Scenario Universe

In Synergetics, R. Buckminster Fuller succinctly lays out his definition of Universe and humanity's place therein. The problem with that opening sentence, however, is that Universe is not some system within which one exists.

As Bucky sees it, "Universe is the aggregate of all humanity's consciouly apprehended and communicated nonsimultaneous and only partially overlapping experiences" (81). Note that, by definition, Universe requires conscious apprehension and communication, without which it would not exist. In the ultimate self-referential recursion, Universe requires humanity to experience Universe as much as humanity requires Universe as the ground against which we experience life. "We have only one counterpart of total complexity," Bucky says, "and that is Universe itself (85).

Thus mutually dependent, Universe and humanity are but components of one eventuation, or, as Bucky notes, "Universe is technology--the most comprehensively complex technology. Human organisms are Universe's most complex local technologies" (85).

At the same time, Universe is not a system. If it were a system, we could stand outside of it and say "There is the Universe"; but that is not the case. Anywhere humanity goes, there is Universe; thus Universe is a scenario, not a system. Furthermore, "Universe and its experiences cannot be considered as being physical, for they balance out as weightless," and "weightless experience is metaphysical" [emphasis added] (84).

Having declared that reality is thus metaphysical, we can look to Joseph Campbell for insight into how humanity experiences this Fuller Universe. "Our eyes are the eyes of this earth," Campbell writes in The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion; "our knowledge is the earth's knowledge. And the earth, as we now know, is a production of space" (2). Obviously Bucky would substitute Universe for earth, but he would undoubtedly assent to Campbell's earth as "a production of space"--production as in artistic performance.

Campbell refers to Immanuel Kant's four-term analogy to make this clear: a:b::c:x "where x represents a quantity that is not only unknown but absolutely unknowable--which is to say, is metaphysical" (29), the point on which Bucky and Campbell converge. Moreover, Campbell notes, "as Jesus also is reported to have declared (in the recently discovered and translated Gnostic Gospel of Thomas): 'The Kingdom is within you'" (53).

To conclude, while Shakespeare's cliched theatrical analogy--"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players"--certainly has some merit, it would be more instructive to consider the fact that the play resides in the minds of the players, even as the players inhabit the play: scenario Universe.