist on a relative reality.

Even when a person is isolated, he or she will attempt to contact or create others. A dramatic example of that is the Tom Hanks movie Cast Away in which his character is stranded on a deserted island. One of the first things that the Hanks’ character does is to use his own blood to paint a face on a washed up Wilson volleyball thereby creating some semblance of another human. He names his unique companion “Wilson” and continues talking to him throughout his survival ordeal.

This is not an unusual behavior. Very young children often talk to “imaginary friends” who may or may not be people in another realm. In any case, it takes two to experience anything in our physical relative reality. Without other, we may not exist, and our experiences may simply be dreams (which may be the case anyway).

And that is one of the key elements to our unique arising consciousness. We have shifted from a “you or me” world to a “you and me” world. As the species on our tiny Spaceship Earth, we have come to know each other more and more intimately over the past few decades, and we now realize that we have to cooperate in order to survive and thrive. We are one global village, and we need the wisdom and creativity of each and every human being to succeed as a species. Or as Bucky reminds us, “Unity is plural, and at minimum two.”

May we all continue to expand and understand the critical gifts that each of us brings to the table so that we may acknowledge and appreciate the unity that is present in the duality of our interaction with others.