Order of Man - GAD SAAD ｜ How Infectious Ideas Kill Common Sense

00:00:00.000 We all know how dangerous ideology can be, and yet some of the most destructive ideas tend to be the

00:00:05.140 most pervasive in society. So why is that? And how do these parasitic ideas spread so effectively?

00:00:11.600 My guest today is evolutionary psychologist and author of The Parasitic Mind, How Infectious

00:00:16.840 Ideas Are Killing Common Sense. His name is God Saad. Today, God and I discuss his guiding

00:00:22.680 principles, truth and freedom. What he refers to is the holy trinity of bullshit, the dangers 0.98

00:00:28.500 of post-modernism, the other deadly sin most people don't talk about, also the woke mob's 0.98

00:00:33.900 desire to eliminate culture and history, and ultimately how to use your voice against these

00:00:38.880 dangerous ideologies. You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears

00:00:44.260 and boldly chart your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every time.

00:00:50.740 You are not easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life. This is

00:00:57.360 who you are. This is who you will become at the end of the day. And after all is said and done,

00:01:02.760 you can call yourself a man. Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Michler. I'm the

00:01:08.260 host and the founder of the Order of Man podcast and movement, and I want to be the first to welcome

00:01:12.140 you here. This is a podcast and a movement designed to reclaim and restore masculinity. And to that end,

00:01:18.120 guys, we are bringing you incredible conversations like the conversation today. We've also got events that

00:01:24.600 we run. We've got our social media profiles and accounts, and we've got a new book coming out in

00:01:31.300 the fall of 2022. So stay tuned for that. I've also got another book called sovereignty, the battle for

00:01:36.480 the hearts and minds of men. So we've got a lot of information out there guys. And what I would ask

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00:02:01.560 community. So please do share, leave that rating and review, and let's get the word out. So guys,

00:02:06.780 I've got a great conversation lined up before I introduce you to my guest and get into the

00:02:11.660 conversation. Just want to mention our show sponsors. And of course, my friends and neighbors,

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00:03:07.880 All right, guys, let me introduce you to God sad. He is of course my guest today. He's also an

00:03:13.720 evolutionary psychologist and a professor of marketing at Concordia university. And he's also the author

00:03:19.080 of his fourth and latest book, the parasitic mind, how infectious ideas are killing common sense.

00:03:25.520 He is also an extremely popular YouTuber. He's got an incredible YouTube channel and also podcast

00:03:32.420 called the sad truth. And I think you're going to hear in this conversation, why God is so popular.

00:03:37.660 He calls it like it is. He pulls no punches when it comes to speaking the truth. And that's something

00:03:42.900 that he refers to as his inner honey badger, which we'll talk a little bit about today. So gentlemen, enjoy.

00:03:47.620 God, it's great to see you. Thanks for joining me. I've been following you for a long time,

00:03:52.500 specifically on Twitter, and I'm really honored to be able to have this conversation.

00:03:55.580 Thank you so much for having me, Ryan. Cheers.

00:03:57.420 I've been, I've been listening. I've seen your book, but admittedly, I've just been listening

00:04:01.180 to it over the past couple of weeks now. And it just surmises perfectly what I think is happening

00:04:06.580 in society, which is a real travesty. And I don't really know how we got to this point. I mean,

00:04:12.600 you talk about the, this concept of death by a thousand cuts. I'm wondering if just gradually

00:04:16.660 over time, uh, we've got ourselves into the position that we are societally.

00:04:20.840 Yeah. So I think a good analogy is to say, when you talk about comorbidities, uh, you know,

00:04:26.580 in terms of the health is a patient's health, you know, if, if they're overweight, it's bad.

00:04:31.660 If they're overweight and they're, and they have a family history of heart disease, it's worse.

00:04:35.460 If they're overweight, they have family of heart disease and they're diabetic, it's even worse.

00:04:40.960 And so that's really the analogy with the death of a thousand cuts. One of these idea pathogens may

00:04:46.940 not be sufficiently, you know, virulent enough to bring down the edifices of reason that we've

00:04:52.960 erected in the West. But when you put a whole bunch of these dreadful parasitic ideas together

00:04:58.220 into a cocktail, then it becomes difficult to navigate through reality. And so up is down,

00:05:04.200 left is right. The wrong is right. And so certainly I'm guessing at some point,

00:05:08.500 we'll talk about some of these specific idea pathogens. Yeah, I hope so. I'd like to get

00:05:12.820 into that, but it, it, it leads me to think that if all of these, and maybe we're getting ahead of

00:05:19.480 ourselves a little bit, but let's just hit on this is that if all of these strange ideologies to put

00:05:25.240 it mildly were introduced all at once, I think it would be repulsive and rejected by much of society,

00:05:30.700 but it seems to be that, uh, they're introduced gradually and slowly over time. And once one

00:05:36.260 idiotic idea is accepted, then a new one is introduced that we'll become comfortable with 1.00

00:05:41.280 at some point. Yeah. So that's why I use the parable of the boiling frog, right? The idea of 1.00

00:05:46.120 course, which, you know, some, some scientific experiments have, have refuted the idea, but

00:05:51.700 the parable still holds, which is that if you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, uh, immediately,

00:05:59.340 then it will try to jump out. But if you put it in, you know, uh, lukewarm water and slowly increase

00:06:05.780 the temperature so that it is below a just noticeable difference, then with each increment,

00:06:12.660 the frog doesn't pick up the sensorial difference. And then eventually it boils to death. And so that's

00:06:17.380 exactly what's happening with these, uh, dreadful ideas. As you said, one of them might get under our

00:06:24.140 radar, two of them, three of them, but then once you put them all together, it really becomes a

00:06:28.020 problem. Now, I don't mean to imply by the way, or I don't want your audience to think that this is a,

00:06:34.120 you know, conspiratorial concerted effort by nefarious folks to put all of these ideas.

00:06:40.720 Each of these ideas or idea pathogens arose for a different reason. Uh, but what they all share in

00:06:49.360 common is a, uh, original goal to solve some noble cause. But then in the pursuit of that noble cause,

00:06:57.280 the idea metamorphosizes into BS, right? So in the pursuit of a social justice goal,

00:07:05.380 you end up killing the truth as a collateral. And of course I, I argue in the book repeatedly that

00:07:11.420 when it comes to the defense of truth with a capital T, we should be deontological. Deontological

00:07:18.060 means that there are absolute truths that we never waver from, uh, for consequentialist reasons,

00:07:24.380 right? So if your spouse asks you, uh, do I look fat in those jeans? Then if you want to have a long

00:07:31.520 successful marriage, then you want to put on your consequentialist hat, which basically says,

00:07:35.960 if I have to lie to spare my spouse's feelings, then that's okay to do the consequences justify

00:07:42.320 the lie. But when it comes to truth with a capital T, we never sacrifice a millimeter of truth

00:07:48.460 for some, uh, for some quote noble goal. And so that's where I think all of these dreadful ideas,

00:07:54.300 all of which, by the way, were spawned within the university ecosystem. As I always remind people,

00:07:59.260 as, as George Orwell remarked many years ago, it takes intellectuals to come up with some of the 0.99

00:08:04.940 dumbest ideas. Let's go back to that, that, uh, remark you made about your wife and jeans. 0.99

00:08:11.260 So this is actually something I've had a conversation about. And I think there's a

00:08:14.520 broader implication here. You said that maybe you'll spare the truth to spare her feelings.

00:08:18.920 I actually disagree with that. I think that you should tell her the truth. Now there's a tactful

00:08:24.640 and appropriate way to do it, but if you don't tell her the truth, you're undermining your own

00:08:29.200 authority, credibility, influence with her. And it seems to me that truth is important,

00:08:34.280 even if it does maybe sting a little bit in this, this example, just in life in general.

00:08:39.460 Sure. Well, uh, look, I guess we can certainly debate where that line of consequentialism should

00:08:45.000 fall, but for many things in life, it would be too rigid for us to, uh, assume a deontological

00:08:52.920 bent, right? Because for some things it really is a gray area. So the classic example, if, uh, you have

00:08:59.700 some, uh, Jews that are hidden in your, uh, you know, uh, cellar and the Nazis come in and say,

00:09:07.580 be truthful. Are there any Jews that you're hiding here? So what do you do? Do you take a deontological

00:09:13.500 bent or do you take a consequentialist one? So we can all debate as to where that line should be,

00:09:19.160 but we can certainly all agree that in many cases it is difficult to pursue a deontological bent

00:09:25.620 because life is, is made up of gray shades, but truth, right? And certainly I'm in the business of

00:09:32.400 generating knowledge and disseminating knowledge. And if I am a, an honest scientist, I never

00:09:38.860 equivocate on the truth for political reasons to spare someone's hurt feelings. But what we're seeing

00:09:45.200 today, what I call progressive epistemology, epistemology is philosophy of knowledge, right?

