Full Comment - ‘Wokeness’ is a mind disease…but it can be beaten

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00:01:11.520 If you look around our society today and you think, hmm, things just aren't right, well,

00:01:24.400 you're not alone.

00:01:25.420 Western societies around the world are changing dramatically, and often not for the better.

00:01:29.960 We are becoming less tolerant in the name of tolerance.

00:01:33.220 We are adopting and accepting ideas that actually eat away at the foundations of a Western liberal

00:01:39.760 democracy.

00:01:40.600 Hello, and welcome to the Full Comment Podcast.

00:01:43.000 My name is Brian Lilly, your host, and today our guest is Gad Saad, an academic, an intellectual

00:01:48.360 in the best sense of those words, and someone who many of us have seen document the very

00:01:54.980 issues and concerns that we're going to talk about today on his popular YouTube channel,

00:01:59.660 on Joe Rogan Podcast, and elsewhere, as well as in his best-selling books.

00:02:04.280 Dr. Gad Saad is a visiting professor and global ambassador for Northwood University, and he

00:02:10.300 joins me today.

00:02:11.600 Gad, thanks for the time.

00:02:13.460 Oh, I'm so glad to be with you, Brian.

00:02:15.140 Thanks for having me.

00:02:15.840 I want to open with a quote that I grabbed off the back of your best-selling book and

00:02:22.900 recently became a bestseller again, and we'll talk about that, but I grabbed this off the

00:02:28.540 back dust cover, and I want to read it to you and have you react, and tell me if you

00:02:34.340 still feel the same way.

00:02:36.040 The back of the book, and I don't think this was you writing it, this is the publisher's

00:02:39.760 promotional bit, but it's kind of summarized a lot of what you wrote about in the book.

00:02:44.040 It said, the West's commitment to freedom, reason, and true liberalism has never been

00:02:51.020 more seriously threatened than it is today by the stifling forces of political correctness.

00:02:57.520 Now, that's from a book in 2020.

00:03:00.980 In 2020, you said we had never been under more threat.

00:03:05.120 Yes.

00:03:05.300 Do you still feel that way, or has it gotten worse?

00:03:07.800 Could you have imagined how bad it would be in 2024?

00:03:12.140 I was trying to predict where you were going with this.

00:03:16.160 No, I guess one of the ways I could answer your question is saying that the book is still

00:03:22.720 selling like hotcakes, which suggests that what I hoped would be the final mind vaccine

00:03:31.360 and inoculation against all this nonsense has apparently not sufficiently worked because

00:03:36.740 we are still facing the same issues, if not those issues having been exacerbated.

00:03:42.780 So the book remains timely precisely because the phoenix of woke parasitic ideas keeps rising

00:03:50.700 from the ashes, despite the fact that I keep hitting it.

00:03:53.580 Well, over the summer, as I said, it came out 2020.

00:04:00.960 I think the paperback early 2021.

00:04:05.940 But this summer, you got a big endorsement.

00:04:09.960 And I don't think you'd seen it yet.

00:04:12.040 Elon Musk goes on X and says, you must read this book.

00:04:17.500 And I sent you a message and I said, I just said, how are sales going?

00:04:22.280 And you hadn't seen it.

00:04:24.040 I'm guessing they took off just after that.

00:04:27.280 They did.

00:04:27.780 Now that just to, if I may correct you, it wasn't the first time that he had endorsed

00:04:32.800 my book.

00:04:33.500 He's been a fan of my work and of the parasitic mind for a long time.

00:04:37.560 But that specific post, I shouldn't say tweet, that particular post, you are correct that

00:04:45.300 you were the first one to bring it to my attention.

00:04:48.160 I said, oh, let me go check.

00:04:50.040 And you are indeed correct that there is, I mean, more importantly than the Oprah bump,

00:04:54.980 I think we need to revise our lexicon to the Musk bump because the book then entered two

00:05:01.140 weeks in a row.

00:05:02.840 I think it was the Toronto Star Canadian bestseller list.

00:05:07.360 So you're exactly right.

00:05:08.720 A book that was a bestseller four years ago, returned to the bestsellers list four years

00:05:13.520 later.

00:05:14.720 Well, very well done.

00:05:15.680 Walk us through the parasitic mind because there's been a lot of talk about that.

00:05:21.640 I know that Musk has been a fan of your work and of the book, and he talks about the woke

00:05:26.240 mind virus, and that can sound like it's, you know, sloganeering, it's jingoistic, a parasitic 0.84

00:05:35.020 mind. 0.95

00:05:35.580 Oh, but what is that?

00:05:36.800 Yeah, no, that's a good question for me.

00:05:39.060 Yeah, that's a great question.

00:05:40.000 So let me give you sort of the background of how I developed the idea and then link it

00:05:44.820 to the neuroparasithological framework.

00:05:47.440 So the first time that I had sort of a Houston, we have a problem moment was in my scientific

00:05:55.580 work.

00:05:56.180 So for those listeners and viewers that are not familiar with my work, I apply evolutionary

00:06:01.200 biology and evolutionary psychology to study consumer behavior, economic decision.

00:06:06.940 And you've written books on this previously.

00:06:09.320 I've written many books.

00:06:10.380 So yes, the consuming instinct right here, the evolutionary basis of consumption.

00:06:14.960 This is an edited book.

00:06:16.720 Go ahead.

00:06:16.900 You've looked at how we react and interact with goods and why we purchase certain brands.

00:06:22.160 And you've looked at that before.

00:06:24.380 That's where you came out of before you got as political as you are now.

00:06:28.780 Right.

00:06:29.120 But I was looking at the biological and Darwinian underpinnings of our consuming instinct, right?

00:06:36.140 So for example, how do our hormones affect our food behavior?

00:06:39.760 How do our hormones, you know, does a man's testosterone increase if he is using a, you

00:06:47.600 know, driving a Porsche?

00:06:48.740 I've literally done those studies.

00:06:50.560 How does a woman's menstrual? 1.00

00:06:52.440 It does.

