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Nov 25, 2025
Editor: Do not miss Peter L. Winkler essay on Philip Wylie’s ‘Generation of Vipers’ it is truly worth your time and attention!
The Man Who Hated Moms: Looking Back on Philip Wylie’s “Generation of Vipers”
Wylie’s moms were middle-aged and menopausal Cinderellas, hirsute and devoid of sex appeal.
By Peter L. WinklerAugust 13, 2021
Jonathan Haidt: The Devil’s Plan to Ruin the Next Generation
I asked ChatGPT how it would destroy America’s youth. Its answers were unsettling—and all too familiar.
Jonathan Haidt: The Devil’s Plan to Ruin the Next Generation
3 hours ago · 195 likes · 131 comments · Jonathan Haidt
Editor: What actual writer/thinker would resort to the notion that the Devil is an active presence in the life of Americans or ‘Others’ ? The title of Haidt book is laced with respectable Academic Chatter and features The Devil and ChatGPT, as reliable source of viable information about the possible Future of American Youth? Some of us might conger up the Orson Wells movie classic of ‘Black Magic’as a kind of enterainment that hides what Haidt embraces?
Editor : Haidt’s confession featuring ‘Our Better Angels’ kitch!
I approach spirituality as a social scientist who believes that whether or not God exists, spirituality is a deep part of human nature, shaped by natural selection and cultural evolution, and central to human flourishing and self-transcendence. Our “better angels” call us upward and out of our daily concerns.
Editor: In the rest of this essay, I reprint Chat’s seven-step plan, in italics, followed by my own commentary.
1. Erode Attention and Presence
2. Confuse Identity and Purpose
3. Flood Them with Information, Starve Them of Wisdom
4. Replace Real Relationships with Simulacra
5. Normalize Hedonism, Pathologize Discipline
6. Undermine Trust Across Generations
7. Make Everything a Marketplace
Editor: Mr. Haidt missed the toxic assent of Neo-Liberalism inagurated by Mrs. Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and their epigones across The West!
Conclusion: Learning from the Red Team
Editor: The final paragraphs of Haights essay crowned with ‘We can save future generations from spiritual devastation’ reeks of a Billy Graham crusade!
When enacted together, these four norms roll back the phone-based childhood and give children time and opportunities to play, develop friendships, read books, grow a stable identity, and learn to pay sustained attention.
We can save future generations from spiritual devastation. We can bring down those high rates of agreement that “life often feels meaningless.” We can—and must—defeat the Devil and reclaim childhood in the real world.
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