The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - Has Iceland Become Woke Central？ (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_822)

00:00:00.000 Hello, hello. With me today is Dr. Ghat Saad, a Canadian professor and evolutionary psychologist who has written best-selling books, including The Consuming Instinct and The Parasitic Mind.

00:00:18.740 Dr. Saad will be coming to Iceland soon, where he's going to be speaking in front of a live audience at Silverberg in Harpa, and tickets for that event are already on sale, so be sure not to miss that if you are located here in Iceland.

00:00:32.180 Dr. Saad, who holds a PhD from Cornell University, has devoted his distinguished career to exploring evolutionary explanations for human behavior, including consumer behavior.

00:00:43.980 He is now serving as a visiting professor and global ambassador at Northwood University in Midland, Michigan, while on leave from his position at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.

00:00:57.220 In his research, Dr. Saad delves deeply into the biological underpinnings of human actions and social trends.

00:01:04.000 In his book, The Parasitic Mind, and numerous peer-reviewed articles, he analyses complex topics with remarkable clarity, offering well-argued, evidence-based perspectives.

00:01:16.440 With a unique ability to simplify complex concepts and present accessible ideas, Dr. Saad has become a compelling voice whose influence extends far beyond the classroom.

00:01:26.760 His podcast and YouTube show, The Saad Truth, has attracted a wide and diverse audience, drawn to his honesty and intellectual depth, shedding a new light on many of today's most pressing issues.

00:01:40.040 Dr. Saad continues to emerge as a powerful force, both in academia and in the public sphere, and that is why I am thrilled to have him on my show.

00:01:49.140 Very warm welcome to you, Dr. Ghat Saad.

00:01:52.180 Thank you for that incredibly generous introduction.

00:01:56.860 I'm so happy to be with you.

00:01:58.080 Thank you.

00:01:59.460 And I hope you can excuse my thick Icelandic accent here, but the first thing we always ask upcoming guests of Iceland or guests of Iceland is, what do you know about Iceland?

00:02:14.060 What have you heard about Iceland, if anything?

00:02:18.400 Frankly, truly only good things.

00:02:20.520 I recently was at a local cafe.

00:02:23.200 I was speaking to an artist who was putting up his art in this cafe, Italian cafe, and when I told him that I was soon going to Iceland, he spent the next 30 minutes telling me that it was going to be a life-changing experience, that he's been back four times to Iceland.

00:02:42.140 He even had, I can't remember if it was the president of Iceland or the prime minister of Iceland who just showed up to one of his, you know, art things in Reykjavik, and everybody was down to earth and lovely.

00:02:54.360 And so anything that I've heard has been nothing but great.

00:02:57.940 So I'm really looking forward to it.

00:02:59.820 Okay.

00:03:00.180 That's good to hear.

00:03:00.900 I hope we will succeed to your expectations.

00:03:04.320 But I would like to ask, I would like to start off with a question about, because there has been an intense public debate about wokeism here in Iceland over the past few days, actually.

00:03:16.320 There's a nationally known activists from the far left of the political spectrum here in Iceland that recently declared that woke was a terrible ideology and it caused a major stir.

00:03:28.680 Everything just went apeshit here.

00:03:30.260 And since then, those aligned with the woke movement have been working hard to defend it, offering explanations like being woke just means being kind to others, being aware of social injustices faced by minority groups, and that those who oppose it are simply bad people.

00:03:48.860 Now, you have written and spoken extensively on this topic.

00:03:54.040 And to begin with, I would like to ask you to explain to our listeners what your personal take on the woke ideology is, how would you best describe it, and what do you see as its main flaws?

00:04:08.800 Right.

00:04:09.280 What wonderful opening question.

00:04:11.160 Thank you for that.

00:04:11.740 So, look, as you mentioned in the introduction, you know, a minute or two ago, my area of scientific research is in applying evolutionary psychology and evolutionary biology to study human behavior in general and consumer and economic behavior in particular.

00:04:30.000 Very early in my career, now this is going back to 31 years ago when I finished my PhD in 1994, very quickly I noticed that many of my colleagues in the social sciences,

00:04:41.740 and the business school thought that it was very dangerous and very corrosive to argue that human beings are shaped by biological forces.

00:04:52.700 To them, biology mattered for every single species on Earth except one called human beings.

00:05:00.140 And if it applied to human beings, it applied for all of our traits except the ones that are above the neck.

00:05:08.120 So, the main organ that defines your personhood, which is called your brain, somehow it was viewed as very, very distasteful to argue that the human mind could be shaped by the same evolutionary forces that shaped the behavior of every other species.

00:05:24.220 So, that was my first introduction to what I subsequently called parasitic thinking because here were supposedly very intelligent people who could completely look at you and negate reality that the average two-day-old pigeon would know that it's true, right?

00:05:40.780 I mean, surely you don't think that human behavior exists outside of our biology.

00:05:45.920 Somehow we exist in a world where biology ceases to matter.

00:05:50.120 And so, over the next nearly 30 plus years, when I first started writing The Parasitic Mind, I realized that perfectly intelligent human beings could be zombified by ideological capture.

00:06:04.000 And so, let me explain very quickly why I used the neuroparasitological framework, and then I'll link it back to your question about, you know, is woke good or bad?

00:06:18.600 Parasitology is the field of host-parasite interactions, but parasites can end up in many different places in your body.

00:06:26.820 So, if you have a tapeworm, it parasitizes your intestinal tract, but a neuroparasite is one that ends up in the host's brain, altering the host's circuitry to suit the interests of the parasite.

00:06:42.620 So, for example, a wood cricket detests water.

00:06:47.420 It wants to do nothing with water.

00:06:49.380 But when it is parasitized by a hairworm, the hairworm needs the wood cricket to jump in water in order for it to complete its reproductive cycle.

00:06:58.920 So, that same wood cricket that hates water suddenly jumps and commits suicide in the interest of the parasite that has zombified its brain.

00:07:09.560 And that was my eureka moment.

00:07:11.580 That's when I said, aha, I will now use this neuroparasitological framework to argue that human beings could not only be parasitized by actual physical brainworms, but they could be parasitized by ideological brainworms.

00:07:27.820 What are these ideological parasites?

