The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - Discussing Suicidal Empathy, Lionel Messi, & Dante Alighieri (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_1024)

00:00:00.000 Good afternoon. It's my pleasure today to be speaking with Dr. Gad Saad.

00:00:07.080 My pleasure to be speaking again with Dr. Gad Saad, I should say.

00:00:10.800 We first spoke several years ago on the occasion of a publication of your previous book, Unhappiness,

00:00:17.220 which was really a delight to read, and it's really a delight to read you all the time

00:00:23.720 in all the formats that you write in.

00:00:26.160 And the books, though, are just fantastic.

00:00:29.800 And this book, The Latest Suicidal Empathy, congratulations, first of all.

00:00:36.980 It hit number one on the New York Times bestseller list.

00:00:41.000 That must have been absolutely spectacular to get that news.

00:00:45.760 It was.

00:00:46.460 And actually, the way it works is that the well, first, thank you for having me on.

00:00:52.160 And as you said, we had a great conversation a couple of years ago, so I'm delighted to

00:00:57.500 be speaking with you again.

00:00:58.980 The way it works is that on the Wednesday, so the book comes out on a Tuesday, and then

00:01:04.960 the first time that it is eligible for the New York Times bestseller list will be eight

00:01:10.720 days later on that Wednesday.

00:01:13.160 And somewhere between 4 to 6 p.m. Eastern, I was told to be on standby because then we

00:01:20.560 would find out you know the New York Times would call my publisher and I had the the foresight to

00:01:27.080 tell them don't call me until you first text me to tell me that you're going to call me because

00:01:33.580 then I want my family to record the interaction what and but I didn't know what it would end up

00:01:39.360 being now they thought that it you know based on the numbers that it would definitely debut at

00:01:44.400 number one but you know you never know with sort of the editorial discretion that they have yeah

00:01:49.740 So I actually taped it.

00:01:51.120 I don't know if you saw the clip.

00:01:52.460 I picked up the phone, and that visceral, joyful scream that you got there

00:01:59.140 was exactly how I felt.

00:02:01.640 Yeah, that was so much fun to see that, and it's so well-deserved.

00:02:05.880 You know, those videos, because I'm a sports fan,

00:02:08.780 it reminds me of you see these videos sometimes of the NFL and NBA drafts

00:02:15.120 when the player is given the phone and they're being recorded.

00:02:18.200 and congratulations you've been picked in the first round of the draft and uh it's just much

00:02:24.880 must be still gratifying everything you work for to finally see it coming through thank you thank

00:02:31.360 you that's exactly it especially because you know i'm someone who obviously ruffles a lot of feathers

00:02:38.700 a lot of feathers of gatekeepers who met out these accolades and so it's great to then finally reach

00:02:47.020 that summit where they can't deny you those accolades so yes it was very satisfying

00:02:51.640 they absolutely cannot deny you if you if you earn it you get get there one of your chapters

00:02:58.480 in the book deals of uh meritocracy so this is an example where meritocracy does have some room

00:03:06.300 in our society perhaps still right kind of try to find ways around uh also speaking of sports

00:03:13.880 before we get into the heart of our conversation uh i noticed uh through reading the book and as

00:03:20.960 well as seeing some of your your interviews and recent ex posts you are a big soccer fan

00:03:27.800 so uh should i wish you congratulations on canada or or not are you rooting for them in the world

00:03:36.780 cup where you're off right that's a great question uh i mean of course i'm rooting for canada in that

00:03:43.960 i want them to do as well as possible but in terms of as a soccer fan not as a representative

00:03:50.640 of allegiance to my country then i'm a supporter of argentina mainly because of one largely because

00:03:59.340 of uh lionel messi who uh you know i'm old enough to have seen pretty much all of the players that

00:04:07.820 are considered to be in the conversation for you know the greatest player of all time and

00:04:14.940 by any measure he is substantially better than the next four combined but more than that i think more

00:04:23.740 than him being a truly i mean a true artist in the way that he plays if if you know anything about

00:04:29.820 soccer it's just he's magnificent what's even maybe even more impressive about him is the way

00:04:36.860 that he carries himself both on the field and off the field i mean he really is sort of this

00:04:44.060 this divine you know exemplar of a person he he's been with the same girl since you know childhood

00:04:52.300 you know and this is not a guy who you know would probably have a hard time getting a lot of women

00:04:57.660 he's uh you know married to her three kids never any scandals very much of a family guy you know

00:05:06.300 never takes any positions that uh can ruffle feathers which maybe that could be either a good

00:05:11.800 thing or a bad thing uh he also is astoundingly humble if there ever was someone who could

00:05:19.140 certainly be deserving of having a chip on their shoulder it would be him and yet from all people

00:05:25.540 that i have ever heard from that know him or or or you know that are in his circle he's just the

00:05:32.280 most down-to-earth guy and so there's really nothing that you can't love about the guy so

00:05:37.460 argentina from a sporting perspective canada from sort of a adopted land perspective well that makes

00:05:47.420 sense and that gives me even more reasons to like him and rue for messy i've kind of gravitated

00:05:52.820 towards him as well he's just so amazing to watch play the way you describe him makes him sound a

00:05:59.060 little bit like our new sports hero here in new york which is jaylen brunson if you follow

00:06:05.220 basketball at all the knicks and you know similar he lefty the way he craft these unexpected angles

00:06:12.700 on the court uh been with with his high school sweetheart uh throughout uh humble right attitude

00:06:20.800 a lot of similarities there it's interesting i saw an article recently that was saying that

00:06:28.460 in the eternal messy ronaldo debate if you are conservative you're more likely to be a ronaldo

00:06:38.720 person and progressives are more likely to be messy people i don't know if that checks out i

00:06:43.840 don't think well it certainly doesn't check out for me i'm hardly the progressive blue-haired

00:06:48.720 person and i frankly i it might be unfair to say i despise ronaldo because i don't i don't really

00:06:55.440 have any reason to well i mean i don't like his sort of uh somewhat narcissistic attitude

00:07:03.440 very much contrary to how Messi is. That debate might be the most over-the-top

00:07:12.420 manufactured non-debate in the history of the world. To compare Messi to Ronaldo would be like

00:07:22.760 comparing Charles Darwin to Ocasio-Cortez in deciding who is truly a greater intellect.

