Comprehensive thinking
Becoming a comprehensive-ist on Spaceship Earth
Buckminster Fuller, of Bucky Ball fame, wrote an essay called Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth. It’s a fascinating and fairly short read, a theoretical and philosophical romp. In it Fuller discusses his views on human capabilities and how we were made to be comprehensive learners. It reminded me so much of my college experience — both as an undergrad and grad student, but in different ways.
“One of humanity’s prime drives” Fuller wrote, “is to understand and be understood. All other living creatures are designed for highly specialized tasks. Man seems unique as the comprehensive comprehender and co-ordinator of local universe affairs.”
It’s an interesting premise though, that society has been pushing toward specialization — in learning, training, thinking — assuming that this was the key to success. Fuller however, argues that this narrowing goes against human nature. Humans were made to be adaptive, “in many if not any direction.” A bird is a specialist in flight, a fish a specialist in swimming, yet humans can fly in an airplane or put on a deep sea diving suit. A bird can’t take off its wings anymore than a fish can “come out of the sea and walk upon land.” They’re limited by their specializations, and we’re not.
I was accepted into Colorado State University as an Environmental Health major. It was a pre-med major and I thought for sure, I’d be on track to becoming a doctor. Yet, halfway through the semester, I began to feel a deep sense of dread. Was this all I was going to learn forever? I did well in my classes, but I was bored. I only had science classes. It was all lectures, memorization, labs and textbooks. Where was the critical thinking? Where were the tangents and discussions? I just couldn’t do all science all the time.
I decided to switch over to a liberal arts program, something that seemed to go against everything I had learned and inferred about what it meant to be “smart.” I had absorbed the idea that smart people went into science and math and engineering. If I got a liberal arts degree, I might as well just start applying for fast food jobs and save my money.
Except it didn’t play out like that at all. Instead of just learning science, I learned thinking. I learned communication, analytical and problem-solving skills — and how to apply them in different contexts. I took a few more science classes anyway — but I also took History, Literature, and International Development.
I learned plenty of hard skills as Technical Journalism major, which are of course critical to my career. But the soft skills go so much farther —I learned how to deal with complexity, diversity, and change. I learned how to apply these soft skills to everything from job interviews, to daily life.
Now that I’m in the Design Strategy MBA program at California College of Arts, I’m excited to use practical tools and techniques for identifying issues and developing solutions. I’m already enjoying being able to live in ambiguity, and use design thinking as a means to solving problems and thinking more comprehensively.
Expanding from interdisciplinary and holistic thinking, our program pushes us a step further and brings in empathy. I get to glean deep understanding, all while keeping people at the heart of it.
Becoming deliberately expansive instead of contractive, we ask, “How do we think in terms of wholes?” If it is true that the bigger the thinking becomes the more lastingly effective it is, we must ask, “How big can we think?”
— OPERATING MANUAL FOR SPACESHIP EARTH by Buckminster Fuller
I’m excited to follow in the footsteps of great thinkers like Fuller, and become a comprehensive-ist.
