Article

Creed

Digital

14 August 2025

4 min read

ChatGPT’s answers on human desire left something to be desired

So we had a little conversation

Rick Hansen

Rick writes and speaks on leadership, transformation, and culture.

OpenAI.

I recently posed a question to ChatGPT.

What do people truly desire? In this unique time in history, what does the soul of humanity yearn for? What are humanity's deepest longings?

The AI's initial response was not unusual or surprising. It was actually rather “meh.” It offered a familiar list of aspirations that could have been answered if I posed the question to a moderately intelligent crowded room:

Love, connection, purpose, meaning, authenticity, freedom, peace, contentment, truth, understanding, hope, transcendence, joy, and wonder.

It continued saying, Ultimately, the human soul's profound quest is for a deep harmony among love, purpose, authenticity, peace, truth, hope, and joy—an integrated, meaningful existence that resonates with our intended nature.

I pressed in,

That is good but it is a long list of many things. Of all of those things you listed above, can you narrow it down to ONE thing, ONE single thing people want from life?

Interestingly and surprisingly it said,

Ultimately, the one thing that the human soul longs for most deeply is: To be fully known and truly loved. All other desires like purpose, authenticity, peace, truth, hope, joy all stem from or lead back to this core need. Being fully known and truly loved means someone sees every part of who we are, with all our imperfections, fears, and dreams, and yet embraces us completely. It's the deepest validation, belonging, and security we can ever experience, satisfying the profoundest longing of the human heart.

I had to step back as I realized what I just read and how I got there. It was a moment of irony. Could it be that AI - one of the most innovative discoveries of our lifetime - identified one of the greatest and most rudimentary dilemmas of humanity? A machine, it appeared, had articulated why we find ourselves at such a cultural moment of unparalleled innovation along with a growing sense of human despair.

We are at a unique point in history, a "cultural moment—a bizarre time of juxtaposition," as articulated by John Mark Comer on his podcast. It’s era defined by the convergence of seemingly disparate events and marked by a time of profound contrast.

Historic levels of digital connectivity parallel a rise of disconnection, loneliness, and despair.

A new cultural fluidity of evolving gender identities and flexible social norms stir strong backlashes over historic claims of rights and norms.

I understand, for some, this "moment" is instead something much less dire. It is simply a moment where life unfolds and continues as it always has. However, what if this moment signifies more than just a fleeting series of advancing and contrasting events?

Why, despite all this progress and innovation, does humanity not seem to be in a better state? Why does it all still feel so woefully empty?

What if this reality presents us with a responsibility to delve into these contrasting events, prompting us to ask a new and perhaps deeper question?

Victor Frankl in his bestselling book Man’s Search For Meaning cited two revealing studies that - not surprisingly - align with ChatGPT. One was a public poll in France that showed 89 percent of the people polled admitted that man needs something to live for, a purpose greater than themselves. A second study he cited of 7,948 students at 48 colleges by John Hopkins University revealed nearly the same. They were asked what they considered “very important”, 16 percent checked “making a lot of money”; 78 percent said their goal was “finding a purpose and meaning to my life.”

What if our constant pursuit of innovation and progress, rather than inspiring wonder and creating soulful connection, is actually separating us from an unknown longing to be truly known and truly loved?

For many, this swift, intense interplay of progress and regress is seen as an inevitable result of our human evolution. In practice, it is the only way true discovery and radical breakthroughs can happen. However, it's clear that our current cultural challenges won’t be answered by this ongoing experiment. More progress isn’t the answer.

What if, in our super modern world where hope often feels out of reach and despair is common, an ancient book and a profound idea can shed light on what ChatGPT and Victor Frankl are getting at? The Bible consistently talks about God's desire for a relationship with us, a longing to be known and loved so that he can in turn know and love us.

Our relentless pursuit of constant change and true innovation may well reflect a profound, yet undiscovered inner yearning: a mirror of the intended two-way connection between God and people. Perhaps the intensity with which we chase external goals of development and discovery stems from our inability to resolve an inherent, unspoken dilemma within humanity.

Could the Bible, in a world shaped by AI, force us to confront and even understand the complexities of the world and our place in it? Could God use AI - a hyper advanced technological tool - to draw our attention to Him and reveal to us the ancient truth of what we truly yearn for? Is it, as ChatGPT quickly summarized, really that simple?

