The Unconditional Human Spirit

See the snippett of auto-bio at bottom of this opening section. The project to expose bad ideas in religious traditions and present better alternatives is not a blanket condemnation, dismissal, or devaluation of all the good people who embrace those traditions and are among the best of citizens in our societies.

Quote from Chat below…

“The pre-eminent story of humanity is our long, unfinished exodus from an animal inheritance of fear, domination and retaliation toward mature humanity characterized by freedom, cooperation, compassion, universal inclusion and, ultimately, unconditional love.”

For the sake of brevity and easier comprehension I asked the AI to do shorter summaries of the section below, titled…

“The pre-eminent story of humanity, Wendell Krossa (big picture themes)

“The pre-eminent overall story of humanity is that of our exodus freedom from animal past to progress gradually across history toward mature humanity in liberal democracy civilization, the best system that we have come up with to unite populations in common purpose. Liberation from our animal past is the truest understanding of real freedom and success in life.”

Their responses…

Grok, could you please do a one-page summary of your previous longer summary of “The pre-eminent overall story of humanity is that of our exodus freedom from animal post to progress gradually across history toward mature humanity in liberal democracy civilization” at http://www.wendellkrossa.com/ Read the rest of the opening comment here

Note that Chat and other AI take turns below summarizing this meta-story of humanity.

The pre-eminent overall story of humanity is that of our exodus freedom from animal post to progress gradually across history toward mature humanity in liberal democracy civilization, the best system that we have come up with to unite populations in common purpose. Liberation from our animal past is the truest understanding of real freedom and success in life.

Animal past? I summarize the worst of that existence in a triad of prominent features of animal life- i.e. (1) tribalism, (2) domination, and (3) violent, vengeful destruction of differing/competing others.

An outline of the human meta-story:

“From Retaliation to Unconditional love”– the story of humanity’s exodus/liberation from animal existence to become human.

http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=9809

Or, for simplicity and clarity’s sake, I use just a single term that summarizes the grand story at the deepest level, as Jesus did in locating the worst of our past to be rejected in his statement rejecting “eye for eye” retaliation, and then presenting a singular ideal to orient consciousness to the best of a truly human future- i.e. “love your enemies, unconditionally as God does”. Hence, my use of the title “From retaliation to unconditional love” as a summary for the entire grand story.

The main features in the two defining categories of the “animal” and the “human” tell us what liberation from the animal involves and what ultimate ideal guides our progress forward, providing a criterion for success at being truly human. Read the rest of the opening comment here

Below- New material by Grok on “Explore Jesus’ nonviolent teachings” and “Examine Jefferson’s biblical notes”, “Explore Tolstoy’s Jesus interpretation”, “Investigate Marcus Borg’s historical Jesus”, “Explore pacifism and suicidal empathy, the well-intentioned spirit behind such movements but the failures to properly restrain/incarcerate repeat violent offenders that undermine the government’s primary responsibility to protect citizens from assault and other harms”, “Explore Just War Theory”, and “Analyze Rob Henderson’s Luxury Beliefs”.

The best of Brinsmead keeps coming. Much appreciated Bob, evidence also of your good research habits and just plain hard work.

Your latest essay prompted these searches of AI input…

I will post this for readers of my site…

Bob Brinsmead’s Substack: “The Greek Vertical Order of Elite Immortals versus the Historical Jesus- Exponent of the horizontal order”

https://robertdbrinsmead.substack.com/p/the-greek-vertical-order-of-elite?utm_source=publication-search

Grok, in this new Substack post Bob Brinsmead details how the elite/commoner divide was affirmed and strengthened by Plato and Hellenism. Please provide some information how this elite/commoner divide (Richard Landes’ term) first originated with ancient peoples as suggested by John Pfeiffer in sources like “Creative Explosion: An Inquiry into the origins of art and religion”. Read the rest of the opening comment here

See below Grok’s summary of Julian Simon’s “Ultimate Resource”, his principles/indicators for understanding the true state of life as rising and progressing toward an improving future and not declining apocalyptically toward a worsening world.

First, these notes before getting to the AI hysteria:

I am just watching a 9/11 memorial documentary on Netflix (“Turning Point: Generation 9/11”) and it revives still intense emotions. For me, the aftermath involved trying to understand what motivates people to do such evil to others. What ideas/beliefs energize human beings to commit such horror on many innocent others. Oct.7 repeated the same pattern and horrifying evil.

