The Heart Revolution and the Age of Enheartenment

If you want to change the world, first change your heart. [Confuzius]

When worldwide cherished leaders talk about the heart, are they strictly speaking in metaphors?

“It is vital that when educating our children's brains that we do not neglect to educate their hearts.” [Dalai Lama]

" ... at the center of this existence is a heart beating with love.” [Desmond Tutu]

“Do not believe anything because it is said by an authority. Believe it only if you have explored it in your own heart ...” [Buddha]

"The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom." [H.W.Beecher]

“War is the suicide of humanity because it kills the heart and kills love.” [Pope Francis]

“The light which shines in the eye is really the light of the heart.” [Rumi]

“Truth resides in every human heart, and one has to search for it there, ...” [Gandhi]

"The strings of all planes of existence are centered in your heart." [Vivekananda]

"When a man moves away from nature, his heart becomes hard." [Lakota Sioux]

As long as the heart is officially defined as solely a pump, what religions, philosophers, and spiritual leaders say about the heart can only be understood to be metaphorical. 

But what if we could learn to ‘see’ and ‘think’ with our hearts, just as we learn to use our fingers to play an instrument?

Around 500 years ago, the Scientific Revolution was a series of events that gave birth to modern science. This led to an intellectual and philosophical movement in the 17th and 18th centuries, the Age of Enlightenment, that established a radical new worldview.

From that time on to today, industrial revolutions, sparked by inventions of machines and technologies, fundamentally changed human lives.

The culmination of these industrial revolutions is the current artificial intelligence boom claiming that our lives will be better the more AI we have in our lives, if we can prevent AI from erasing humanity ;-) This claim has been the same over the last centuries. Technologists say we need more technology to have a better life.

The core ideas of the Age of Enlightenment are

- the universe is a big machine

- thus, humans are machines

- the brain is the most complex machine within the body.  It is the source of all our human traits like consciousness, creativity, reasoning, emotions, feelings, compassion and so on.

- there is no such thing as god or soul. These are experiences coming from specific brain activity.

- and the human heart is a pump. Its only job is to push blood through our body.

This focus on the brain has reached new heights with the meditation and yoga boom, where now billions of dollars are spent researching the mind and consciousness by measuring brain activity in ever-increasing detail.

Humanity at a Crossroad

We can choose to fill our daily lives with more and more technology, or learn how to go inside, find answers within ourselves, and build a relationship with ourselves. From there, we can build healthy, nurturing relationships with others, animals, nature, Earth, and the universe.

What if all these relationships spring from our heart, not our mind or brain?

In a time where experts suggest that the only next step in our evolution is to merge with machines and augment our brains with chips that link our mind to a super AI, the question "Why do we have a heart?" is no longer a philosophical luxury but an existential necessity.

Maybe the heart revolution will become a movement towards the Age of Enheartenment.

Which road will you take?

Will you choose to live heart-core? Will you format your heart-drive? Upgrade your heart-ware? Work hearter, not smarter?