00:09:50.220 So under progressive woke epistemology, if you do a scientific study and the results come out

00:09:56.440 in line with a politically correct position, then publish it. And you'll be hailed as a hero.

00:10:01.640 If they don't come out the way you, uh, it should be according to PC orthodoxy,

00:10:06.280 then you suppress it. If you publish it, then you are akin to Himmler and Hitler.

00:10:10.600 Well, science doesn't get adjudicated based on political ideologies. I'll give you a very quick

00:10:17.200 explicit example, if I may. So when I taught, so I'm an evolutionary psychologist and consumer

00:10:22.340 psychologist. So when I'm, whenever I'm lecturing, say on about, on sexual variety, right? Variety

00:10:28.000 seeking the fact that, you know, we've both evolved to be polygynous, to, to, to have desire for many

00:10:33.540 people, but also to form long-term monogamous unions. And there, there, therein lies the tension

00:10:39.920 for most people, right? And so if I offer some evolutionary reasons why women also seek sexual 0.99

00:10:46.900 variety as they do, then I will get the feminists who will write to me and say, Dr. Saad, you're 1.00

00:10:52.180 such a brilliant scientist because there that message resonates with their political ideology.

00:10:58.520 If in the next sentence I say, notwithstanding that both sexes might seek sexual variety,

00:11:05.800 men have greater penchant for sexual variety. The same feminists will write to me and say, 1.00

00:11:12.940 dear Dr. Himmler, you are a sexist patriarchal pig. So from this side of the mouth, I was a brilliant 0.99

00:11:19.320 scientist from that side of the same mouth. I became Hitler because depending on what I said, 0.77

00:11:25.020 either agreed with your ideology or not science doesn't operate that way.

00:11:28.820 Yeah. I mean, it's unfortunate that we've placed the feelings of others and, and, and how people

00:11:34.740 perceive things and how they might feel offense above the truth. Like you said, with a capital T,

00:11:42.560 because I think this leads to all sorts of problems in society where, you know, we, we, we make,

00:11:47.740 uh, martyrs out of those who, who speak the truth. We, we crucify them. We ostracize them. In many

00:11:56.400 cases, they get doxed and then it continues to evolve into this slow loss of what is true and

00:12:02.860 what is not in reality is lost. Yeah, exactly. Look, uh, in 2002, maybe we, this is a good segue

00:12:09.860 to maybe give an example of a specific idea pathogen, although we can certainly discuss many

00:12:14.700 of them from the book. I call postmodernism the granddaddy of all idea pathogens, because it is the

00:12:21.360 highest form of intellectual terrorism, because it basically purports that there are no

00:12:26.000 objective truths, right? Other than the one truth that there are no objective truths. So already the

00:12:32.380 whole house of cards is, uh, breaking apart. So postmodernism is a perfectly anti-scientific

00:12:39.440 framework because of course, scientists do wake up every day thinking that there are truths out there

00:12:44.140 to be discovered. Now, science recognizes that truths are provisional. What we thought was true

00:12:49.460 in science 300 years ago may no longer be true today. So we have epistemic humility. We are willing

00:12:55.160 to change our views as a function of incoming new evidence that might falsify our previously held

00:13:00.620 positions. But we do think that there are truths. We do know that men are taller than women, even

00:13:05.700 though there are many women that are taller than men, on average men are taller than women. So let me

00:13:10.720 give you an example. So, so the reason why postmodernism is a idea pathogen is because it is literally the

00:13:18.080 eradication of the epistemology of truth. You can't, the scientific method is an incredibly powerful

00:13:24.580 framework for us to be able to adjudicate that which is true versus that which is not true.

00:13:31.320 Postmodernism says you're wasting your time. There is no truth. What's the point of the scientific

00:13:35.420 method? Everything is subjective. Everything is shackled by our personal biases. Bullshit,

00:13:40.280 if I may say. Of course not. If you, if you jump out of a, the empire state building 100 times, 1.00

00:13:45.600 I could 100 times predict what will be the outcome of your head when you land on the pavement.

00:13:51.480 Gravity is not a social construct. So in 2002, I had the, my, one of my doctoral students had just

00:13:59.760 defended his PhD dissertation. And so we were going out to a celebratory dinner. It was myself,

00:14:06.140 him, my wife, and he brought a date along. I recount this story in the parasitic mind. 0.97

00:14:11.360 And so he calls me before the dinner meeting to kind of gives me, give me a heads up that the

00:14:19.760 date that he's bringing along is a graduate student in postmodernism, cultural anthropology, 0.98

00:14:26.080 and women's study, to which I answered, aha, the holy trinity of bullshit. And so his point was, 0.98

00:14:32.960 of course, that, you know, let's have a nice evening and so on. I said, oh, I got you,

00:14:37.820 no problem. I'll be on my best behavior, which of course was a lie. And so about halfway through

00:14:43.580 the evening, I turned to the lady in question. I said, oh, I hear you're a postmodernist. Yes.

00:14:48.800 Do you mind if I propose what I think are certain universals and that you can correct me as to how

00:14:55.600 they're not universals? Because I do believe that they are human universals, but you think that there

00:14:59.500 are no objective truths, so on. She goes, yes, go for it. Is it not universally true that within

00:15:05.660 homo sapiens only women bear children? So look here, by the way, Ryan, I, uh, I, I prophetically,

00:15:11.880 uh, you know, came before the whole transgender men can get pregnant. This was in 2002, almost 20 years 0.73

00:15:19.120 ago. So, so is it not true that only women bear children? So she looks at me with complete disdain, 1.00

00:15:27.880 with derision. She can't believe that someone could be such a simpleton like yours truly. She says, 0.98

00:15:32.680 no, of course it's not true. I said, oh, it's not true. How is that? She said, well, there is some

00:15:37.740 Japanese tribe of some Japanese Island whereby within their mythological, uh, folkloric realm,

00:15:45.160 it is the men who bear children. So by you, you know, maintaining the conversation to the biological

00:15:50.180 realm, that's how you keep us, you know, barefoot and pregnant. So once I recovered from the mini stroke

00:15:55.320 due to her imbecility, I then said, okay, well, let me come up with another example that might be a bit 0.97

00:16:00.260 less corrosive and controversial as women bear children. She said, yeah, go for it. Is it not 1.00

00:16:08.160 true that from any vantage point on earth, sailors since time immemorial have relied on the premise

00:16:16.160 that the sun rises in the East and sets in the West and have used that for their navigation? There,

00:16:21.960 she used something from Jacques Derrida, deconstructionism, language creates reality.

00:16:26.560 She said, well, what do you mean by East and West? And what do you mean by the sun, that which you

00:16:32.400 call the sun, I might call dancing hyena. Literally, those are her words. I said, well, fine, the dancing

00:16:38.220 hyena, right? And then she said, I don't play those label games. So when I couldn't find an intersection

00:16:46.460 of meaning in the Venn diagram between me and this person, she's a graduate student, right? She's not an

00:16:52.400 escapee from a mental asylum, although one could argue that studying postmodernism is the same as

00:16:58.480 being in a mental asylum. So if we can't agree on the basics of women bear children, and there is East, 0.96

00:17:05.920 there is West, and there's the sun, then where does that lead you? It's an epistemological dead end.

00:17:12.720 So now imagine if you have 40, 50 years of students being inculcated with this garbage. 0.97

00:17:18.880 They can't build bridges. There are no postmodernist bridges. You can't build planes. 0.97

00:17:24.540 You can't cure cancer. You can't solve number theory problems in mathematics. You can't build

00:17:29.740 a mathematical model to understand consumer choice using postmodernism. So it's a form of

00:17:34.900 intellectual terrorism that number one, parasitizes the minds of those who study it,

00:17:39.360 and number two, steals their parents' hard-earned money to pay for their tuition.

00:17:44.040 What is the point? If you were to ask, for example, a postmodernist, what is the point or what is the

00:17:51.580 objective or why would you even believe in this way of viewing the world? I think it's easy to say,

00:17:58.960 well, we believe in objective truth because that helps us formulate better conclusions to live our

00:18:04.340 lives more effectively. But what would a postmodernist say about their perception of the world?

00:18:08.700 Yeah. So to answer that question, I'll first answer it broadly, and then we can bring it back

00:18:14.220 to postmodernism. As I was trying to look at all of the idea pathogens that I cover in the book,

00:18:19.500 so postmodernism, militant feminism, biophobia, the fear of using biology to explain human behavior,

00:18:25.740 cultural relativism, identity politics, victimology, all of these different strains of idea pathogens,

00:18:31.920 I wanted to look at, they're all different. They've all evolved for different reasons.