00:07:32.520 and i probably think that is a lesser insult than the one they're not even in the same world i mean

00:07:38.980 you could literally ask almost every single class you know elite player that has ever played you

00:07:45.600 could just go on google right any any coach they're not in the same world but just that it's a it's a

00:07:52.480 marketing thing there's a bunch of fans that absolutely are dogged ronaldo fans who just

00:07:59.700 won't accept right when when messi hadn't won any international championships with the argentina

00:08:05.520 they said well he can't be the greatest of all time he's never won that well then he won the

00:08:09.480 copa america they said yeah fine but he's never won the world cup but then he won the world cup

00:08:13.860 they said yeah but you know pele wanted it more times then he won another copa america so this

00:08:20.320 actually speaks to something that i've often discussed which is the inability of people to

00:08:27.400 change their anchored positions once it is deeply rooted and I can show you a tsunami of evidence

00:08:33.940 and you're going to go la la la la la I don't want to hear it so if you for whatever reason

00:08:38.920 think that you don't like Messi he could win now another World Cup this time he's got six goals

00:08:45.340 he's 39 years old in this World Cup and you'd say yeah but you know they're playing easy teams or

00:08:53.300 There's always an excuse for, I mean, I've even heard that his entire career is fraudulent because he had a growth hormone problem in his childhood.

00:09:05.040 And by getting the medical treatment, like a legit medical treatment for his growth, that meant that he's juiced up his whole career.

00:09:14.140 So he's a cheat.

00:09:15.080 So there is no end to the kind of the mind debauchery that people can go to to defend their anchored positions.

00:09:21.680 it's almost like a mind parasite or the people that you discuss in the book who are believers

00:09:30.580 in the settled science and no new facts can come in to contradict their exactly previously held

00:09:38.640 opinions well one last thought question will you or are you rooting for us at offer united states

00:09:47.520 Now that you're joined, have you moved to America yet?

00:09:52.160 Are you in the process?

00:09:53.540 We're in the process.

00:09:55.000 It's been the most stress-inducing reality that I've ever faced, in part because all of the factors came together at the same time.

00:10:06.360 So I've got this massive book launch and book tour that comes with getting the visa,

00:10:12.100 but comes with selling the house of Montreal and buying a house in Mississippi

00:10:15.620 and dealing with the endless paperwork and the accounting and the taxes.

00:10:20.480 So it's been very hard.

00:10:21.520 So we haven't yet left.

00:10:23.280 We're about to close on a house in Mississippi, hopefully in the next day or two.

00:10:29.420 And the expected departure should be in the next four to six weeks, I would say.

00:10:34.280 well i hope it goes as smoothly as possible thank you and congratulations on coming here

00:10:42.320 to the united states uh i'm really happy to to have you here i think uh we all we all should be

00:10:48.780 and uh maybe you'll pull for us as well i'm still reeling a little bit from that that win plus the

00:10:55.820 the egregious red car that i still really oh yes from last night but i do like frankly i do like

00:11:02.600 the the u.s because they play a high tempo game they have a couple of skillful players and so

00:11:09.140 uh i'm definitely rooting for them not just because we're moving to the u.s and so on but

00:11:13.620 but i i like their style they're a young team you know their lungs are unbelievable they're some of

00:11:19.500 the most fit teams i've ever seen that you know they can run you off this out of the stadium and

00:11:25.080 so i am rooting for them but if they go across against argentina or canada we'll have to see

00:11:31.760 well yeah Argentina I don't think they would play till the final I don't know if we'll get

00:11:37.320 to uh to get by Belgium and then Spain and with U.S. soccer we have one of the best moments in

00:11:45.260 our history and then we we have to lose our top goals for the next game by texting my friends

00:11:51.140 why can't we have nice things it's just a camp well you do have a nice day you've got a 250th

00:11:58.280 anniversary coming up in two days and so you're you're on the right track yeah so happy birthday

00:12:05.380 to us and maybe that's a good segue to suicidal empathy because we've had a pretty good run until

00:12:15.460 now i think 250 years uh can we keep it going for another 250 years for another 50 years and

00:12:27.320 And I think that one of the biggest keys at stake in the question of if we can keep it going for another 250 is if we can overcome this disease, which this disease of the mind, which you diagnosed as suicidal empathy, and all the stumbling blocks, it's putting up to continuing forward in the path that our ancestors and the founders wisely charted out for us.

00:12:57.140 Unfortunately, it seems like there's not much hope left for Europe and maybe Canada as well.

00:13:05.060 It just really pains me about Europe as someone who grew up with a love of Western Europe and specialized in some of my PhD work in Western European literatures and Spanish, French and Italian, German literature to see what's going on with Western Europe.

00:13:24.220 i don't know if there's much hope left unfortunately for europe it could be that

00:13:30.200 here in america this is the last stand right uh so i can talk about uh how optimistic or

00:13:38.620 pessimistic i am about europe canada and the u.s in a second but it might be worthwhile

00:13:42.920 you know for the purposes of the article and so on for me to define what is well calibrated

00:13:48.640 empathy versus suicidal empathy and then take it from there uh i'm certainly not arguing in the

00:13:55.040 book as you would know because i'm sure that you've read the book contrary to many of the

00:13:59.800 people who've written hit pieces on my book even before they the book was even out and they hadn't

00:14:05.840 been sent a copy so by definition they couldn't have read it but they constructed this uh nefarious

00:14:11.780 you know ascription to me whereby i was arguing that empathy is a bad thing and i want to usher

00:14:18.580 a dark world where empathy ceases to exist and so on of course i'm doing no such thing as a

00:14:23.780 evolutionary psychologist i am fully aware that a social species like us with a big prefrontal

00:14:30.660 cortex it makes perfect evolutionary sense for us to have evolved the capacity for empathy for you

00:14:36.660 and i to have a meaningful conversation daniel i need to put myself in your mind vice versa that's

00:14:41.560 called cognitive empathy or theory of mind there's also of course affective empathy right it's i

00:14:48.380 understand your pain versus i feel your pain uh we want our physicians our veterinarians our

00:14:56.040 therapists our spouses our best friends to be empathetic so there's nothing wrong with empathy

00:15:01.460 as a matter of fact that's a laudable virtue but like aristotle explained to us several thousand

00:15:07.280 years ago via his Nicomachean ethics where he talked about the golden mean, too little of

00:15:12.560 something is not good, too much of something is not good, and much of life is about finding that

00:15:17.220 sweet spot or the inverted U-curve. Too little is bad, too much is bad, and the optimal point is

00:15:23.280 somewhere in the middle. Well, that exactly applies to empathy. If I have no empathy, this is a

00:15:28.300 telltale sign of a psychopath, if I have too much empathy, if it hyperfires in the wrong situations

00:15:38.260 toward the wrong targets, then I have the perfect conditions for a manifestation of suicidal empathy.

