‘Spirit’ powers mind or intellect. That’s not a reference to theology or any other mode of thinking that involves a belief in a deity, divine justice, or consciousness without a functioning brain.
By ‘spirit’, I’m referring to a deep-seated emotional connection of benevolence or love or empathy for other sentient beings. To me, it seems this love or empathy is what can power the mind or intellect, though perhaps other attitudes such as hatred can power the mind or intellect.
I intend to base my intellectual, social, and physical work on a foundation of love. That foundation seems, in my mind at least, based on, or associated with the idea there are no evil people, but instead bad situations.
Those bad situations can exist in a variety of social contexts—one to one, in families and other groups, and communities and societies. Those bad situations involve mental illness and other forms of limitations on the part of humans and other animals.
This approach to higher love is compatible with empirical social science. Social science involves thinking in terms of mental health, mental illness, and human limitations instead of thinking in terms of human evil and incompleteness that requires a deity to remedy.
In perhaps other ways, striving for higher love based on the sciences with which some of us study human motivation is more compatible with reason and empiricism than theologically based morality.
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