00:18:38.860 Their trajectories are different, but do they have anything in common? And that's going to get at

00:18:43.600 the root of your question. So in the same way that cancer, pancreatic cancer is different than

00:18:49.400 leukemia, which is different from melanoma, they do share one thing in common, which is they all

00:18:54.680 involve the unchecked cell division. So at least we have that as common ground across all the different

00:19:01.300 cancers, which are otherwise very different. So when it comes to idea pathogens, what I argued is that

00:19:06.360 they all free us from the pesky shackles of reality, right? So for example, trans, I simply,

00:19:16.200 I just engage in, I just put the word trans, and suddenly I can be a elderly Korean woman.

00:19:24.420 So I explained in the book that I wanted to participate in the under nine, meaning less than

00:19:31.720 nine-year-old judo championships for kids who are less than 70 pounds. That's absolutely no problem

00:19:38.140 epistemologically. I use transgravity, which allows me to self-identify at the time I was close to 200

00:19:44.620 pounds. It allows me to self-identify as less than 70 pounds. And I use trans ageism, which doesn't 0.80

00:19:51.620 shackle me to my actual age. It's what I self-identify that matters. Now, it's very important

00:19:57.380 to hear you to recognize that me saying this in no way, only imbeciles who are lobotomized think that 0.99

00:20:02.600 I'm making fun of trans people. I'm not. Because gender dysphoria does exist. People who are 0.99

00:20:10.560 transgender deserve to live with the full dignity and free of bigotry, just like anybody else.

00:20:15.920 That doesn't mean, though, that in the service of protecting trans people from bigotry, we murder

00:20:23.300 truth, to go to my earlier point, right? So, no, you can't be transracial. No, you can't be trans thin. 0.50

00:20:30.380 But it can liberate me from the shackles of my genitalia. So, postmodernism liberates me from truth. 0.73

00:20:38.740 There is no truth. There is my truth. There is my lived experience, right? And so, if you look at each

00:20:45.040 of those idea pathogens, they all serve one ultimate goal, which is the freeing of whomever

00:20:53.240 is engaging in this idea pathogen from the pesky shackles of reality. I'll give you one other quick

00:20:57.620 example. Social constructivism is another idea pathogen. Social constructivism basically argues

00:21:03.480 that everything is due to a social construction. For example, sex differences, there are no innate

00:21:08.480 sex differences. It's only because mama and papa taught Joe to play rough.

00:21:13.300 Trained. Sure.

00:21:14.840 Exactly. There are no biological imperatives that can explain sexual dimorphisms across the two sexes.

00:21:20.580 Well, that's a very liberating message because what that also teaches me is that we are all born

00:21:26.640 tabula rasa, empty slates, with equal potentiality, right? Well, that's very hopeful. I'd like to believe

00:21:33.660 that my child, the only reason why he didn't become Michael Jordan is not because there is any innate

00:21:40.440 starting point that made my child less likely to be the next Michael Jordan. It's only because I didn't

00:21:46.420 hug him enough or hugged him too much, or I gave him too many Big Macs or not enough Big Macs that led to

00:21:51.860 Michael Jordan being able to jump much higher than my kid. So, again, by adopting the ethos of social

00:22:00.420 constructivism, it frees me from the shackles of reality. My son could truly be the next Lionel

00:22:05.960 Messi. That's a wonderful message, completely rooted in bullshit, but it still makes me feel 0.98

00:22:10.520 really good. 0.98

00:22:12.120 As you were writing that, I started to think about when children, for example, and I have four kids

00:22:17.340 of my own say, well, that isn't fair. And the apparent appropriate response is, well, life isn't

00:22:23.880 always fair. That's the deal. Welcome to life. It seems to me that these kids grew up saying life

00:22:29.160 isn't fair and nobody told them, well, life isn't fair. We don't start at an equal place. We don't

00:22:34.140 all have the same genes or biological makeup or predisposition to be competitive or passive.

00:22:41.940 Everybody's different. But I started thinking about this with sexes, for example. It's a real shame

00:22:46.880 just to look at it in this context that somebody who's a woman, for example, considers herself

00:22:52.440 inferior and feels like she needs to free herself from the shackles of being a woman. I look at my 0.65

00:22:58.700 wife and she honors her femininity. She honors the fact that she's a woman. She doesn't look at it as

00:23:03.360 bondage or slavery or beholden to me or anything else. She loves being a woman. I don't understand 0.99

00:23:09.300 why these are constraints to some people.

00:23:11.680 Well, look, it's astonishing that for a sexually reproducing species that has two phenotypes

00:23:18.600 called male and female, that we need to have these types of conversations. I had to appear in

00:23:24.360 front of the Canadian Senate in 2017 to testify about, well, I mean, the general theme was Bill

00:23:32.240 C-16, which was a bill that was seeking to introduce gender identity and gender expression

00:23:37.900 under the rubric of hate crimes. And of course, my position and, you know, some of your viewers

00:23:44.080 might also know that Jordan Peterson was also part of the, you know, the witnesses at that

00:23:48.560 sure thing. Neither of our position was, oh, you know, we support, you know, bigotry against

00:23:54.700 transgender people or that we don't want them to live free of bigotry. But we recognize that there

00:23:59.720 were, you know, the slippery, the proverbial slippery slope is something that we really need

00:24:04.760 to discuss. So for example, if I'm sitting in my evolutionary psychology course, and I want to talk

00:24:10.320 about Darwin's sexual selection, which talks about two sexes, is that now transphobic? Well, as I was 0.72

00:24:18.400 making those arguments, very sober arguments in front of, you know, a bunch of truly laughable, 1.00

00:24:25.040 idiotic, lobotomized, self-indulgent imbeciles who were mocking and scoffing, all of whom are now 1.00

00:24:32.740 eating their words, I couldn't believe the political theater that was taking place, right? Because it was 1.00

00:24:39.100 like, oh, what a conspiratorial freak this idiot is in reference to me, you know? No, no one's ever going 1.00

00:24:46.040 to, you know, stop you from teaching this or saying that. But now we know that, you know,

00:24:51.920 different places, hospitals are asking people to incorporate, not ask the man that you put he,

00:25:01.400 him, or they, whatever, in your signature. They had said that they'd never be compelled speech. Now,

00:25:07.320 of course, some people say, well, what's the big deal? What's the big deal if you just put that in

00:25:11.140 your, but here there is a deontological principle. The deontological principle is it's not for big

00:25:18.380 daddy, meaning the government, to compel me to say or, you know, take any position that I don't wish

00:25:26.040 to take, right? I mean, that's, you know, I'm an evolutionist, yet I recognize that there are

00:25:30.500 religious people who wish to teach, you know, their kids at Sunday school that evolution is a

00:25:36.020 Zionist hoax. And in a free society, idiots are allowed to exist. I'm a Jewish person. I'm from, 1.00

00:25:42.900 I'm a Lebanese Jew who escaped execution in Lebanon, yet I support the right of Holocaust deniers 0.85

00:25:49.080 to deny the most grotesque, you know, reality in history that is the most documented event in human

00:25:56.900 history. Yet I recognize that in a free society, my feelings might be hurt in the most grotesque way,

00:26:02.800 which is the denial of the eradication of my people, right? So in a free society,

00:26:09.680 shit happens. And therefore, you don't compel me to say him, hey, hey, and you don't compel me. 0.99

00:26:15.680 And that's the bottom line. But yet people are driven by an ethos of empathy. Therefore, you know,

00:26:21.880 don't have closed borders because that's simply not empathetic to Guatemalans, right? Don't fight

00:26:28.600 against the gender pronoun issue. Because why? Are you a mean person who hates transgender people?

00:26:33.600 So it's a type of kindergarten logic that's driven by empathy, right? Well, I'm about as empathetic 0.98

00:26:39.720 as they come, but I'm also rooted in reality. So these two things should not be pitted against each

00:26:45.360 other. I could chew gum and walk at the same time. Well, and it's also a very close-minded level

00:26:50.000 of empathy. You talk about open borders, for example. Somebody who says, well, there should be no

00:26:55.260 borders because that's not very kind to people who would like to come to this country, for example.

00:26:59.600 Well, okay. Well, how does that factor for all of those immigrants who came here legally?

00:27:04.400 How does that factor for the negative consequences that come from opening up borders and not knowing

00:27:09.700 who people are? How does that factor for a mother and father who lose their daughter to somebody who

00:27:15.340 came here illegally and decided to rape that daughter or murder that daughter? It's maybe empathetic,

00:27:21.940 but it's not a complete picture of empathy. It's a very isolated, close-minded view of empathy.