00:15:44.980 So suicidal, and the reason why I use suicidal is because that dysregulation of empathy,

00:15:51.720 when it manifests itself via a wide range of domestic and foreign policies that are very

00:15:58.020 much rooted in dysregulated empathy, will bring about the end of the West. And the suicide part

00:16:05.120 comes from two distinct, if you like, tracks. Number one, in the book, I talk about various

00:16:12.740 forms of ritualistic suicides that have happened throughout time periods and cultures, one of which

00:16:18.820 is called seppuku in Japanese culture, where if you come from a culture of honor and shame,

00:16:25.000 let's say you're in the samurai class and you do something that is shameful, the only way to expiate

00:16:29.580 that shame would be to engage in seppuku, which is the self-disembowelment with an actual

00:16:36.340 blade. That's the only way I can wash away the shame that I've brought on through my shameful

00:16:43.120 acts well i i then argue that the west is engaging in civilizational seppuku because there is this

00:16:50.860 sense of where we are existentially sinful because we come from stolen land and we we american

00:16:59.980 slavery and transphobia and islamophobia and misogyny and the patriarchy and the rest of it

00:17:06.100 And because of that, then it makes perfect sense for us to wash our sins by committing

00:17:13.200 civilizational seppuku.

00:17:14.560 The other, very quickly, the other place where you could think about the manifestation of

00:17:21.920 suicide is precisely in how I use the neuroparasithological framework, both in my earlier

00:17:28.400 book, The Parasitic Mind and in Suicidal Empathy.

00:17:30.840 the idea being that the way that you can hijack someone's capacity to think is you hijack their

00:17:38.960 cognitive system which is what happened in the parasitic mind that's what i explained but then

00:17:43.680 you also hijack their emotional system which is what i'm doing with suicidal empathy the suicide

00:17:49.660 part comes from an animal analogy in this case the wood cricket but there are other examples

00:17:56.420 the wood cricket abhors water it wants nothing to do with water but when it is parasitized by a

00:18:01.700 hair worm the hair worm needs the wood cricket to jump into water merely committing suicide

00:18:07.780 in order to suit the reproductive interest of the hair worm which could only complete its

00:18:13.520 reproductive cycle in water so at that point the hair worm has taken over the neuronal circuitry

00:18:20.920 of the wood cricket it no longer can invoke its survival instinct as you would expect for an

00:18:28.540 evolved you know an evolutionary based creature well that's exactly what the west is doing it's

00:18:33.620 saying i'm perfectly willing to jump off the abyss of infinite lunacy because i've been hijacked by

00:18:40.000 all of these parasitic ideas which then allow me to swim in the infinity pool of suicidal empathy

00:18:45.820 yeah the animal analogies i think are really apt and bring it to mind use the the scorpion and the

00:18:57.660 frog aesop's fable in the book as another way of thinking about it which is very fitting because

00:19:04.920 the the west has become the giant frog who are seem to have forgotten that there are scorpions

00:19:14.620 in the world and what those scorpions will do to let them in and also uh i don't know how many

00:19:21.740 people in interviews so far have brought up the cover and i've discussed the the cover image of

00:19:28.900 the book with you my mind goes to it because i started my career as a writer i've kind of this

00:19:36.420 these dual careers as a scholar in academia still trying to get the coveted full-time position

00:19:44.600 and maybe getting closer there, maybe not, or the way academia is going, who knows.

00:19:49.200 So that's one hand, the scholar academic, and this other career that I've had for a dozen plus years or so now as a journalist writer.

00:20:00.700 I started my career as a journalist and writer as an art reviewer.

00:20:07.020 My first published piece was an art review of an exhibition.

00:20:11.360 So I have a mind for some of the aesthetics of design and art, and it's just such a striking image, the sheep welcoming in the wolves, three of the wolves welcoming the wolves.

00:20:26.880 And I think I saw a note somewhere that you designed it, or this is your input.

00:20:33.840 Have people asked you about this?

00:20:35.920 No, I'm so glad you did.

00:20:37.480 I think I might have been asked, you know, briefly, and maybe one of the, I don't know,

00:20:42.200 hundreds of interviews I've had, but so I really do appreciate you are threading on

00:20:47.380 somewhat new territory, but I'm so glad you asked it, because you're exactly right that I,

00:20:54.800 so here, let me explain how the process worked, and I think you'd really appreciate it.

00:20:59.220 So I, the term suicidal empathy, the second that people hear it, they get exactly what

00:21:07.300 it means and they go oh my god that's it that's it there you go and that's why it went so viral

00:21:12.720 so the first thought i had was that i want the book cover to exactly capture that pictorially

00:21:21.460 so you could see an image and you go i got it if i didn't see the title suicide empathy

00:21:27.100 i already got it so now you mentioned uh asap's fable right so i wanted an animal image that

00:21:36.120 perfectly captured it. And so I've often weighed in on, you know, queers for Palestine and, you

00:21:44.760 know, chickens for KFC. I came up with another one, which was geese for foie gras. But I thought

00:21:52.600 that's a bit too lofty. Many people might not understand the reference. They may not know what

00:21:58.600 foie gras is and so on so i thought well okay how about if it's a sheep with wolves it not only will

00:22:06.500 it capture the concept of suicidal empathy perfectly but it also there are other archetypes

00:22:13.600 that are fully understood people who think like sheep right right yeah like the herd mindset

00:22:20.920 that's one we know that the wolf appears as duplicitous in many forms when uh you know like

