A “Positively Deviant” Day with Bucky and Marshall

Marshall Thurber has the unique distinction of being a
protégé of Buckminster Fuller and W. Edwards Deming.

On Saturday, August 16 I joined Marshall and a few dozen
“positive deviants” to tour the Buckminster Fuller exhibit
at the Whitney Museu

m in NYC.

Before the museum opened, we gathered like a dance troupe
on the sidewalk of Madison Avenue as Marshall shared
Bucky insights. When the museum opened, we shuttled
to the cafeteria for another hour of Bucky wisdom.

I captured it all on my trusty FLIP video.

I had many “aha” moments.
This ONE sits atop my mind today:

TRIM TAB!

Picture a rudder, then imagine a tiny rudder on the rudder.
This miniature “rudder on the rudder” turns the ship.

The smallest movement of the trim tab builds up low pressure
that pulls the rudder around, which turns the entire ship. It
takes almost no effort at all to turn a floating city like the
Queen Mary.

Bucky had no capital, but he knew how to trim tab.

He spent his life creating “low pressure” to one side or the
other to move things in a preferred direction.

He asks each of us to be a trim tab during our time here
on Spaceship Earth. He said,

“Do NOT attempt to earn a living. Instead, do what needs
to be done. If you are doing what needs to be done then
the Universe will support you, always and only in the nick
of time (otherwise it wouldn’t be most economical and
nature is always most economical).”

I’ve heard this many times before.
I never internalized it.

When Marshall said it I heard it again for the first time,
and it rocked my world.

Bucky said he’d

rather be NOT understood than misunderstood.
He spent two years in silence to learn to do his own thinking.

Bucky loved to explode myths and counter conventional
thinking of “gurus” and masters. He urged us go beyond
learning how to “think, believe and know” to FEEL and
EXPERIENCE.

When you feel and experience you are only yourself.
Experience is the intrinsic” dimension of life.

The world wants to teach you to think, believe and know.
That messes you up. Bucky said,

“Forget standing on the shoulders of giants. Use your senses.
Make your own experience the basis of the world.”

He called this Synergistics.

The world is a moving mass of synergy.
It serves up heaping helpings of serendipity.
It shows up in beautiful symmetry and synchronicity.

Richard Bach wrote in Illusions:

“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls a butterfly.”

“Big doors swing on little hinges” is a mantra in the spirit
of the trim tab. Today is a gift that opens big doors of
gratitude and appreciation to whatever unfolds.

How will you trim tab today to move things in a preferred direction?

Please share your experiences and comments.