00:27:28.060 Well, and look, I think Thomas Sowell said it, but many others have remarked, myself included,

00:27:33.440 that, I mean, life is about trade-offs, right? So there is no way by which you're going to maximize

00:27:41.460 a single objective function, which is, you know, minimize the hurt of noble immigrants who come 0.99

00:27:48.120 undocumented because life involves trade-offs. In an ideal world, I'd like to think that there's 0.98

00:27:53.960 no possibility that a homeless person is going to go through the streets of Montreal in the cold

00:27:59.500 winter of Montreal. Yet, notwithstanding that that's a dreadful reality, I recognize that I can't

00:28:05.920 keep my front door open because, you know, it would otherwise be unfair to homeless people who would want

00:28:12.460 to come into my house and sleep there. I mean, I help the homeless people by paying the totality of

00:28:17.940 about 65% of my income ends up going to the government. Yeah, that's a real number. Okay,

00:28:23.260 that's a real number. From January till about end of August, I work for free. So I'm about 65%

00:28:31.060 of a complete slave. And only in August, I am allowed by my noble overlords to keep some of the money of my

00:28:37.760 own. So I already exhibit tons of empathy to all sorts of people with the hundreds of thousands

00:28:44.340 of dollars that I pay per year in taxes. So again, it's a form of truly stunted childhood logic to view

00:28:53.200 the world through the lens of, you know, this orgiastic empathy. This is precisely why, Ryan,

00:28:59.060 in chapter two of The Parasitic Mind, I talk about the distinction between feeling versus thinking.

00:29:04.960 And the reason why that's a very important distinction, number one is because it's a wrong

00:29:09.680 dichotomy to set up. It's not that we are a reasoning animal or a feeling animal. We're both.

00:29:15.700 The challenge is to know when to trigger or activate which system. When I am going down a dark alley,

00:29:23.260 because I want to take a shortcut to get home, and I see four young men loitering. And by the way,

00:29:29.240 I said four young men, not four elderly nuns, because I recognize that statistically speaking,

00:29:34.700 young men are more likely to be violent than elderly nuns. And that doesn't make me ageist or

00:29:40.400 sexist. It makes me somebody who has a brain who can calculate statistical regularities.

00:29:45.700 But progressives think that that would have been ageist and sexist. But in any case, when I...

00:29:51.140 Actually, it just depends on what color they are, because if they're white men, that's not a problem.

00:29:55.540 If it was any other race, then maybe it would be a problem. 1.00

00:29:58.440 Exactly. Because it's only neo-Nazi skinheads who are dangerous. There are no other types of young 0.99

00:30:06.760 men who otherwise might cause me harm. There's just no documented cases of anybody other than young

00:30:13.040 white men committing crimes. We just follow the data. 0.84

00:30:17.360 That's right.

00:30:17.700 So anyway, so when I walk down that dark alley, what happens? My heart starts raising. My blood

00:30:25.980 pressure goes up. So I am having an affective-based response, a feeling response that makes perfect

00:30:33.160 evolutionary sense. On the other hand, if I'm trying to do well on a calculus exam, you can trigger my

00:30:38.860 affective system all you want. If I haven't studied for the exam, if I don't activate my cognitive system,

00:30:43.800 I'm not going to do well on the calculus exam. So again, the problem is when we are misactivating,

00:30:52.040 we're misfiring the incorrect mechanism for the wrong situation. So if we apply it to, say,

00:30:58.120 the political world. So I saw all of my super smart, super highfalutin progressive colleagues,

00:31:07.180 all of whom in unison said that Donald Trump, this is not hyperbolic. Now, this is not my sarcasm.

00:31:14.660 This is literally the case, was going to usher a nuclear holocaust. Democracy was going to end. 0.79

00:31:22.020 Martial law was going to be instituted. The economy was going to be obliterated. We were going to go

00:31:27.700 back to a barter system where I trade you a caught fish for the fig leaf that is covering your genitalia. 0.99

00:31:34.640 That's what he was going to do. Now, how could it be that otherwise supposedly intelligent intellectual 0.99

00:31:42.000 colleagues could be so unhinged, so deranged? Well, as I explain in the book, it's because they

00:31:48.040 were fully immersed in activating their emotional system. Donald Trump disgusts me. He is grotesque. 0.95

00:31:56.940 I revile him. Every single statement that I make regarding Donald Trump, I'm saying this now as the 0.87

00:32:04.640 is a utterance of my affective position. I didn't say I dislike Donald Trump because I disagree with

00:32:15.600 his monetary policy because of reason X, Y, Z. He disgusts me. He speaks in a vulgar way. He puts 0.62

00:32:22.320 out disgusting tweets. On the other hand, noble prophet Barack Obama is just music to my ears. 0.95

00:32:31.000 So let me give you an example here from Arabic. Arabic is my mother tongue. Presume that this for

00:32:35.800 a second is the cork of a wine bottle. Okay, Ryan? There's an expression in Arabic that says

00:32:41.720 getting drunk simply by smelling the cork of the wine bottle. What does that mean? It basically means

00:32:48.580 that I am such a lightweight that I don't actually need to go through the effort of drinking the wine

00:32:54.800 bottle to get drunk. I just take a whiff and I'm already drunk. So therefore, when I now smell

00:33:00.880 Barack Obama, oh my God, he has such a mellifluous voice. He has such a radiant smile. He's so tall and

00:33:08.240 lanky. He's so charming. Therefore, what he says must be true. Now, the reality is that every single

00:33:13.960 syllable that he's ever uttered is a platitudinal sack of shit. But that doesn't matter. I'm drunk by his 1.00

00:33:22.140 magisterial nature. On the other hand, fat boy Trump disgusts me. Therefore, every single position 1.00

00:33:29.780 that I've taken, I'm speaking now as super smart, progressive professor, every position that I take

00:33:37.220 is rooted in the affective reasons why I hate Trump and the affective reasons why I love Kamala Harris,

00:33:45.760 right? But paradoxically, it might turn out that actually my positions are a lot more aligned with

00:33:53.660 Donald Trump, as I know many of my colleagues are, but they never look that far because that part of

00:34:00.800 their brain has been shut off. Trump is disgusting. And so that's a, it's a bewildering reality, right? 1.00

00:34:07.980 Because you would think that when you are trained, just like a soccer player is trained to be super fit,

00:34:13.920 you would think that an intellectual who spent their entire life being trained on how to think

00:34:20.500 would not succumb to these. But as I explained in the parasitic mind, it's professors who come up with

00:34:25.300 these parasitic ideas. They are the ones who promulgate them. And they're the ones who are 0.90

00:34:29.380 parasitized by them. Holy trinity of parasites. Is there an evolutionary benefit though, to taking that 0.98

00:34:37.360 into consideration? Let's take Trump. Well, even a better example is you're walking down the road or down

00:34:43.040 that alley, like you were talking about earlier, and you see somebody and it feels off, right?

00:34:48.780 There's something that you can't quite put your finger on. Either that person gives you a weird

00:34:53.180 vibe or you just don't quite feel right. And you can't fully articulate or explain, but you make a

00:34:58.960 decision based on that assumption of that feeling. And I assume that we've evolved to take these subtle

00:35:05.260 cues into consideration to keep ourselves alive. So it seems to me that appearance with Obama,

00:35:12.460 appearance with Trump, the way they present themselves is something that maybe we should

00:35:16.200 listen to to some degree. Yeah, no, great question. As a matter of fact, I published a scientific paper

00:35:21.500 back in 2003 in a journal, not journal, in an edited book. The paper was on evolution as applied to

00:35:31.200 political marketing. And I precisely make the point that you just made, which is that it is perfectly

00:35:37.740 evolutionarily feasible, that we use certain, so the fancy term would be peripheral cues. So for

00:35:44.440 example, how tall you are, right? So we know that yesterday I was watching The Five. Oh my God,

00:35:50.840 I just admitted that I was watching Fox News. There goes my academic career. Please, please edit this out.

00:35:58.200 If it was going to be gone, it would have been gone by now already.

00:36:01.320 Exactly. So I was watching The Five and Jesse, I can't remember his last name, but one of the

00:36:09.300 anchors, Jesse said, regarding Buttigieg, he said, he's never going to be president. He's too short.

00:36:17.620 Okay. Well, in that chapter from 2003, I talk about, for example, morphological features of

00:36:25.400 presidential candidates, their height. So many of these cues that technically speaking says,

00:36:30.520 they say nothing about their policy positions by definition, yet we still use them because we want

00:36:36.940 to have someone that looks as though they are intimidating and so on. So I'm not suggesting that

00:36:41.680 peripheral cues are not important, but they should constitute one of many attributes that you look

00:36:48.200 at, right? So for example, I could have as one attribute, presidential looking, and therefore I

00:36:55.320 could give Obama on a score of 10, a nine, and I could give Trump a two. So I have incorporated what

00:37:02.740 you just said, but it can't be the only one. It can't, right? What about monetary policy? What about,

00:37:08.520 right? The world is typically made up of multi-attribute choices, right? Now, there are cases where we only use

00:37:16.200 a single attribute to make a decision. That's called the lexicographic rule. And I actually

00:37:21.200 use that psychological rule to explain why many perfectly rational people could have voted for

00:37:26.760 Trump. I famously explained this to arguably the most unhinged Trump derangement syndrome person,

00:37:34.780 Sam Harris, also known as the Malibu meditator. So Sam Harris, who used to be a good friend of mine,

00:37:43.160 I mean, good friend, we knew each other, we've had dinner, we've, I went on a show, became, I mean,

00:37:48.260 completely, utterly lost his mind with Trump in ways that are very, very difficult to even,

00:37:53.020 you know, stomach. It's impossible to imagine someone could be that unhinged. Well, I explained

00:37:58.560 to him on the show that the lexical works as follows. Let's suppose I'm choosing between

00:38:03.920 toothpastes. Well, there are 15 different attributes that I can use in making a choice for toothpaste,

00:38:08.920 but most people use the lexicographic rule. What does that mean? I look at my most important

00:38:14.300 attribute and I simply choose the alternative that scores the highest on my most important

00:38:19.400 attribute. So for example, for toothpaste, for me, it might simply be the price of the toothpaste.

