GRUNCH OF GIANTS

Yet another restatement of the Fuller message: technology plus awareness of the synergy of the universe can save us from disaster. This installment is billed as an ""intimately related sequel"" to Critical Path (1981), Fuller's summa on human evolution and destiny; but it seems more like an incoherent addendum to the chapter ""Legally Piggily,"" a fabulistic history of the rise of capitalism. Here, he recaps and expands the story of the evolution of multinationals--a GRoss UNiversal Cash Heist of giants--from men with clubs through J. P. Morgan to sinister omnipotence. Though Grunch's machinations have brought us to the brink of economic collapse and atomic war, there is hope: ""All it takes is shifting from weaponry to livingry production."" This shift will come at ""a soon-to-occur critical-mass moment"" when all responsible humans will simultaneously intuit that corporations and national governments are unreal, ushering in a Design Science Decade. We will then form one global government and enter on a new phase of cosmic evolution. This, though familiar, is not Fuller at his best. The a priori history, partly deduced from daffy etymologies (""real""--as in real wealth and real estate--is from the Spanish word for royal, so ""real is what the socioeconomic power structure says it is""), seems less mythopoeic than just plain silly; and the quaintly Thirtyish side of Fuller's thinking (echoing Social Credit and General Semantics) is much in evidence. The only news is a sense of urgency: a ""bloodless socioeconomic reorientation"" can be postponed only at our peril. Otherwise, redundant even by Fuller's repetitive standards. Try Critical Path instead.