00:06:53.140 As a matter of fact, so I did a study with one of my former graduate students and I'll

00:06:57.440 come back to the parasitic mind in a second.

00:06:59.960 In 2009, I published a paper with John Vungas, who was one of my former graduate students,

00:07:05.340 where we actually got men to not imagine driving a Porsche.

00:07:12.720 We actually rented, try to get a scientific granting agency to give you money to rent a

00:07:18.900 Porsche for science.

00:07:20.300 So we rented a Porsche and we had a beaten up old car.

00:07:24.140 So one is a high status product.

00:07:25.760 One is a low status product.

00:07:27.120 And we had young men drive these two cars, either in downtown Montreal, where everybody

00:07:34.880 can see you and on a semi-deserted highway where few people could see you.

00:07:40.000 And the dependent measure was we took salivary assays so that we could measure the fluctuation,

00:07:47.020 the fluctuating levels of their testosterone. 0.93

00:07:50.120 Because, and actually that's a good segue to eventually answering your parasitic mind 0.97

00:07:54.340 question.

00:07:55.000 So one of the things that I do as an evolutionary psychologist is I look at the behavior of other

00:08:00.640 animals to draw homologies and analogies with human behavior.

00:08:04.960 So for example, the peacock, right, has evolved this big, beautiful tail that's otherwise very

00:08:10.740 cumbersome and costly, right?

00:08:12.880 It's from a survival perspective, that peacock's tail is costly.

00:08:16.700 It increases your chances of predation.

00:08:18.760 But the reason why it evolves, it does so through sexual selection, meaning that it confers a reproductive

00:08:24.860 advantage to the peacock in exhibiting that signal.

00:08:28.200 So I took that idea and I said, well, surely human beings engage in sexual signaling and

00:08:34.000 I'm going to study it in the context of consumer behavior.

00:08:37.180 And that's how I came up with the idea of studying it and using, so the Porsche is the human equivalent 0.55

00:08:43.680 of the peacock's tail. 0.77

00:08:45.460 So coming back now to the parasitic mind.

00:08:48.180 So I realized early in my career that what seemed profoundly obvious to me, which is that

00:08:54.600 human beings are biological beings, and therefore if we want to study consumer behavior perfectly

00:09:00.240 and completely, we need to study the biological forces that compel us to be the consumers that

00:09:05.940 we are.

00:09:06.520 Well, that was complete crazy quackery.

00:09:09.040 It was neo-Nazism, according to many of my social scientist colleagues and business school

00:09:14.840 professor colleagues.

00:09:16.020 And so right there, I said, well, this is strange.

00:09:18.840 How could otherwise supposedly sophisticated, intelligent, intellectual professors be such 1.00

00:09:25.200 imbeciles? 1.00

00:09:26.800 So that was my first exposure to how ideology can cause you to have completely irrational 1.00

00:09:34.360 thoughts.

00:09:34.740 So that was nearly 30 years ago.

00:09:36.460 And then as my academic career progressed, I saw the infiltration, the proliferation of

00:09:44.480 these, what I call parasitic idea pathogens.

00:09:47.740 But why do I use the framework?

00:09:49.380 To your very specific question, why do I use the framework of parasitology?

00:09:54.600 So in the animal kingdom, including humans, there is the field of parasitology, which studies

00:10:00.420 how parasites interact with hoats.

00:10:02.760 So for example, the tapeworm goes into your intestinal tract, but a neuroparasite ends up

00:10:15.120 in your brain, altering your circuitry to suit its reproductive interest.

00:10:21.300 And therefore, I had my aha moment.

00:10:23.640 I would then argue in the parasitic mind that not only can human beings be parasitized by actual

00:10:30.020 physical brain worms, like Toxoplasma Gandhi, but they could be parasitized by ideological

00:10:36.720 brain worms, and hence my neuroparasithological framework.

00:10:41.040 And what are some examples of these parasitic ideas?

00:10:44.860 Post-modernism, cultural relativism, social constructivism, radical feminism.

00:10:50.900 Each of these parasitic ideas destroy the capacity of the infected person to think rationally.

00:10:58.580 And so I go through all of these parasitic ideas, and then I offer a mind vaccine at the

00:11:04.000 end of the book.

00:11:05.420 You know, as I'm thinking about, you know, cultural relativism, I was just trying to look

00:11:10.140 up her name.

00:11:10.880 The Iranian dissident who lives in New York, she's had her life threatened.

00:11:15.840 I'm sure you've seen her work.

00:11:17.120 It just reminds escaping me now.

00:11:18.740 And she's talked about that recently, about how we've got people in the Western world declaring

00:11:25.900 themselves feminists, but they won't speak up for the women of Iran who are being oppressed.

00:11:31.680 They are fully on board with Hamas and Gaza and denouncing Israel, which is a state that 1.00

00:11:40.200 actually puts these things forward.

00:11:42.280 So I said off the top, we have become less tolerant in the name of tolerance.

00:11:48.520 Is that one of the parasitic ideas that you deal with?

00:11:51.920 Oh, absolutely.

00:11:52.680 Look, so cultural relativism was an idea that was first espoused by an anthropologist by the

00:12:01.960 name of Franz Boas.

00:12:03.440 And he wanted to create a new worldview of human behavior that abdicated biology as being

00:12:14.960 relevant to the study of human behavior.

00:12:17.300 In other words, because a whole bunch of bad folks had misused Darwinian theory.

00:12:24.640 So for example, British class elitists argued that, well, it's a natural struggle between

00:12:31.360 the classes.

00:12:32.040 We're the upper class.

00:12:33.620 If the lower class has to die from a pandemic of tuberculosis, and if they live in squalor 0.97

00:12:42.240 and they all die out, well, that's just Darwinian.

00:12:45.280 It's just the natural struggle between classes.

00:12:48.180 The Nazis came along and said, hey, it's a natural struggle between the races.

00:12:52.260 We are the Aryans. 0.86

00:12:53.980 Sorry, gypsies. 1.00

00:12:55.060 Sorry, homosexuals. 1.00

00:12:56.040 Sorry, Jews. 1.00

00:12:56.840 It's time for you to go. 0.98

00:12:58.700 Hey, that's just Darwinian.