00:38:25.200 I don't care about tartar removal or if it's different. I just care about the price of the

00:38:34.400 toothpaste. The one that's cheapest is the one that I'll buy. Well, let's apply the lexicographic

00:38:39.040 rule now to Trump versus say Clinton when in 2016. Let's suppose that the border issue is my

00:38:47.960 lexicographic attribute, meaning the only, I'm a single issues guy. I only care about who is best

00:38:54.600 in protecting our national borders. Now it could well be that on every other attribute, let's say

00:39:00.320 there are 25 attributes on which I could look at Trump versus Clinton. On the other 24, Clinton wins.

00:39:08.120 But the most important attribute is the one for me, border protection. And if Trump scores higher on it,

00:39:16.140 I will choose Trump. So they are perfectly rational, well-known, well-documented, scientifically

00:39:23.960 validated cognitive processes that we know consumers, in this case, you know, voters will use in arriving

00:39:32.560 at a choice. So notwithstanding that I was very patient in explaining to the Malibu meditator how

00:39:39.280 perfectly rational people could arrive at choosing Trump and they don't have to have slept with their

00:39:45.340 sisters and be called Roscoe and have a KKK hooded white robe on, that didn't seem to assuage his fear 0.61

00:39:56.380 that Trump was going to outlaw sex and was going to usher nuclear holocaust. That upsets me because 0.92

00:40:03.520 for better or worse, I have the disposition to be allergic, existentially allergic to bullshit, 0.99

00:40:11.720 to posturing, to inauthenticity. That's why, by the way, I like Trump, because even though a lot of 0.99

00:40:18.840 his authentic qualities were annoying, at least he was authentic. I prefer an authentic, you know,

00:40:26.020 bull than an inauthentic, you know, viper, right? So for all of these reasons, I fully agree with you

00:40:33.380 that peripheral cues are important, but they can't be the only reason in terms of how I choose my president.

00:40:38.160 Right. That makes sense. You know, I think there's another factor at play here too, that people

00:40:42.800 will maybe not consciously choose based on the factor that's most important to them, but they

00:40:48.640 may just rely upon somebody they admire or respect, uh, or has some sort of credibility or authority

00:40:55.860 with them and choose just based on what that individual may choose. Is this part of the way

00:41:01.060 that these parasitic ideas spread is just because so many people believe it. So it must be true.

00:41:05.340 Yeah. So that's called in, in, in psychology of marketing, it's called social proofing,

00:41:10.300 right? So for example, when I, when McDonald's says, uh, 6 billion satisfied customers, what are

00:41:16.340 they saying? Look, there has been an interaction, a service interaction with 6 billion people,

00:41:22.140 and they've all already ticked it off as good. Shouldn't you also join that band of satisfied

00:41:27.300 customers? So, well, it's just funny because, you know, take McDonald's 6 billion satisfied customers,

00:41:32.420 but you go buy a burger, you're still going to shit your pants. So it's like, but, but you don't,

00:41:36.820 but still that 6 billion is so compelling versus your own personal experience with it.

00:41:41.240 Yeah. There's actually some interesting research that was conducted a few years ago, uh, contrasting,

00:41:48.040 uh, social proofing appeal. So the one that we just discussed versus a scarcity appeal,

00:41:54.200 scarcity appeal would be, you know, a limited edition, only seven left, uh, you know, so on.

00:41:59.620 And what the, these researchers did is that they, they were actually coming from an evolutionary

00:42:05.460 perspective. It's, it's, I mean, other than the work that I have, uh, generated over the past 20

00:42:10.780 years, I, I, if I may say, I pioneered the use of evolutionary psychology in the study of consumer

00:42:15.000 behavior, but subsequently there were several, uh, new generations of people who were originally

00:42:20.580 trained in evolutionary psychology that then went on to the business school. These guys were part of

00:42:26.180 that group. Uh, what they did is that they primed, uh, participants to either be in a mating mindset

00:42:33.440 or in a survival mindset. And what they showed is that when you prime people to be in a mating mindset,

00:42:41.460 then the scarcity appeal is more effective because when I'm, when you are priming me to be in the mating

00:42:49.540 mindset, I don't want to be part of the herd. I want to stand out, right? I want to be unique,

00:42:54.420 uniquely positioned in the mating market. I want you to notice me. On the other hand,

00:43:00.420 when you prime me about, uh, to be in a survival mindset, then I want to blend into the herd. So

00:43:06.980 the social proofing, uh, proof appeal works better. I thought that was a brilliant study because it

00:43:12.080 shows you that like most things in life, and certainly like most things in psychology of advertising,

00:43:17.260 there is no definitive rule. It always, it depends. So the two appeals either work better or work less

00:43:25.140 well, depending on the mindset that I come in to watching these ads.

00:43:30.260 Guys, as you may know, I've spent the last several weeks building out new systems and processes inside

00:43:35.280 of our exclusive brotherhood, the iron council. Uh, all of these updates are based on the experiences

00:43:40.740 of thousands of men who have banded with us over the past six and a half years. These are men who

00:43:45.800 have lost 30, 40, 80 pounds. Uh, they've doubled and even tripled their income. They've rekindled

00:43:51.080 dying relationships, started new businesses. They've dreamt about for years and generally just improved

00:43:55.960 every aspect and facet of their lives. So if you think you can go at it alone in life,

00:44:00.680 I wish you all the best. I really do. I want you to win, but if you want to leverage and maximize

00:44:06.400 your life results and also a powerful network of other men, as we close out 2021 and roll into 2022,

00:44:13.480 then I would encourage you to band with us inside the iron council. So if you are interested,

00:44:18.240 you want to learn more about what we're doing inside our brotherhood, head to order of man.com

00:44:21.740 slash iron council. And you'll be notified when the iron council opens back up in the next couple of

00:44:27.480 weeks. Again, head to order of man.com slash iron council. Do that right after the show for now,

00:44:34.380 we'll get back to it with God.

00:44:36.400 How do you sift through the societal noise through the media? Uh, because I, you know,

00:44:42.420 I know, for example, and you've talked about this, you talked about in the book is truth and freedom

00:44:46.380 being some of your core driving principles, but how do you sift through all the noise? And,

00:44:52.420 and there's things that I hear that sound right. They sound true. They sound accurate. And then you

00:44:58.240 delve into it and you realize, no, that isn't true. How do you, how do you sift through all of the

00:45:03.300 information that we have available? Yeah. So this, this, we're going to fast forward to chapter

00:45:07.760 seven, where the chapter is on how to seek truth. And I basically argue that, uh, well,

00:45:17.180 first, why is it so difficult? So to your point to, to obtain truth is precisely because most people

00:45:23.320 are cognitive misers, meaning that they are intellectually lazy, right? So if Barack Obama

00:45:28.400 tells me that Islam is a religion of peace, that's good enough for me. If George Bush tells me that 0.77

00:45:33.220 Islam is a religion of peace, that's good enough for me. Just like you mentioned earlier, if I trust

00:45:36.960 someone and they say something, then, uh, I buy into it. But of course, if you want to take up,

00:45:44.120 uh, a epistemologically valid position on an issue, you have to do the heavy lifting.

00:45:49.900 And so what I argue in chapter seven is that there is such an epistemological tool. It is

00:45:55.200 cognitively burdensome to do because you have to spend the effort to, to, to achieve truth or to

00:46:02.440 get to the truth. Here's how it works. I'm going to try to amass as much evidence stemming from as

00:46:10.900 many distinct lines of evidence that support my position. Okay. So example, I want to prove to you,

00:46:19.540 Brian, that, uh, toy preferences have a sex specificity. Boys prefer certain toys. Girls

00:46:25.180 prefer certain toys, and it's not due to social construction, right? In other words, it's not

00:46:30.060 because mommy and daddy taught me to play with the truck or the doll. There are biological driven

00:46:36.520 universals that shape those toy preferences. How would I go about doing that? Well, I can get you

00:46:43.500 data from developmental psychology. When you study young infants who are too young to have been

00:46:48.840 socialized by definition, they are at the cognitive developmental stage where they can't be

00:46:53.620 socialized. And I can show you that they already exhibit that sex specificity of toy preferences.