00:07:31.160 Postmodernism, cultural relativism, social constructivism, identity politics, and, you know, many others.

00:07:39.640 Now, each of these ideas, so now I'm going to come to your question, is wokeness good or bad?

00:07:44.680 Each of these ideas starts off with a noble positive goal, exactly to your point.

00:07:53.400 But then in the service of that goal, if we have to murder and rape truth, so be it.

00:08:00.580 Because the social justice goal is more important than the defense of truth.

00:08:05.820 So, let me give you a concrete example.

00:08:07.960 Equity feminism is a great idea. 1.00

00:08:10.240 Equity feminism says men and women should be treated equally under the law. 0.68

00:08:15.340 There should be no institutional barriers that cause one sex to be less likely to succeed in anything than the other sex.

00:08:22.080 Well, based on that definition of feminism, most of us, and probably all your viewers and listeners, would say, yeah, sign me up. 1.00

00:08:28.820 I'm an equity feminist. 1.00

00:08:30.200 But then radical feminists came along and said, well, that's not enough. 1.00

00:08:34.160 In order for us to accelerate the battle against the mean patriarchy, let us now promulgate the idea that there are no innate sex differences between men and women.

00:08:45.600 And any sex differences between men and women must be due to social construction. 0.71

00:08:52.220 And if we promulgate this idea, it will allow us to more quickly reach our goal of gender equality in society.

00:08:59.900 Well, you see what the problem is.

00:09:01.560 In the service of what started off as a nice goal, we end up negating reality and raping and murdering truth.

00:09:10.460 So, I can chew gum and walk at the same time.

00:09:13.140 I could be for social justice without murdering truth.

00:09:17.640 Unfortunately, wokeism doesn't do that.

00:09:20.480 Wokeism says up is down. 1.00

00:09:23.020 Some women have nine-inch penises. 1.00

00:09:25.660 Left is right. 1.00

00:09:26.640 Slavery is freedom.

00:09:27.960 No, I will not agree to that.

00:09:31.440 That doesn't make me mean.

00:09:33.040 It makes me a solid defender of the truth.

00:09:35.160 But still, wokeism, this ideology, which you describe as totally unsustainable for the species, homo sapiens, human beings.

00:09:48.320 It has had a stronghold or has been the, I would say it has been the leading ideology in Western societies for the past 10 years or roughly about so.

00:10:03.960 Would you agree with that or how would you describe the status of the woke ideology?

00:10:09.380 So, it might be that the last 10 years is when people started seeing it on their radar, on their way to pick up the eggs for tonight's omelet.

00:10:21.460 But I've been standing on top of the mountain for nearly 30 years screaming for somebody to pay attention, right?

00:10:28.420 The reality is it takes a while for these things to spread, right?

00:10:32.700 When I first started, you know, attacking all of this parasitic nonsense, people would say, oh, come on, Dr. Saad. 0.93

00:10:41.560 This is just some silly idea that is in some silly department in the humanities. 0.94

00:10:46.700 And then I would answer them. 0.95

00:10:48.020 But guess what?

00:10:48.940 Those ideas eventually will break out of the lab, right?

00:10:52.440 Just like the Wuhan COVID virus came out of the lab and then it's locked down for three years, the bad ideas might start off in some esoteric philosophy department or women's studies department.

00:11:06.100 But then it becomes our prime ministers and our leaders in industry and our Hollywood stars and our prime ministers in Canada.

00:11:14.760 And so, yes, you're right that people have taken notice over the past 10 years.

00:11:20.420 But the origins of those parasitic ideas, we can date them back to 50 to 100 years ago, depending on which parasitic idea you're talking about.

00:11:31.860 For example, cultural relativism, which basically purports that there are no universal moral truths. 0.96

00:11:40.040 Who are you to judge the cultural values and practices of another culture, you disgusting racist? 0.90

00:11:46.880 That started close to 100 years ago by a professor of anthropology at Columbia named Franz Boas. 0.98

00:11:55.860 And then he trained his doctoral students in this nonsense.

00:12:00.080 On the other hand, postmodernism really picked up about 40, 50 years ago with a bunch of French postmodernists, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan.

00:12:10.200 So it depends. But you're right that people woke up to it probably in the past decade.

00:12:17.220 And like what I was trying to say is I feel that this has been the ruling idea in our institutions and in big corporations and everywhere in our society in the past 10 years, 10, 15 years.

00:12:33.660 So would you agree with that, that this has been the ruling, this basically flawed ideology has been a ruling ideology in our Western hemisphere for the recent 10 years?

00:12:48.540 I mean, absolutely. Right. I mean, just think about every leader of Western countries, whether it be the New Zealand, you know, Jacinda Ardern or it be Angela Merkel or it be, you know, anybody who was in France or it be the Canadian prime minister who recently stepped down, Justin Trudeau and on and on and on.

00:13:11.880 All of them share one thing in common, which is they were all fully zombified by these parasitic ideas.

00:13:18.920 Now, let me let me give you an example, which I think will resonate with people from Iceland.

00:13:25.520 Iceland is a small country that has, would it be right for me to say it's about 300,000 people? Is that right?

00:13:31.720 Yeah, it's about 320,000 Icelandic people and then some 80,000 foreigners. So it's 400,000 all in all.

00:13:38.220 So let's suppose now that you let in 150,000 people from Yemen, Pakistan and Syria.

00:13:49.640 Do you think that the indigenous culture of Iceland might change or do you think it would only be enriched?

00:13:57.960 I'm genuinely asking you.

00:13:59.220 I genuinely think it would change. And since Icelandic, Icelandic born people are not having babies anymore, we would probably very soon be overrun by the new population. 1.00

00:14:14.320 Exactly. Now, you stating that doesn't make you a mean racist. It makes you a person who is wedded to reality, right?

00:14:24.240 But the same people who tell you that yesterday, John, who was a six foot four, 285 pound NFL football player, woke up the next day and became Linda and suddenly, automatically, magically, through the magic wand of transgenderism, became a woman. 0.99

00:14:45.980 It is now very transphobic of you to say that Linda, that has nine inch penis and testicles and was called John yesterday. 0.99

00:14:55.940 It is transphobic of you to say that you don't feel comfortable with Linda taking a shower with your 13 year old daughter. 1.00

00:15:04.340 That's just bigoted and mean, right?