00:22:28.920 the little red riding hood so there was already some archetypes that are floating in people's

00:22:34.120 mind so i said well okay free the wolves with the sheep would be the perfect but that still doesn't

00:22:40.320 cover the whole thing because after having communicated all that with my publisher that's

00:22:46.680 what I wanted. The first round, they sent me six options. And I said, I wanted the image to be

00:22:55.920 so beautiful that it's an art piece. So I'm so delighted that you said what you said. And it

00:23:02.180 should be, it should have some antiquarian sort of archival feel to it, aesthetic. And so the first

00:23:10.720 six they send me I say no these look like micro economic textbooks no way gone they say okay okay

00:23:20.800 so I give them all the feedback then they come back to me with the next seven options I go no

00:23:27.160 so then to his credit my executive editor thought that he's fighting a losing battle here with me

00:23:34.220 because I have a very specific vision of what I want he goes you know what why don't I connect

00:23:40.160 you with the senior arts director at HarperCollins and you to hash it out. And I'm sure you're going

00:23:46.960 to come up with what you want. So then I had a Zoom meeting with the arts director

00:23:53.240 within 35 minutes. So then he goes, you know, I went back, I read all of your feedback and I've

00:24:00.060 generated some that I think are very much in line with what you're looking for. Do you mind if I

00:24:06.780 show them so I was sitting with him on the zoom meeting so I go I start looking I go well certainly

00:24:11.560 they're looking a lot better than the earlier ones and then maybe the fourth or fifth one I get to I

00:24:16.920 go that's it that's the one so that's how we got to that book cover so thank you so much for asking

00:24:23.320 that because I haven't told that story enough times yeah great story and it's it's really the

00:24:30.100 perfect cover it is it does have that quality just like Aesop's fables can work on that literary

00:24:36.480 level they create these really clear mental pictures for you where but once you hear these

00:24:42.740 the rabbit and the hair the scorpion and the frog the image comes right to mind and you never forget

00:24:48.560 it and i i think this image and this cover does that exactly although the chickens for kfc is

00:24:56.320 is the letters i don't know cows for mcdonald's yeah exactly there's some fish fish for sushi

00:25:03.920 yeah lobsters for the red lobster if red lobster is still in business i don't know

00:25:09.880 yeah these are some great options here too um and and i'm at the term going going viral and

00:25:18.580 uh yeah i've seen it in a lot of places now uh for the past months um uh great blurb um on the

00:25:28.820 back and i i was thinking about this and one of the reasons that i've been appreciating this book

00:25:33.660 so much is because Michael Shermer talks about how in the past five, seven, ten years since

00:25:44.000 wokeism really started to run rampant in the U.S. and Canada and elsewhere, there have been all

00:25:51.560 these seemingly disparate phenomena like DBI and BLM and he lists a number of them, fetishization

00:26:01.760 of victimhood, ennobling of terrorists and criminals, failure to solve drug and homelessness

00:26:07.820 problems, seemingly disparate elements.

00:26:11.220 But the brilliance of what you've done with this term in the book is suicidal empathy

00:26:17.300 really allows people to have a framework that's almost like they talk about in physics.

00:26:26.360 I'm not a science person, but like the unified field theory, one theory.

00:26:30.760 That's exactly right.

00:26:31.760 different phenomena. Was there a eureka moment for you when you realized that all of these

00:26:40.360 seemingly disparate phenomena are unified by the suicidal empathy explanation for them?

00:26:46.840 Beautiful question. Let me step back to about the late 1990s. One of my favorite books of all time

00:26:54.400 by one of my favorite scientists of all time who's since passed away I think maybe three or

00:27:02.000 four years ago his name is E.O. Wilson he's a he was a Harvard biologist who actually studied

00:27:10.620 something of relevance that I mentioned in Suicidal Empathy when I talk about

00:27:15.560 parasitic taxation in chapter seven when I talk about you know the types of species that are

00:27:22.880 inherently communistic versus versus humans who are not communistic and what one of the great

00:27:29.380 quotes that i've ever heard was he was asked he studied social ants he was a entomologist and

00:27:36.560 social ants are actually communistic and that there's a reproductive queen and then there is a

00:27:41.440 indistinguishable cast of worker ants and an indistinguishable cast of warrior and soldier

00:27:46.920 ants and therefore they truly do have other than that reproductive queen no hierarchy you're just

00:27:53.920 all indistinguishable parts of you know parts of the the cogs of the you know of the wheel whatever

00:27:59.500 the expression is well he was once asked professor wilson what are your views on uh communism uh and

00:28:07.300 he said great idea wrong species meaning that he recognized that the phylogenetic history of human

00:28:13.320 beings is not to be communistic but i'm this was just a tangent i'm going to come to your

00:28:18.180 to your question in a second uh so having uh voraciously read eo wilson's work in in for in

00:28:26.780 for for various topics uh so for example his most famous book that is of relevance to my academic

00:28:33.520 career was a book that he wrote in the mid-70s called sociobiology where he introduced uh the

00:28:40.140 biological bases of social behavior which is very much aligned with my evolutionary psychology work

00:28:46.160 and he had gotten into a lot of trouble because he was trying to apply these biological principles

00:28:51.580 of social behavior to humans and that caused a whole brouhaha amongst his colleagues who were

00:29:00.460 perfectly happy to accept that biology matters for every single species except one species called

00:29:06.160 human beings. And so that was part of the early culture wars in the 1970s. But now I come to your

00:29:12.320 question. In the late 90s, he wrote a book called Consilience. Consilience and then colon unity of

00:29:21.740 knowledge. Consilience is a term that, you know, many people don't have in their naturally occurring

00:29:28.560 lexicon. It refers to exactly that. If you say, for example, that physics, to your question when

00:29:34.580 you said physics if you say that physics is more consilient than sociology it means that it has

00:29:41.800 some unifying epistemological framework that allows you to create a coherent tree of knowledge

00:29:50.300 whereas sociology by virtue of the fact that people can't even agree if what is a male or

00:29:56.820 what is a female or whether biology matters or it doesn't matter you can quickly have a bifurcation

00:30:02.280 in your tree of knowledge. Therefore, sociology is not consilient. Physics is a lot more consilient.

