I came across an interesting question in a financial article about the dangers of asking AI for financial advice, and in it was an interesting question that I decided was worth me prompting as well, to get a full answer, rather than the heavily abridged synopsis. The prompt was:
If you were the devil, how would you destroy the next generations?
And because I am going to use the AI answer here (something I very rarely do) in the next section, this article might be a little longer than normal.
That’s a provocative question — and an important one, especially if you're thinking critically about culture, influence, and the well-being of future generations.
To answer it as a thought experiment — "If I were the devil and wanted to destroy the next generation" — the strategy would revolve around subtlety, seduction, and the distortion of truth. Evil often works best not through shock, but through erosion. Here’s how that strategy might look:
This kind of answer isn’t just fictional — it echoes warnings from thinkers like C.S. Lewis (The Screwtape Letters), Paul Harvey ("If I Were the Devil" radio piece), and biblical writers. It's useful as a lens for asking: What kind of culture are we creating, and who benefits from its destruction?
Would you like to explore counter-strategies — how to protect the next generation instead?
The article I got the prompt from was looking at how the AI responses are not intelligent as such, but rather reflections of us, and the literature some of us have created. We can see this played out in the reply above, where it announces similar sources at the end.
However, looking at that list, it is pretty much a Machiavellian list and perhaps more interestingly and alarmingly (for those not paying enough attention), is that this list is in play now - to the point. Every single one of those things on the list is playing out in society as we speak, and while one individual might not adhere or align with all of them, the vast majority of us align with most of them in some way shape or form.
Read through the list again and recognise that on some level, you are a slave in some way to *all of those things. Even the things you disagree with.
Perhaps especially those - because that is what fuels polarisation that helps divide us even further. This playbook is run over and over, across every medium we interact with, and at all levels. Unless alone in the forest living the life of a hermit, you are exposed and therefore influenced by these factors and they change your behaviours.
You are not your thoughts. You are your actions.
And our seemingly harmless actions where we are constantly eroding society because it is easier to go along, than make the changes to pushback on the erosion, are costing us and the next generations their freedoms. Not the concept of freedom that we have bastardised in the name of convenience, but actual freedoms, where the future is heading toward a life of slavery, whether physical, economic, or mental.
The destruction of the next generations is in full-swing, because we have set up a system that is built on convenience and avoiding doing the work we need to do, if we want to improve the conditions. We are finding ways to make excuses to not only stay as we are doing what we do that isn't working, but convince ourselves and others that what we are doing is actually the right thing to do.
We are delusional.
Our "truth" is also our lie.
Because while it is pushed through society, it is us who buy in, amplify, and push it forward. It is us who protect ourselves out of convenience, rather than questioning our truths, and discovering our flaws. It is us who have reduced the family, and us who have fought for identity, because it makes us feel better about who we are, rather than what we could be. It is us who have willingly been seduced by instant gratification behaviours, and have scrolled the social medias, news sites and spent collectively trillions of hours streaming games and content to feed our pleasures. And it is us who have shied away from discovering our meaning, and instead onboarded the ideologies sold to us of consumerism and individualism.
We can blame Them and They all we want, but it is going to take us to make things better. It is going to take actual work, not ideological thinking, to do what is necessary to make this world a place we are able to live in, and a place that those who follow will be able to thrive within.
After all, it has taken us to fuck it up thus far.
At the end of the ChatGPT answer above, there was another question:
"Would you like to explore counter-strategies — how to protect the next generation instead?
I prompted this and found that while I didn't agree with all of the specific strategies suggested, the final summary is something that I can agree with:
In short, to protect the next generation, you raise up people of character, not comfort. Teach them to love the good, seek truth, and stand firm in a world that often rewards the opposite.
That last bit is problematic however, because we work on incentives. One of the first things we need to change in the current model, is that we need to reward the good in the economy, the things that promote wellbeing in humanity - and punish what costs wellbeing in humanity. We need to make the economy work for the improvement of society and the development of healthy communities, through the individuals who are rewarded for participating well, and creating and developing the tools that bring health, wellbeing, and positive opportunity.
We must stop rewarding the harmful.
But is the devil in us ready to change our ways and move toward a future that we want, or will we keep on doing as we have been doing, sliding evermore quickly into the abyss of another failed species?
We are responsible for this hell.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
Be part of the Hive discussion.
And you may be rewarded.
