trimtabbing

                                                                                                          

                                                                                                     changing the course of our world

                                                                               

                                                              workshops and consulting with Jaime Snyder

Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment. - Buckminster Fuller, 1980

As humanity teeters on the edge of its very survival, it is clearer and clearer that we cannot wait for our governments to do all that is necessary to rise to the occasion.  But what can we as individuals really do to turn the tide?

 When I was a child, my grandfather, the futurist and design scientist Buckminster Fuller,  not only taught me the usual childhood  tasks, like how to tie my shoes (for which he always had a special system),  but he also introduced  me to the principles  he observed nature using to regenerate and sustain life  on Earth.  In living, growing and working with him until his passing when I was 28, I was immersed in all he had discovered throughout his life’s experiment to see “what the little individual  can do, which the great institutions  of government,  religion,  and business cannot.”

 After a lifetime  of experimentation  using himself  as the guinea pig,  Bucky concluded that if individuals  applied  nature's own principles  they might just make the critical  difference  in whether it is to be “utopia or oblivion” for all of humanity. Acknowledging the profound potential  of one such fundamental  principle,  Bucky asked that his epitaph be: “call me trimtab.” A trimtab is a small rudder used to turn the main rudder on large ships.  It clearly demonstrates how in any large system a seemingly small and individual  action can leverage a great impact on the big picture—thereby steering the whole system into new directions.

 In the 27 years since Bucky’s passing, the core of my life’s work has centered on exploring how thetrimtab principle, and all its corollaries, can be applied in the day-to-day lives of citizens concerned with magnifying their contribution in addressing the epochal global challenges facing humanity in this ‘critical moment’ before us. The trimtabbing workshops are designed to provide a forum to develop these capabilities.