00:15:06.860 Well, the same people who believe that also think that it is racist and bigoted what you said when you said that Iceland's culture would forever change if you let in people from Yemen.

00:15:20.480 Now, that's not because you are bigoted against people from Yemen.

00:15:24.740 It's because we live in a real world where cultures have many different values.

00:15:31.640 Some values we share with others, other values we don't share with others.

00:15:37.540 So we know that if Iceland were to let in 100,000 indigenous Danes into Iceland, they're likely to more assimilate than people who come from Yemen.

00:15:50.080 It doesn't take a fancy professor and evolutionary psychologist to explain that to someone.

00:15:56.380 But yet, when you are parasitized by cultural relativism, when you are parasitized by suicidal empathy, which is the topic of my next book, that becomes a meanful thing to say.

00:16:10.860 Why are you being mean to noble people from Yemen or Pakistan or Algeria, right?

00:16:18.000 But I come from the Middle East.

00:16:19.960 I understand the culture from the Middle East.

00:16:22.180 There are millions and millions of perfectly beautiful and peaceful people in the Middle East.

00:16:27.920 But they also come with a baggage of values that couldn't be any more contrary to Icelandic values.

00:16:38.020 So you have one of two choices you can make.

00:16:40.520 You could either write articles about the mean Professor Gadsad coming to Iceland, or maybe open your brains up a bit and actually take time to listen to what I'm warning you about, because it would take exactly five minutes for Iceland to no longer be Iceland.

00:16:58.540 Yeah, like you said, you've been watching this for over 30 years.

00:17:05.700 But the masses of people are maybe starting to recognize this now, which I think is mainly because of immigration policies in Europe and also in the States, where the border was just like border control was just shut down.

00:17:24.480 And these immigration policies in Europe that have totally just, you know, they have been bankrupting the European communities and the cultures.

00:17:39.020 And also, as you mentioned, the transgender thing, when we see that women have to compete in sports with biological men who identify as women, that's, I would say that this has, those two factors have been very eye-opening for people to see there's something strange going on here. 1.00

00:18:02.620 Would you agree?

00:18:03.620 Would you agree?

00:18:04.620 Why would you, if you, could you pinpoint what it is that is making this, what they would call the backlash of the woke ideology now, where that is coming from?

00:18:16.960 Well, here's the regrettable part of the architecture of the human mind. 0.99

00:18:22.740 And that is that it is a lot more comforting for people to ignore realities until the point that it comes and bites them in the ass, right? 0.99

00:18:36.860 So diabetes doesn't exist until my child has diabetes, right? 0.99

00:18:43.980 But when, so for example, there are many Jewish billionaires in the United States and Canada that were completely oblivious, and I know many of them, and they're fans of mine and so on, but they were completely oblivious about these issues until their son or daughter was affected by huge Jew hatred at their alma mater.

00:19:09.180 Suddenly, the slap of reality woke them up, right?

00:19:13.160 That's the regrettable feature of the human spirit, which is, it's a lot easier for people to just ignore reality and say, you know, it's happening over there.

00:19:23.400 It doesn't really affect me.

00:19:25.020 Plus, it's too scary for me to think about it.

00:19:28.020 So let me try to ignore it as far, as long as I can ignore it until finally it hits me.

00:19:33.060 So you're right.

00:19:34.560 It could have been the transgender issues that slapped people into reality. 0.99

00:19:39.380 It could be immigration.

00:19:40.920 It could be many other things.

00:19:42.100 But people are waking up.

00:19:44.020 But here's the problem.

00:19:45.700 Why are you waking up now when you could have woken up 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, and avoided unbelievable amount of costs that we will have to bear?

00:19:59.280 Not just, it will be economic costs.

00:20:01.540 It is social fabric costs.

00:20:04.020 It is labor costs.

00:20:06.000 It is cultural costs.

00:20:07.620 It will be violence costs.

00:20:09.920 Because I can assure you that people will wake up at some point violently.

00:20:15.120 I've been begging people to wake up so that we can resolve the problem peacefully.

00:20:19.840 But the problem is going to be resolved one day or another.

00:20:23.300 Do you prefer it to happen peacefully or violently?

00:20:27.260 The reality is with every passing day, Europe is coming to much closer to violence than to peaceful solutions.

00:20:34.640 Yeah, I mean, I think, like I was mentioning before, this conversation we're having in Iceland right now stems from this leftist politician who was criticizing the woke ideology.

00:20:47.640 And it's because they're saying now the woke ideology has been hurting us.

00:20:53.460 It's been hurting the left.

00:20:54.520 We need to snap out of this because we are losing elections now.

00:20:58.400 And that's what's waking them up.

00:21:00.200 And I think, I believe that Democrats in the United States are going to have to wake up to that smell of the same coffee very soon.

00:21:06.320 And they're probably starting to do that.

00:21:08.800 So it's...

00:21:09.520 Sorry, before, forgive me for interrupting you.

00:21:12.520 I hate the fact that they are waking up to it for pragmatic reasons.

00:21:18.760 If we don't wake up, it's because we will lose elections, rather than waking up because it is morally wrong and grotesque for you to argue that six foot four men should be sharing the locker room with your 13-year-old daughter.

00:21:35.680 That should have woken you up rather than the loss of elections.

00:21:39.780 Exactly.

00:21:40.380 I agree.

00:21:40.740 But do you... 0.96

00:21:42.920 I mean, you write in the parasitic mind, you talk about a vaccine against the parasite.

00:21:50.840 Are you optimistic that we will ever become free of this nuisance that the woke ideology is?

00:21:59.700 Yeah, that's a great question.

00:22:01.560 Thank you.

00:22:02.000 So let me answer it in two ways.

00:22:04.520 The capacity for the human mind to be parasitized is eternal.

00:22:09.700 In other words, this is not a unique feature that is happening today.

00:22:15.940 What is unique to today is the specific parasitic ideas that are zombifying us, right?

00:22:23.180 But 300 years ago, in a place called Salem, Massachusetts, where we had the Salem witch hunts, it was perfectly natural if you thought that Linda, your neighbor, was a witch, to throw her into the water.

00:22:36.480 And if she swam, that proved that she was a witch. 0.86

00:22:40.120 And if she drowned, oh, I guess we were wrong.

