The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - Social Justice Gone Bad, Woke Politics, and the Death of Cancel Culture (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_785)

00:00:00.100 This is a man's opinion that I have been looking forward to having in conversation all week.

00:00:05.740 I'm so happy to welcome to the show, Dr. Gad Saad, visiting professor and global ambassador

00:00:11.100 at Northwood University, evolutionary behavioral scientist and author.

00:00:15.100 In other words, far, far smarter than me.

00:00:17.620 Doctor, welcome to the show.

00:00:19.540 Oh, so good to be with you.

00:00:20.800 Thank you so much for having me.

00:00:21.800 So listen, I just finished your book, The Parasitic Mind.

00:00:25.140 And I would love if you could just give us the thesis, give us the thesis of the thrust

00:00:30.960 of that book.

00:00:31.920 Right.

00:00:32.640 So in the animal kingdom, there is a field called parasitology, which basically studies how parasites

00:00:39.600 and hosts have co-evolved.

00:00:41.800 So for example, a tapeworm looks to your intestinal tract to parasitize it.

00:00:48.060 Neuroparasitology is when a parasite looks for the host's brain to alter its neuronal circuitry

00:00:55.120 to suit its reproductive interests. 0.96

00:00:57.000 So for example, you have a wood cricket that abhors water.

00:01:00.200 It doesn't, it wants nothing to do with water, but when it is parasitized by a hairworm, the

00:01:05.240 hairworm needs the wood cricket to jump into water in order to complete, in order for the

00:01:11.220 parasite to complete its reproductive cycle.

00:01:13.960 And so that was my epiphany.

00:01:16.180 I thought, aha, I'm going to now use the neuroparasitological framework to argue that

00:01:22.240 human beings can be parasitized by another class of brain worms.

00:01:27.380 And I call these idea pathogens.

00:01:29.760 And so what the book does is it traces where all these parasitic ideas come from.

00:01:35.020 And regrettably, Ben, they all come from university campuses because it takes professors to come 0.99

00:01:39.860 up with some of the dumbest ideas. 0.97

00:01:41.240 And then these ideas proliferate to every nook and cranny of society, as we've seen over 0.99

00:01:48.920 the past 10, 15, 20 years.

00:01:51.320 And at the end of the book, I offer hopefully an effective mind vaccine against the lunacy.

00:01:57.720 Well, you argue about the sort of the duality of the human condition, the analytical mind

00:02:02.420 and the emotional mind.

00:02:03.780 And you posit that in places and spaces and in subject matter where we should be thinking

00:02:10.480 analytically, we have chosen the emotional brain.

00:02:14.700 And that's the cause of a lot of the issues that we deal with today in society.

00:02:18.900 Yeah, that's a perfect synopsis.

00:02:20.980 So look, it is a false dichotomy to argue that reason takes precedence over affect or feelings.

00:02:28.340 We are both a thinking and feeling animal, but what matters in life is that you invoke

00:02:34.940 the right system at the right time.

00:02:37.040 So if I'm taking a shortcut to get home through a dark alley and I see four young men that look

00:02:43.640 suspicious that are loitering around, I will have an emotional-based fear response that makes

00:02:49.540 perfect evolutionary sense for me to have that response.

00:02:52.220 On the other hand, if I'm trying to do well on a calculus exam, all of the fear response in

00:02:56.760 the world is not going to make me perform better on that exam.

00:03:00.180 So when it comes to, say, choosing a prime minister or a president, you would like to

00:03:05.880 think that the electorate is going to invoke their cognitive system.

00:03:09.780 But regrettably, to your synopsis, most people end up voting with their feelings.

00:03:15.620 He's tall.

00:03:16.620 He has beautiful hair.

00:03:18.200 He's young.

00:03:19.320 He looks empathetic.

00:03:20.760 So at no point did the electorate say, I like him or dislike him because of policy reasons

00:03:26.960 A, B, C.

00:03:27.920 I simply use peripheral affective cues to make my judgment.

00:03:32.380 That's not a good idea.

00:03:33.960 So I guess through that lens, you could explain some things that have boggled my mind.

00:03:39.800 Like, how did we get from a point in time where prior to the murder of George Floyd, which

00:03:46.540 was a disgusting abuse of police power, but prior to his murder, we were living in, which

00:03:52.160 what at that point was the fairest, most equitable version of Western society at any point.

00:03:57.880 Now, we weren't we weren't perfect.

00:03:59.620 We weren't where we want to be.

00:04:00.800 But it's the struggle to get to that that level that makes that makes Western society great.

00:04:06.340 And then but with that, with that catalyst of his murder, people started feeling like society

00:04:12.620 was unfair, people started feeling like there was a patriarchy, people started feeling like

00:04:18.580 everywhere you looked, people who look like me had our boot on our heel on somebody's neck.

00:04:25.400 Is that a fair way of looking at it?

00:04:28.320 I mean, the part that I might, you know, disagree with is that, you know, George Floyd was the

00:04:36.060 catalyst.

00:04:36.520 Now, it is true that George Floyd, you know, instigated all sorts of subsequent realities

00:04:42.780 downstream, but the parasitic ideas that allowed the post George Floyd reality to happen have

00:04:52.280 been festering in academic ecosystems for 50 to 100 years.

