Kevin Kelly

So if it's those three, then you can say it.

And there's a lot in the book about the virtues of kindness, that kindness is not a weakness, but a sign of strength.

And you can't really be too kind.

If you have a choice between being right or kind, you be kind.

And I have another bit of advice for people, which I have had the experience lately, which is to attend as many funerals as you can, particularly when you're young, and listen to what they say about the departed.

And the shock to me was that nobody was talking about the achievements, how many patents they had, how many companies they started, how much money they had, none of that.

They were talking about what kind of person they were, how they made people feel, whether they were kind.

It's like, wow, that's really powerful.

That's what matters.

Do you think that humans are naturally kind?

I do.

There's a great book called Humankind that changed my mind that brought the evidence showing that our received wisdom, the thing we're taught in school, so to speak, that humans are naturally selfish.

and that when all things being equal, particularly if it gets tough, people will retreat to being completely selfish and self-interested and mean.

And I think the evidence is the opposite, and my own experience is opposite, that people generally are kind, you can generally trust strangers, that all things being equal, people want to help each other.

And that bias runs through my book, which is that the universe is generally abundant,

That's the bias of the universe.

That there's this other weird paradox at the foundation of the universe, of the human condition anyway, which is that the more you give, the more you get.

That the most selfish thing you can do is to be generous.

The more you give, the more you get.

If that's true for everybody, then where does it come from, right?