00:22:42.460 She's not a witch. 1.00

00:22:43.780 So the capacity for the human mind to succumb to imbecilic zombification is eternal. 0.99

00:22:51.820 What is unique to the current time is the specific cocktail of these parasitic ideas. 0.92

00:22:58.640 As I said, postmodernism, by the way, is the granddaddy of all parasitic ideas because it removes the possibility of there being an objective truth, right?

00:23:08.660 Postmodernism purports there are no objective truths other than the one objective truth that there are no objective truths.

00:23:14.860 So you could imagine how that becomes complete intellectual terrorism.

00:23:18.840 Up is down, left is right, women are men, because there are no objective truths. 1.00

00:23:22.600 Who are you to say what is the objective truth, right?

00:23:25.500 So I think that there is a way to create a mind vaccine to defeat the current parasitic ideas.

00:23:36.340 But as we know from actual biological pathogens, they mutate, right?

00:23:42.320 So once I create a vaccine to fight this particular flu strain, then the next one comes out next year and the vaccine is no longer.

00:23:50.640 So we have to be forever vigilant against bad ideas.

00:23:54.260 And that's why I've dedicated my life to psychology of decision making, because the most dangerous thing in nature is what's inside this brain, right?

00:24:06.940 I mean, yes, tsunamis can cause great damage, but nothing can bring about the end of civilization as much as parasitic ideas.

00:24:15.620 And so that's why I wake up every day saying, what can I do to hopefully defend the truth?

00:24:21.260 Yeah.

00:24:21.800 And what advice do you give your readers and what can you give our listeners?

00:24:28.380 How can we defend reason and intellectual freedom in these current times?

00:24:36.500 So in Chapter 8 of The Parasitic Mind, I implore people to activate their inner honey badger.

00:24:44.080 And I suspect that maybe some people from Iceland may not understand the reference.

00:24:48.900 So if I could take a minute to explain it, the honey badger, the African honey badger, has been ranked as the absolute most ferocious animal in nature.

00:24:59.600 Now, that's saying a lot, right?

00:25:01.040 Because there are a lot of very ferocious animals.

00:25:04.000 And for you to be number one World Cup winner of ferocity in the animal kingdom, that's saying a lot.

00:25:09.840 Now, why is it so fierce?

00:25:11.240 It's only the size of a small dog, small to medium-sized dog, but yet a band, a pride of adult lions, if they come across it, will say, excuse me, sir, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

00:25:26.360 Please let us move aside so that you can pass.

00:25:29.320 Why?

00:25:29.980 Because it walks very tall, because it defends itself to death, right?

00:25:36.080 Now, when I ask people to activate their inner honey badger, I'm not saying, I'm not imploring you to be physically violent, but I'm imploring you to be ferocious in defending foundational principles of the Western tradition, right?

00:25:52.520 Guys like me who escaped the Middle East, came to the West, and we appreciate what's in the West because we've sampled from the buffet of possible societies.

00:26:03.040 And we know that it's not the default value throughout history to have the freedoms and liberties that we have in the West.

00:26:10.860 And therefore, that's why I fight.

00:26:13.180 Well, partly because it's my personality, but also because I know what's awaiting around the corner.

00:26:19.860 Westerners and people who go to the Blue Lagoon in Iceland think that this is the default value.

00:26:26.060 It's all kumbaya.

00:26:27.420 We all love each other.

00:26:28.740 We all listen to the Beatles music, and we'll all get along.

00:26:31.460 That's not what history teaches us.

00:26:34.080 So when I implore people to be honey badgers, you could do it in many ways. 0.91

00:26:39.460 If you go to the pub with your friends and your friend says something that is insanely ridiculous, challenge them politely.

00:26:47.280 Don't keep quiet because you don't want to create friction. 0.96

00:26:50.740 If your professor says that men can menstruate, raise your hand politely and say, what are you talking about, professor?

00:26:58.680 What do you mean by men can menstruate?

00:27:00.500 What kind of insanity is this?

00:27:02.240 So in other words, don't diffuse the responsibility of defending reality, common sense, science, logic, reason to others.

00:27:12.280 Don't always say, don't worry.

00:27:14.980 God's side will defend us.

00:27:16.900 He's courageous on our behalf.

00:27:18.860 Each of us has a voice.

00:27:20.500 Each of us has to be a honey badger.

00:27:22.240 Yeah, but people, they're internally afraid of offending, you know, trans people, for example.

00:27:33.280 I mean, it's almost only if you say that it's strange that women have to compete in competitive sports with trans women, which are biological men. 0.95

00:27:46.820 You are somehow you are attacking trans people as a whole and you're transphobic and you're an evil person.

00:27:57.200 How do you respond to ideas like this?

00:28:01.200 So that's I mean, I discussed this in The Parasitic Mind, but I actually complete that story, which addresses your question in Suicidal Empathy, the next book that actually I was working on just before I came to meet you.

00:28:15.460 So let me explain the background of the follow up to The Parasitic Mind, and then it will hopefully answer your question.

00:28:22.660 The Parasitic Mind talked about what happens to our cognitive system once it is parasitized.

00:28:29.320 So cognitive means thought, right?

00:28:31.960 Yeah.

00:28:32.280 But we are both a thinking and feeling animal, right?

00:28:35.960 We're not one or the other.

00:28:37.620 So therefore, for me to completely zombify you, I also need to parasitize your emotional system, hence suicidal empathy.

00:28:47.320 So now I'm going to address your question.

00:28:50.020 What happens with suicidal empathy is it takes a noble emotion called empathy.

00:28:58.200 It makes perfect sense for a social animal like human beings to be empathetic.

00:29:03.320 It actually oils our sociality.

00:29:05.740 But like Aristotle explained to us 2,500 years ago, everything in the right amount, in the right place, in the right measure, right?

00:29:15.720 So therefore, if empathy starts misfiring, if it becomes hyperactive, if it targets the wrong targets, then it becomes suicidal empathy.

00:29:27.820 So when you're talking about the trans issue, for every case where you're trying to be empathetic to the biological male who wishes to wrestle with biological females and therefore you want to be empathetic to her,

00:29:47.660 what about the empathy for all of the biological women who are not going to be on the podium because he's going to steal that opportunity from them?