00:12:59.940 Now, of course, it had nothing to do with Darwinian theory, but because all sorts of political 0.99

00:13:05.200 cretins were misappropriating evolutionary theory, some idiotic professors, as often 0.98

00:13:12.460 happens the case, said, hey, why don't we create a new worldview of humanity that completely 0.98

00:13:18.460 abdicates biology and evolutionary theory being relevant to human beings?

00:13:23.100 Therefore, cultural relativism does exactly that because it says that there is no universal

00:13:30.200 human nature.

00:13:31.680 There are no universal objective moral truths.

00:13:36.000 Every culture has to be judged based on the idiosyncrasies of its own cultural trajectory. 0.97

00:13:43.740 Therefore, who are you, Brian, white guy, Canadian imperialist racist, to tell us that the cutting 0.99

00:13:52.400 off of clitorises of five-year-old girls is a bad idea? 1.00

00:13:57.420 That's cultural imperialism. 0.98

00:13:59.480 And that's, by the way, exactly what, since this is a Canadian show, so let's link it to

00:14:03.500 Justin Trudeau.

00:14:04.440 If you remember when Justin Trudeau was a parliamentarian, before he became prime minister, Stephen Harper's

00:14:11.080 government had released a sort of an edict or a pamphlet saying, look, we do not condone

00:14:18.440 barbaric practices like female genital mutilation, child brides, honor killings in Canada.

00:14:26.660 And if you remember, in a very theatrical and obnoxious, bombastic way, Justin Trudeau got 0.83

00:14:31.700 on TV and kind of huffed and puffed and moved his hair and said, you know, I will not tolerate

00:14:37.220 that these things be called barbaric.

00:14:39.540 Barbaric.

00:14:40.380 Yeah, he was upset at the use of barbaric, not the barbaric practices.

00:14:45.600 Exactly.

00:14:46.480 Well, what allowed him to have the goal to do that is precisely cultural relativism.

00:14:52.840 Who are you to judge what others do?

00:14:54.680 No, no, no.

00:14:55.300 I will judge. 0.99

00:14:56.440 There is no context under which cutting off the clitorises of little girls so that they 0.99

00:15:01.440 could never experience fully the joys of intimacy is ever a good thing. 0.97

00:15:05.880 So each of those parasitic ideas, Brian, started off in a university setting for a noble cause,

00:15:15.440 right?

00:15:15.880 So in a sense, I'm being charitable here.

00:15:18.800 It's not as though the people who espouse and spawn these ideas say, let's just destroy

00:15:24.140 the edifices of reason just for fun.

00:15:26.380 They usually start off with a noble reflex, but then in the service of that noble reflex,

00:15:33.260 if we have to murder and rape truth, so be it. 0.71

00:15:36.520 I remember a colleague going back years ago, I was in radio in Ottawa, and he made a comment

00:15:48.040 that there was objective truth, and there were a pile of other people in the newsroom that

00:15:53.920 couldn't believe that he said that, and they said, no, there is no truth.

00:15:58.020 There's only your truth and my truth.

00:16:00.000 Well, no, but there has to be a truth, and we can have our views, we can have our opinions,

00:16:05.760 but beyond cultural relativism, there is a desire to say there is no truth anymore.

00:16:12.300 Right.

00:16:13.000 That's a beautiful setup for my next anecdote.

00:16:17.580 Maybe some of the viewers and listeners have heard it, but even if they have, it's worth

00:16:21.080 hearing it again.

00:16:21.940 And for those who have never heard it, fasten your seatbelts.

00:16:25.060 So the reason why I call postmodernism the granddaddy of all idea pathogens is precisely

00:16:33.520 because that's the root parasitic ideas from which all of the other parasitic ideas can

00:16:40.380 flourish.

00:16:41.180 If we can espouse the idea that there are absolutely no objective truths, then you're not constrained

00:16:48.740 by your genitalia when it comes to your biological sex.

00:16:51.680 Who are you to say what constitutes male or female?

00:16:54.260 As the most recent addition to the Supreme Court, when she was being confirmed and asked,

00:17:00.360 what is a woman? 1.00

00:17:01.540 She said, well, I'm not a biologist.

00:17:02.980 Well, until 15 minutes ago, until 15 minutes ago, the 117 billion people that had existed

00:17:09.980 on earth were perfectly able to navigate through the very complex conundrum of what constitutes

00:17:16.260 male or female, but she wasn't able to say it.

00:17:18.740 Did you see the head of the International Olympic Committee?

00:17:23.540 Yes.

00:17:24.640 He was at a news conference.

00:17:27.560 And of course, there was all the debate about the women's boxing and were there biological 1.00

00:17:33.780 males in it? 0.96

00:17:35.020 Was it, you know, they did not handle it well.

00:17:38.300 They could have settled all the debate by being upfront and honest.

00:17:42.580 So one of the journalists just asked a very relevant question, will you handle this better

00:17:51.040 next time?

00:17:52.580 Will you find ways of talking to the public and being upfront with them so that there isn't

00:17:59.480 this controversy around sex?

00:18:02.920 And he said, there is no scientific way to determine what is a man and what is a woman.

00:18:10.360 This is the head of one of our biggest global bodies.

00:18:14.600 Well, I was fortunate enough when I chose what I thought was a woman to start my family. 1.00

00:18:21.320 And then we ended up having children.

00:18:22.960 It's by the complete vagaries of stochastic life that I ended up, because I could have 0.99

00:18:30.080 easily chosen a woman with a nine-inch penis to have children with, but luckily I came out 1.00

00:18:35.860 on the right side. 0.99

00:18:36.840 But just so that I don't leave your viewers and listeners hanging, can I go back to telling

00:18:42.160 the story?

00:18:42.520 Yeah, go back to your story.

00:18:43.400 So the best way to describe what a cancerous form of intellectual terrorism, postmodernism

00:18:53.000 is, to your point about your colleagues who were saying, what is this?

00:18:56.240 There is no objective truth.