00:47:00.000 So if I had stopped right there, I've already dealt a death blow to the social constructivist argument,

00:47:05.600 but I'm not going to stop there. That's why I said it takes heavy lifting. So now I got you data

00:47:10.640 from developmental psychology. Now I'm going to get you data from comparative psychology, comparative in the

00:47:16.400 sense that you're comparing across species. I'm going to show you data from vervet monkeys,

00:47:21.180 from rhesus monkeys, and from chimpanzees that they exhibit the same sex specificity of toy preferences. 0.98

00:47:28.420 It's starting to look pretty bad for you with your social constructivist bullshit, but I'm not going 0.99

00:47:32.920 to stop there. I'm going to drown you with a tsunami of evidence. I'm going to get you data cross-culturally 1.00

00:47:39.520 from cultures that are very, very different from the Western tradition, you know, nomadic cultures in 0.70

00:47:46.480 sub-Saharan desert where they exhibit the same sex specificity. That's not good enough for you. I'm 0.98

00:47:52.780 going to get you data from 2,500 years ago in ancient Greece where researchers had done a content analysis

00:48:00.540 on the outside of funerary monuments where little boys and little girls are depicting playing with the

00:48:07.440 exact same toys as we see today. I'll just do one more, although the network is actually much larger

00:48:13.700 than this. I can get you data from pediatric endocrinology whereby little girls who suffer

00:48:19.880 from a disease called congenital adrenal hyperplasia, this is an endocrinological disorder

00:48:25.680 that masculinizes the morphology and the behaviors of little girls. Well, little girls who suffer from 1.00

00:48:34.000 this disorder, drum roll, have preferences, toy preferences that are akin to those of boys.

00:48:42.120 So look where I got you the data from. I got you developmental psychology data. I got you

00:48:46.060 comparative psychology data. I got you cross-cultural data. I got you intertemporal data. Going back 2,500

00:48:52.380 years ago, I got you data from medicine, from pediatrics, all of which point to the same conclusion.

00:48:58.540 Therefore, when I walk into a room of very hostile buffoons armed with that nomological network,

00:49:06.620 I walk with the swagger of someone who knows what they're talking about. You better not attack me and 0.68

00:49:13.460 miss because then I'm going to destroy you. I mean, in a debate sense. On the other hand, 0.54

00:49:20.820 so that's how you get at the truth, right? On the other hand, when I haven't built the requisite

00:49:28.240 nomological network, then I walk with someone with due deference and humility because I know what I

00:49:35.960 know and I know what I don't know. So if you tell me, oh, hey, you live in Canada. Justin Trudeau was

00:49:42.880 one of the first leaders to legalize marijuana in Canada. So what are the pros and cons of having done

00:49:48.980 so? Then my answer is going to be, I simply don't know enough about this issue to offer you an

00:49:56.240 intelligent, well-reasoned position. So there is no magic recipe. There is no shortcut. If you want

00:50:02.920 to get to the truth, it requires effort. But at least you know that when you do your homework by

00:50:10.300 building this nomological network of cumulative evidence, it becomes a lot more difficult for people

00:50:15.740 to hurl hysterical insults and attacks at you. And that's what people say. How is it that you walk

00:50:21.440 around, you speak your mind in this unbelievable, there's zero filter to you. I mean, I never go out

00:50:27.320 of my way to hurt someone, but when it comes to taking positions, I truly am a honey badger because

00:50:33.560 I know what I'm talking about. Now, by the way, even when I know what I'm talking about, if you come

00:50:38.560 with compelling arguments that causes me to have to revise my position, I'm going to say to you,

00:50:43.760 well-played, Brian, I need to go back to the drawing board. So I always leave room for the

00:50:50.220 possibility of revising my opinion in light of incoming information. That's what ideologues don't

00:50:55.840 do. Those ideologues could be Islamic terrorists. Those ideologues could be blue-haired, woke Taliban. 1.00

00:51:03.160 They are different. They wear different hoods, but they are made of the same mindset. There is no

00:51:09.100 amount of evidence that can alter their position. That's why they operate in a religious world,

00:51:13.320 where you have revealed truths. Boys can menstruate. Shut up and go home, Rube. There is

00:51:21.360 no evidence that suggests that it, right? I mean, listen, by the way, I get grown-ups, adults who

00:51:28.620 write to me to show you how parasitic these ideas are. They write to me, dear Dr. Saad, I have an

00:51:34.580 awkward question to ask you. So what is now the biologically accepted thing? I mean, is it women 1.00

00:51:40.480 who menstruate or do boys menstruate? I mean, imagine the world that we live in where a functioning 1.00

00:51:47.040 adult no longer feels sufficiently confident to answer that question from their lived experience.

00:51:54.080 They need to get the imprimatur of the fancy professor to tell them, no, no, no, no, it's

00:51:58.900 still true. Boys can't menstruate. It's insane. 0.99

00:52:02.400 Well, I do appreciate what you said earlier about not setting out to offend anybody, but one of the

00:52:09.460 things that you actually mentioned in the book is a willingness to be able to do that, right? Is

00:52:13.720 that isn't your intent or your desired objective, but at least you're willing to risk somebody being

00:52:19.780 offended to share what you know to be true based on the research and the data and the information

00:52:23.960 that you've collected? Absolutely. Right. So look, as I said earlier, when it comes to the truth,

00:52:30.680 you have to put on your deontological hat. You never equivocate on the truth to spare someone's

00:52:35.720 feelings. This is why, by the way, I've often been asked, is there any place where you think

00:52:43.480 scientists should not go to study something? What is now known in science as forbidden knowledge.

00:52:49.060 Just that term should give you a tingly feeling in the back. Right. Of course.

00:52:55.200 Right. What the hell do you mean forbidden knowledge? So wait a second. Wait a second.

00:52:59.880 Physics led to the creation of the atomic bombs. Those atomic bombs were dropped on two cities

00:53:08.200 that incinerated instantaneously hundreds of thousands of people and led to future misery to

00:53:14.960 many others that didn't perish during the original bombing. Should we get rid of physics? Because

00:53:21.500 there are really nasty downstream consequences of physics. You can't build cannons without

00:53:26.740 understanding projectile motion. That's physics. That's mechanics. Let's get rid of it. Right.

00:53:32.380 By the way, that's where a lot of the idea pathogens origin. So let me give you another example of an idea

00:53:38.140 pathogen that comes from that desire to create forbidden knowledge or protect against the possibility

00:53:45.280 of forbidden knowledge. Cultural relativism is the idea that there are no universals. Every culture

00:53:52.140 has to be studied and judged within its own idiosyncratic reality. So who are we to judge that

00:54:01.000 some cultures cut off the clitorises of little five-year-old girls? I mean, that's their religious 1.00

00:54:05.480 tradition. Who are we to judge, right? No, there is no context where cutting off the clitorises of 0.99

00:54:11.460 little girls who don't have, who haven't given you the consent to cut off their organ that will lead 1.00

00:54:16.480 to sexual function is an okay thing. But under cultural relativism, that's okay. Now, where does

00:54:22.420 that come from? It speaks to an earlier question you asked me about, but why do postmodernists believe

00:54:27.500 this? What can be the logic of believing this? Well, it turns out that many Darwinists, because,

00:54:36.880 well, many Cretans had misappropriated Darwinism to advance their political goals. So for example,

00:54:46.480 a British class elitist in the 19th century wanted to argue, hey, we are the upper class.

00:54:53.200 Plus, there's a Darwinian struggle between the classes. You guys, the great unwashed down there

00:54:58.320 are lower class. If you die out because of tuberculosis, I mean, who cares? That's just a 1.00

00:55:02.540 Darwinian struggle. Darwin said it's okay. Of course, he said never such a thing, but they are

00:55:06.700 using a Darwinian argument, argument in quotes, to justify their position. The Nazis came along and 0.58

00:55:13.800 said, hey, there's a natural Darwinian struggle between the races. You Jews, you gypsies, you 1.00

00:55:17.760 homosexuals, you lost, and we're Aryan, we won. So what's wrong? I mean, that's just Darwinism. 1.00

00:55:24.940 Eugenicists say, hey, you're Sicilian, turn of the 20th century, therefore you're dark. I mean,

00:55:31.160 yeah, maybe you're white, but you're darker. Maybe we need to sterilize you so that you don't 1.00

00:55:35.160 procreate. Or maybe we have to sterilize homosexuals so that they don't. That's called 1.00

00:55:39.400 eugenics. Hey, that's Darwinian. Well, none of these things had anything to do with Darwinian theory,

00:55:43.900 but these Cretans, these miscreants misused Darwinian theory to advance their goals.