00:29:57.840 We know that there was a recent study done by the UN of none other than the UN is not exactly a conservative organization.

00:30:05.020 They found that there were roughly 900 medals that were lost in the study that they did, but that were taken by biological men who are trans women against biological women.

00:30:19.540 Aren't half of humanity called women deserving of your empathy? 1.00

00:30:24.640 Well, when you suffer from suicidal empathy, that no longer matters.

00:30:29.280 So, for example, MS-13 gang members from El Salvador are worthy of greater empathy than are American vets who are homeless on the streets.

00:30:41.180 That can't be right.

00:30:42.780 That's called suicidal empathy.

00:30:44.780 Arguing that all immigrants are equal is suicidal empathy. 0.99

00:30:49.060 Nobody is saying that you shouldn't be empathetic to people fleeing war.

00:30:54.080 I am a product of being a war refugee, right?

00:30:57.440 Right. So people tell me, but your friend Elon Musk is also an immigrant.

00:31:02.480 Why do you rail against immigration?

00:31:04.820 I'm not railing against immigration.

00:31:06.620 I'm railing against open borders.

00:31:09.000 I'm railing against no vetting of immigrants. 0.99

00:31:12.180 I'm railing against letting in millions of people into your society that you could never integrate properly. 1.00

00:31:18.220 So, look, a Fido, the house cat, is called a feline.

00:31:25.400 Yes, feline.

00:31:26.340 It's a feline species.

00:31:28.080 The African male lion in the savannah is also called a feline.

00:31:34.060 They're both called a feline.

00:31:35.820 But surely we have the ability to recognize that while I can cuddle in bed with Fido, the house cat feline,

00:31:44.960 if I try to cuddle in bed with the African male lion in the savannah, it might end up badly for me, even though they're both called felines. 0.99

00:31:54.500 So what level of stupidity must you be succumbing to to say all immigrants are equal? 1.00

00:32:00.540 They're not equal, right? 1.00

00:32:01.720 Some don't come from cultures that like homosexuals. 0.97

00:32:05.780 So if you are liberal, as many of the walksters are, do you want to let in millions of people who in their home country kill homosexuals? 1.00

00:32:15.160 How do you reconcile that? 0.96

00:32:16.800 Well, you reconcile it by being suicidally empathetic.

00:32:20.620 But one last thing about the trans thing.

00:32:23.360 I mean, I often see that when you are when someone is criticizing this thing with with the trans women and women's sports is they always get this.

00:32:33.840 And that they are denying the existence of trans people.

00:32:39.140 They are they want to erase trans people and they don't acknowledge trans people for what they are.

00:32:45.760 You probably heard this.

00:32:47.380 I mean, well, how how how do you answer notions like that?

00:32:51.620 Not only have I heard it, I appeared in front of the Canadian Senate in 2017 as an expert witness, because in the 21st century,

00:33:04.200 you need an evolutionary behavioral scientist to appear in front of the Canadian Senate and and confirm that for a sexually reproducing species made up of two phenotypes, male and female,

00:33:17.780 there really is a way to define what is male or female.

00:33:21.100 When I said that, one of the senators, a Canadian senator said to your point, to your question, he said, you are promoting the genocide of transgender people.

00:33:34.860 Yeah, to which I answered, you might want to be careful about accusing someone who literally escaped a genocide in Lebanon of of this genocide stuff.

00:33:46.980 I would be careful about saying such things. And of course, it didn't go to welfare.

00:33:51.220 So I understand that reflex. But that's why I implore you to be honey badgers. 0.64

00:33:56.320 Look, I wish for every person in society to live free of bigotry.

00:34:01.800 I don't care if you want to call yourself Linda and wear heels and wear, you know, a dress. 1.00

00:34:09.920 That's great. More power to you. And you shouldn't be discriminated against.

00:34:13.780 That doesn't mean in the pursuit of that I have to go down the road of uniquely celebrating your personhood whilst sublimating the rights of my daughter.

00:34:27.400 Right. My daughter also has rights. Right. 1.00

00:34:30.640 And those rights are that she should be allowed to play soccer against other individuals who share her biological sex. 1.00

00:34:39.660 Life is about modulating these tradeoffs of conflicts. Right.

00:34:46.840 Some men, if they feel sexually starved, feel that it is their right to attack women sexually.

00:34:54.300 But it turns out that you don't have that right because the right of women to be free of your sexual aggression supersedes your sexual frustration rights. 1.00

00:35:06.240 Yes. So by the exact same logic, more power to all transgender people.

00:35:11.860 That doesn't mean that you destroy the dreams of actual biological women so that we could all stand and sing along to your unique, beautiful personhood.

00:35:22.460 Exactly. Now, Donald Trump, the president of the United States, he has, since he took office in January, made some steps against the woke mind virus.

00:35:36.760 And he has, for example, banned biological men in in women's sports with a presidential order.

00:35:46.580 Do you think that Donald Trump will have an influence on on suppressing the woke mind virus?

00:35:56.300 Or is it going to make the the woke ideology even stronger to have an opponent like him?

00:36:01.780 Or what do you think is the effect of Donald Trump coming into office of the United States in these times?

00:36:09.900 So in the short term, him having won is certainly good news for all those fighting these parasitic ideas.

00:36:18.340 Because, of course, the the the the alternative would have been a acceleration and doubling down on all of this woke nonsense.

00:36:26.440 So in that short term window, of course, you can rejoice at his victory.

00:36:32.300 But so this is the really important but be complacent into thinking that because Donald Trump won his second term, this is going to result in the magic erasure of all parasitic ideas.

00:36:49.800 It took, as I mentioned earlier, 50 to 100 years for all of these parasitic ideas to first be spawned on university campuses and then to escape into every nook and cranny of society.

00:37:02.660 It won't be Donald Trump who comes along and gives us the final vaccine and will never hear about these parasitic ideas.

00:37:10.140 So, no, I tell people this is going to be a generational battle.

00:37:14.700 Now, I'd like to think that it won't take 50 to 100 years to eradicate all this nonsense, but it certainly won't end because Donald Trump came to power.

00:37:26.260 And I mean, you would have thought that this must if it's going to end any any any time, it's going to have to end in the in the universities, in the academia, because it's it's started.