00:18:57.680 In 2002, one of my doctoral students had just defended his dissertation.

00:19:04.620 So we were going out to celebrate.

00:19:07.720 And have you heard this story before?

00:19:10.160 Okay, so I'm glad because it's always exciting when someone hears it for the first time.

00:19:16.600 So we were going out for a celebratory dinner, myself, my wife, my doctoral student, and he

00:19:22.960 was bringing a date with him.

00:19:24.880 So a few hours before the date, before the dinner, he calls me up and he says, oh, I just

00:19:31.660 wanted to give you a heads up that the lady that I'm bringing for the dinner is a graduate 1.00

00:19:36.400 student in anthropology, postmodernism, and women's studies. 0.99

00:19:43.520 And I said, ah, okay, so the holy trinity of bullshit. 0.96

00:19:47.320 And so, but of course, the reason why he was calling me to say this is like, you know, please, 0.99

00:19:52.560 can we not get into this big, you know, I said, oh, no, no, I got you.

00:19:56.860 I'm going to be on my best behavior.

00:19:59.280 Mom's the word.

00:19:59.880 I'm going to be good, which of course was a complete and utter lie because about halfway

00:20:05.560 through the evening, I turned to the lady and I say, oh, I, I hear that, you know, you're,

00:20:11.880 you're a graduate student in postmodernism.

00:20:15.060 Yes.

00:20:16.280 Oh, so there are no objective truths, of course, other than the one objective truth that there

00:20:22.160 are no objective truths.

00:20:23.120 But nevermind that internal cognitive inconsistency.

00:20:27.240 Do you mind if I propose what I think are universal truths and then we can discuss it and

00:20:33.800 you can tell me how I'm, I'm wrong.

00:20:35.580 She says, yes, go for it.

00:20:37.120 Now this is 2002.

00:20:38.320 So this is way before the transgender stuff. 0.99

00:20:40.580 2000, this is 22 years ago.

00:20:42.100 I said, is it not true that within homo sapiens humans, that only women bear children?

00:20:50.720 She looks at me, can't believe at what a simpleton I am and says, that's absolutely not true.

00:20:56.500 I said, oh, what, what do you mean?

00:20:58.100 How is that?

00:20:58.960 How is that?

00:20:59.860 She goes, oh, because there is some Japanese tribe on some Japanese Island whereby within

00:21:06.680 their folkloric mythological realm, it is the men who bear the children.

00:21:12.020 So by you restricting the conversation to the biological realm, that's how you keep us,

00:21:16.380 you know, whatever, barefoot and pregnant.

00:21:18.060 So after I recovered from the mini stroke I had at listening to such gibberish, I then 1.00

00:21:23.240 said, okay, well, you know what?

00:21:24.520 Maybe it was too controversial, too incendiary for me to mention something as controversial

00:21:30.620 as only women bear children. 1.00

00:21:32.140 So let me give you another example and then let's see if we can agree on this one.

00:21:35.620 She goes, yeah, go for it.

00:21:36.900 I said, is it not true since time immemorial that sailors have relied on the premise that

00:21:43.000 the sun rises in the east and sets in the west?

00:21:47.600 And there she used a variant, Brian, of postmodernism.

00:21:52.160 It's called deconstructionism.

00:21:53.900 It's Jacques Derrida.

00:21:55.220 Language creates reality.

00:21:57.280 So she said, what do you mean by east and west?

00:22:00.680 And what do you mean by the sun?

00:22:02.720 That which you call the sun, I might call dancing hyena.

00:22:06.800 Exact words.

00:22:07.800 I said, well, fine.

00:22:08.580 The dancing hyena rises in the east and sets in the west.

00:22:11.920 She goes, I don't play those label games.

00:22:13.880 Now that became known.

00:22:15.100 It's not part of the lore of the internet, the dancing hyena story.

00:22:19.180 Why do I always recount that story is because it perfectly captures what happens to a graduate

00:22:28.220 student at a leading, arguably the leading Canadian university who is parasitized by postmodernism.

00:22:37.260 If she can't sit at a dinner and agree on the fact that women bear children and that there 1.00

00:22:43.040 is such a thing as east and west and the sun.

00:22:46.180 And the sun.

00:22:47.360 What can we do?

00:22:48.300 Like, where can we go from there?

00:22:50.100 It's a Darwinian epistemological dead end.

00:22:53.640 There is no value to postmodernism, right?

00:22:56.620 So that gives you a sense of why I wrote The Parasitic Mind, because yes, universities can

00:23:03.220 be wonderful places, but they can also be where reason goes to die.

00:23:08.780 But okay.

00:23:09.440 So these ideas start in the university.

00:23:12.620 Yes, sir.

00:23:13.360 They don't stay there.

00:23:14.440 It's not like a, you know, a bad weekend in Vegas.

00:23:17.280 It doesn't stay in Vegas.

00:23:19.240 It comes back with you like a venereal disease from Vegas, and it infects everybody.

00:23:25.840 This, talk about how that has an impact on the wider society, because Western liberal

00:23:32.800 democracies, I think, were going pretty well.

00:23:37.320 You know, we had elevated society, and now we seem to be going backwards.

00:23:43.680 And so how do these ideas that infect the minds of just academics at the start undermine

00:23:52.600 our entire society?

00:23:55.240 I love that you set up the question that way, because one of the most frequent blowback that

00:24:02.720 I would receive early in my career as I was standing on top of the mountain warning people

00:24:08.700 is, oh, come on, Dr. Saad, why are you exaggerating?

00:24:12.500 So there is some esoteric department in the humanities that is promulgating these ideas.

00:24:18.840 So what?

00:24:19.660 It's not going to make it to medicine.

00:24:21.720 It's not going to make it to mathematics.

00:24:23.960 It's not going to make it to the business school.

00:24:26.160 I said, no, exactly to your point.

00:24:27.960 I said, the virus eventually breaks free from the lab, as we think we know with the lab leak

00:24:35.900 theory of COVID.

00:24:37.000 So yes, you're right that the dreadful parasitic idea starts off in some nonsensical department

00:24:43.840 in the humanities, but it doesn't stay there.

