[This is about a real-life man from the blog of Gordon Wesley Asbury, a fictional character in the Dance Floor Wars novels.]

Upon contemplating suicide early in his adulthood, Buckminster Fuller had a vision.

Suspended inside a sphere of light, Ol’ Bucky heard a voice say,

“From now on you need never await temporal attestation to your thought. You think the truth. You do not have the right to eliminate yourself. You do not belong to you. You belong to Universe. Your significance will remain forever obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your role if you apply yourself to converting your experiences to the highest advantage of others.”

In another age, I would have said Bucky was high on cocaine under a disco ball at Studio 54. That assumption certainly would not be out of line with his early life. He was kicked out of Harvard for spending all his money partying with a vaudeville troupe.

Yet, when he stopped waiting on the stamp of approval from those in charge is when he really began to see his place in the world.

Fuller’s famous quote bears marking here. I shall tie it up momentarily. He said, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” He lived by his quote in all respects save one that we will get to, but which even he knew to be useless.

Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller (July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983), was a systems theorist, neo-futuristic architect,  designer, publisher of more than 30 books, coined or popularized terms such as “Spaceship Earth” and synergetic, developed numerous inventions (mainly architectural designs), popularized the widely known geodesic dome after which carbon molecules known as fullerenes were later named by scientists for their resemblance to geodesic spheres, and served for nine years as the second president of Mensa.

Old Bucky was all about putting his time into things he could shake up for the better.

That is why not once in his speeches, writings, projects, or teachings did Bucky ever address the longest running fight against reality that man has ever known: The War Between the Sexes. Even he knew this thing called male-female relationships would never change, could never change, and could not be systemized, quantified, modeled, remodeled, or legislated.

Longtime readers of my columns (and now my blog) accuse me of having an inconsistent and changing opinion on the subject I’m famous for covering. My reply is always the same: It sure is nice to be so assured of your facts that you never have to visit the basis for them.

In this longest war, the acceptance of reality is, in fact, the better part of valor, and will save aggravation and wasted motion. Acceptance allows our finite time to be better spent since false expectations are clearly identified early on, and if not identified until late in life, will bring the same benefits to what life remains.

Bucky knew this to be true; which is why he worked on the easy stuff with a high gee-whiz factor.

Buckminster Fuller never addressed The War Between the Sexes. Even he knew that was useless.