“The young world is giving up any interest in their political system. They have decided that it is absolutely corrupt. The young world finds that it costs $50 million to buy the presidency, $20 million to buy a senatorship, $2 million to become a representative. It’s obviously corrupt. When a president like Reagan can go in and force his program through the Congress, it is because he can threaten its members with a comeuppance, threaten to get back at them in the elections. It’s absolutely corrupt. So the young world has no faith whatsoever in the political system. They don’t want to vote. They consider it contaminating to vote.”

— Buckminster Fuller

“Patents are a powerful way of controlling know-how, but the know-how itself is what they care about. They monopolize know-how by taking on all the educated people, all the scientists and technologists.

“But the word ownership has no meaning whatsoever. You can’t own information. There’s nothing you can own. You can seize the land if you want to, and say, “Is there anybody says this isn’t mine?” That doesn’t mean that it belongs to you. There’s no deed from God to anything. One of the things that’s going to come out in the laundry in the next decade is that there’s no such thing as ownership. There are custodianships, natural custodianships such as the father or mother of their child. But no ownership.”


— BUCKMINSTER FULLER

“There is no scarcity. Forty-one million people are dying of starvation each day around the world and there is plenty of food for all of them. We lack a marketing system. All we have is this game of money, how to acquire things. And that’s the problem. It isn’t working.”

— Buckminster Fuller



Fuller said this about half a century ago. Even then it was an underestimated figure, and now even more. About a billion people are starving. However, what he said is still true.
There's plenty for everyone. We have enough food to feed 11 billion people, whereas the world population is only 7.5 billion. But still, 1 billion people are starving…
Capitalism!

“I have made a great differentiation between wealth and money. Money is not wealth. Wealth is the technological ability to protect, nurture, and support the needs of life. Money is only a means of exchanging items of real wealth. Those who make money with money deliberately keep it scarce. There is ample wealth right now, but people have been too involved in the game of making money with money. There is such incredible avarice. They have loaned their money out all over the place at enormous usury terms, and they’re not collecting. Now they need even more money to play their game. They are completely disconnecting money from wealth. The system is destroying itself. Nature will not go along with that which is not true.”

— BUCKMINSTER FULLER

Sharing the World
(Part 1)

We (you and me) share a world, we live together in it affecting each other's lives at different levels – always, although not always conscious of the fact. We are born here without prior notice but we still choose to continue, mostly because – why not...?

But despite life's tremendous beauty and appeal, there is one truth that is common to all of us: that life is harsh; it is easier for some much more than for others – but it is harsh to all of us. As much as we want to enjoy reality, we also want to escape from it time to time. While we sleep, we escape from it. People use psychoactive substances – sometimes even hard drugs – to escape from it... regulated usage works well for that end but unregulated usage leaves people helpless, makes them empty slaves and then controls them. People lose their individuality, their sense of self and ultimately their reality. While under its effect, they only care about one thing or to be more precise they CAN only care about thing and that is getting more of it, they forget that there are other people that exist aside from them, people who are similar to them and share the same world...

But there are other ways as well to escape reality that we have created for ourselves. For better or for worse, people have built civilizations around those escapes, placing them at the very core of their experience.. nationalism, race, religion, caste etc., to name a few. They help us escape life in the same way weed helps stoners, we start seeing another world, a world quite similar to ours yet very different; but the trick to escaping is to get out of it at will, if you never escape the escape you escape life, which is fine at an individual level but when done collectively we inevitably start affecting others, because we (you and me) share the same world...

Sharing the World
Part 2

We are related to and affected by each other in many complex ways that we fail to notice some of them even if they are in front of us, because it all looks so familiar and normal that we fail to imagine something else. For example, your relationship with the production: you are either producing something by your direct labour or you own the means by which production is done – like, machinery or land or even mines if you are a big fish. Those who are the actual producers who use their own labour usually get paid only a small amount of what they produce while those who own stuff take a significantly bigger portion; people living wealthy and luxurious lifestyles are fine on their own but due to this unfortunate interconnection they are also the reason why most "others" have to feed on scrap, because we (you and me) share the same world...

Now you might be wondering if life is really significantly harder for the majority is it possible to change the status quo so that most people get to live the same life only a minority enjoys now, and so that atleast no one dies of starvation or of malnutrition or of diseases that are easily treatable and yet aren't treated, so that nobody is homeless or uneducated, so that climate doesn't destroys us the way it is going to do and ultimately so that everyone gets the opportunity to live a life worth living. Then let me tell you: yes, it is indeed possible to create such a world. We, together, can build such a world because we (you and me) share the same world...