00:24:47.780 You know what it becomes eventually?

00:24:49.300 It becomes the prime minister of Canada, right?

00:24:52.160 So you're exactly right.

00:24:54.480 Bad ideas don't have a geographical limitation.

00:24:59.740 That's what makes them so dangerous.

00:25:00.880 That's why I repeatedly say in my social media engagement, and earlier you mentioned Elon Musk,

00:25:06.440 he completely agrees with me.

00:25:07.580 We've had private conversations where we've confirmed this to each other, where there is

00:25:12.540 nothing more dangerous on earth than a parasitized mind.

00:25:17.940 Yes, a tsunami can cause great devastation, but that's a, quote, act of God.

00:25:23.140 But most of the tragedies that are imparted throughout human history start off with a bad

00:25:31.720 idea, right?

00:25:32.480 There is a little Austrian guy with a small mustache who said, hey, you know what the 0.61

00:25:36.560 big problem in our culture is? 1.00

00:25:39.700 It's the cancerous parasitic Jew. 1.00

00:25:41.760 And if we only excise that from our society, then we will all live in a utopia. 0.99

00:25:46.800 And a bunch of people said, yeah, that sounds like a great idea, Adolf.

00:25:49.640 So, to your point, that's why I stood up and kept screaming and screaming, because I knew

00:25:58.300 that those ideas were going to eventually escape and become our journalists, our pop culture,

00:26:04.200 our actors, our prime ministers.

00:26:06.680 And so, yeah, that's what happens when bad ideas infect entire societies.

00:26:12.400 All right.

00:26:13.080 We need to take a quick break here.

00:26:14.840 When we come back, I want to talk about how it's impacting medicine, because if you haven't

00:26:21.000 been following it, the idea that we're going to put diversity, equity, and inclusion ahead

00:26:27.740 of medical knowledge is actually something happening.

00:26:30.880 More in moments.

00:26:32.340 Gad, before we jump back into the conversation about parasitic ideas and how they don't just

00:26:38.700 stay in the sociology department somewhere, you've got a new title.

00:26:41.980 You're visiting professor and global ambassador at Northwoods University.

00:26:48.420 I don't know Northwoods University.

00:26:50.760 Give me your elevator sales pitch on this.

00:26:53.680 What are you doing there?

00:26:54.640 Tell me about this change.

00:26:56.400 Yeah.

00:26:56.740 So, I was approached by the president of Northwoods University there.

00:27:01.680 And apparently, having yet gone in person, I will be going soon in person to meet the

00:27:06.800 folks there in Midland, Michigan.

00:27:10.600 He approached me and said, look, we're big fans of your scientific work and, of course,

00:27:15.460 your free thinking.

00:27:16.860 We are known as the free enterprise university.

00:27:20.380 So, their entire ethos is rooted in freedom.

00:27:24.900 And we would love to see if we can work together.

00:27:28.840 And so, in all frankness, I had never heard of Northwood either.

00:27:33.760 But boy, am I glad that I now have because, you know, it's really, we're all human beings.

00:27:40.180 And so, we'd like to say that, you know, hey, nothing phases me and so on.

00:27:44.960 But you also want to be at a place that shares your general sense of how a university should

00:27:53.380 be run that is not infested with parasitic ideas.

00:27:57.240 And so, it's been very, very refreshing for me in the few weeks that since I've joined

00:28:02.260 them to be able to interact with people, you know, who I don't have to discuss whether

00:28:08.740 the sun exists or not, or whether it's called dancing hyena or not, or I don't have to do

00:28:14.020 land acknowledgements before saying hello.

00:28:16.140 And I don't have to submit a diversity, inclusion, and equity statement before I apply for a grant.

00:28:21.520 So, it's been very, very liberating.

00:28:23.920 And I really look forward to my visiting professorship there.

00:28:28.000 Well, let me know how Midland, Michigan is.

00:28:31.480 Beautiful part of the, I haven't stopped in Midland, but I love that the area of that part

00:28:37.060 of the state that it's in.

00:28:38.200 So, I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

00:28:39.860 And go in the fall because, you know, campus is in the fall.

00:28:42.960 There's just something picturesque about it.

00:28:45.740 That's exactly what the president told me, by the way.

00:28:47.640 He said, we want to get you here before winter breaks, precisely for the reasons that you

00:28:52.080 said.

00:28:53.520 So, we were talking about parasitic ideas.

00:28:56.960 We were talking about how they don't just stay in the sociology department.

00:29:02.780 And I want to give you one glaring example.

00:29:06.420 And then, you know, we can move from there into what happened to Jordan Peterson and the

00:29:12.100 College of Psychologists a little while ago.

00:29:14.060 But this is actually from one of the organizations that determines how doctors are trained in

00:29:23.680 this country.

00:29:24.140 The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada put out a notice a little while ago

00:29:29.840 that they want to change how medicine is taught and practiced.

00:29:33.640 And it said, quote, a new model of can meds would seek to center values such as anti-oppression,

00:29:41.960 anti-racism, and social justice rather than medical expertise.

00:29:47.360 I don't give a flying you-know-what about my doctor's political views.

00:29:52.920 I want to know, are they competent?

00:29:55.480 My GP, I happen to be friends with, and we share political views.

00:29:58.960 But I really don't care when I'm being treated medically, how they view, you know, the state

00:30:05.460 of Canadian politics or what have you.

00:30:07.620 I want to know, are they competent?

00:30:08.840 And these guys want to put everything else ahead of competence.

00:30:12.380 Yeah, I've actually weighed in on that exact new training of Canadian physicians.

00:30:17.960 Look, there are certain professions and certain bodies, the FBI, judicial system, the medical

00:30:28.720 associations that should transcend politics, right?

00:30:32.900 I mean, that's like the Hippocratic oath should be first do no harm.

00:30:38.820 Now, of course, the woke physicians will say, but no, we are doing no harm by teaching you

00:30:44.100 about anti-oppression.

00:30:45.280 No nonsense, right?

