Like other songs on this album, the song is inspired by Buckminster Fuller. This one is based on a letter he wrote to a 10 year old boy named Michael. Michael had written to him and asked whether he was a "thinker" or a "doer". This is the reply:
Dear Michael,
Thank you very much for your recent letter concerning ”thinkers and doers.”
The things to do are: the things that need doing: that you see need to be done, and no one else seems to see need to be done. Then you will conceive your own way of doing that which needs to be done – that no one else has told you to do or how to do it. This will bring out the real you that often gets buried inside a character that has acquired a superficial array of behaviors induced or imposed by
others on the individual.
Try making experiments of anything you conceive and are intensely interested in. Don’t be disappointed if something doesn't work. That is what you want to know – the truth about everything — and then the truth about combinations of things. Some combinations have such logic and integrity that they can work coherently despite non-working elements embraced by their system. Whenever you come to a word with which you are not familiar, find it in the dictionary and write a sentence which uses that new word. Words are tools – and once you have learned how to use a tool you will never forget it. Just looking for the meaning of the word is not enough. If your vocabulary is comprehensive, you can comprehend both fine and large patterns of experience.
You have what is most important in life – initiative. Because of it, you wrote to me. I am answering to the best of my capability. You will find the world responding to your earnest initiative.
Like other songs on this album, the song is inspired by Buckminster Fuller. This one is based on a letter he wrote to a 10 year old boy named Michael. Michael had written to him and asked whether he was a "thinker" or a "doer". This is the reply:
Dear Michael,
Thank you very much for your recent letter concerning ”thinkers and doers.”
The things to do are: the things that need doing: that you see need to be done, and no one else seems to see need to be done. Then you will conceive your own way of doing that which needs to be done – that no one else has told you to do or how to do it. This will bring out the real you that often gets buried inside a character that has acquired a superficial array of behaviors induced or imposed by others on the individual.
Try making experiments of anything you conceive and are intensely interested in. Don’t be disappointed if something doesn't work. That is what you want to know – the truth about everything — and then the truth about combinations of things. Some combinations have such logic and integrity that they can work coherently despite non-working elements embraced by their system. Whenever you come to a word with which you are not familiar, find it in the dictionary and write a sentence which uses that new word. Words are tools – and once you have learned how to use a tool you will never forget it. Just looking for the meaning of the word is not enough. If your vocabulary is comprehensive, you can comprehend both fine and large patterns of experience.
You have what is most important in life – initiative. Because of it, you wrote to me. I am answering to the best of my capability. You will find the world responding to your earnest initiative.
Sincerely yours, Buckminster Fuller
Where did you find this? I've been looking for roots of these songs and this never came up in my searches.
Where did you find this? I've been looking for roots of these songs and this never came up in my searches.