Start With Universe Preface
When I was nineteen, I met a woman who changed my life.
I was young and naive, and she was a chronic liar. For almost two years, we lived in a fantastical world of romance, magic and endless high drama built on lies. It ended, predictably, as the illusion collapsed under its own weight. It wasn’t very dramatic. She got bored and moved on. I slowly woke up, blamed her for everything, and pretty much got back to the life I was living before we’d met.
She didn’t change my life until a few months later. I was telling my sob story to an old high school friend—how this woman had lied and betrayed my trust—and I realized that I was leaving out all the embarrassing parts. I was leaving out all the times I went along with her lies.
There’s a fine line between believing a lie and going along with one. In both cases, you’re accepting it without question, but to go along with a lie, some part of you has to recognize it for what it is. Looking back, I can remember times when my intuition was screaming at me, trying to get my attention. My intuition knew about the lies, but I blocked it out. I told it to go away because I had decided that I was going to see this thing through no matter what.
No matter what.
These days, “no matter what” is one of the red flag phrases that I’m wary of. “No matter what” means that your mind is closed. You’re no longer listening for the subtle signals that you might be on the wrong track. It’s right up there with “always” and “never” and other indicators of unwarranted certainty.
Lies get their power from the people who believe them, and I was eager to believe. Some hidden part of me needed so much to be loved and to be seen as special in her eyes, that I was willing to sacrifice truth to keep her around.
It hit me that I wasn’t so much a victim of that relationship as I was a co-conspirator. I had believed every crazy thing she told me, alienated myself from friends and family, and hurt people that I love. I wanted those things to be her fault, but to blame her I had to lie to myself. I decided I didn’t want to do that any more.
A year or so after my run-in with reality, I was reintroduced to the ideas of Buckminster Fuller. I was studying architecture, so I was initially fascinated by his geodesic domes and tensegrity structures. Before long, though, I was captivated by his view of the world. I bought his book, Synergetics, and started reading the introduction titled “The Wellspring of Reality.” At the time, I found it almost incomprehensible. I had to read sentences over and over, take a nap and try again. I went to the library to look up references to overspecialization and extinction, general systems science, the philosophy of science and more, trying to deeply understand what he was saying.
It launched me on a path of self-directed education that consumed my twenties and has continued over the years, slowed only by the demands of my web development career, marriage and three wonderful children.
What I found so compelling about Fuller was his honest search for truth and his willingness to be wrong. He insisted that he didn’t want people to accept his ideas without testing them first. He wanted people to do their own thinking, not follow him. That was a reassuring message to someone like me. I was starting to question everything I thought I knew, and I saw Fuller as a safe guide. He provided my curriculum and shaped my thinking for a long time.
Fuller’s worldview led him to invent things like the Dymaxion house and car, the geodesic dome, a form of geometry he called “synergetics,” and much more. At first, I thought of him as another Thomas Edison, master of a mysterious process of “inventing” where the goal was to bring new gadgets into the world.
As I learned more about his thinking, though, I realized that his inventions—his “artifacts” as he called them—were the result of a much deeper vision. He understood that the suffering, poverty and want that so many humans experience is no longer inevitable, and his artifacts were intended as tools to help bring that suffering to an end. For much of his life, Fuller insisted that we could do better. In 1975, appearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, he had this to say: “I can state and prove that it is technically feasible to take care of all of humanity at higher standards of living than any have ever experienced and do so by 1985…”
He created the World Game where groups of people worked together to understand and try to solve global problems. The goal was to “make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.”
I found his vision inspiring, but my inability to discern from his writings a clear path to achieving that vision was frustrating. I decided that I was going to figure out how it could be done and then find a clear way to communicate that to others. That was twenty-five years ago, and while I’ve continued to work on the problem, the world has changed. The internet and smart phones have taken over. Existential threats that Fuller worried about, like nuclear war, have been expanded upon, and now include climate collapse, and accidental or intentional weaponization of a number of technologies, including CRISPR and artificial intelligence. We’ve made a lot of progress as well, but we still have a ways to go.
Over the years, I’ve struggled to find a way to communicate what I’ve learned from Fuller and others in a form that can be more easily absorbed and acted on. I’ve wanted to find a way that more people could effectively join in the effort to create a better world. As it turns out, I found the answer in another idea I encountered studying architecture: the pattern language.
In 1977, Christopher Alexander published A Pattern Language, and a companion volume called The Timeless Way of Building. Together they provide the framework for a way of creating the built environment that is very different from the traditional architect/client relationship. Instead of designing the building directly, the architect acts as an advisor and helps the client to create the design themselves, using a pattern language as a guide. A pattern language is a collection of interrelated patterns. Here’s how Alexander explains what a pattern is: “[A} pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice.” (A Pattern Language, p. x)
So, a pattern is a solution to a problem in a context, written in such a way that the solution can be carried out in millions of different ways, based on the specific circumstances. Using a pattern is like following a simple rule: “if problem in context, then solution,” without the pattern dictating the details of the solution. It’s like having an advisor who helps you figure out what to do rather than telling you what to do. As simple as they are to use, patterns have a whole theory around them. Since 1977, Alexander has published numerous books about patterns and how they can be used to transform and improve systems of all kinds.
Since Alexander published his pattern language, the idea of patterns has been applied to many disciplines. First, it was adapted by software engineers to communicate best practices in object-oriented software design. In recent years, Takashi Iba has been experimenting with using patterns to document and teach a wide variety of creative human actions such as collaboration, learning, and more.
In this book, I’ve applied the idea of a pattern language to the question “how can I help create a better world.” Another way to ask that question might be “how can I help transform some part of the world so that it’s more vibrant, fair, accepting, beautiful and alive, and supports all life in a way that we can survive and thrive far into the future?” Part of the answer is that you transform yourself and the world together. You have a certain set of capabilities right now that you can use to make the world better. If you can find something that you can do today, that needs to be done, will make the world a little better, and is within or just at the edge of your capabilities, you will both improve yourself and make the world a little better.
The patterns in this book are intended to help you gently transform yourself, to turn yourself into an effective creator. As a creator, you will be better at transforming the world.
Think of the patterns as challenges. Each pattern will challenge your current ways of looking at, thinking about and acting in the world. Like our bodies, our minds grow by being challenged. Just enough weight lifted enough times and our muscles respond by growing stronger. In the same way we can question ourselves in simple, repeated ways that will make us stronger humans. We can become more resilient. We can become better versions of ourselves. And we can do the same to the world.
I started this process of self-transformation when I was twenty-one, but it’s never too late to start. Most likely, if you’re reading this book, you’ve already been transforming yourself. This book can serve to continue what you’ve started with a bit more structure and maybe some insights you haven’t come across yet. If all this is new to you, don’t worry. This book will meet you wherever you are.
Like Fuller, I want you to question these patterns. Are they consistent with your experience of how the world works? Do they ring true? Consider what this book has to offer, but be skeptical, be critical, and do your own thinking.
To the journey!
Jim Applegate December 2020