“There is a lot of talk about love, but who teaches it? And what about unconditional love? Why can’t you get a degree in it, just like you can in other subjects of lesser value? When unconditional love is developed into courses, undergraduate, and graduate degrees, and offered at all levels of the educational system, then we will be filling the world with advanced students of love, with the tools and resources needed to transform the human spirit so that we can stop killing each other and our planet.” – Wolfram Alderson
When we understand that love is not just emotion, but intelligence, then we are on the evolutionary road. Love is an extremely advanced body of knowledge, but we put more time into learning how to drive a car (study for an exam, pass a test, demonstrate driving skills, etc.). The sum of real knowledge and real love are real existence. If it doesn’t come from love, it isn’t real. The heart is far more than a glorious pump, it is a wisdom engine, a source of actionable intelligence, a divine communication device that sends information faster than the speed of light.
Love is an action, never simply a feeling.
The total sum of suffering in the world is essentially the “love deficit”. We all need to start investing more in love – the ROI is simply fabulous!
The most incredible architecture is the architecture of Love.
“Selling Fear has been an enormously successful business model. Why not sell Love?” –Mr. O
“Capitalism Kills” by Claire Fontaine
The moral of the story told by Claire Fontaine is that “at the heart of the most arrogant commercial prosperity a shameful poverty proliferates, and that in the midst of Third World deprivation priceless wealth multiplies.”
Love is the most powerful element in the universe. It may in fact be the thing which holds stars in the firmament and that thing which keeps the blood rushing in our veins.
Radiate boundless love towards the entire world — above, below, and across — unhindered, without ill will, without enmity.
That is to say: if you live for others you will have an intimate personal knowledge of the love that rises up in you out of a ground that lies beyond your own freedom and your own inclination, and yet is present as the very core of your own free and personal identity. Penetrating to that inner ground of love you at last find your true self.
There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.
Love is the answer, and you know that for sure;
Love is a flower, you’ve got to let it grow.
While romantic love is a delightful subject, my interest in love is not the territory that has already been amply covered. Rather, my interest is in fostering conversations about what I call “structural love.” We all know much about “structural hate”…the systems that build on fear and ignorance and manifest in bigotry, sexism, racism, hunger, homelessness, and perpetual war. These systems are well funded and organized. You can get a PhD in War Studies, become an engineer and design weapons of mass destruction, or join a global corporation that specializes in extracting earth’s precious resources, exploiting humanity – or destroying it. Structural hate offers many career opportunities, with lucrative benefits and positions that offer great power. These systems have sophisticated definition, infrastructure, and manifest in highly developed industries and economies.
“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries.
Without them, humanity cannot survive.”
– Dalai Lama
Structural love is another story. We can find many independent actors who have laid the foundation for structural love, and even some examples wherein they specifically call for a more organized and structured approach. But, it is not unusual to encounter these exceptional individuals railing against the prevailing organizations of their time – because they fail to deliver love. And, sadly, it is also not unusual for these characters to become the victims of terrible persecution and violence.
“If it doesn’t come from love, it isn’t real. It’s just an illusion.”
– Course in Miracles
There are many organizations dedicated to spreading love in one form or another – we typically refer to them as NGOs (nonprofits), or “faith-based” institutions. However, love is rarely called out as a “program,” and it is difficult to find a course of study that results in any “degree” of love – a higher education in love, etc.. Ironically, in some cases, faith-based institutions limit their love to “true-believers,” making love an exclusive club, only available to qualified members who accept certain teachings or commandments. And, due to limited resources, many NGOs are required to limit how much love they can spread, focusing their efforts on narrow segments of the population – like the homeless, the hungry, or abused. This is one reason I have joined the founding board of directors for the Institute for Love and Time (TILT), an organization dedicated to performing research and creating technologies that demonstrate and harness the relationship between unconditional love and travel in time. We are creating applications that can lead us toward our goal of scaling unconditional love and time travel responsibly, for the benefit of humanity.
“Every day People straighten up the hair, why not the heart?”
– Ernesto Che Guevara
Where is the Love University where you can get your Masters in Love? Where is the pedagogy of love? Love belongs in the classroom. Where is the highly developed archive of knowledge stored that deepens our understanding of love, enabling it to become a stronger, dominant force on our planet? Many of us seem to believe that love is one of our most amazing traits as homo sapiens – our ability, in some cases, to make profound sacrifices, to rise above our selfish needs and think and act for the greater good – to practice “metta love,” “unconditional love,” “Agape love,” or “universal love.” So, why the profound lack of structure, organization, and resources around this cherished idea of love?
