Thursday, November 26, 2009

Bucky, Precession & You!


The following is from DailyHappyLiving.com

Hi Friends,

This post is divided into three sections as mentioned above. Let us take it one at a time.

BUCKY:
I can hear you asking “Who or what the heck is Bucky?” Well Bucky is short for one of the greatest of minds who lived in the Twentieth Century – Buckminster Fuller. He was one of our world’s first futurists and global thinkers. Born July 12th 1895 (year of the automobile, and radio), at age 22 he married Anne Hewlett. He was the inventor of the Geodesic Dome and dozens of other patents.

He had a lot of personal tragedies:

In 1922, his first child died in his arms of pneumonia just a month before her fourth birthday, after having survived both infantile paralysis and spinal meningitis.

Five years later in 1927, his second daughter Allegra, was born. It was the same year he went bankrupt and lost the company he had started with his father-in-law. Feeling totally depressed, he stood on the edge of Lake Michigan and contemplated suicide. It was then some voice told him `You are not here in this world for yourself!’ Those words caused him to re-evaluate his life and the world!

From that day he decided to commit himself, his wife and infant daughter to solving world problems by designing artifacts that were capable of “doing more with less”. He decided to pay no attention to `earning a living’; never promoting or selling or paying others to do so. He believed that if his designs were good for the world, then nature would take care of him by good precession!

How did it turn out? Well he was well looked after by nature! He has owned 43 cars, 3 planes, and several boats. Although Fuller never graduated from college, he was awarded nearly 50 honorary doctorates for his work in science and the humanities, and over 100 major awards of merit, including the cover of Time magazine in 1964.

He died in 1983 at age 88. If you want to know more just google his name!

PRECESSION:
What is `precession’? In most small dictionaries you won’t even find the word precession! But on the internet you can see some examples,but mostly it describes precession as related to geography & physics (about the rotation of the earth, gyroscopes etc.)

In 1980 Buckminster Fuller himself said that only about 1 in 10 million people understood `precession’. Well I hope that by the end of this post, I can help to increase that ratio somewhat! And that you the reader may have acquired a working knowledge of this `life-concept’.

The precession I’m talking to you about is that defined, studied and practiced by Bucky himself for over 50 years!

Simple examples of precession:

Dropping a Pebble into a Lake: When a pebble is dropped into a calm lake, as the pebble drops vertically downwards to the bottom, it creates ripples – which travel outwards horizontally away from where the pebble was dropped.

So in the above example, Bucky was referring to the fact that physically an action can create some ripples or side effects, which are perpendicular to the direction of the action or movement. However he took it a step further in the case below.

A Bee Gathering Honey: When a bee gathers honey (facing in one direction), pollen from the flower is being deposited on its legs (which are at right angles to its body). Thus in the act of gathering honey, the bee unknowingly pollinates the flowers – thus helping plant life to grow.

Bucky philosophised that the bee is getting a reward from nature because it is helping nature to reproduce plant life! So he theorised that if he himself were to do something to benefit the world, then he would always be well looked after and rewarded by the Universe! He believed that he need not live as most of us live – always being worried about earning an income, of surviving! As far as he was concerned that philosophy worked out exceedingly well for him as you will know by reading of his accomplishments.

But what about us laymen, normal average mortals; how can we use this philosophy? That brings me to the third part of this post – YOU & Precession.

YOU & PRECESSION:
What can You & I do to use precession to our advantage? Let us analyze the example of the Bee Gathering Honey further. Does the bee know it is helping the universe in its task of preserving plant life? No! Does the bee need to know that it is helping the universe in order to get its reward? No! All it has to do, is go after its desire or goal (to collect honey) and it will automatically be provided with its rewards!

Similarly I would like to point out that we human beings are also `programmed for happiness’ by nature (or the universe or God)! So all we have to do in order to get good precession is to go after our goals and dreams with a passion – knowing that when we pursue our purpose, we are actually helping the universe in our own unique way!

Just think about it. If you are happy, you naturally spread this happiness: your spouse is happy, your children are happy, your family is happy, your office colleagues are happy to see you! If you are depressed, you spread your depression to one and sundry! A happy person does not get into fights or start wars! So it is good to go after your own happiness.

Imagine what would happen if the bees were to go on strike and stopped gathering honey. The pollination of flowers would not take place and plants would eventually die out! (This idea was explored a little in the movie `Bee Story’.) However this won’t happen because the bees are `programmed’ by nature to go out and gather honey and don’t have a choice in the matter!

However we humans have been given the choice to follow our `program’ and be happy or go against nature and be miserable! If we keep saying that this world is `illusion’ and try to avoid living life to the fullest now – hoping somehow that will qualify us to live a better after-life, then we are not unlike the bees that go on strike! We are going against nature and God! Thus if we persist in living a miserable life in this lifetime (which is against nature), we have no chance of being happier in the next life!

So my suggestion to you if you are an average person (not Buckminster Fuller) is to:
Go after your dreams with your whole heart and soul knowing that the universe is for you. You will know if you are going in the right direction, by the precession you create. If you have good precession, nature will pat you on your back by giving you `lucky circumstances’ and you will achieve success and happiness easily.

If on the other hand you are off track and you create bad precession, then the same universe may give you a `knock’ on the head rather than a pat on your shoulder to get back on course again! Setbacks and lucky breaks are just nature’s way of giving you both`negative or positive feedback’ – so that you can steer in the correct direction!

Well I hope today’s post has caused you to put on your thinking caps a little. I also hope that it has helped make the word `precession’ less of a mystery! See you soon.