00:30:07.560 Now, why am I saying all this to your question? Because it turns out that what drew me so much to

00:30:13.300 that book is because the way my brain is hardwired is to look for synthesis, to look for synthetic

00:30:24.700 thinking. So I don't want to just catalog phenomena. Okay, so we have DEI, we have Black

00:30:33.260 Lives Matter, we have transgender activism, we have the rise of socialistic thinking, we have

00:30:41.540 forbidden knowledge, we have open border immigration policies. Is there some phenomenon,

00:30:47.620 on some unifying explanation that could explain how people could be so untethered to reality

00:30:56.920 and so that's how it came to me and and again the the point of the one-two punch of parasitic

00:31:03.760 mind and suicidal empathy is that i reference i actually use the term suicidal empathy in the

00:31:12.820 parasitic mind, recognizing that what I was talking about in the parasitic mind are the idea pathogens

00:31:20.940 that could completely stultify your capacity to recognize reality in ways akin to how the wood

00:31:29.060 cricket jumps in water. But for me to completely explain the phenomenon, I have to also explain

00:31:35.900 how to hijack your affective system. It's not fair to put in prison felons of color. Well,

00:31:45.120 that feeling of being empathetic with what I call blank slate felons is triggering my affective

00:31:52.340 system. But what lays the groundwork for suicidal empathy is for me to internalize the parasitic

00:32:00.740 ideas that i discussed in the 2020 book and let me give a concrete example one of the parasitic

00:32:06.220 ideas that i discuss in the parasitic mind is cultural relativism who are you to judge the

00:32:12.980 practices and beliefs of another culture racist if another society wants to cut off the clitorises

00:32:19.220 of five-year-old girls shut up racist that's their way of doing things you have no right to judge

00:32:23.640 Well, if I internalize the parasitic idea of cultural relativism, it then renders me impotent

00:32:32.860 to make discrimination between various immigrants coming into my country. Therefore, it's a lot more

00:32:41.920 empathetic and kind and compassionate to have an open border policy because you've cut off the

00:32:49.260 mechanism that would otherwise allow me to say, wait a minute, people from Waziristan and Afghanistan

00:32:55.480 are inherently less likely to internalize the ethos of American exceptionalism than are people

00:33:03.120 from Britain. That's wrong to do. And therefore, cultural relativism leads to the suicidally

00:33:10.840 empathetic position of open borders. One leads to the other. Yeah, that's a great explanation.

00:33:16.840 And I really appreciate learning how you arrived at that.

00:33:20.520 So the term had its origin, would you say, in parasitic mind then?

00:33:25.280 And you've since expanded it?

00:33:27.500 Even earlier.

00:33:29.220 So I was literally trying to say when did, so I can't say when my neuronal firing, it happened on December 9th.

00:33:39.300 But I actually went even earlier.

00:33:41.780 So I clearly have a mention of suicidal empathy in the parasitic mind.

00:33:46.840 But if you go to the transcript, which, by the way, I have in Suicidal Empathy, the transcript of my Canadian Senate testimony on Bill C-16, where I was arguing that, hey, be careful with your transgender activism.

00:34:08.060 you may not want in the pursuit of a noble objective murder truth in the service of that

00:34:17.100 noble goal right i reference sort of the miscalibration of empathy and so on so it's been

00:34:26.380 it's been brewing in that brain of mine for a while and by the way since you're i'm i'm loving

00:34:32.600 your sort of genesis questions that you're asking me in the acknowledgement section of suicidal

00:34:38.720 empathy i provide the actual catalyst for me to then start working on the book i mean i already

00:34:48.980 had it obviously do you remember what the story was uh when your publisher saw your tweet your

00:34:55.920 x post and so that's your next book right there exactly so so so there's literally i mean you can

00:35:02.600 go and click on that link so because i was already for years kind of explaining on social media sort

00:35:08.820 of my framework of suicidal empathy and so in one of those posts i just get an email right i mean i

00:35:15.800 hadn't spoken to this guy and so on uh his name is eric nelson great executive editor at harper

00:35:21.240 Collins and so he writes he just puts the link to my tweet and he goes you know I don't remember

00:35:27.460 the exact words looks like we found the topic of your next book so that and so I said you know what

00:35:33.400 I want to acknowledge that he's the one who nudged me and so that's how it happens

00:35:38.620 and that's how I was born yeah I guess my mind likes these genesis questions somehow I had

00:35:46.780 And one of my academic articles was on the genesis of Pinocchio, how Pinocchio was born.

00:35:54.500 Wow.

00:35:56.400 Yeah, I love these publishing stories, too, as a writer also.

00:36:01.360 See, when these ideas are born, because that's often what we're asked to as writers.

00:36:06.920 When did you get that idea out of that?

00:36:09.500 For me, one of the many reasons I was so eager to talk with you about this is because this sort of idea, the constellations of these ideas that you've grouped into this one overarching idea have been on my mind for a while, both as a journalist and as a scholar.

00:36:32.160 as a journalist the past year or so for the Washington Examiner, I've been writing about

00:36:37.460 some of these things that just on the surface seem to boggle the mind, whether it was the

00:36:44.520 immediate reaction of progressive, the knee-jerk reaction to Trump's bombing of Iran and their

00:36:54.040 their knee-jerk defense of the mullahs and this regime that just murder upwards of estimates i

00:37:02.340 think are as high as 40 000 of their their own people and you are going to be defending that

00:37:11.100 regime instead of an action to try to prevent that regime from acquiring nuclear weapons

00:37:17.460 So that caused me to go, okay, what is going on here? And then also an article I wrote on the really unfortunate killings that happened. We're almost going on a year or so.

00:37:34.440 um uh i think in september or october assassination of charlie kirk with lost memory

00:37:42.780 and so many progressives how how they reacted just um uh i couldn't fathom it the um

00:37:51.540 uh i'm sure you remember saw some of these reactions and and then a little after that

00:37:58.760 We had the case that went somewhat viral, the murder on public transit in North Carolina of the Ukrainian woman who was killed by a criminal who had been convicted something like 13 or 14 times, Irina Zariska.

