Thomas Dexter Kerr

The Default Setting Is Love (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

The culture of freedom, democracy and human rights is creating an advanced civilization, more 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 separate by nature and evolved to compete against one another. But we aren't and we didn't.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Poems with a Preface

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Thomas Dexter Kerr
• Erscheinungstermin: 20. September 2014
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781311116819
• Artikelnr.: 48180522

Autorenporträt

When embarking on my quest for the ideas in "The Default Setting Is Love" in 1973, I realized that if I was to find the meaning of peace and love in the larger sense, their importance, origin, and function in real, practical everyday life, I not only had to read lots of books, I had to live it and help build it. So I choose a career of service to my country and my people. By my people I meant Americans. African Americans are Americans. I came to West Philadelphia alone, with enough to get by a couple months. I drove city transit buses for five years, immersing myself in the culture and neighborhoods, then started a successful small business helping lots and lots of people, doing not charity but respect, and did a lot of volunteer work, all designed to add to the slowly growing peace. I did my small part and made a difference. Right from the beginning in that world I learned from the people around me to stop asking what caused the chaos of the low level civil war raging all around us back then. We already knew most of that. A much more difficult and important problem was addressing what could be done to build the peace and help people find ways to live better lives. And when you start asking and pursuing those very different questions it changes you and the things you do and the world opens up in front of you.

This book is not about those struggles, that adventure. It is about the universal truths I learned along the way.