The Buckminster Fuller play was excellent, but not because of anything that was actually said, but because of what the discourse made my mind do and think about. It's a one-man play, an actor playing the title role of the reknowned, 20th Century, arguably crackpot, architect/philosopher. He was a visionary and an idealist. Some ideas were very simple, like the feasibility of feeding and housing the entire planet, and the technological ability to get more while using less, and it's depressing knowing that they won't be realized any time soon, given the current political structure of nation-states and the inherent counter-productivity regarding global and corporate economics. And his more bigger concepts about viewing the world were intriguing.

One thing the play made me think about was the idea of the "universe", it being one thing, the whole enchilada, everything contained in it. Traditionally we think of the universe just in spatial terms, it being here, wherever. But the temporal aspect is also a part of it, time isn't just a fleeting regulator that prevents everything from happening at once. It is all happening at once, including time, we just experience it sequentially. Most scientists now recognize that we live in (or experience, rather) four dimensions, not three. Three spatial dimension, and one temporal dimension, time. Time is given the same value as spatial dimensions, so when you conceive the universe, you have to include time, all of it, from beginning to end, existing at once.

We look up at the night sky and some of the stars we see aren't even there anymore, they've long since novaed and we're seeing the light that shone 30,000 years ago. In real time, the star doesn't exist. But time 30,000 years ago still does exist, as we are still observing it. So when Kansas sings, "I close my eyes, only for a moment and the moment's gone", it's poetic, but doesn't conform to current science. Actually, it's all very Matrix.