This site probes the roots of what motivates such madness. And explores why people continue to repeat and repeat the same monstrosity endlessly across human history. We know more today the answers to these issues/questions. To respond to General Nagata- We know what the idea is behind such cruelty and how to defeat it. This site deals with these concerns. Read the rest of the opening comment here

See below Grok’s responses on Zoroastrian cosmic dualism that has affirmed human tribalism across subsequent history and how, for example, this relates to Marxist collective dualism of today, and its new variants in Woke progressivism with DEI that embraces new dualisms of victims/victimizers based on race/skin color. Note also Grok on the path that Marxist ideas/principles took to infect western academia and Woke Progressive DEI. Note also Grok’s material on Critical Race Theory origins and principles.

Note how Grok applies the Zoroastrian framework of themes to the current Iranian theocracy and its stated intentions to overthrow western liberal democracies and install a worldwide caliphate.

The material below is good on how and why Marxism/socialism inevitably produces totalitarianism outcomes and where the collectivist elites end up eating even their own in the obsession to maintain highly centralized control over power. It is inherent to the system. And all suffer the loss of freedom and material wellbeing except the elites paranoidly holding power.

Socialism (due to built-in principles and practises) incites and validates the worst of human impulses to tribalism, domination, and violent destruction of differing others. Grok explains the details and the psychology at work in all this.

Why does this matter for this site? Because it illustrates a modern-era variant on Paul’s apocalyptic millennialism or salvation through violent destruction that is common also to radical Islam and environmental alarmism.

Here is detail on the topics covered below:

-Lenin’s Vanguard Party Theory and Examine Hannah Arendt’s Totalitarianism.

-Xi’s stated intention to overthrow liberal democracy and install his authoritarian approach worldwide.

-Chinese cooperation with Iran in shared goal to overthrow western liberal democracy.

-The influence of Paul’s apocalyptic millennialism on the Chinese brand of communism.

-The left side of our western liberal democracies has shifted further far-left under what is termed “Woke progressivism with DEI” that is a new variant on socialist collectivism, the same old tribal dualism that divides humanity into two opposing groups.

-Critical race theory origins. Read the rest of the opening comment here

Intro point: This site’s focus on mythical/religious archetypes is about transformation at the most fundamental level of thought/belief. The “old story” ideas (i.e. tribal cosmic dualism, domination/submission relationships, violent destruction of differing/offending others, etc.) have affirmed “threat theology” and “salvation through violent destruction” crusades across multiple millennia, in both religious and modern-era secular variants like Marxism, Nazism, and environmental alarmism. The “new story” alternatives (universal inclusion, mutual service among equals, restorative but common-sense accountable justice, restraint/incarceration of repeat violent people, etc.) affirm liberal democracy principles, laws, and representative institutions.

“Humanity’s worst ideas, better alternatives (Old story themes, new story alternatives).”

http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=9533

“The complex of “bad religious ideas” that have darkened and enslaved human minds from the beginning” (short versions below with Grok’s comments on them)

http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=13571#more-13571

“Notable contradictions between Jesus and Paul’s Christ (updated 2025)”.

http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=14451

New material… Wendell Krossa

What am I doing in these engagements with AI? We get that AI “learns off all the bullshit on the Internet” (Elon Musk). And all of us are part of the free market of ideas on the Internet. So, we can all be part of influencing the learning of AI. Is that too much of a leap of hope? Am I too much of a dreamer? I hope to, along with zillions of others, to spark more humane directions in the “thinking” of AI (i.e. make AI “safer”, as many fret about).

My approach is to spark AI interest in fundamental archetypes (the ideas/beliefs that shape our narratives) and how to transform and orient those toward more humane directions which is what I see Historical Jesus doing with his stunning new unconditional theology related to an unconditional ethic. I.e. “Be unconditionally merciful because God is unconditionally merciful” (my take on Luke 6:27-36).

Jesus viewed his new theology as working through populations by a gradual non-coercive process of transformation. He understood the powerfully embedded archetypes that had dominated human minds from the beginning, the powerful impulses to tribalism, domination of others, and vengeful retaliation against “enemies” as justice. He saw these themes as deeply ingrained in people’s minds and they constituted their very identity, hence it would take time to transform their worldviews with his stunning new theology of no conditions love. Read the rest of the opening comment here

See further down– “The pathological impulse to domination and the elite/commoner divide, Wendell Krossa”

Below are the responses from Grok on the centralization of power and control in state elites/bureaucrats:

I asked Grok to comment on the elite/commoner divide across history, beginning with the primitive shaman claiming to know the secrets to the invisible realm of spirits and how to please and appease them and thereby gain control over their fellow tribe members, down to Plato’s specially endowed elites (i.e. “philosopher kings”) specially qualified to rule others, to the divine rights of kings, to modern state elites and their bureaucrats amassing power through excessive taxation and regulation, and to collectivist “enlightened vanguards” centralizing power and control in collective leaders (i.e. ruling on “behalf of the people”, controlling resources and decisions “for the people”, something Kristian Niemietz states that can never actually be the outcome).