Ultimately, the one thing that the human soul longs for most deeply is: To be fully known and truly loved.

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Article

Belief

Comment

Leading

9 May 2025

4 min read

Here’s what Pope Leo really needs, and it’s not our speculation

What the media analysis misses when projecting on to the new pope.

Jack Chisnall

Jack Chisnall is a former gag teller and Oxford Theology graduate, combining the two at Holy Fooling.

Vatican Media.

If memory serves, there was a very positive feeling about Pope Francis when he was elected in 2013. Mind you, I had just started my first year at university and was passionately atheistic - I had flunked my ‘General Studies’ A-Level essay purely because I had nothing to say in favour of the proposal that heaven exists. It was plain enough to me that it was all unscientific wish-fulfilment - so a requirement to give balance had to be jettisoned.

But the late Pope was so adept at doing things that sent a message, that even in my sphere it became commonly agreed that he was a breath of fresh air. Anyone would tell you that he was very down-to-earth. PR types can only dream of that kind of cache among those who have zero interest in what the company is selling.

The less ostentatious popemobile!

The refusal to live in the official papal apartments!

Here was a man clearly wanting to step back from pomp, and the wealth (all that Vatican gold!).

It is only now that, as a Catholic, I have an inside track perspective on how more complicated this all actually was. Some in the Church found some of the public piety unsettling. All churches have a trade-off to make between the gospel directive to not value treasure on earth, as well as a gospel directive to give honour to God using all of our humanity, which might involve using our sense of beauty.

But I am not saying I agree or disagree with any of this. Francis was making a point, and it was well made. I am rather saying that there is a tendency sometimes to think of a pontiff in ill-fitting terms - often political ones. As an atheist, I crammed things into a binary of ‘good, stripped-down rationalisation’ versus ‘bad, mythological and weird’. Especially in secular media, there is a tendency to make popes answers to questions that the media have asked, and not the ones of the Church. The story is always more intricate than ‘liberal’ versus ‘conservative’. Francis was not, in the end, the moderniser some commentariat hoped for, but only because he demonstrated what should have already been obvious: that that the Pope is not ‘in charge of’ the Catholic Faith like that.

At any rate, speculation of a similar kind is already booming around the new Pope, Leo XIV. Everyone is trying to read into every micro-detail we have. What is the significance of his being an American? Is this the conclave’s attempt to create a counter-Trump? Why did Leo come out in traditional garb (which Francis made a point of eschewing)? Why ‘Leo’?

Rumours have already abounded that this new Pope likes to do his private masses in the old Latin; others have pointed out that he ran with Francis’ crowd - and even his opening speech touched on the late Pope’s theme of ‘synodality.’ Synodality, depending on who you ask, is either a noble attempt at decentralisation and listening to the full range of voices in the Church - or an attempt to sneak doctrinal change under the guise of being pastoral.

My advice is to stay well away from it all. Perhaps I’m bringing my own personal journey in too much here - but people change their minds all the time. I wouldn’t want someone to judge me on that General Studies essay now, let me tell you. People especially change when given such a task as Robert Prevost has been given. Even on a purely natural view, being handed responsibility for over a billion Catholics is likely to have a sobering effect, and make one hyper-aware of every move one is about to make.

But, more importantly, on a supernatural lens, Catholics will want to say that this Pope has been, at the very least, permitted by the Holy Spirit. Benedict XVI put it as dismally as this, in 1997:

"Probably the only assurance [the Holy Spirit] offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined.”

Pope Leo’s ability to shepherd the Church is not a power he enjoys on his own - it comes, as the official teaching has it, “by virtue of his office.” He gets it purely from God, and by existing in relationship to a bigger thing, the Church. It is a difficult thing to make sense of, but the Catholic view of the Pope is not really a statement about human power. It is the belief that, at some very foundational level of analysis, Jesus has agreed not to abandon those who follow him; agreed not to “leave us as orphans." The Pope has come to be seen, in time, as that foundation; as that ‘rock’. But he should always be seen within the bigger picture of God’s promises to us.

For the meantime, the Pope needs not analysis, second-guessing, or projections. He needs prayers.

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Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

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