00:37:40.440 It's it's it stems from the academia and do you think that we will ever see our Western universities start to go on Vogue or against the Vogue mind virus?

00:37:56.180 What do you think?

00:37:57.640 Yeah, again, it's going to be a nuanced answer.

00:38:00.080 On the one hand, I think that the specific parasitic ideas that we're speaking about will wane. 0.85

00:38:07.860 They will lose effectiveness, but never underestimate the ability of intellectuals and professors to come up with some of the dumbest ideas. 0.96

00:38:18.280 Right. Yeah. 0.98

00:38:18.760 So all of these ideas were started in academia.

00:38:22.580 Now, you might say, well, why am I saying this?

00:38:24.620 I've dedicated my entire life to academia.

00:38:27.200 I've been a professor for 31 years. 0.93

00:38:29.660 Well, I'm going to tell you why professors come up with the dumbest ideas, because regrettably, many of the professors who pontificate these things are perfectly decoupled from the auto corrective pressures of reality. 0.95

00:38:45.580 Right. 0.91

00:38:46.080 So, for example, if you are an engineer that is tasked with building a bridge or an architect, you can't use postmodernist physics because there is this thing called the bridge will collapse because there is no postmodernist physics.

00:39:02.920 There is just physics.

00:39:04.260 There is no indigenous physics.

00:39:06.780 There is just physics. 0.98

00:39:08.280 But when I'm a professor of intersectional lesbian dance therapy, I could stand up in front of a bunch of idiotic students, pontificate about stuff that has no real value, and all of those students will go, yes, yes, beautiful, professor. 0.98

00:39:27.260 Thank you, thank you, because I am perfectly decoupled from reality. 0.93

00:39:31.540 That's why, by the way, the two places where you saw the least parasitic ideas were not that they're not there, but the lesser is the engineering school and the business school.

00:39:45.600 Why? Because you can't build economic models where people's money is going to be affected by doing postmodernist or feminist economics, right? 1.00

00:39:57.160 There's just economics.

00:39:59.100 Same thing with engineering.

00:40:00.420 But in the other disciplines, in women's studies and anthropology and sociology and so on, I can afford the luxury of spouting nonsense. 0.99

00:40:11.200 So I do think that these specific parasitic ideas will wane, but then professors will be hard at work in coming up with the next generation of idiocy. 0.98

00:40:23.480 Yeah, I see. 0.93

00:40:23.960 Okay, but how has this stance of yours against the Vogue mind virus, if you say, how has that affected your career?

00:40:37.560 I mean, I have interviewed Jordan Peterson a couple of times, and he told me personally that, I mean, they didn't counsel him, but they took away his academic career because he had no means to, you know, properly work as a professor and have PhD students under him and so on and so on.

00:40:58.400 Because just because of his stance against this woke ideology, he was just side-trailed, kind of.

00:41:05.080 And you have, you know, endless of examples like Brett Weinstein and others that have had to just make a run for it out of their academic career.

00:41:17.100 So how have you managed to survive in this atmosphere?

00:41:21.780 Well, I have had to bear huge amounts of personal and professional costs.

00:41:28.780 So, for example, personal costs.

00:41:31.660 I know that I'm not always necessarily safe.

00:41:36.760 I get a lot of death threats.

00:41:38.860 I get a lot of hate thrown at me.

00:41:41.180 If I didn't have a thick skin, I might have jumped off a building because the types of stuff that people write about you and put about you, they post things about, I mean, complete lies, complete fabrications. 0.99

00:41:54.480 But my desperate defense of the truth supersedes what someone, some idiot might write about me, right? 0.97

00:42:01.760 And so there are huge personal costs. 0.95

00:42:04.240 You don't get invited to some of the academic parties that you might otherwise get accepted.

00:42:09.440 You don't get necessarily certain offers that you otherwise would have gotten.

00:42:14.140 So I'll give you a very concrete example.

00:42:16.660 I held the highest professorship at my university.

00:42:20.000 It's a university-wide chaired professorship for 10 years.

00:42:24.580 When it came to renew it, I was always denied after that.

00:42:29.020 The last time I held it was in 2018.

00:42:31.500 So it's now been seven years, and I suspect that I will never hold it again because I was, at that point,

00:42:37.380 simply too outspoken against all of the things that my university was defending, indigenous knowledge and transgender and gender pronouns and the rest of it.

00:42:46.660 And I was very, very dead set against it.

00:42:49.600 And so here's another example.

00:42:52.040 I have stopped applying for research grants because the research grants, which we need to be able to do research, right?

00:42:59.120 I have to pay my students and so on.

00:43:01.520 I can't apply for a research grant because it requires you to write a diversity, inclusion, and equity statement.

00:43:10.000 That's right.

00:43:10.360 Well, guess what?

00:43:11.580 I'm not willing to write a book called The Parasitic Mind where I say what a cancer this diversity, inclusion, equity is.

00:43:20.040 But then when nobody is looking to fill in this statement, right, I would be a fraudulent guy.

00:43:26.300 I would be an inauthentic guy.

00:43:27.780 So I have stopped applying for research funds, which means that my research has stopped.

00:43:32.720 So they haven't fired me because luckily I do have tenure.

00:43:37.700 I do have a very big platform.

00:43:39.220 So it would be difficult to get rid of me.

00:43:41.180 But for example, as you kindly pointed out in my introduction, when you said I'm currently at Northwood University,

00:43:47.820 the reason why I'm at Northwood University is because it has become very, very dangerous for me to be an outspoken Jewish professor at my university. 1.00

00:43:56.900 There are literal, genuine, physical threats against me.

00:44:01.520 So, you know, all of the people that you could think of that have probably bore a cost as professors,

00:44:09.280 and I don't mean to be engaging in a competition of victimology,

00:44:13.440 it probably pales in comparison to what I've had to bear because I'm probably the most outspoken professor by many orders of magnitude.

00:44:22.920 But guess what?

00:44:24.240 But at the end of the night, when I put my head on the pillow, I could sleep well because I know that I never modulated my speech in order to pursue selfish careerist interest,

00:44:36.440 which goes back to our original question, which is, what is my advice to people?

00:44:40.880 Be a honey badger.