00:55:50.080 So a bunch of academics came along and said, how about we now, so here's consequentialism,

00:55:56.220 how about we erect a new worldview where there is no such thing as biology, where biology should never

00:56:03.440 be used to study human affairs, where humans are defined by the fact that they transcend their

00:56:10.300 biology, because then we can protect against any future misuse of biological argumentation.

00:56:17.680 And then hopefully, kumbaya, we could all sing John Lennon, imagine. So basically what you've built

00:56:23.280 is over a hundred years, you've built fields in anthropology and sociology and the business school

00:56:28.700 and economics and psychology, completely bereft of biology. So how could it be that out of 2 million

00:56:36.240 species? 1,999,999,999, we would never presume to study them without referring to their biological

00:56:45.220 heritage. But there's this one unique species called humans that somehow floats outside the purview of

00:56:52.940 their biology. Now, that's how, by the way, I first got into this stuff, because when I was trying to

00:56:59.080 Darwinize the business school, most of my colleagues were like, are you insane? What does economics or

00:57:05.640 consumer behavior or organizational behavior have to do with biology? What are you, some kind of weird

00:57:10.560 Nazi, Jewish Nazi professor? Well, that's how I said, my goodness, these people are parasitized. 0.99

00:57:17.500 And eventually, it went from that original debate within the strict confines of my scientific

00:57:24.440 discipline, and then it was blown up into all of the culture wars that I'm now involved in.

00:57:28.880 Yeah. I mean, what I hear when you say that is that for these individuals, the ends of this utopian

00:57:36.460 society justify the means and the behavior and the way that reality and truth is distorted,

00:57:44.080 because it leads us to some sort of promised land that's going to be better for everybody else.

00:57:48.420 It's delusion, essentially.

00:57:49.440 It exactly is that. And by the way, all of these ideological fascist movements have another

00:57:57.160 commonality, exactly what you just said. There is a utopia out there. Before we came along, people

00:58:03.440 ate each other's children, right? So there's the pre-Islamic era of darkness, right? The ancient Greeks 1.00

00:58:11.160 apparently gave us nothing of value. There was only darkness before Islam. Then Islam came. That's why 1.00

00:58:18.560 within Islam, you do eradicate the markers of other cultures. That's why you do blow up the Buddhist 1.00

00:58:28.440 statues in Afghanistan. That's not an anomaly. That's not false Islam. That's not Islamism. It's pure,

00:58:38.660 simple Islam, okay? Because it is part of the existential definition of Islam to compare the 0.85

00:58:46.160 pre-barbaric world in the pre-Islam, and then the utopian ideology comes along. Well, same thing with 0.99

00:58:53.460 Marxism. Same thing with socialism. Same thing with wokeism. There's always a pre, and now we're going

00:59:01.540 to come along, tabula rasa, bring down the statues. I mean, isn't it incredible that the Taliban brought 0.99

00:59:08.340 down the Buddhist statues? And let's bring down George Washington, that racist slave owner. It's 0.98

00:59:15.000 the exact same mechanism, right? In French, there's an expression, plus ça change, plus ça reste la même.

00:59:21.540 The more it changes, the more it remains the same, right? So you might think that wokeism is very

00:59:27.480 different than the Taliban. I mean, yes, they are. They wear different garb, but the underlying instinctual

00:59:34.060 impulse is the exact same. We're here to create the final utopia.

00:59:40.060 How do you personally choose which battles you engage in? You're talking about the amount of

00:59:44.100 research and information and data and all this stuff that you're collecting. I mean, clearly you

00:59:51.400 can't do that for every topic you could possibly have today. So how do you choose what's important

00:59:57.540 to you to pursue? Because I think about that with myself. We're a men's movement. We're focused on

01:00:02.540 men's issues, men in society. And so I personally trying to decide how do I get informed and go

01:00:09.720 deep into the subjects that are important and how do I choose which ones to pursue?

01:00:14.000 Yeah. So for me, it kind of goes back to the two fundamental ideals that I discussed in chapter one,

01:00:19.960 truth and freedom. Anything that is a frontal attack on my ability to adjudicate truth is something

01:00:28.440 that I'm going to weigh in on. That's why I'm a staunch defender of the scientific method,

01:00:32.240 because there's never been anything as brilliant as the mechanisms by which we apply the scientific

01:00:39.920 method to decide whether this hypothesis should be refuted or not. And anything that attacks freedom

01:00:46.420 is something that I'm going to fight against, right? So now that doesn't mean that I won't weigh in on

01:00:52.680 specific issues. But generally speaking, if it's something that attacks truth with a capital T or

01:00:59.840 attacks freedom, then I'm in. Now, it's exhausting because the onslaught of attacks on these two

01:01:09.280 foundational ideals is relentless. It's nonstop. And so, you know, my blood pressure has gone up

01:01:17.580 longitude. I mean, I mean, I'm being, I mean, literally true. My cortisol levels, cortisol stress,

01:01:23.920 sure. Cortisol is got, you know, and so I try to modulate as best as I could. I try to institute

01:01:29.840 mechanisms. I'm not going to check my social media on the weekend. I'm not going to check my emails on

01:01:34.780 the weekend and so on. But generally speaking, it's very, very, you know, draining because if you have

01:01:41.840 the disposition to be someone who stands up and fights for truth, well, then you're going to be

01:01:47.900 fighting all day long because the attacks on truth are just relentless and endless.

01:01:54.460 You come to the conclusion in the book you've got, and I appreciate this because

01:01:58.620 it might be easy to say, you know, so what, this is a lost cause and there's too much and the onslaught

01:02:04.240 is everlasting. But you talk a lot about the solutions. And one of the things that you talk about

01:02:09.560 is using the power of your voice. I'd like you to talk about that because I think there are so many

01:02:14.120 people who've bought into the notion that they just need to sit down, shut up, be quiet and do what

01:02:20.360 they're told. So I'd really like you to talk about that power of voice. Sure. Thank you for that

01:02:24.500 question because it's a, it's a nice way to, to instill hope and optimism in people. Right. Because,

01:02:31.080 you know, if, if the book were simply here are the collective maladies, good night, everyone,

01:02:36.680 then it's not a very, right. It's kind of like you go see the physician and he, he or she tells you,

01:02:41.560 here's what you have. Okay. So what do I do? Doc? I don't know. Just, yeah. I don't need to go to a

01:02:46.660 doc. I could have told you that. Like, I feel bad. You don't, I don't need you to tell me I feel bad

01:02:51.020 and confirm that for me. Exactly. Look, I discussed in chapter eight, the final chapter, different things

01:02:59.220 that we can, different, you know, calls to action. One of which of course, as, as you said, you know,

01:03:03.780 use your voice. Now, many of these things to me seem trivially obvious, but apparently they're not

01:03:09.740 because I realized in, in being a fighter in the public arena for so many years that we need to add,

01:03:17.140 we need to amend the seven deadly sins with an additional sin. And that's called cowardice,

01:03:22.300 right? So it's, it's, it really is the case that, and, and, and I mean, you're a men's movement.

01:03:28.680 And I don't mean to imply that it is incumbent only on men to stand up, but one of the things that we

01:03:33.320 think about when we talk about the, you know, the heroic male archetype is someone who doesn't

01:03:38.460 suffer from cowardice, right? Someone who is courageous, someone who stands up to be counted,

01:03:42.840 you know, the, the folks who landed on the beaches of Normandy. Well, what I've noticed in, in,

01:03:49.220 in being a professor of almost 30 years is that most people are just grotesquely coward, 0.84

01:03:57.100 right? So they, they would rather as a default value, hide in the corner, sucking their thumb 0.98

01:04:02.900 in a fetal position. And please, please, please don't notice me. So I can go on with my life,

01:04:07.600 you know, uninterrupted by any of this stuff and let someone else. So that's another problem.

01:04:12.240 Diffusion of responsibility, you know, God's side is courageous for all of us. He'll handle it.

01:04:16.940 Hey, thank you, professor. You're doing a great job. Please don't mention my name. If you read my email,

01:04:21.980 I don't want, Oh, right. So you're not even courageous enough to stand next to the one

01:04:27.020 who is going to the guillotine, right? That's how cowardly you are. That's how castrated you are. 1.00

01:04:33.220 That's how spineless you are. So use your voice simply means, and here, by the way, 0.98

01:04:38.980 I don't mean to imply that everybody is going to take on the same levels of risks professionally

01:04:44.680 or personally. I understand that there are individual differences in terms of how people

01:04:48.960 want to navigate through the risk landscape. I concede that.

01:04:52.760 Or even the same risks, you know, I, it's not, you know, people reach out to me and say, well,

01:04:57.260 Ryan, you should really, you know, talk about this or do that. And my response is you should do that.

01:05:01.380 Like, do you think that's a problem? You should do that.