But then what's stopping us? What is it that's not letting us do so? What in this world has the power to stop us from organising our civilization the way we want it to? It's the fact that we DON'T share the same world: we are made to believe from the very moment we are born here that we are a part of some other world, we are given an identity, a name, a gender, a nationality, a religion, a caste, a race, our relationship to the means of production, and along with that all the stereotypes and conforming roles that we are supposed to perform upto an arbitrary standard that is forced upon us. Despite being born into the same world the first thing that we realise are the differences that exist between us, some are personal and individual differences which arise out of our own individuality and uniqueness and some differences are a matter of the place/region/circumstances that we do not choose but are expected to uphold. And when we choose to uphold those differences, we diverge from the same world, we become a part of a different world than "others", we escape this world and forget that there exists another reality, one that is devoid of such distinctions, one that we may want to escape but in reality can't — the material reality, which affects all of our lives Invariably, because we (you and me) ultimately share the same world.

Sharing the World
Part 3

But what happens when we choose to ignore this and indulge in our own worlds? We become a slave to this reality's status quo. We indulge in false differences and fight over them while neglecting the true material differences that decide our lives. Instead of trying to make a change here, we become the guardian of the very thing that oppresses us. By choosing to ignore the oppressor, we empower the oppressor. The oppressor (this system) first creates such differences and then makes us fight over them so that it can sustain its existence, because it knows that the only thing that can protect it is the ignorance and delusions of the masses. It gives false power to one of our groups which is usually the majority to subjugate and oppress minority to create a decoy conflict and then the minority is forced to strive for all of its life to fight the majority and the majority strives to accumulate and maintain those false structures that give them the sense of power. Both these groups submerged in this conflict forget the material conflict that oppresses and subjugates them both, because they both share the same world.

The system creates puppet goverments that in theory work for the people but their true job is to make people fight each other over the meagre little that is thrown to them by the plentiful system. They use these differences to their full advantage. One person practicing their religion personally is not a problem to anyone, but when the same person is shown fear of the "other" person who follows another religion the same person then becomes a tool of this oppressive system. Now if the person happens to be a part of majority religion then the fear is the loss of power, and if the person is part of the minority religion the fear is the loss of life. Both these groups are controlled using fear politics and the material politics gets ignored and status quo secured.

Sharing the World
Part 4

Let's take an example of India. It like every other nation is a patriarchal one. So if you are a man the system favours you over women, gives you special privileges and power. If you are a Hindu, then by mere virtue of being a part of majority religion you get special privileges and power over a person of minority religions. But unlike other countries, India also has caste, so if you are an upper caste person then the system favours you and empowers you over a lower caste person. So by this organisation, upper caste hindu male is the most privileged social group and minority religion/lower caste women the least privileged and most oppressed. And of course there is intersectionality: like, the upper caste hindu women still enjoys privilege over lower castes but not over a male of her own caste. We often realise these distinctions and fight for our social group but many times neglect other social groups: like, an upper caste woman may fight against patriarchy but not against caste system, securing her own power structures she might wish to dismantle the ones that oppress her.

If we take the case of Hindutva, we will see that the narrative of fear is very well played and settled in the minds of the majority: ironically, the fear of the minority muslim population. But where does the fear stem from? Does it stem from the rational consideration that this minority group is secretly trying to conquer the country using their insurmountable power? Or does it stem from the constant propaganda of fear and hatred of those "others" who are portrayed as evil and barbaric? Everything from their culture to their lifestyle including their attire is deemed inferior and subhuman; the minority itself is considered subhuman by the majority. The people in power understand and use our differences to create and propagate this fear and hatred, but why? Because it gives them power, power over us, power to take more power than they otherwise would have achieved: but to what end? Actually there is no end, power is not a means to any end but an end in itself, these demagogues of "democracy" seek only power, power for them and for their corporate friends, because deluded and divided people are easy to fool and rule. The Hindus thinks they must elect this particular person who is going to let them maintain their false power structure but in reality that person doesn't even exist, yes, he is just an actor playing out a script, and the purpose of the script is to fool everyone of course: to fool the Hindu into believing that he is with them and fool the Muslim into believing nothing is going on between the Hindu and him. It is deception within a deception, multiple layers of lies carefully crafted to fool even the intelligent ones among the sheep. Those who manage to rise above one layer (say, caste) are fooled using religion; those who rise above the religious layer are fooled by the Nationalist layer. If Aliens existed on Mars I'm sure there would be a layer for that as well, there would be constant fear mongering and antagonisation against them and we would be fighting a pointless war with them (while fighting among us all the same) just so the demagogues and capitalists of both species could collectively benifit from it, because we both then would be sharing the same world.