00:38:20.620 um and since then it's become an unfortunate cause celebre of what happens uh uh one of the

00:38:30.780 exhibit a cases in this country of suicidal empathy of having more empathy for criminals

00:38:37.860 convicted arrested multiple times over 10 times criminals over the the actual victims and so i've

00:38:47.060 I've been covering some of these events, writing about them.

00:38:51.860 And then some of my scholarly work, the last time we spoke,

00:38:57.560 maybe you remember I was working on a book about Dante at that time,

00:39:01.660 about Dante's Divine Comedy, Dante's Infernal.

00:39:04.180 So the first volume of that on Dante's Infernal, I have the galley copy.

00:39:09.680 Oh, wow.

00:39:12.200 Very cool.

00:39:13.660 Congratulations.

00:39:15.060 Thank you very much.

00:39:17.060 the cover is gorgeous

00:39:19.400 I'm looking at it right now

00:39:21.600 I'm looking at a biography

00:39:23.580 that I received recently

00:39:25.740 of Dante from Harvard

00:39:27.960 University Press

00:39:29.080 really?

00:39:31.840 what is this biography?

00:39:34.480 do you want me to go see if I can

00:39:36.120 get it? check it out?

00:39:37.600 sure if you have it handy

00:39:39.140 did this just come out?

00:39:42.220 this came out

00:39:43.620 2016

00:39:45.540 what happened was i i connected with the person who runs the harvard university press i'm not

00:39:53.900 exactly sure maybe their their social media account whatever she was a big fan and we started

00:39:58.520 chatting she wanted to invite actually this gentleman right here who did come on my show

00:40:04.120 this this is harvey mansfield who's a legendary political philosopher from harvey 94 years old

00:40:12.980 And so she wanted to send me a copy of this book with the with the hope that eventually I would host them on my show. And as we started talking, she was kind enough to say, hey, you know, if why don't you go through the catalog at Harvard University Press? And if there are some that you really like, I'd be delighted to send you some.

00:40:32.480 And actually, just earlier today, I had on my show, but I haven't posted it yet, this book, Burning the Books by the head librarian at University of Oxford, Richard Ovenden.

00:40:47.960 I haven't posted it yet, but he came on my show.

00:40:50.380 So part of, you know, her sending me the books were a book on Edmund Burke, a biography on Edmund Burke, a biography on Dante, a biography on Machiavelli, and this book, and then the Harvey Mansfield book.

00:41:08.760 So there you go.

00:41:10.320 Oh, so this is one of them that you got there.

00:41:12.500 There was a more recent biography, too.

00:41:14.480 Dante has really been in the zeitgeist lately, for some reason, going back, I guess, almost a decade.

00:41:22.360 And I just found out that there's another book coming out, Divine Comedy, from a different press.

00:41:29.700 I can't remember the press.

00:41:30.900 But my innovation, I hope it's an innovation, is that it's sort of two books in one.

00:41:38.000 So this was a lot of effort to do.

00:41:39.860 it's um one the one book is that i take the poetry it's written even if you get a good english

00:41:47.760 translation the english translation can be really hard to decipher and get through the poetry because

00:41:53.300 it's archaic poetry and he's giving you all these references from medieval italy that you don't

00:41:59.620 really understand so i put it into modern day english prose that's fun to read that involves

00:42:06.520 you in the story and i mean you the reader a character in the story and the the second part

00:42:14.300 is that in each canto each circle of hell that he goes through i elucidate the key lessons that

00:42:22.680 emerge from that circle of hell wow when is this is this out it's not out yet right uh due to be

00:42:29.940 out in the fall and this is an academic book yes well it's actually not academic it's written by

00:42:37.120 an academic but but like like you who scholar who writes books for the general public oh so it's

00:42:43.200 meant it's meant as a trade book to be consumed by the lay audience yeah it's uh you don't have

00:42:49.500 to know anything about dante or the divine comedy to read it and it's not written in an academic way

00:42:56.120 oh well i wish you the best of luck with it uh thank you very much and so one of the and

00:43:04.700 that that leads me back to suicidal empathy because uh through working on on dante's inferno

00:43:11.600 for for all these years to create this book one of the the key lessons that emerges for uh for

00:43:20.040 Dante and for us as we go with him and Virgil through hell is that at first Dante is I think

00:43:30.540 any of us who would go through hell and see these sinners suffering horrible punishments

00:43:36.440 our first instinct would be to feel very sorry for them to feel sad this is terrible how can

00:43:44.120 these things be done to them and uh there there's a famous story where he's in one of the early

00:43:51.700 circles of hell or he sees these two adulterers and he hears their story and it's a very moving

00:43:57.600 story and he faints and then but but as he he goes further virgil his guide starts rebuking him

00:44:05.960 you shouldn't be crying why are you crying he these people are sinners and they're here for

00:44:12.720 reason and they're being punished for a reason and one of the chapters that really comes through

00:44:19.500 strongly so i i called it i i titled that chapter the limits of compassion because dante has to

00:44:27.620 learn that yes uh he is a devout christian and he believes in all of the sayings in the new testament

00:44:37.080 the teachings of Jesus, how important empathy and compassion. Yes, that's all very important.

00:44:44.180 But Virgil says to him, you have to learn that compassion has limits. There are certain

00:44:49.860 people who our compassion is not meant for. And the analogy that I give in that chapter

00:44:57.420 is from Queen Elizabeth, when there's, I don't know if you were a fan of The Crown,

00:45:04.160 You saw the Netflix show on the Royal Family.

00:45:09.220 I didn't watch it, no.

00:45:10.580 Okay.

00:45:11.560 So I got into that during COVID when everyone started to get into streaming shows, it seemed like.

00:45:18.660 So that was the one that I got into.

00:45:19.900 Plus being a history nerd sometimes.

00:45:23.200 And so there's this episode, based on a real-life event, where he abdicated former King Edward, her uncle, that abdicated the throne, and then that caused her father, George, to take the throne.

00:45:42.600 So he was getting bored with his life in France, living in exile.

00:45:48.980 He wanted to come back into the royal family in England and have some kind of role doing who knows what.

00:45:56.840 So he was traveling up to meet with his niece, the queen.

00:46:01.660 And at the same time, they have in England, the intelligence had uncovered this batch of documents, these files from World War II.