00:44:41.900 Look, when the young men landed at Normandy at the end of World War II, most of them knew that they were going to be mowed down like little mosquitoes by the German machine guns.

00:44:57.300 And yet they all said, yeah, yeah, okay, I'll go.

00:44:59.900 So there is no justification for why you shouldn't speak.

00:45:03.520 There is always some excuse you can give me for why it shouldn't be you, right?

00:45:08.560 So let me give you an example.

00:45:10.000 Well, Professor Saad, I can't speak because I'm not tenured yet.

00:45:14.320 Okay, now you get tenure.

00:45:15.960 Well, Professor Saad, I can't speak because I'm going up for full professor.

00:45:19.880 Okay, now you get full professor.

00:45:21.640 Well, Professor Saad, I can't speak because I'm applying for a chaired professorship.

00:45:25.480 Well, now you get chaired professorship.

00:45:27.260 Well, Professor Saad, I can't speak because they won't give me the grant.

00:45:30.280 So there is always a reason why it shouldn't be you who speaks and all of the risks should be taken by someone else. 0.96

00:45:38.360 That makes you a coward. 0.67

00:45:40.220 Speak up before you lose the ability to speak. 0.98

00:45:43.240 Very well said, very well said.

00:45:47.780 Your upcoming visit here to Iceland has already sparked some strong reactions.

00:45:52.320 And I have to admit, I was quite taken aback when I read an article by an Icelandic journalist

00:45:57.220 who described you as a controversial academic, because I've been following you for many years.

00:46:02.760 And I was just like, what?

00:46:03.780 I just didn't agree with that.

00:46:06.040 And brace yourself.

00:46:07.440 He said, the worst scionist on the internet.

00:46:11.320 And just for fun, I would like to go over some of the main points from that article with you

00:46:16.440 and get your response to it.

00:46:19.180 The article said, verbatim, it says,

00:46:22.040 One of the ideas for which Saad is best known and which figures like Elon Musk have adopted

00:46:28.460 is the notion that compassion for others is destroying the West.

00:46:33.000 This concept, which he calls suicidal empathy or pathological altruism,

00:46:38.680 suggests that society begins to decay and collapse when showing empathy and tolerance

00:46:43.660 becomes more important than safeguarding one's own interests and ensuring survival.

00:46:49.360 These ideas have started to exert direct influence in the United States

00:46:53.380 through individuals like Elon Musk, who has the air of the president, Donald Trump,

00:46:58.240 for example, in the form of calls to dismantle US foreign aid programs.

00:47:03.700 Dr. Saad also has made headlines for a number of controversial remarks.

00:47:08.480 He has, for instance, referred to the former US vice president Kamala Harris 0.98

00:47:12.220 as a disgrace and a brainless communist. 0.98

00:47:15.180 He has expressed contentious views on topics including women, transgender people and Muslims. 0.98

00:47:24.360 What do you say about these remarks from this Icelandic journalist who is welcoming you to Iceland?

00:47:30.560 Yes, what a welcome.

00:47:31.760 Well, the suicidal empathy I've already spoken about.

00:47:36.820 Empathy is beautiful and it's a noble virtue when it is applied properly, right? 0.50

00:47:43.640 So, for example, there is a Norwegian man who about 10 years ago was sodomized and raped by a Somali immigrant.

00:47:53.400 After the Somali immigrant had served a short sentence, I don't know, three, four years, which is not much for a rape. 0.89

00:48:02.220 When he was going to be deported, the really, really empathetic and kind and compassionate victim of the sodomy felt very guilty that now he was going to not have a good life in Somalia.

00:48:16.540 Well, I'm here to tell you and to tell all Icelandic people that our emotional system did not evolve to be empathetic toward our rapist. 0.73

00:48:27.160 That's what I mean by suicidal empathy. 0.99

00:48:29.420 So that journalist in question is void of a brain.

00:48:33.820 Empathy is good. 0.96

00:48:34.900 Suicidal empathy is bad.

00:48:37.580 That should be easy to understand for the average three-day-old puppy.

00:48:43.060 So that's number one.

00:48:44.320 Number two, do I think that Kamala Harris is a lobotomized communist? 0.99

00:48:49.840 Well, she has repeatedly said that we need to create a culture where we all end up at the same place, right?

00:48:58.920 Therefore, equality of outcomes.

00:49:02.220 Well, that is a central feature of communism.

00:49:05.080 We will all be equally miserable while we wait in the long bread line, right?

00:49:11.600 As E.O. Wilson famously said, he was a biologist who studied social ants.

00:49:16.960 When he was asked about how good communism is, he said, great idea, wrong species, meaning that ants are communistic, humans are not.

00:49:27.660 So she is someone who has espoused communistic ideas.

00:49:32.660 You just have to look up her speeches.

00:49:34.520 And she is lobotomized in that she is unable to complete a single sentence that has any meaning. 1.00

00:49:43.040 She's a complete imbecile. 1.00

00:49:45.060 Now, that's a fact, right? 1.00

00:49:47.200 If I were to administer to her an IQ test, I don't think she would score the way Einstein does.

00:49:55.040 I agree.

00:49:55.820 I agree.

00:49:56.480 So that's that.

00:49:58.020 What was the other one?

00:49:58.860 He said, oh, comments that he's made about women. 0.99

00:50:01.060 I'd like to see which comments he makes, because I'm willing to bet that Monday morning when I wake up, I have defended more women's rights on that Monday morning than this idiot will in his entire life. 0.98

00:50:16.140 I defend the right of women to be free of sexual attacks in the Middle East. 0.98

00:50:22.280 I defend the rights of women to not have to share showers with biological men. 0.56

00:50:29.020 I defend the right of women to not lose medals to biological men. 0.99

00:50:34.620 So I will put up my schedule as a defender of women against this idiot any day of the week. 0.99

00:50:40.300 When it comes to Muslims, I have nothing but love for individuals, right? 0.99

00:50:46.580 I know more Muslims, and I'm friends with more Muslims than this journalist will ever meet in his entire useless life.

00:50:55.360 That doesn't mean that Islam is compatible with Icelandic values, right? 0.98

00:51:02.840 Iceland has certain values that it's proud of.

