The Default Setting Is Love

Freedom, democracy and human rights is intelligent, moral and beautiful. This reality is beyond the vision of modern philosophy based on the false premise that the default setting is hate because humans are fundamentally separate and evolved to compete against one another. But we aren’t and we didn’t.

A better world is being chosen by all kinds of people whose lives are enhanced when they’re allowed, enabled, inspired to make more decisions in their lives. This is the great transformation of our era. It's an exciting and hopeful time to be alive.

People thinking more is moral and beautiful because our thoughts and feelings evolved to mix together in the living thinking system that is all minds connected, 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. The information system created as people mingle thoughts and feelings with those of others evolved to be the most intelligent entity ever to exist.

Our collective intelligence was our primary means of survival so it was that which evolution made ever sharper. How individuals think was shaped by the enormous force of their effect on our most important tool and weapon, the human information system. Many of the talents that make people so intelligent together are useless in isolation, essential when combined with others. Impractical musicians, nonathletic priests, groveling politicians help bring disparate folks together. Mechanics fix things, clumsy scientists invent, cooks devise food, athletes run and hunt, shoppers gather, some who can memorize, memorialize the past. Fearless and timid, quick and slow, passive and aggressive, skillful and clumsy, female and male, serious and frivolous, analytical and intuitive, speculative and methodical, mathematical or musical or not, all are found in every group across the globe. This mix exists today because it is the combination that proved to be most intelligent. At every evolutionary step the result was the most efficient, creative and intelligent combination, bound together by countless varieties of love in a package of glorious shining beauty.

The challenge of our era is finding thousands of ways in complicated large scale modern life of unleashing human intelligence. Our kind of intelligence is a category leap, rising far beyond what could ever evolve to be the smartest, most wily, most dominant individual. Supermen and philosopher kings do not exist. If they did our world would be much less intelligent. The most striking thing an honest person sees in mirrors is the amazing ordinariness of uniqueness. Human morality evolved as a necessary component of intelligence, since to think together we must get along. Embracing the inherently moral nature of our heritage elevates the life of every individual, validating their own freedom, their hopes and dreams, when they welcome those of others. It is the essential beating heart of the institutions that are making a more intelligent world possible by decentralizing decision making.

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. 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.

Poems and a preface tracing the love that bends the long arc of history toward intelligence.