00:30:46.940 If anti-oppression comes before your ability as a physician to perform an operation, you're

00:30:55.680 doing harm.

00:30:56.920 You're exactly right, all right?

00:30:58.620 So look, I mean, that issue arises not only in, you know, at that, you know, with physicians,

00:31:06.920 it starts at the first point where, for example, they're now arguing that the grading of physicians

00:31:15.140 when they're in medical school creates undue pressures and stress on physicians, and therefore,

00:31:23.520 we should move to a more empathetic pass-fail system so that people are not competing against

00:31:31.020 each other and worried.

00:31:32.560 Guess what?

00:31:33.140 But I want my emergency room physician who, by definition, is facing some of the most stressful

00:31:40.060 moments where the decision tree that he or she follows over the next five minutes will

00:31:46.780 cause that child to either die or not.

00:31:49.380 I want them to have been exposed to stressors, right?

00:31:53.380 Seneca, in the happiness book, I talk about anti-fragility, which is a term that was coined

00:31:59.380 by a fellow Lebanese, Nassim Talib, right?

00:32:02.120 Seneca, the ancient philosopher, Stoic, said, I'm paraphrasing, that the strongest trees are

00:32:10.560 those that have been exposed to a lot of wind stressor.

00:32:14.880 Therefore, their bark and their roots are stronger.

00:32:18.400 The trees that haven't been exposed to wind stressors end up being brittle and they break

00:32:23.120 and they, right?

00:32:24.240 So let's apply that, the concept of the wind stressor to your physician.

00:32:29.120 Do you not want them to have faced stressors so that they can be trained to deal with stress?

00:32:34.920 So not only are you infusing to your original question all of this woke nonsense in the practice

00:32:42.060 of medicine, but just in the original training of physicians, you're incorporating this very

00:32:48.200 loving, I love you, you love me, we all win trophies.

00:32:52.280 No, we don't.

00:32:53.300 I want the physician to have suffered during medical school because that makes them anti-fragile.

00:33:02.300 At the medical school level, here's just a couple of things.

00:33:05.680 This is from my colleague, Jamie Sarkanak at National Post.

00:33:12.060 She writes about the University of Calgary created a special admissions pathway for black

00:33:16.340 students, entitling applicants to have their admission essays evaluated by non-white assessors.

00:33:22.700 McGill, the University of Alberta and Dalhousie have all done the same and similar routes are

00:33:29.060 being opened up for indigenous students.

00:33:31.100 I'm all for having diversity in terms of who's getting into medical school, but it is an insult 1.00

00:33:39.160 to indigenous and black students to say, well, you should be held to a lower standard. 0.98

00:33:46.080 Indeed.

00:33:46.700 I mean, it's simply, isn't it, do you wake up in the morning, Brian, and say, I simply, I

00:33:52.220 mean, I wrote the parasitic mind and I don't cease to be amazed every day at the level of

00:33:59.140 collective lunacy that we are seeing.

00:34:01.780 It's really breathtaking, right?

00:34:02.960 Because you'd like to think that there are certain ideas that were defeated.

00:34:07.340 Let's say judging people based on immutable traits.

00:34:11.180 We call that racism.

00:34:12.820 We call that bigotry.

00:34:13.940 And we did a great job over the past 100 years to remove those systematic barriers, right?

00:34:20.380 And of course, that speaks to, I know you know this, but maybe some of your listeners

00:34:24.980 and viewers don't, the distinction between equality of opportunities and equality of outcomes,

00:34:29.900 which of course, the current contender for the presidency of the United States, Kamala 0.81

00:34:34.100 Harris, doesn't seem to understand that difference, right?

00:34:36.440 She believes that to the extent that there is any differences across people in terms of the

00:34:43.580 outcomes, it must be a nefarious cause that created that difference.

00:34:50.800 And therefore, we need to fix that so that we all end up at the same final place.

00:34:55.680 I mean, those are literally almost identical words.

00:34:58.580 You know what creates equality of outcomes?

00:35:01.140 Socialism and communism, right?

00:35:03.380 But we all end up poorer and more oppressed.

00:35:05.480 We all end up poorer.

00:35:06.400 We all end up at the same bread line.

00:35:09.140 We all end up as hungry as each other.

00:35:12.060 We all end up dying of famine together, equally dead from the famine, as Lysenkoism showed 1.00

00:35:18.720 during the Soviet Union era, right?

00:35:21.340 Because the argument there is, there are fewer women who are professors of mathematics at Brown 0.99

00:35:28.780 University.

00:35:30.060 Aha! 0.94

00:35:30.800 That's where the part that the patriarchy is demonstrating its machinations.

00:35:35.500 But it never goes the other way.

00:35:37.440 When I was a kid, there were a lot more men as teachers.

00:35:45.020 Elementary schools are 85% to 90% women as teachers. 0.95

00:35:50.260 You always found more men in high school teaching positions, but even that is shrinking.

00:35:55.300 There were fewer men in nursing.

00:35:57.640 Nobody says we've got to get more men into these professions. 0.63

00:36:00.520 Yeah, well, not only that, Brian, once the patterns of the narrative of oppression is no

00:36:09.880 longer present, people don't adjust their priors.

00:36:13.760 So let me explain that.

00:36:14.680 That sounded like a lot of fancy talk.

00:36:16.160 So let me break it down into a concrete example.

00:36:19.100 There used to be a time where women were discriminated from entering veterinarian school 1.00

00:36:25.460 and from entering medical school and entering...

00:36:28.300 When my mother came here in 1968, she had been working on computers in the UK.

00:36:33.280 She got to Canada and was told, oh, no, ladies can't do that job. 1.00

00:36:36.940 I'm not, you know, I'll never say there was not discrimination and oppression and things

00:36:41.280 to change, but we've got a weird view of it.

00:36:44.260 So now let's fast forward to today.

00:36:46.500 So I would receive at my university endless emails.

00:36:49.780 You know, how are you going to be an ally to women?

00:36:53.460 What's your contribution to allyship to women? 1.00

00:36:55.920 As if the email was happening while we all lived in Waziristan and the tribal territories

00:37:02.560 of Pakistan.