Sharing the World
Part 5

True liberation from this abysmal state of affairs lies in the abolition of all of these unjust arbitrary untrue powers structures and hierarchies. All of these create a world that diverges from the material reality. And all of these people, collectively and invariably, are ultimately oppressed by the system. Even if you are an upper caste hindu male, you are still oppressed by the economic arrangement unless you are a mega corporate giant. You still have to work your ass off 8-10 hours, 7 days a week just to meet basic survival needs and lead a secure life. But that should be the very minimum that we start from, a basic secure life, with free healthcare and education to everyone, and an opportunity to live a life worth living; that should be the very minimum everyone should have. And if we set aside our differences for a while, we will realise that we (you and me) share the same world and we will be able to strive to achieve that basic minimum, and nothing will stop us because there is nothing that CAN stop us.

“I was now my own master.… I worked that day with a pleasure I had never before experienced.”

— Frederick Douglass,
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845)

(Frederick Douglass on his liberation from slavery and the joy of work as a free man)

“Experience demonstrates that there may be a wages of slavery only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other.”

— Frederick Douglass,
Three Addresses on the Relations Subsisting Between the White and Colored People of the United States (1886)

(Douglass towards the end of his life. He realized that wage slavery was almost as bad as chattel slavery.)

SUN (magazine): All this control of ideas depends on a high degree of secrecy. What kind of democracy can we have when secrecy is the basis of wealth?

BUCKMINSTER FULLER: People don’t know what is going on. How can they make any decisions? The capitalists want to control who is going to do what using which materials. So much is invisible, monopolized and kept secret that society doesn’t have any decisions to make.


(Regarding patents etc)

“The labor of a country is the source of its wealth”.

— Frederick Douglass,
Three Addresses on the Relations Subsisting Between the White and Colored People of the United States (1886)

"We do not find this Marxist notion of what anarchy is acceptable, for we do not believe that the state will naturally or inevitably die away automatically as a result of the abolition of classes. The state is more than an outcome of class divisions; it is, at one and the same time, the creator of privilege, thereby bringing about new class divisions. Marx was in error in thinking that once classes had been abolished the state would die a natural death, as if through lack of nourishment.

The state will not die away unless it is deliberately destroyed, just as capitalism will not cease to exist unless it is put to death through expropriation. Should a state be left standing, it will create a new ruling class about itself, that is, if it chooses not to make its peace with the old one. In short, class divisions will persist and classes will never be finally abolished as long as the state remains."

— Luigi Fabbri, Anarchy and "Scientific" Communism, 1922

“Neither the great political and financial power structures of the world, nor the specialization-blinded professionals, nor the population in general realize... that it is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a "higher standard of living than any have ever known."
It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary and henceforth unrationalizable as mandated by survival. War is obsolete.
It could never have been done before. Only ten years ago the more-with-less technology reached the point where it could be done. Since then the invisible technological-capability revolution has made it ever easier so to do. It is a matter of converting the high technology from weaponry to livingry. The essence of livingry is human-life advantaging and environment controlling. With the highest aeronautical and engineering facilities of the world redirected from weaponry to livingry production, all humanity would have the option of becoming enduringly successful.”


— R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER, Critical Path (1981)

“World Game finds that 60 percent of all the jobs in the U.S.A. are not producing any real wealth—i.e., real life support. They are in fear-underwriting industries or are checking-on-other-checkers, etc.”

“You have to decide whether you want to make money or make sense, because the two are mutually exclusive.”

“I am convinced all of humanity is born with more gifts than we know. Most are born geniuses and just get de-geniused rapidly.”


— BUCKMINSTER FULLER

"The whole apparatus of the western cultural tradition is a death machine, the negation of reality, a reign of the fictitious that has accumulated every kind of infamy and injustice, exploitation and genocide. If the refusal of this logic is condemned as madness, then we must distinguish between madness and madness."

—Alfredo M Bonanno, Armed Joy

https://youtu.be/NKCSDDgBAfw