The culture of freedom, democracy and human rights is creating an advanced civilization, more intelligent, moral and beautiful. The dawn of a better world is driven by all kinds of people whose lives are enhanced when they’re allowed, enabled, inspired to make more decisions in their lives. It's an exciting and hopeful time to be alive.
This reality is beyond the vision of modern philosophy based on the false premise that the default setting is hate because humans are separate by nature and evolved to compete against one another. But we aren’t and we didn’t.
People thinking more is good, right and beautiful because our thoughts and feelings evolved to mix together in the living thinking system that is all minds connected, talents not concentrated but dispersed, every person incompetent on their own, each and every one needed to add variety to the whole, creating a category leap in intelligence, grace and power far beyond what could evolve to exist in any one beast, completely dependent on everyone getting along, intelligence and morality joined in a common endeavor.
Our collective intelligence was sharpened over eons as our primary means of survival. Living in small groups everyone was known, every voice was heard, all played a role in success. With failure a constant shadow the result at every step was the most efficient, creative and intelligent combination bound together as it had to be by countless varieties of love in a package of glorious shining beauty.
The most important and potent attribute of human intelligence is not that some are all encompassing geniuses but that none are. The magic at the heart of power comes disguised as innocence, composed of pieces in a pattern always arranged the same. Impractical musicians, nonathletic priests, groveling politicians help bring disparate folks together, mechanics fix stoves, clumsy scientists invent, athletes run and hunt, shoppers gather, some cook, others memorize, memorialize the past. By themself each is so small, incompetent, having over eons given up ability to think completely or prosper all alone, developing instead critical extremes of difference, widespread idiosyncrasy and partiality of vision. A very steep price, necessary to be essential to the thinking whole, providing wide variety, depth of thought and wild sparks of creativity.
The challenge of our era is finding thousands of ways in complicated large scale modern life of unleashing human intelligence and nurturing our heritage with a clear-eyed recognition of it. Democracy, including ever more people in decision making, is active, alive and intelligent and deserves respect for it. Freedom works, intelligence is beautiful because the default setting is love. Together our destiny is to wonder and speculate, create and explore, seek truth and solve the riddles of the universe.
Connections are everywhere, disconnection is illusion, ever greater mixing lending context, depth and meaning to the love enabling the human information system to dominate existence with warmth and beauty. We all have a responsibility to engage with the wonder and joy of life, opening ourselves and our world to all voices. So rise above superiority to live equal with all, awaken to see the light in every pair of eyes, each one a unique shining facet of the most intelligent entity ever to arise.
In the clear cold light of morning
the facts of life reveal
the long arc of history
bends toward intelligence.
The full story is here
in Poems, with a Preface.