00:51:07.880 Now, I would be happy to sit with him and debate whether the foundational values of Islam are compatible or antithetical to Icelandic values.

00:51:22.160 Set it up.

00:51:22.940 I'd be happy to debate him.

00:51:24.300 So criticizing specific tenets of Islam is perfectly different than hating individual Muslims.

00:51:34.500 I am very good friends with imams, right? 1.00

00:51:37.800 Islamic, you know, equivalent of priests. 1.00

00:51:42.940 So certainly they wouldn't be friends with me if they thought, you know, I was bigoted against individual Muslims. 0.53

00:51:49.980 I attack ideas.

00:51:50.980 I never attack individuals. 1.00

00:51:54.160 So this idiot needs to go and find his brain, and then we can talk. 1.00

00:51:58.120 Yeah, it's the thing with the liberal media. 1.00

00:52:00.580 I mean, you often get the feeling that they're willingly ignorant and, you know, they somehow manage to misinterpret everything that, you know, their opponents say.

00:52:14.720 So this wasn't a perfect example of that, but what about the thing about Elon Musk, that you're having the influence or you're influencing Elon Musk, which is then dismantling US foreign aid programs.

00:52:30.720 So you were the ideologist behind that evil doings of Elon Musk in the current American administration.

00:52:40.340 Look, it always gives me great pride that I can have the ear of important and powerful people.

00:52:48.160 So, yes, guilty as charged.

00:52:51.140 I have been hopefully able to offer Elon some ideas that he has taken and then shared with the president.

00:52:59.840 That doesn't make me or him mean people.

00:53:04.000 Aid is nice, but not suicidal aid, right?

00:53:07.740 So, for example, there is no reason why there should be whatever, I don't know what the thing is, a $75,000 grant to promote transgender theater in Peru, right?

00:53:22.880 That's not what American taxpayers should pay.

00:53:27.060 But that's precisely what suicidal empathy is, which is you're willing in your desperate desire to appear infinitely dysregulated in your compassion, kindness, and empathy.

00:53:41.280 All bets are off.

00:53:42.900 There is no modulation of the reflex of empathy.

00:53:46.700 Let me give you an example.

00:53:47.700 If you see two children that are about to be hit by a bus, one child is your biological child, one child is not your biological child. 0.99

00:53:59.960 If I were to ask you, most people around the world, including that idiotic journalist, who would he jump and save? 0.99

00:54:09.860 Who would he jump and save? 1.00

00:54:11.360 The biological child or the non-biological?

00:54:13.600 Of course.

00:54:13.980 Now, that's not because he is mean and he is callous and he doesn't believe in empathy.

00:54:22.040 It's because life has created trade-offs, right?

00:54:26.800 If we had infinite money, we'd give infinite money to everybody and sing John Lennon songs, but we don't.

00:54:34.140 Economics involves trade-offs.

00:54:36.400 Our emotional system involves trade-offs.

00:54:39.220 Our responses involve trade-offs.

00:54:41.660 Those are called homeostatic systems.

00:54:44.300 So, yes, I want to save every child on Earth, but given that I can't, I will show preference to my biological children. 0.97

00:54:54.020 So will every single parent in Iceland.

00:54:57.540 You know what that's called?

00:54:58.740 It's called evolution.

00:55:00.220 So, nobody is questioning the importance of compassion, kindness, and empathy. 0.98

00:55:06.660 As a matter of fact, I'm an evolutionary psychologist, so I have forgotten more about those topics than this idiot will ever know, right? 0.73

00:55:16.040 So, nobody is questioning that, but it has to be within regulated norms. 0.96

00:55:23.500 By the way, that's what a psychiatric disorder is, right?

00:55:26.340 So, take, for example, OCD, right?

00:55:29.240 Obsessive-compulsive disorder.

00:55:30.800 Yes?

00:55:31.420 Yeah.

00:55:32.460 Well, obsessive-compulsive disorder is a dysregulated mechanism of an otherwise evolutionarily beneficial process.

00:55:41.600 Let me explain what that means.

00:55:42.740 The idea that you should scan environmental threats makes perfect evolutionary sense, right?

00:55:49.120 If you and I meet in Reykjavik, and I notice that you sneezed into your hands before we met, and then you shook my hands, I will go quietly to the bathroom to wash my hands so that I don't catch your cold.

00:56:01.980 Yes?

00:56:02.180 That makes perfect evolutionary sense.

00:56:03.780 Sure.

00:56:03.960 But if I spend eight hours a day washing my hands until my skin comes off, and I'm stuck in an infinite OCD loop of germ contamination fear, it becomes dysregulated, right?

00:56:19.660 What started off as an adaptive process, when it misfires, it becomes maladaptive.

00:56:27.600 That's exactly my argument for empathy.

00:56:30.360 Empathy is perfectly noble when it is directed in the right amount to the right people at the right context.

00:56:39.480 When it becomes orgiastic and unregulated, it becomes suicidal.

00:56:45.060 Excellent.

00:56:46.600 Well, okay, Dr. Gadsad, it's been an absolute honor to have you here on my show, and I'm looking forward to seeing you and your lecture here in Iceland in June here in Harpa, the conference hall.

00:57:00.200 The tickets are already on sale, as we already said, and I hope you will have a wonderful time here in Iceland.

00:57:06.740 Are you planning on staying?

00:57:08.760 Are you going to see something of Iceland, or how are your plans?

00:57:12.620 Thank you for the good wishes.

00:57:14.300 I mean, originally I was planning on staying a week, but then I had to coordinate immediately after my Reykjavik event.

00:57:23.020 The next day I have to head off to a London-speaking event, and then to another event at the University of Buckingham, I think.

00:57:32.180 And so I'm not staying as long as I would have liked to.

00:57:35.600 Hopefully I'll see a few things, and hopefully you guys will invite me back for a round two.

00:57:40.960 We will definitely do that.

00:57:42.060 Thank you so much, Dr. Gadsad.

00:57:44.160 Have a nice day.

00:57:44.500 Thank you, sir.

00:57:44.980 That was fantastic.

00:57:45.720 Thank you.

00:57:46.020 Thank you.

00:57:46.260 Thank you.

00:57:53.020 Thank you.

The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - April 18, 2025

Has Iceland Become Woke Central？ (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_822)

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