01:05:03.980 Exactly. And so what I tell people is, so how, how should you use your voice? And so here,

01:05:09.300 I think the, the powerful imagery is that of a honey badger, right? And that's why I say activate

01:05:14.160 your inner honey badger. I use the honey badger because for those of you who don't know,

01:05:18.000 who are listening to the show or watching the show, honey badger is the size of a small dog.

01:05:21.600 And yet it is so fierce. It is so ferocious that six adult lions. And I use the number six,

01:05:26.880 because there are clips where you see six adult lions being intimidated away from it. I just

01:05:32.680 recently watched a clip of the honey badger that someone had sent me where the honey badger was

01:05:38.460 caught in the death grip of a Python. And when a Python has you in that death grip, the chances of

01:05:45.500 you getting out is, I mean, is literally statistically almost nil. Not only does the honey badger,

01:05:51.600 get out of the death grip of the Python, when it now gets away from it, what, what do you think

01:05:58.180 would be the instinct? It's right. We have the instinct of fight or flight. It's going to be

01:06:02.400 flight. I just run away. The honey badger said, now that I beat all odds and I just got out of your

01:06:10.500 death grip. I'm going to kill you. And so it starts engaging the Python, kills the Python, starts carrying 1.00

01:06:19.040 it to its bushes. Two jackals start attacking because they want to steal the Python. It then

01:06:26.720 attacks the jackals. So it escapes the death grip, kills the Python, attacks the two jackals, and then

01:06:33.900 it goes, who else wants a piece of me? Okay. So what does that mean? Well, walk through life like

01:06:40.480 a honey badger. I don't mean that's a call to violence, but it does mean ideological fierceness,

01:06:47.120 which means when your professor says something that you think is insanely false, challenge them

01:06:54.380 politely. Honey badger doesn't mean impolite. It doesn't mean cantankerous. It just means you stand

01:07:00.660 your ground, right? If your friend on Facebook posts something that you think is objectionable,

01:07:06.820 meet them at the pub and challenge them. So use your voice doesn't mean build a platform the size

01:07:13.520 of Joe Rogan's. It simply means don't subcontract an opportunity to weigh in to others because you want

01:07:23.840 to be free of anything that might come your way in terms of blowback. That's what then makes you

01:07:29.160 a castrated coward. So use your voice, get engaged. Look, Christopher Rufo is a guy that had nothing 1.00

01:07:36.800 to do with all the stuff with critical race theory. Through the serendipity of life, he gets some

01:07:42.180 whistleblower stuff sent to him. Six, eight, 10 months later, look what this guy's done. There was no

01:07:49.580 grand celestial plan for Christopher Rufo to have the influence that he has garnered over the last

01:07:58.440 year or so, but he's a honey badger. He said, I'm going to stand up. So we can each debate and

01:08:06.360 modulate how much is enough for us. I'm not asking people to be reckless martyrs, but I'm asking them

01:08:13.220 to rise up and speak out. And as I famously recently said on my appearance on Tucker Carlson,

01:08:20.520 if the silent majority speaks out in unison, if we activate our honey badger in unison,

01:08:27.080 we will get rid of these dreadful ideas by next Tuesday. If we don't, it will be a slow

01:08:32.760 train ride to help.

01:08:35.000 Well, I appreciate your willingness to do it because it certainly inspired me and inspires

01:08:39.440 other people. And that's another thing too, I think about it is that when you are willing to

01:08:43.080 stand up and embrace that inner honey badger, like you're talking about, you also simultaneously

01:08:47.460 give other people permission to do the exact same thing. And it's unfortunate, but the reality is,

01:08:53.640 is that people are waiting for somebody to lead. So lead, like you have an opportunity to do it and

01:08:59.180 to, and to influence other people. And I think we ought to take advantage of that opportunity and

01:09:04.060 responsibility.

01:09:05.600 I agree. And, and lead, by the way, it doesn't have to be lead the entire nation, lead everybody

01:09:10.180 online. It could be lead your family. It could be lead your group of friends. It could be, uh,

01:09:16.040 serve as the leader in a classroom discussion. Right? So again, I'm not suggesting that,

01:09:21.460 you know, you have to be, uh, Winston Churchill giving the speech against the Nazis, right? Not,

01:09:26.580 not everybody has that ability. Not everybody has that courage, but we can all do more than what we

01:09:32.260 typically are comfortable doing. So rise to the occasion. I always tell people because people ask

01:09:37.660 me, well, well, what is it about you that causes you to, to do what you do? And I tell them, look,

01:09:43.040 I have a very exacting code of personal conduct. This is actually kind of a good, good thing for

01:09:49.320 a men's club to, to hear. Although of course it could apply to women as well. Uh, when I go to bed

01:09:54.760 at night and put my head on the pillow for me to not have insomnia, for me to sleep well, I need to

01:10:01.560 know that I passed every junction, every fork of the road where I was called upon to do something.

01:10:10.720 And I did the right thing. If I don't do that, then I feel like I'm a fraud. I'm a coward. And that's

01:10:16.700 something. There is no harsher critic of me than me. And therefore my exacting code of conduct

01:10:23.000 needs to ensure that I go to bed at night and say, look, I may not have solved all the world's

01:10:28.220 problem, but I certainly didn't walk away from the pleas of help that truth was calling from the

01:10:35.380 alley. I stood up. I posted a tweet. I attacked the bullshit, uh, keyboard warriors, uh, the pronoun

01:10:42.840 Taliban that kicked the two weeks ago, uh, the luminary Einstein, Valerie Bertinelli, the child 0.98

01:10:48.980 actress came after me because I had shared a, a rather innocuous tweet where I was trying to

01:10:55.760 demonstrate how kind and sweet my wife was because she was having an interaction with a barista at a 0.51

01:11:00.300 cafe. And she didn't know exactly how to address the person because they seem to be transgender. 0.99

01:11:04.960 It was meant to demonstrate that she is very kind, that she's really thinking about how to do that.

01:11:10.160 I mean, literally that was the whole point of the tweet. 23 million tweet impressions later,

01:11:16.400 literally that number, you know, where I've been called every single thing, death to you. They wish me

01:11:21.460 every single possible death thing. Now that I capitulate that I start crying, that I issue an apology.

01:11:28.160 Oh no, the honey badger came back to kill the Python. It only emboldened me. It only angered me. So

01:11:37.260 foster that sense of indignation, right? Don't, it's not okay for your children to be taught how to twerk

01:11:44.900 as, as six year olds in class, because it's progressive. It doesn't make you a transphobe

01:11:51.140 if you don't want your child to see twerking in class, be confident in that principle. And so that's

01:11:57.080 what I mean by speak out and use your voice. Well, I, I encourage everybody to pick up a copy

01:12:03.100 of the book and just want to encourage you as if you needed it to keep fighting the good fight,

01:12:07.080 because you are leading people you're leading me. And I really appreciate you taking some time to

01:12:11.620 share some of your wisdom with us today. Thank you, sir. And thank you for giving me an

01:12:14.860 opportunity to speak. I hope it wasn't too long-winded each of my answers. I appreciate your

01:12:18.620 gracious host style. It wasn't at all. It was exactly what, what we needed to hear and what I wanted to hear

01:12:24.900 and some of the, the answers that I wanted to get. So thank you again. Thank you, sir. Take care.

01:12:28.920 Cheers. All right, gentlemen, there you go. My conversation with God sad. I hope you enjoyed

01:12:35.240 that conversation. I know I did. I've been following him for quite a while. And so it was a real honor and

01:12:40.700 pleasure to be able to connect with him and have this powerful conversation. And I imagine that we'll

01:12:45.480 be having more because I don't see this getting better anytime soon, unless, unless we, as men step up,

01:12:50.380 really reclaim our voices, uh, reclaim our culture and society. And he's doing a wonderful job

01:12:56.400 spearheading that movement. And, uh, I would encourage you to connect with him, pick up a

01:13:00.960 copy of the book, connect with him on Twitter is where he's most active. So if you're on Twitter,

01:13:05.220 do that. Uh, also Instagram connect with me on Instagram. Let me know what you think about the

01:13:09.720 podcast in general, uh, leave the ratings and review, share it, take a screenshot of you listening to

01:13:15.360 this right now, tag me in it, tag, uh, God in it and let everybody know what you're listening to.

01:13:21.480 Also pick up a copy of his book, the parasitic mind, how infectious ideas are killing common sense.

01:13:28.200 All right, guys, you've got your marching orders. We'll be back tomorrow for our ask me anything,

01:13:33.000 but until then go out there, take action and become the man you are meant to be.

01:13:37.200 Thank you for listening to the order of man podcast. You're ready to take charge of your life

01:13:41.740 and be more of the man you were meant to be. We invite you to join the order at order of man.com.

Order of Man - November 23, 2021

GAD SAAD ｜ How Infectious Ideas Kill Common Sense

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