The Processional Effect
Nov 28th, 2008 by Geoff
Imagine if you will; the commoner-garden honey bee, hopping from flower to flower collecting pollen that he intends to take back to his hive family in order to feed the queen bee and keep his friends and family in sustenance.
A simple manoeuvre. A basic task. A solid, honourable, selfless purpose. ‘Go out young bee and – as Cuba Gooding Jnr screamed down the telephone at Jerry McGuire (in the film of the same name) – show me the honey!’
They honey bee knows its purpose. It knows what it is doing.
Or does it?
What the honey bee does not know, what the honey bee could not know is that in the process of travelling from plant to plant, from flower to flower he inadvertently collects pollen on his tail and accidentally pollinates all the flowers and plants in an act so vital to the eco-structure of this spinning planet that mankind would perish without it.
The bee’s purpose is simple and it is based on its hive instinct. But the processional effect of the bee’s gathering is so massive that I am hardly able to articulate it with words.
Now, I want you to imagine another cross pollinating processional effect that is equally mammoth and equally accidental and it all started with a race. One that was precipitated by fear.
The race in question was ‘the space race’ and it occurred between the Russian and American governments. The finish line? Man walking on the surface of the moon!
The premise of this race (or the belief) was that whoever landed a man on the moon first got to control space, and who ever gained control of space automatically held dominion over the earth. As I said it was a race precipitated by fear and ignorance. I mean who cares who got into space first? Do you? I don’t give a horse’s hoot. It does not excite me, it doesn’t inspire me but….but, but, but what I do care about, what I am interested in, what does excite me is the wonderful, paradigm shattering by-product of that whacky race between the global behemoths. Or what the visionary inventor Buckminster Fuller called the processional effect.
As far as President Kennedy was concerned he just wanted to place an American astronaut on the moon within a decade. He felt that this would bring back power-pollen to the American hive and insure its survival in a war that was freezer-box-cold cold. What Kennedy did not realise, what Kennedy could not have realised was that America at that time in history did not have the technology to place a man on the moon. It was discovered at the time that in order to meet Kennedy’s weighty directive and place moon dust on the boot-soles of Armstrong within ten years they would have to leave the cutting edge of sharply current technology and venture out onto the bleeding edge of the unknown and undiscovered, where imagination meets creation and where creation launches mankind into a new era.
To satisfy outrageous demands of course, one has to go to outrageous lengths. In other words, in order for man and moon to marry they had to invent and create new technology (now known as space technology). In fact, it is said that in order for President Kennedy to bring his ‘one small step’ into mankind’s reality 1000,000 (that is one million) new pieces of technology had to be invented by the current crop of scientists.
1000,000!!!!
Kennedy could not have known (surely) that his space dream would change the course of mankind forever. The by-product of the technology that built a ship capable of space travel was and is the mobile phone you are carrying on your hip right now, the computer at your desk, the engine in your car, in fact pretty much every new and exciting piece of technological, life-enhancing piece of kit that you and I absolutely take for granted on a daily basis can be traced back to that race for space.
Aiming for the moon changed the earth almost beyond recognition, because the processional effect, the cross pollination (although accidental) was so very far reaching.
The race for space inspires me to aim equally high in my own life. If for instance I aim to be a millionaire, or billionaire, or BAFTA winner or recipient of the Oscar or any other such global goal, how many things will I have to learn, how many skills will I have to master, what bleeding edge human extensions will I need to imagine and create in order to make my goal a living reality? And in creating those new tools, how many individuals peripheral to my singular intention, my original schematic will benefit from my example as I have benefited from the examples set before me, either with the inspiration it fed me or the proven path it created? Equally important; who will be inspired to aim high and win and create by your aspirational conquests?
Often we are motivated to achieve by desirous longing or by buck-naked terror and each of us, in the throws of creation probably thinks our efforts personal and autonomous. But we all need to know that everything we do has an effect on everything and everyone else, and whilst our singular purpose might just be to bring home the honey, the processional effect is so vast, so grand so earth shatteringly vital that all of mankind will be elevated by it. And with that as your motivation I think it only right that you think, that you talk and that you do BIG. That way you ensure that the by-product of your worthy labour and your joyful creation will encourage labour worthy enough to inspire joy in all creation.
Be well.
Geoff Thompson