The world is full of organizations. I earned a couple of degrees in organization development, just because I believe “organization” and “leadership” are the fundamental challenges, not the lack of expertise to solve huge problems, inadequate resources, etc. The problem is, in all my years of higher education, my professors did not once talk about organizations having a heart and soul. They never professed “Love” in the organizational context. Fancy that. The most powerful force for change – love – left out of virtually every advanced course in organizational development and leadership. Most organizations choose to “incorporate”. Nonprofit and for-profit alike.
“A corporation is essentially a legal “body” – literally and figuratively a “corp”. The word “corporation” from the Latin “Corporare” (combine in one body).
So, why is it that so many (most) corporations don’t have an explicit heart? Why isn’t love fundamental to organizational structure, by-laws, policies, practices, etc.?
Without a heart, a corp is just a corpse.
Dollars must not be confused as the life force of the organization. Too many organizations take a transactional approach to management. To be clear, I’m all for the most rigorous financial structure possible – I’m talking about assumptions, strategies, and tactics, and the ultimate force underlying any good nonprofit – love.
Jack Ma, Founder of Alibaba, and one of the richest people on the planet, makes a big deal out of something he calls the Love Quotient. Even big business is waking up to the idea that Love is an essential part of any organizational structure…both in quantitative and qualitative terms.”
– Wolfram Alderson
Maslow identified love was a fundamental need in the hierarchy of needs. Why do so many nonprofits, founded around a social mission, leave out love? Of course, I speak of Love in the greater sense.The majority of people on Earth have, at some point, acknowledged the primacy of love to well-being and happiness, so why do we hear so little about it in the context of organizational work? Why the collective acquiescence to not expressing, discussing, or practicing love in the place where we spend the majority of our waking hours? I’m hoping that we can get it right in our evolution as a species. I am no longer afraid to ask for it in the context of my organizational work that focuses on human and environmental health.
“It’s about what you believe, and I believe in love.”
– Wonder Woman
These are among the questions I attempt to address in my science fiction epic “Pupazzo Universo.” Sadly so much of our modern fiction about the future is dark and dystopian, and laden with apocalyptic scenarios that feature militaristic, paternalistic, violent, hopeless futures wherein humans carry their insanity into the universe and expand their impact in the context of space-wars, battles with alien species, usually accompanied with lots of “blowing shit up.” Most of Hollywood and the entertainment industry has caved into this thinking, which seems to have a significant profit margin.
“The best mythology that we can create is not based on the tired fear-based tropes and myths of our past, but on bright futures filled with love and light. This beautiful future won’t arrive if we obsess upon dark fantasies that are built upon our worst fears and most awful traits as a species. I believe this is my mission as an artist – to offer light filled moments of magic and places of rescue.”
-Wolfram Alderson
We struggle to transcend our differences (important as they are – I’m not suggesting we discount them).
Van Jones calls for a love army. I support this notion.
There must be at least one plank we can all hang our political hats on so we can stop the politics of fear, intolerance and hatred. The lack of civility, the ability to engage in civil discourse, the ability to reach across the aisle, are among the deficits that provide fertile ground for fascist actors to ascend by exploiting our fears, intolerance, and polarization. This strategy of divide and conquer erodes our ability to coalesce in a united movement that embraces a wide spectrum of views. Dialectical reasoning has digressed.
What does “dialectical” mean?
“… the process of thought by which apparent contradictions are seen to be part of a higher truth.”
–The Oxford English Dictionary“The process or art of reasoning through discussion of conflicting ideas.”
– The Merriam-Webster Dictionary
I think a better framework of thinking is in order: a “trialectical reasoning.” In short, the transcendence of polarized thinking, the art and science of forging a third way, a path of that offers fresh thinking and solutions to the most challenging problems – void of rancor and fear. Martin Luther King, Jr. is among many who have proposed we adopt such thinking… based largely on a time honored and quaint concept called universal love – the ultimate value that transcends all others. Neuroscience is catching up with this line of reasoning as well – check out The Triune Brain in Evolution: Role in Paleocerebral Functions, by P.D. MacLean. The triune brain hypothesis was also featured in Carl Sagan‘s Pulitzer prize winning 1977 book The Dragons of Eden. The human limbic system is at the heart of this – literally and figuratively…this is where a great battle between fear and love is taking place in the human brain. One of the best ways to navigate this struggle is to cultivate limbic resonance through time honored strategies such as meditation, kindness, connection, compassion, and metta love (agape love, universal love, etc.). Love can sculpt your mind / your life / your world – it is the ultimate sculptor!
