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About this quote

What does it mean?
Humanity must learn to manage Earth without prior instructions.
In plain terms
We have no manual for living on this planet.
What can you take from it?
Experiment and learn as you go.

Where it applies

  • policy
  • education
  • innovation

Putting it to work

  • adaptive planning
  • systems learning

Questions to consider

  • What are you learning without a manual?
  • What experiments help?

Another view

Trial and error on a planetary scale risks catastrophe.

More from Buckminster Fuller

  1. Our little Spaceship Earth is only eight thousand miles in diameter, which is almost a negligible dimension in the great vastness of space. . . . Spaceship Ear…

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  2. Synergy is the only word in our language that means behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the separately observed behaviors of any of the system's separate …

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  3. Evolution consists of many great revolutionary events taking place quite independently of man's consciously attempting to bring them about. Man is very vain; h…

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