Book Club Guide: Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth

Part I, Introduction and Chapters 1–4

Buckminster Fuller was born in 1895 and died in 1983.

He was a highly original thinker and designer; a popular speaker, especially in his later years, and a writer with his own unique style.

“Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth,” was published in 1968 and was part of new orientation toward seeing the planet as a unified, interconnected entity. “The Whole Earth Catalog,” also first published in 1968, with its picture of the Earth seen from Space on the cover, was dedicated to Buckminster Fuller.

In my opinion the book is not dated at all; in fact, I would say we have finally caught up to his thoughts from over fifty years ago.

We used it in a Book Club during the Coronavirus shut-down, in April, 2020. I led the discussion and chose the book because its central metaphor has never felt more accurate and timely.

It is one of those rare books, like “Be Here Now,” for which the title isn’t just the name of the book. It is the book. Just getting that we are all crew members on a spaceship with no instructions is enough.

But there is much more. It is a short book, but it is dense. Bucky is a dense writer. You need to read every word, some of which…