Check out Love References for an amazing list of quotes about Love.
Hate is but love unexpressed; and if we but knew this and understood it, we would no longer hate. Instead, we would turn our efforts into those channels in which we can find divine and unlimited expression of our love—in advancing the progress of the times, in loving people and being loved by them, in loving society and winning our rightful place in it.
Since love is infinite, the one who love is unexpressed in one channel can always find greater and grander expressions of love—if he realizes the divinity and magnificence of love.
Many revered and beloved men and women learned to love humanity and benefit it by their lives because, instead of letting rejected personal love turn to hate, they broadened their love and deepened it, in a divine way, to many hundreds or thousands of people.
In doing this they have found that the greater love brought more happiness than that which they thought was rejected—even greater and nobler than personal love.
And then, loving thus gloriously, the soul finds the one it loves most of all and from whom it receives more than from all others.
Find a man or a woman who has rendered great service to humanity, and in that soul you find love given its largest and most glorious expression. Also its freest and happiest expression, for all the trouble and fears and jealousies of personal love are to the attempt to limit great love to expression in a small channel and in a small channel only.
O Soul, thou art love and there is no hate in thee–only love unexpressed!
That thou mayest know no hate and no suffering in this manner love: think not overmuch about love, but love itself, much and divinely, to the end that its peace and joy may remain forever with thee.
Consider for a moment that love—or a connection to love—is the one singular thing that every human on this planet has in common. Each of us has at some point loved or been loved, celebrated love or longed for love, thought about love or doubted our understanding of love. Some of us have done all of that and more. From the perspective of feelings and emotion, I believe that every human has some connection to the concept of love. Whether one lives a very short lifetime surrounded by people who feel great love for them or lives a long slow life of longing for some unattainable sense of what love could be, I suggest that all humans have what we might call an emotion- or heart-based connection to love. Beyond simply having some sense of it, I believe that love—having it, finding it, engendering it, or losing it—is central to human existence on this planet. Our stories tell us this, our art is inspired by love, and our music tells us that love is everywhere. From songs to slogans, clichés abound that tell us love is the answer, love can heal all things, and love is all we need.
(A Pedagogy of Love by Joan Clingan, PhD)
There are only two emotions: love and fear. All positive emotions come from love, all negative emotions from fear. From love flows happiness, contentment, peace, and joy. From fear comes anger, hate, anxiety and guilt. It’s true that there are only two primary emotions, love and fear. But it’s more accurate to say that there is only love or fear, for we cannot feel these two emotions together, at exactly the same time. They’re opposites. If we’re in fear, we are not in a place of love. When we’re in a place of love, we cannot be in a place of fear.
The word “intelligence” is derived from the Latin words, inter and legere.
“Inter” means “between” and “legere” means to “gather” or to “choose.
Intelligence is to choose.
I choose love.
#LoveKnowsNoBorders
All objects have gravity in one form or another; something as small as a neutrino has a gravitational force, and now they think even gravity (gravitons) have gravity. So, let’s just imagine for a moment that love has gravity. If that were true, then the amount of love gathered together would increase its gravity or “pull”. Is love an object? Well, scientists imagine that love is something that exists in our brain, occupying neural pathways. In addition to the positive feelings love brings, love also deactivates the neural pathways responsible for negative emotions, such as fear hate. These positive and negative thought forms apparently evolve in separate neurological pathways, and each therefore carries some weight or pull or have some programming effect. I don’t think it is too much of a leap to imagine that the more neural pathways occupied by love, the more “pull” it has, the more influence it has on the negative forces (inside and outside of us). I hereby proclaim the existence of “Liebetrons” – particles of love that are apparently as equally hard to measure as gravitons, but nonetheless, important elements in our physical as well as metaphysical universe.
Love is the Answer
Wolfram’s Work
Wolfram Alderson
