Paolo Crepet: "Tutti pazzi per Sinner. E perché tuo figlio è chiuso in casa a ordinare la pizza?"

"Not everyone has a soul; those who kill children don't. But if you have one, it's like a garden; it needs to be cultivated." Paolo Crepet—psychiatrist, sociologist, writer, and regular speaker at sold-out theaters—is divisive, to say the least. Now in his 70s and with dozens of books under his belt, he's authored "Ripresarsi l'anima" (HarperCollins)—a Hemingway Award winner—and shows us a narrow path. "AI makes us stupid, as does scrolling and algorithms." Young and old alike. The path is play for children, creativity and doing things together for adults. Challenges, defeats, going beyond repetition and the comfort zone. Forget the obsession with bodies and eternal youth: "Grandparents, instead of jogging, should go play with their grandchildren. We want to live to 130 but without a life, giving up food and drink, with the contraption of blood pressure on us." And isolated. "The lords of Big Tech want us to be individuals and separate. But intelligence isn't individual, it's collective. So either we exercise it or we abdicate." Democracy is at stake: "Do we want to surrender to a digital monarchy? Do we want hospitals controlled by robots, schools with robots, Wimbledon played by robots?" Tennis is his bane and obsession: "Is it possible that we slouched on the couch and admire Sinner and Alcaraz, who know what hard work and commitment are, and then we wipe our children's noses at 10 like we do at 20!?" Nothing against young people: "I love revolutionaries, but those who dare, who challenge the waves like sailors, who go looking for a job in Antarctica, the last of the Mohicans." Where does violence among young people come from? "From frustration. We don't trust them, we pick them up from school like Amazon packages. By the way, I would like a ban on ordering food to anyone under 35." And on cell phones for anyone under 16? "A ban on general stupidity. Keep going like this and we'll get to a nice little camera inserted into the fetus to post photos of the unborn child." And the flood of photos and videos is making us less and less sensitive: "We are stingy, anesthetized by images, they no longer have an effect on us. Wars and kittens. But can you imagine the effect of the photo of the Capaci massacre back then?" Interview by Giulia Santerini