00:37:03.460 Now, let me draw the line of what the current data shows.

00:37:08.920 So this is from US data, US government data, looking at four levels of educational attainment.

00:37:16.500 So in the US, you have what's called an associate's degree, which is like half a bachelor's.

00:37:21.300 Imagine like community college.

00:37:23.080 So there's associate's degree, bachelor's degree, master's degree, and doctoral degree.

00:37:28.500 So there are four levels of educational attainment across five racial groups, whatever, Hispanic,

00:37:35.680 white, black, and whatever.

00:37:37.420 So there are five.

00:37:38.300 So the matrix is a four by five matrix, okay?

00:37:42.080 In each of those cells, the government has provided the ratio of male to female, right?

00:37:51.980 So let's assume we were the time when your mother came, or let's go further back to make,

00:37:57.920 to go back to when there was real full on orgiastic discrimination.

00:38:03.060 20 out of the 20 cells would have shown that men outnumber women in each of the 20 cells. 0.99

00:38:08.840 Guess what the current data was?

00:38:12.020 Go give it to me, Brian.

00:38:13.380 Oh, it's all women. 1.00

00:38:14.920 20 out of 20 cells, women outnumber men. 0.79

00:38:19.760 So let me, I get, I'm not trying to talk down to your audience, but it's important to explain.

00:38:25.400 Meaning that I couldn't make up data that was more of a falsification of the narrative

00:38:34.940 that women are being held back in universities.

00:38:38.080 Therefore, it offends me as a professor of 30 years to receive an email of,

00:38:44.920 how are you going to be a better ally to women?

00:38:47.940 My dean is a woman.

00:38:49.240 This is at my home university.

00:38:51.240 My chair is a woman.

00:38:52.520 The associate dean of research is a woman.

00:38:54.720 But yet I'm being sent emails as if I lived in Waziristan, Pakistan.

00:38:59.540 That's the dishonesty of the woke narrative,

00:39:02.600 which is it is impervious to incoming new data that the victimhood narrative must persist.

00:39:09.940 La, la, la.

00:39:10.840 I don't want to hear of any progress.

00:39:12.460 What's the anecdote?

00:39:15.000 Is there an anecdote?

00:39:16.120 I mean, I know you've got anecdotes in your, or antidotes, sorry.

00:39:22.020 I'm saying anecdotes.

00:39:23.100 What's the antidote?

00:39:24.220 I'll learn to speak one day.

00:39:25.960 English is my second language, I guess, after Glaswegian.

00:39:29.960 The, you know, how do we cure this?

00:39:32.420 You put the book out four years ago.

00:39:34.500 It hasn't worked, Gad.

00:39:35.780 Well, I'd like to say, I mean, it has worked in the sense that I receive, I mean, literally receive

00:39:45.940 thousands of emails from people saying, I was the biggest blue haired wokester possible.

00:39:54.200 Then I read your book.

00:39:56.020 I started consuming your content.

00:39:58.340 Thank you so much.

00:39:59.160 So, so in the grand scheme of things, I haven't been able to administer the vaccine and all 0.98

00:40:05.800 stupidity has ceased to exist. 0.99

00:40:07.380 And I don't think any mind vaccine could ever do that because regrettably, I think the architecture 1.00

00:40:13.180 of the human mind is built to be parasitized.

00:40:16.660 The only thing that's unique about the current period are the specific idea pathogens that we

00:40:23.120 are now seeing, right?

00:40:24.400 Cultural relativism was not an idea pathogen 500 years ago.

00:40:28.820 But there were other idea pathogens then, right?

00:40:31.860 You look, look back to the 1930s.

00:40:34.560 They thought eugenics was great. 0.99

00:40:37.000 Even Tommy Douglas did his, his thesis on, you know, sainted Tommy Douglas did his thesis

00:40:42.860 on eugenics in favor of it.

00:40:46.320 Exactly.

00:40:46.800 So yeah, bad ideas have been around a long time.

00:40:48.720 So bad ideas are around.

00:40:50.960 Regrettably, there's always an allure to these bad ideas so that they can quickly infect and

00:40:57.360 parasitize many human minds.

00:40:58.900 There was a time where we threw women into the water and if they swam, they were witches. 1.00

00:41:04.960 And if they didn't and drowned, then oops, I guess they weren't witches.

00:41:08.520 And people thought that that was a great test to do.

00:41:11.740 That was a diagnostic test to determine whether my neighbor, Angela, was a witch or not, right? 0.65

00:41:17.260 So we've, we've done that to Dr. Jordan Peterson.

00:41:21.740 We have, by the way, in the water, he swam.

00:41:24.940 So we must be a witch and he's got to go to a re-education camp.

00:41:28.260 Have you seen the clip, the satirical clip that I released where I feigned that the Ontario

00:41:35.200 College of Psychologists has had declared me as his re-education mentor?

00:41:40.900 Have you seen that clip?

00:41:41.720 I mean, that, that's now, I think my second or third most viewed clip of all of my clips.

00:41:48.140 So this demonstrates to you, by the way, the power of satire, sarcasm and humor, right?

00:41:54.380 Because the dictators don't usually eliminate the guys with the big muscles because we can

00:42:02.580 handle those because we own all the guns.

00:42:04.440 I'm speaking out if I were the dictator, the guys that really are dangerous to me as a dictator

00:42:09.540 are the guys with the sharp tongues, the guys with the sharp pen. 1.00

00:42:13.580 Those are the bastards that I have to eliminate. 1.00

00:42:16.260 So the satirist is the biggest danger to the dictator. 1.00

00:42:19.920 We have, he, he goes first to the chopping blocks.

00:42:22.400 So oftentimes I will get some smarmy, obnoxious professor that I'm talking to who tells me,

00:42:28.080 oh, but you know, aren't you demeaning your professorial, you know, image when you do all

00:42:35.040 of that satirical stuff?

00:42:36.460 I say, absolutely not, because I'm in the game of trying to persuade people to better

00:42:42.520 think.

00:42:43.160 I will use any weaponry within my arsenal of weapons to try to achieve that goal.

