My friend Steve asked Tom Friedman (and economist Joseph Stiglitz) a poignant question about the role of science and peace in a world where a quality standard of living for all is technically feasible while the politics of scarcity still continues to justify war.
The event took place on April 19th in Washington and was hosted by The New York Times, moderated by Ted Koppel, and recently broadcast on a delayed basis by C-Span. Here's the link to the video, which steve posted to YouTube.com.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=MebIll2VDEA
The discussion provoked by Steve's question was thoughtful and on target. It was nice to see that Ted Koppel continued the discussion by asking his own related question at one point....as well as commenting on how important he thought this subject is.
Nice work Steve!

I love that word 'imagine' ... and have been an avid 'Bucky' student since completing Robert Kyosaki's Business School in Hawaii in 1993.
I am also an engineer, a risk engineer whose passion is health and wellness and so I now risk engineer human beings health. It is well documented in the risk engineering arena that design solutions work almost 100% of the time, compared to administrative solutions around 10 to 20% effective and education is a around 5% effective.
We currently pour enormous amounts of capital into education even though it is inherantly inefficient.
Bucky is very clear that transformation of our plant will require a comprehensive design revolution. In effect that is having us focus on what we see needs to be done and designing a solution. Many people have already identified the problem and implemented a solution, however they are still working inside the context of scarcity, and as such competition must put many of them out of business after much struggle.
Why does America currently have 37 million people living in poverty? Because the economic system as Bucky also states (in GRUNCH I think) is bankrupt.
I have had two attempts and am starting the third attempt at producing a "healthy and green" 'Ebay' or marketplace for individuals, businesses, clubs and organisations that are each focused on making a positive contribution to the wellbeing of our Universe.
The synergy will be enormous and we have proposed incorporating an MLM (multi-level marketing) system to distribute wealth back into the member businesses.
Bucky talks quit a lot about networking and the fact that the inter-connectedness of computers (internet) will play a big part in our design revolution. I still come up against some resistence to the MLM approach, and would appreciate feedback from members as to their thoughts in relation to Bucky's philosophies.
Bucky said "prices should never go up", that it was anti-evolutionary. Inflation he would say is a result of us not working together. Once we learn to work together (and that willl come via artifacts, not policy changes, or education) Bucky said we could create 10 billion Billionaires on planet Earth, there is that much wealth here.
Imagine 5 billion individuals and businesses all working together ... WOW, that's the sort of future I see possible.
I look forward to all comments.
Alex Sprunt
Founder and CEO, Your Healthy Planet.Com
Imagine 5 million healthy and sustainable businesses clubs and organisations all working together ... imagine the difference that will make. Go to http://www.yourhealthyplanet.com and register.
The Ted Kopple Video
Isn't it always the case, though, that interesting questions are posed and well-informed answers are given? Yet, when it comes to conservation and distribution, scarcity and justifications for war, what turns us away from Bucky's synergetic models? I mean, are we here to provide an unending resource base for the news media regardless of the forum but not as to the actual conceptual models that show pattern conservation of energy events and vivid models of that process in conceptual field? We can explore the A Modules, which are energy conservers and the B Modules which distribute energy quanta. These are a concise and exquisite geometric integrity in the vector equilibrium and how that whole conceptual field operates? I mean, isn't such conceptuality in thought more comprehensively valid than examples in the destructive mind sets as imagination conjures an objective and alluded to during the Ted Kopple interview? It's as if being an expert on global statistics will provide what we need as a reality transformation. When in reality that is already manifest and what we are looking for is the structural integrity pattern that was overlooked for our realities to have gotten to such rationalized disproportions.
Well, if more of us persevered with Fuller's geometric models, and got to know the geometry of thinking as we construct a thought, this could manifest its patterning integrity a lot more comprehensively considerate than anything anyone at that forum proposed and imagined. The question, was definitely to the point about the objective of a better world. And, the opinions from the guests seemed to have no clue about the geometry of thinking. To sell a book about a flat world isn't even close to the prime awareness, which is a sphere. Still, it's the same old format that gives the media it's presence in the world, but we've all seen so many of these presentations that they have become a type of rhetoric.
The same goes for the endless and yet beautifully put together documentaries of the most tragic world conditions. But nothing changes, not when it comes to thinking a thought, imagining anew, and the conceptuality of pure genius. That genius was Buckminster Fuller and his clearly knowable mind in his Synergetics. The most earnest people ignore it, some even try to rethink his geometric models changing them drastically, and by so doing invalidate the pattern integrity, which is the whole conservation message for us to grasp. In turn, Fuller's Synergetics is very much undervalued, and treated, in a sense, as the extraneous factor. However, it gives us the basis that may have redirected the media's train of thought, treating the whole thing under discussion as a conceptual field objective and not just another transmitted event.
IN ADDITION, I TOOK THIS CONCERN ONE STEP FURTHER THE FOLLOWING MORNING. PLEASE SEE http://www.omniscientuniversechurch.org/BOOKSEVENChapterOne17TheAngleofError.html
Thank you Steve, for being there, asking the right question to the right person in the right forum, and letting the answer flow. This type of accurate placed discussion can create a tipping point, a critical mass, for those individuals who believe that there is hope for the future of our planet.
An interesting point was raised by Mr. Koppel, is there a society that currently models a sharing of resources, demonstrating the structure necessary to assure the sustainable growth of huge economies like China and Indonesia?
I changed it to a 'live link'. In oder to make a link in html you have to use the following syntax:
<a href="enter link location, i.e. http://google.com">enter link name to be displayed in the text</a>
- Jochen
--Site Administrator--
jh@bfi.org
Thanks a lot, Josh. I tried to make the link "live", but can't get that to work.
- Steve