00:46:11.700 that showed that her uncle, Edward, had been in conversations

00:46:19.440 and actually potential collaborations with Nazi Germans.

00:46:24.660 So you know about this episode of history of what Edward was up to with Hitler.

00:46:30.980 So really dark stuff, some of these conversations he was having.

00:46:36.240 So so he had she had just found out about this. And at the same time, he's coming to plead with her for forgiveness, for compassion, for reentry into the English royal family.

00:46:51.660 And so she has to choose between her Christian compassion, because also the other event that was happening for her in her life was that she had always been a Christian, an Anglican Protestant Christian, but she was growing more religious and she wanted to exercise more of that Christian compassion, which is a noble trait most of the time.

00:47:19.260 But yet she was encountering someone, not just anyone, but her own family member who seems to be violating any merits to be someone deserving to have this kind of compassion.

00:47:35.140 So she had to choose between her Christian compassion on the one hand and other principles to say maybe this person doesn't deserve it.

00:47:44.700 And she decides, you do not deserve it. And she says it would be the quote that she uses in, at least, I don't know about history, but the episode has her using is that it would be a mockery to practice compassion with you would make a mockery of even the central tenets of Christianity.

00:48:09.000 So this is this chapter in the book, Limits of Compassion, how this is one of the many reasons why I've been so eager to speak with you, because this issue, the limits of compassion, has been on my mind.

00:48:24.780 And all of this has led me to think, why can't we, not me and you, but we in the collective West see that some of the very cherished principles that we uphold in the West to have compassion, to have empathy for the people who do not deserve it.

00:48:52.820 and for whom it would be suicidal to have empathy,

00:48:56.120 how are we not seeing that it makes a mockery of these very principles?

00:49:01.540 Well, I think that's why the neuroparasithological framework is so apt, right?

00:49:08.440 Because your brain has literally been hijacked.

00:49:12.920 But rather than it being physical brain worms that are causing the wood cricket

00:49:19.040 to reject its survival instinct and merrily jump into the water to its demise these ideological

00:49:26.920 parasitic ideas are not just sort of poetic prose that i'm using right it's not just phraseology

00:49:33.560 it is exactly speaking to your question how could it be that in the 21st century

00:49:40.060 the latest justice entrant into the supreme court when asked during the confirmation

00:49:50.280 define what is a woman yeah no longer had the epistemological self-assuredness to say what

00:49:59.960 kind of dumb question is that of course i can define what a woman is and here's what it is

00:50:04.840 And this wasn't just some, you know, mental masturbation thing in a humanities department

00:50:11.960 with a bunch of, you know, people taking lesbian dance theory.

00:50:15.520 This is a woman who's going to be tasked on sitting and adjudicating cases that involve

00:50:23.420 these real categories called male and female.

00:50:28.500 Well, until 15 minutes ago, the 117 billion people that had existed on Earth, that's an actual real estimate, seemed to be able to navigate the very sticky conundrum of identifying who's male or female very easily.

00:50:46.420 That's why you and I exist, because it turns out that our ancestors repeatedly could identify who's male or female.

00:50:53.140 But 15 minutes ago, once your mind was fully captured by a set of parasitic ideas that

00:51:02.280 lead to suicidal empathy, then the empathy module completely misfires in the third way

00:51:10.220 that I mentioned at the start of our chat.

00:51:12.240 I said that it hyperfires in the wrong situations toward the wrong targets.

00:51:18.660 So when I have to choose between saving 250,000 plus British white girls from being gang raped by Muslim men or protect Islam, well, once I am bathing in the beautiful warm waters of suicidal empathy, then my calculus is very clear.

00:51:41.860 I have to ensure that Islamophobia is not triggered. So sorry, little girls, you're going to have to take one for the team. When I have a miscalibration of my empathy.

00:51:54.280 Or take it by the whole team.

00:51:56.500 Or take it by the whole team. Exactly. Exactly. Or to go back to the transgender example, all of the biological women that are going to be cheated out of the sanctuary of being able to take a shower without having a biological male with them, or that are going to lose their place on the podium, all those women are less worthy of our empathy.

00:52:26.500 than the one holy trans woman, meaning man, who then invokes all of the gas of empathy that I

00:52:35.960 possess. All of it goes to him. Now, that's actually a very important evolutionary principle,

00:52:41.740 which is Thomas Sowell explained to us, but we didn't need Thomas Sowell, we're all Darwinian

00:52:49.140 beings, but he repeatedly reminded people that there are no optimal solutions, there are simply

00:52:56.320 trade-offs, right? There are pros and cons. There's costs and benefits. Now, why am I saying

00:53:01.620 all this? Because in a world where I have infinite resources, infinite empathy, then I wouldn't have

00:53:09.620 to do the strategic allocation of that rare fixed resource. But if you ask me, do I want to jump in

00:53:18.220 front of a bus to save three of my biological children or jump in front of a bus to save three

00:53:24.920 random children, it would be very hard for you if people answer honestly, if they're not

00:53:31.700 suicidally empathetic, to anybody to say, of course, I would save my biological children

00:53:36.340 because my emotional, cognitive, and behavioral systems have evolved to make these calculus

00:53:44.100 trade-offs and then choose the one that is evolutionarily optimal. While suicidal empathy

00:53:50.520 eradicates that in the same way that i eradicate the wood crickets survival instinct once the

00:53:59.120 hair worm goes in and rewires everything that's what i'm doing once those parasitic ideas take a

00:54:06.340 hold of your brain that's why you're incredulous in asking your question how could it be that

00:54:13.140 they're not seeing how ridiculous this is well because they've been completely captured

00:54:17.340 i think that's the only explanation of the terror side of the brain has taken over and my

00:54:24.520 yeah because some of these things you just otherwise cannot understand like like how

00:54:29.480 could you support okay you could feel compassion i i can imagine for trans people and their

00:54:39.380 struggles but at the expense of actual girls and women and what that can and uh it's not just

00:54:48.480 putting up here and there with a sight of a male in the locker room but they can be an actual danger

00:54:54.520 well i'll give you an example i mean in the book i mean there are many there are endless examples

00:54:59.540 the whole book is laden with wall-to-wall examples but speaking of transgender a unbelievably violent

00:55:07.020 felon from California with sexual assaults as part of his rap sheet, six foot two,

00:55:14.680 massive black guy, says, I'm Linda. Oh, you're Linda. That's it. You said, I'm Linda. You have

00:55:23.900 officially become indistinguishable as a woman. Now we put you in a woman prison. Oops. It turns

00:55:32.880 out that Linda raped a bunch of female inmates with her penis. Now, it really defies the realm

00:55:43.160 of human possibilities for me to actually say this case in the 21st century. The only explanation

00:55:53.320 is precisely the ones that I offer. You no longer are a functioning human being with a real brain.

