The Default Setting Is Love

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

It's an exciting and hopeful time to be alive.
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.

The culture of 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.

The objection to the morality of free societies has always been, What good could come from letting ordinary people think? The real world contains self-evident proof that people thinking more is moral, intelligent and beautiful.

Over eons the information system created as people mingle thoughts and feelings with those of others was our primary means of survival so it was that which evolution made ever sharper. Living in small groups everyone was known, every voice was heard, all played a role in success. Many of the talents that make people so intelligent together are useless in isolation, essential when combined with others. All are needed, all play a part. At every evolutionary step the result was the most efficient, creative and intelligent combination.

A purely automatic biological morality would not have left room for the messiness of creative diversity. Survival and success resulted from the best balance of automatic and conscious sources of morality to both bring people together and foster independent creativity. We are the heirs of a long history of ever greater morality.

Respect for the minds of ordinary people is respect for the intelligence of humanity is respect for your mind and mine.

The dispersal of desire is the generator of our overwhelming intelligence, an amazingly complex and beautiful information system everywhere dense, consisting of all the millions of thoughts and feelings crowding the mind of every individual all day and night throughout the world. Everyone wants to live and find their own happiness. Minute by minute with every decision, dream, comment and smile we add to the thinking going on.

The great challenge of our era is finding thousands of ways in complicated large scale modern life of unleashing human intelligence. 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.

Embracing the inherently moral nature of our human heritage elevates the life of every individual, validating their own freedom, their hopes and dreams, as they welcome those of others. It is the essential beating heart of the institutions that make the growth of intelligence possible, building a better world by decentralizing decision making.

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. Every life is enhanced by accepting humanity’s great gift, the smallness and particularity of self, opening the door to the world outside, gardens teeming with variety in which life takes place.