00:00:00.000Gad Sads, the author of Suicidal Empathy, and scholar at the Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom at Ole Miss.
00:00:26.980So if it if it becomes hyperactive, if it is invoked in the wrong situations, if it targets the wrong targets, you end up with a society that's committing civilizational seppuku.
00:00:38.760You're basically self disemboweling yourself. So empathy is great. Suicidal empathy is fatal.
00:00:45.080So what would an example be current day of suicidal empathy?0.80
00:00:48.700So to argue that all immigrants are equally likely to assimilate within the American ethos would be a perfect manifestation of suicidal empathy.0.73
00:00:59.180Elon Musk is an immigrant to the United States.0.81
00:01:02.160Mohammed Ahmed, who just went to a summer camp in Waziristan with al-Qaeda, is also an immigrant.
00:01:09.180They're probably not equally likely to assimilate well within the American experiment.0.98
00:01:13.740That's true, and we know that from experience.
00:01:16.900Also, women in this country seem to be most afflicted with suicidal empathy.
00:01:24.540Well, they are the ones who are holding hashtag refugees welcome as they are being gang raped by said refugees, right?0.87
00:01:31.880So there are many, many examples that I discuss in the book, and you and I talked about it offline,1.00
00:01:36.220that really seem almost as though they're impossible to believe that they could be true.0.83
00:01:40.520So a woman is gang raped by a bunch of guys from the Middle East.0.76
00:01:44.080She tells the police that they were speaking in German because if she were to truly say that they spoke Arabic and Farsi, that would marginalize the Middle Eastern community.0.60
00:01:54.860So when a woman who is being raped and victimized, her first reflex is to protect her rapists, that's probably suicidal empathy.
00:02:03.980Does it generate from a hatred of your country?
00:02:10.640how does it how does it show itself well it shows itself in many many different ways so for example
00:02:19.360the fact that people are incredibly islamophilic they love islam in the west would be one
00:02:25.360manifestation of suicidal empathy it shows its way by the fact that you shouldn't put felons in0.54
00:02:32.000prison they've only been arrested 187 previous times why don't you be a nice guy and give them
00:02:37.720a second chance, right? It shows its way in the fact that we should elevate indigenous knowledge
00:02:44.980over the scientific method, because the scientific method is laced with white supremacy. So there
00:02:50.240are an endless number of ways that bit by bit, the edifices of reason that define the West are
00:02:57.000being clobbered. So you and I can see it. It's illogical. And you've seen people hurt by this.
00:03:02.600Why can't they see it? And if you were to, I don't know, lay them down on the couch, Dr. Gad said, how would you cure this?
00:03:11.100Well, I would tell them to read this book because the last chapter I offer an inoculation against suicidal empathy.
00:03:18.940But it's a very difficult and almost intractable problem because if my personhood is defined by the fact that I am infinitely tolerant, infinitely compassionate, kind, magnanimous,
00:03:30.760then it becomes very difficult to ever take a position that might seem as being non empathetic.
00:03:36.360So it's a tough problem. But I'm up for the challenge. And do you think America can cure
00:03:41.200this issue? Because you say in the book that a lot of civilizations, they don't perish from
00:03:47.840a foreign country, you know, taking them over. They die from within. Exactly. So Arnold Toynbee,
00:03:54.060I think that's who you're referring to, was a British historian who did a broad, exhaustive
00:03:59.340study of all civilizations and their trajectories. And the maxim that he came up with is that
00:04:04.880civilizations do not die by murder. They die by suicide. Now, in my case, I'm arguing that the
00:04:12.140means by which we are committing suicide is by the dysregulation of an otherwise virtuous value,
00:04:19.460which is empathy. So adaptive empathy is great. Suicidal empathy is fatal.
00:04:24.500suicidal empathy Gad said one of my favorites go get it right now it's an