The Default Setting Is Love

Poems and a preface tracing the inseparable nature of morality and intelligence.

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.

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.

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, talents not concentrated but dispersed, every person incompetent on their own, each 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. This information system has always been our primary means of survival, our most important tool and weapon.

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

Respect is an opening of self
to the splendors of the world
awakening especially
to see the light
in every person’s eyes,
each one a unique shining facet
of the greatest intelligence ever to exist,
their decisions, simple, muddled and sublime
invaluable elements of the mix.
Respect is not deference
it’s the opposite of pretense
no halfway, can’t be faked,
comes only from the heart,
it’s there or it’s not
personal because
you truly mean it, feel it, see it
then blink you are in
the kingdom of heaven.
It’s easier for a camel to go
through the eye of a needle
than for one fixated on status,
on measuring against others,
to enter that reality
to see it, even believe it exists.
A life filled with kissing up
and condescending down
some ridiculous social scale
is a life cut off, trapped in addiction,
self-imposed separation,
blind to the experience of seeing
in every pair of eyes
irreplaceable doorways
to the vast, intricate, beautiful
thinking information universe
of all humans together
alive right now
in that creature right there
a person
like all of us tentative and uncertain
about adding their voice to the world
respect for their voice
is respect for intelligence
no matter how ordinary or peculiar they may seem
respect is the antidote to hatred and war
the key to unlocking human intelligence
it’s doing the right thing
the lubricant of daily life,
for honest business works best
when respecting all involved
respect makes freedom real every day
lifts the spirits of those you meet
gives them hope of a better world
having respect for yourself and the world around
infuses your life
with purpose, meaning, beauty and love.