Whole Earth Catalog 1968

Whole Earth,  Winter, 1998  

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PURPOSE

We are as gods and might as well get used to it. So far, remotely done power and glory--as via government, big business, formal education, church--has succeeded to the point where gross obscure actual gains. In response to this dilemma and to these gains a realm of intimate, personal power is developing--power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested. Tools that aid this process are sought and promoted by the WHOLE EARTH CATALOG.

FUNCTION

The WHOLE EARTH CATALOG functions as an evaluation and access device. With it, the user should know better what is worth getting and where and how to do the getting.

An item is listed in the CATALOG if it is deemed:

1) Useful as a tool,

2) Relevant to independent education,

3) High quality or low cost,

4) Not already common knowledge,

5) Easily available by mail.

This information is continually revised according to the experience and suggestions of CATALOG users and staff.

USING THE 1968 CATALOG

WARNING: Using the access information from the 1968 Catalog will drive you nuts. Publishers begged us not to reprint the Catalog with their names anywhere near books they no longer carry. Please don't call a publisher and ask for a book because you saw it here.

Buckminster Fuller

The insights of Buckminster Fuller are what initiated this catalog.

Of the four books reviewed here, Nine Chains to the Moon is his earliest and most openly metaphysical, Ideas and Integrities his most personal, No More Secondhand God the most recent, World Design Science Decade the most programmatic.

People who beef about Fuller mainly complain about his repetition -- the same ideas again and again, it's embarrassing. It is embarrassing, also illuminating, because the same notions take on different uses when re-approached from different angles or with different contexts. Fuller's lectures have a raga quality of rich nonlinear endless improvisation full of convergent surprises.

Some are put off by his language, which makes demands on your head like suddenly discovering an extra engine in your car -- if you don't let it drive you faster, it'll drag you, Fuller won't wait. He spent two years silent after illusory language got him in trouble, and he returned to human communication with a redesigned instrument.

With that, empirical curiosity, and New England perseverance Fuller has forged one of the most original personalities and functional intellects of the age.

   I see God in
   the instruments and the mechanisms that
   work
   reliably,
   more reliably than the limited sensory departments of
   the human mechanism.
   And God says
   observe the paradox
   of man's creative potentials
   and his destructive tactics.
   He could have his new world
   through sufficient love
   for "all's fair"
   in love as well as in war
   which means you can
   junk as much rubbish,
   skip as many stupid agreements
   by love,
   spontaneous unselfishness radiant.

   The revolution has come--
   set on fire from the top.
   Let it burn swiftly.
   Neither the branches, trunk, nor roots will be endangered.
   Only last year's leaves and
   the parasite-bearded moss and orchids
   will not be there
   when the next spring brings fresh growth
   and free standing flowers.

   Here is God's purpose--
   God, to me, it seems,
   is a verb
   not a noun,
   proper or improper;
   is the articulation
   not the art, objective or subjective;
   is loving,
   not the abstraction "love" commanded or entreated;
   is knowledge dynamic,
   not legislative code,
   not proclamation law.
   not academic dogma, not ecclesiastic canon.
   Yes, God is a verb,
   the most active,
   connoting the vast harmonic
   reordering of the universe
   from unleashed chaos of energy.
   And there is born unheralded
   a great natural peace,
   not out of exclusive
   pseudo-static security
   but out of including, refining, dynamic balancing.
   Naught is lost.
   Only the false and nonexistent are dispelled.

   And I've thought through to tomorrow
   which is also today.
   The telephone rings
   and you say to me
   Hello Buckling this is Christopher; or
   Daddy it's Allegra; or
   Mr. Fuller this is the Telephone Company Business Office;
   and I say you are inaccurate.
   Because I knew you were going to call
   and furthermore I recognize
   that it is God who is "speaking."

   And you say
   aren't you being fantastic?
   And knowing you I say no.

   All organized religions of the past
   were inherently developed
   as beliefs and credits
   in "second hand" information.

   Therefore it will be an entirely new era
   when man finds himself confronted
   with direct experience
   with an obviously a priori
   intellectually anticipatory competence
   that has interordered
   all that he is discovering.

[No More Secondhand God]

Ideas and Integrities Buckminster Fuller 1963; 318pp