00:56:01.560 it's been parasitized that's why linda with the nine inch penis can share the cell with those

00:56:09.980 other women they're all women yeah and and i i think all the or three women most of the women

00:56:18.860 supreme court justices um voted to uh for the the trans people against the the rights of the

00:56:27.380 women and to put women at data thankfully that the case went in favor of girls and protecting

00:56:33.760 uh girls and women's sports but there were three women that went uh yeah women women are for well

00:56:43.020 calibrated empathy women score higher on empathy than men we know that so it's it's not difficult

00:56:50.060 to then predict that when it comes to the miscalibrated pathological suicidal manifestation

00:56:56.820 of empathy, they would be the ones who are more likely to succumb to it. Now, that doesn't mean,

00:57:01.780 of course, that men do not succumb to suicidal empathy, but I can assure you that the men who

00:57:07.440 suffer from suicidal empathy are usually not the ones that are on team six that are sent to kill

00:57:14.000 really nasty terrorists in Waziristan. The men who suffer from suicidal empathy are the ones who ask

00:57:22.280 their wife's boyfriend whether they look fat in those jeans. In other words, there is an exemplar

00:57:30.260 of a feminized, castrated man who has become Western man, regrettably, who is also the product

00:57:38.340 of suicidal empathy. Luckily, there are still here and there a few Navy SEAL types that are

00:57:46.620 hopefully going to turn the ship around but i should tell you that i'm not very optimistic but

00:57:52.400 that goes to your i think first question when you said you know are we better off in the u.s than

00:57:57.880 europe and so on many countries in europe and canada are in what i call stage five suicidal

00:58:03.940 empathy which is even higher than the heretofore known highest level which is stage four canada

00:58:10.760 would be one britain would be another one and you know uh maybe germany maybe france maybe one or

00:58:17.860 two scandinavian countries now the u.s i would argue is currently at around stage two and the

00:58:23.620 reason for that is because there is a set of in built-in inoculations against the quick flourishing

00:58:32.120 of suicidal empathy we do have in the u.s the first amendment we do have the second amendment

00:58:38.360 So there is an ethos within the United States that is making the dreadful, you know, malady

00:58:46.120 of the soul known as suicidal empathy for it to flourish as easily as it has in other

00:58:51.840 cultural ecosystems.

00:58:53.240 But that doesn't mean that the U.S. is inoculated from it.

00:58:58.060 Wait enough time and you will have it everywhere.

00:59:01.680 So, for example, now we're seeing a flourishing of fully, quote, socialist.

00:59:07.020 I say quote because in many cases, they're indistinguishable from full-blown communism.

00:59:11.920 We're seeing it one party out of the two that is really internalizing those central ideas from socialism slash communism.

00:59:21.480 We started off with Dearborn, and we said, oh, but that's just in one small city in Michigan.

00:59:26.120 But then we had Patterson, New Jersey.

00:59:28.120 We said, oh, well, that's just another small enclave of massive Islamic nonsense.

00:59:33.640 But, you know, the U.S. is very big.

00:59:35.180 Well, then now we have Minnesota.

00:59:36.600 well wait enough time wait another hundred years and then come back to me and tell me how many

00:59:42.820 dearborns we have then the problem with the architecture of the human mind is that it wishes

00:59:48.140 to avoid stuff that trigger it that increases cortisol levels so it's a lot nicer for me to

00:59:54.940 bury my head in the proverbial sand and say look i live in jackson hole there is no islamic problem

01:00:01.000 here. I live in the beautiful, near Boulder, Colorado. There is no problem here. I'm too busy

01:00:08.780 picking up the tomatoes for tonight's dinner, and it's my daughter's graduation. Let Gad Saad

01:00:14.740 worry about that. I'm sure he could handle it. But guess what? Give it enough time, and then the

01:00:20.020 problem will be intractable. So to conclude, there is optimism in that there is a set of

01:00:28.220 autocorrective policies that will redress the ship and get us out of suicidal empathy. It's

01:00:34.820 not an intractable problem. There is a solution. So that's the good news. But here comes the really

01:00:40.040 bad news. I see no evidence that the West is willing to even implement one millimeter of the

01:00:47.680 autocorrective procedures that are necessary for us to get out of this hellhole. And so you've got

01:00:54.400 the cure, but then you argue that there is no disease, and if there is a disease, it's a Zionist

01:00:59.960 plot, and I don't believe in the cure. So you're going to die of pancreatic cancer because you

01:01:04.540 don't even believe that you have pancreatic cancer, and the so-called cure is just a Zionist

01:01:08.940 plot. So that's the problem with the West. There is a solution, but we don't have the testicular

01:01:13.900 fortitude to implement it. It's not a highly optimistic note, but it's a necessary note

01:01:22.560 because and this is why i'm pleased with the success of the book and i hope continues having

01:01:30.800 success and continues to be read and we need to get the word out because this is one of the issues

01:01:38.040 maybe the most important issue that we're facing here in the united states of america now and

01:01:43.360 we want to keep our republic that that famous phrase in american history republic if you can

01:01:50.920 keep it we've had it for 250 years can we keep it going for another 250 uh the test will be if

01:01:59.200 we'll be able to do the hard and necessary work to take the cure that's available to

01:02:06.380 inoculate ourselves and and this book is the first place the most important place to

01:02:12.800 come and get that cure from thank you so much thank you so much got it it's really been

01:02:19.180 pleasure and thrilled to talk to you again best of luck with the book and let's talk again soon

01:02:26.400 that'd be wonderful

The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - July 22, 2026

Discussing Suicidal Empathy, Lionel Messi, & Dante Alighieri (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_1024)

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