00:42:48.260 Sometimes I will be professorial.

00:42:50.260 Sometimes I will be scientific.

00:42:52.280 Sometimes I will be satirical.

00:42:54.680 All bets are off when it comes to trying to change human minds.

00:42:58.900 Well, you know, we're seeing in the United Kingdom what we're worried about here.

00:43:03.940 And this is something that Elon Musk is fighting back against.

00:43:07.320 He has definitely turned Twitter now X around in terms of being a place for free speech.

00:43:15.420 We just had Mark Zuckerberg admit that, yeah, he had downplayed the Hunter Biden laptop story

00:43:20.360 and he was smothering true things that were being said about COVID at the behest of the

00:43:26.800 government, the Biden administration, because it went against their, their views.

00:43:30.960 But in the UK, we're seeing people being arrested for memes posted on Facebook.

00:43:37.040 I'm worried about that coming here.

00:43:38.740 If we don't have a change in government, that sort of thing, you know, if you had told

00:43:44.920 me 20 years ago in Britain, they'll be arresting you for jokes, I would have laughed.

00:43:49.820 I mean, the cradle of the, the, the best of Western civilization comes from the UK, the,

00:43:57.380 the, the Americans, Canada, the Australians, New Zealand, we all draw inspiration from there.

00:44:03.080 And they are now once great Britain.

00:44:06.720 Yeah.

00:44:06.900 I mean, life comes at you fast to your point about how quickly things change.

00:44:10.740 I have a quote in the parasitic mind.

00:44:12.740 I don't have it in front of me.

00:44:13.600 So I don't, I'm going to sort of paraphrase it.

00:44:15.260 Ronald Reagan famously said, and I'm sure you probably know which passage I'm talking

00:44:19.340 about, where he basically said, look, every generation, there has to be an assiduous fight

00:44:24.900 for freedom and freedom of speech, because the bad folks are always coming to bring down

00:44:30.600 those, those majestic, you know, foundational values that define the greatness of the West.

00:44:37.060 And so in the past, we had a stronger sense of our identity so that we were able to push

00:44:43.580 back against intrusions against freedom, but because of all this cocktail of parasitic

00:44:48.120 ideas, there's no longer any defense against it.

00:44:51.120 So that a place, as you said, a cradle, the bastion of the Western tradition, Britain is

00:44:56.420 now looking more like Orwell's worst nightmare.

00:45:00.020 And if I may, I don't think I've ever mentioned this to, in our, I didn't mention this in our

00:45:05.220 last conversation.

00:45:07.140 There is a distinction in ethics between deontological ethics and consequentialist ethics.

00:45:12.840 And I'll link it back to, you know, the 11-year-old that's being arrested in Britain.

00:45:17.880 So bear with me.

00:45:20.220 Deontological ethics refers to absolute statements of ethical conduct.

00:45:25.760 So for example, if I say, it is never okay to lie, that would be a deontological statement.

00:45:32.060 Consequentialism, on the other hand, is another ethical statement that says that you judge the

00:45:36.260 morality of an action based on its consequences.

00:45:38.900 So then if you say, it's okay to lie if you're trying to spare someone's feelings.

00:45:43.760 And so I often joke that if you want to have a long, happy marriage, if you ever hear the

00:45:47.940 following question, do I look fat in those jeans, put on the, put on your consequentialist

00:45:53.260 hat very quickly.

00:45:54.340 Okay.

00:45:54.740 Now, for many, many things in life, we are all consequentialists and that's perfectly fine.

00:46:00.380 But, so now I'm going to tie it back to your original question.

00:46:03.600 When it comes to foundational values that define the Western tradition, those by definition

00:46:10.540 have to be deontological.

00:46:12.420 If you say something like, I believe in freedom of speech, but the second you say, but you're 0.99

00:46:19.080 a degenerate asshole, because what's going to come after the but is going to be exactly 0.99

00:46:24.000 some consequentialist ethos. 1.00

00:46:26.040 Yes, you should be able to criticize religions, but you should maintain group cohesion or community

00:46:32.980 cohesion.

00:46:33.620 That's what causes people to then argue that Islamophobia should be a hate crime.

00:46:38.100 No, no, no.

00:46:38.460 In a free society, as long as it's not defamation, libelous, you know, incitement for child pornography,

00:46:46.180 direct incitement for violence, screaming fire in a theater, there are, all bets are off.

00:46:52.760 I am Jewish with a very, very tragic childhood in Lebanon, and yet I support the right, Brian, 1.00

00:46:59.480 of Holocaust deniers to spew the most offensive and insulting stuff humanly possible, which

00:47:05.920 is the rejection of a historically documented reality where an entire people were extinguished.

00:47:14.000 I support their right to exhibit such offensive language.

00:47:19.060 So that's the problem of what's happening now in Britain.

00:47:22.540 They've put on a consequentialist hat when it should be the deontological framework that

00:47:29.380 originally made Britain great.

00:47:32.200 Well, you and I will continue to be out there on the good fight pushing back against bad ideas.

00:47:38.100 We could talk for another hour, but I know you've got another appearance to make.

00:47:41.560 So, Gad, thanks so much for your time.

00:47:43.840 Keep up the good fight, and let's keep in contact.

00:47:46.920 That's wonderful.

00:47:47.440 Thank you so much for having me, Brian.

00:47:49.120 All right.

00:47:49.600 Full comment is a post-media podcast.

00:47:52.300 My name's Brian Lilly, your host.

00:47:53.940 This episode was produced by Andre Pru.

00:47:56.180 Theme music by Bryce Hall.

00:47:57.980 Kevin Libin is the executive producer.

00:48:00.200 Remember to hit the subscribe button, whether you're listening on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,

00:48:04.640 YouTube Podcast, now a thing.

00:48:06.920 Make sure you leave us a review, share it on social media, tell your friends about us.

00:48:11.220 Thanks for listening.

00:48:12.040 Until next time, I'm Brian Lilly.

Full Comment - September 16, 2024

‘Wokeness’ is a mind disease…but it can be beaten

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