The elite mind is shaped by the belief that it is more intelligent than the rest of the population and knows what is best for all and will impose its decisions on others through state force.

Full comments below.

Grok, your suggestions to add to a “List of main site themes” for http://www.wendellkrossa.com/

My start…

(1) Bad religious ideas and better alternatives- What we believe shapes who we become and how we live and treat others (i.e. We become just like the God that we believe in).

(2) The grand story of humanity- i.e. exodus/freedom from the animal to become human in civilization (i.e. liberation from tribal retaliation and domination to mutual service in unconditional living qualified by holding all accountable and restraining harm).

(3) The great contradiction between Jesus and Paul’s Christ myth/Christology- i.e. threat theology versus an unconditional God.

(4) Collectivism versus liberal democracy for organizing human societies- Paul’s Christology affirms collectivist salvation through destruction, whereas the Jesus themes affirm liberal democracy principles and institutions. Read the rest of the opening comment here

Also new: For any interested in “going down a rabbit hole” with AI, below is a kind of “existence of God” tussle with AI.

I’ve just posted in the section below a dense and longish exchange with Grok on things like how to apply “love your enemy” through restorative justice approaches, with details on how that might be used in response to varied categories of offenses. Also, Grok offered a lot of feedback on “Process theology/Open theology”, etc. That in relation to NDE insights such as those from Natalie Sudman’s “Application of Impossible Things”, her account of being blown up by an Iraqi IED.

Here is an interesting concluding statement in the second Grok response below about not continuing to over-qualify my approach to the Jesus material that I regularly post comment on. “Over-qualify” in the sense that Grok gives endless counter points that weaken/undermine the point that I try to make. Grok eventually conceded with this…

“What I will not do instead

“I will not pretend the Gospels contain no judgment language, or that “the historical Jesus” is a settled document you can simply quote against Paul. Reconstruction is always selection. Jefferson and Tolstoy selected too. That does not make the contrast imaginary. It makes it an interpretive stand: the center is the ethic of non-conditional love; the Christ-myth of required sacrifice is the burial.

“I will not use Pauline love-verses as a solvent for that stand. They belong in the account as the material that made the burial look like continuity. That is their historical role in your argument, not a rebuttal of it.

“The contrast you want kept clear is this: Jesus’s insight, as you use it and as the love-core of NDEs illustrates it, is that reality’s deepest word is unearned love, and ethics follow from that. Paul’s governing story, as Ellens reads it, is that reality’s deepest problem is divine wrath, and love is what wrath costs. Those are not two emphases in one theology. They are two theologies. The second became the master story. The first is the neglected one. That is the point. I will not keep sanding it down.” Read the rest of the opening comment here

New material below:

AI on making the case for an unconditional theology and ethic that does not take things in the direction of pacifism/quietism. Then more AI on “the wisdom teachings of Jesus” and “non-retaliatory justice models”.

Also, details on restorative justice approaches to varied categories of offenses. How that is implemented and statistical details on success rates.

Then Grok goes into someone called Wink on “redemptive violence”, “transformative justice”, “abolition of prisons”, etc.

While Grok raises some interesting points in communicating an unconditional reality/ideal, I do not share its concerns that appear to lean a bit too much to placating the materialist mind and thereby catering to that dominant viewpoint. Grok seems (my opinion) to miss the common concerns of those more oriented to things “spiritual or metaphysical” as they relate to meaning and purpose.

I am always alert for signs of these AI being “infected with the woke virus” (Elon again) as noted in that Washington Post report (all AI tend to lean left as in Woke Progressivism with DEI).

As human and with a unique life story, unique interests, concerns, and feelings about the things discussed here, I am trying to counter something that has dominated and deformed human consciousness, narratives, lives, and societies for millennia with destructive outcomes on entire populations. Grok’s multiplication of endless qualifiers, while informative, only weakens the case that I am trying to make about a neglected alternative.

