Meet Joe

Joseph Chilton Pearce was born January 14, 1926, in Pineville, Kentucky, and passed on August 23, 2016 in his lifelong home in Faber, Virginia.  Joe, as he preferred to be called, served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II. He graduated with a BA from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, received a Master of Arts degree from Indiana University, and did post-graduate studies at Geneva Theological College in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. Joe taught college humanities until the mid-1960s, and thereafter devoted himself to writing and lecturing. 

In the following decades, he wrote 12 seminal works on themes ranging from child development, mind-heart connection and spirituality. He presented the emerging and synthesized science of the heart, or compassionate mind, as a category of brain function equal in stature to the thalamus, prefrontal cortex and lower brain. A father of five children, and twelve grandchildren, Pearce presented over 2,000 lectures, workshops and keynotes in 40 years.

Pearce believed that active, imaginative play is the most important of all childhood activities because it cultivates mastery of one’s environment, which he terms “creative competence.” Children denied that form of play develop feelings of isolation and anxiety. He also believed that child-parent bonding is crucial, and sees modern clinical childbirth and lack of breastfeeding as obstructions to that bonding and attachment.  By translating the emerging science of increasingly disconnected fields, Joe helped to create language and integrated discussions in academic and lay person circles that may never have been possible without his brilliant guidance.  A self-avowed iconoclast who fearlessly spoke out against the myriad ways American culture fails children, Joe’s work sparked thousands of individuals and hundreds of nonprofit organizations to explore innovative ways to introduce and preserve Evolution’s Biological Imperatives into an increasingly disconnected and unsustainable culture.  

Joe’s work inspired the founding of Kindred World, formerly Families for Conscious Living, located in Williamsburg, Virginia, and Kindred, its alternative media and nonprofit initiative dedicated to "Sharing the New Story of Childhood, Parenthood and the Human Family."

Visit the Joseph Chilton Pearce Library to discover forty years of archived lectures, as well as insights into Joe’s books.

See Joe's Wiki page here.

Visit his Touch the Future video playlist here.

Share his Pinterest quotes/art here.

Follow his Facebook page here.