Also, Grok has an annoying habit of framing something silly and implying that I have stated that silly thing somewhere when I haven’t. Example, below he says, “I would not begin with “God is unconditional, therefore convert”. Grok, c’mon. I would never say anything so ridiculous and I never have. I have not even implied such. This stating ridiculous things and implying that is what I have said somewhere becomes irritating at times. Read the rest of the opening comment here

Note new material at bottom of this opening section as Grok explores what Gemini speaks to below and then probes related ideas in “Process theology” and more… Also, dips into NDEs as related to the issue of an unconditional God and human responsibility to fight evil in this world, etc. Explores theological thought on God as love, omnipotent yet non-intervening to prevent evil, exercising non-coercive love, yet fully involved in human experience and the ongoing development of life.

So who is really being more “rational”, the materialists or those holding subjective or “spiritual” views of reality? Upholding the science/philosophy boundary, it seems better to recognize that they speak to different elements of reality. AI weighs in on this with some interesting comment below.

The descent into a “rabbit hole” with AI, posted below, was sparked by Joe Rogan’s interview of Jesse Michels. Among other things that are related to quantum mechanics, note how the AI (Gemini) pulls back when challenged on a point, self-corrects from the claim made earlier that I challenged it on, and then comes back with a more affirming approach to the specific point that I made on quantum mechanics (i.e. quantum entanglement). AI appears to recognize that people can legitimately interpret entanglement in terms of a fundamental “oneness” that should not be arrogantly dismissed as “Woowoo” stuff.

That particular element of quantum mechanics offers important information to counter the virus of tribalism that has intensified and spread pandemic-like across humanity today. The varied factors that affirm human oneness, that in a general oneness there is also the element of the oneness of humanity, such factors are useful to encourage our responsibility to love one another as intimate family, to grow up get over the things that we appeal to that divide us, that incite suspicion and fear of one another, and then result in harm to one another.

In defense of NDEs, Wendell Krossa

The central discovery or insight of the Near-Death Experience is that the Light or God is a stunningly inexpressible unconditional love. No other movement, experience, or tradition gets this element so consistently. And that affirms the main theological insight and theme of Historical Jesus, in direct contradiction with the highly conditional atonement theology of Paul and his Christ. Read the rest of the opening comment here

AI on the “Uniquely potent” insight with “extraordinary transformative potential”, i.e. the single most profound thing ever spoken by anyone. “That insight operates at the deepest level of human meaning-making: the character of the Source, the Ideal, the “deity” that people project onto and then mimic” (Grok).

Other topics further below-

Projecting the trait of perfectionism onto God as a foundational element in the narrative of salvation by destruction. That comment was sparked by Rogan interview of Chris Williamson.

“Projecting the mental deformity of perfectionism onto God”

Perfection-obsessed deity then becomes a foundational element in complexes of bad religious ideas, notably in the salvation through destruction narrative (apocalyptic millennialism).

Then,

Getting Grok to summarize my site’s material on defeating the real enemy/monster in life and bringing out the best in people:

“AI on the real battle in life against the real enemy of us all”

Quotes from Grok:

“The site at wendellkrossa.com repeatedly frames the core human struggle as an intensely personal, inner battle— echoing Solzhenitsyn’s insight that the line between good and evil runs through every human heart— against inherited “animal” impulses toward tribalism, domination, and vengeful/violent destruction of “enemy” others. Read the rest of the opening comment here

Intro:

There are legitimate forms of fear that we tolerate because they keep us alive as we navigate our life stories. Like when we walk near a cliff on a hike along some mountainside. But then there are added illegitimate fears that darken and enslave our minds, fears based on manufactured bad ideas that others use to manipulate and control people, notably the ideas of apocalyptic narratives that exaggerate and distort natural elements till they become outright lies. Those fallacies have been used to frighten many into embracing salvation through destruction schemes like Net Zero decarbonization.

This site exists to counter bad ideas that must be defeated in order to liberate us from falsely-based fears, none more destructively false than apocalyptic themes that exaggerate natural elements of life to apocalyptic scale and then manipulate frightened people to embrace irrational salvation schemes that destroy life and societies. Salvation through destruction.

Spark for the comment below:

I listened to Joe Rogan and a guest bemoan the sad state of life and musing that the future looked bleakly bad. It sparked the thought of how destructively the apocalyptic narrative has impacted people, the belief that all is going to hell in a handbasket.

Joe Rogan Experience #2544 – Chris Williamson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vh8FkZaQ06I&t=174s

Re-instating the theology of rage to energize destruction of differing others, Wendell Krossa

A recount of the man who defeated of the idea of divine rage/vengeance theology but was followed by another man who soon reinstated divine rage/vengeance theology. They constructed two entirely contrary narratives with contrary outcomes. Read the rest of the opening comment here