00:04:56.680 So it's not as though we needed George Floyd's, you know, brutal murder to be where we are.

00:05:04.020 The abyss of infinite lunacy has been unfolding, regrettably, for many, many years.

00:05:10.000 So I'll give you an example.

00:05:12.300 Post-modernism, I argue it's the granddaddy of all parasitic ideas, is really a form of

00:05:20.380 intellectual terrorism, because it says that it purports that there are no objective truths

00:05:25.500 other than the one objective truth that there are no objective truths.

00:05:29.000 Well, that framework then provides the room for us to say up is down, freedom is slavery, 0.98

00:05:38.580 war is peace, you know, women can have penises, of course, men too can menstruate. 0.99

00:05:44.740 So yes, the George Floyd incident served as a catalyst for some realities, but the problem 0.97

00:05:52.340 is much more longstanding than that.

00:05:54.260 Was, it sounds like you say, yes, so much of this is coming from the universities and

00:05:59.240 our place of higher education.

00:06:01.120 Was that done by design?

00:06:02.480 Was it orchestrated?

00:06:04.620 Yeah, that's a fantastic question.

00:06:06.740 So I argue in the book that each of these parasitic ideas, and let me just at the very

00:06:12.060 least mention them so that, you know, your listeners have a clue of what I'm talking about.

00:06:15.180 So I just mentioned post-modernism.

00:06:17.000 And another idea pathogen is cultural relativism.

00:06:20.000 Who are we to judge the rituals and behaviors and beliefs of another culture?

00:06:25.340 Another one is political correctness.

00:06:28.600 Another one is identity politics, social constructivism.

00:06:31.820 Everything is due to social construction.

00:06:34.220 Biology doesn't matter in explaining human affairs. 0.99

00:06:36.400 So each of these parasitic ideas have served as, if you like, a plane of BS hitting our edifices

00:06:45.900 of reason, right?

00:06:47.020 Now, each of these parasitic ideas, to your question, starts off with a noble cause.

00:06:54.340 So no, it's not by some, you know, willful evil design that we got here.

00:06:58.640 So let me give a specific example.

00:07:01.320 Equity feminism is a great idea. 1.00

00:07:04.260 There should be no institutional or legal reasons why men and women shouldn't be treated

00:07:10.380 equally under the law.

00:07:11.840 By that definition, both you and I would put up our hands and say, hey, we're proud equity

00:07:16.980 feminists. 0.94

00:07:17.520 But then radical feminists came along and said, in order for us to accelerate the squashing 1.00

00:07:24.220 of the evil, toxic, masculine patriarchy, we need to argue that there are no innate sex 0.99

00:07:31.240 differences between men and women.

00:07:32.940 They're all due to social construction because that will allow us to better serve our ultimate

00:07:37.680 goal of squashing the patriarchy. 0.94

00:07:39.380 So in the service of what started originally as a noble goal, if we have to rape and murder 0.74

00:07:45.140 truth, so be it.

00:07:46.700 And so I argue that each of these parasitic ideas started from a noble place and then 0.80

00:07:52.180 metamorphosized into nonsense.

00:07:54.460 And of course, this dovetails very nicely into your other book, The Suicidal Empathy, that

00:08:00.560 states it's excessive compassion undermines societal cohesion, values and security.

00:08:05.580 Exactly right.

00:08:07.700 So let me kind of give you the background to the sort of the one-two punch of those two

00:08:12.080 books.

00:08:13.100 In the parasitic mind, I'm arguing that our cognitive system, hence, right, our thought

00:08:18.480 processes could be parasitized by bad ideas.

00:08:22.020 But as I mentioned earlier in our conversation, we are both a thinking and feeling animal.

00:08:27.220 So not only could our cognitive system be parasitized, so can our emotional system enhance suicidal

00:08:35.340 empathy.

00:08:36.240 Look, within certain functional norms, being empathetic is perfectly laudable, right?

00:08:43.100 We've actually evolved empathy as part of our human sociality.

00:08:48.480 I need to be able to put myself in your mind.

00:08:51.520 This is called theory of mind in order for you and I to have a productive exchange.

00:08:56.020 So it makes perfect evolutionary sense for social species to experience the sentiment

00:09:02.200 of empathy.

00:09:03.600 But of course, the devil is in the details.

00:09:06.360 If empathy becomes hyperactive, if it targets the wrong targets, then it becomes dysfunctional.

00:09:14.460 Dr. Satt, we're going to take a quick break and we're going to come back on The Ben Mulroney

00:09:18.280 Show.

00:09:18.700 More in conversation with Dr. Gadsatt.

00:09:20.820 This is The Ben Mulroney Show, and this is the conversation with the author of Suicidal

00:09:25.900 Empathy and the Parasitic Mind, Dr. Gadsatt.

00:09:29.160 Doctor, thank you so much for sticking around.

00:09:31.560 Three years ago, we could not have had this conversation without worrying, at least by myself,

00:09:35.700 worrying that the online mob would come to cancel me.

00:09:39.040 And something seems to have changed in society.

00:09:44.360 And I don't know what to put my finger on.

00:09:48.000 Well, it's a combination of things.

00:09:50.720 You know, it takes a while for people to find their spines, for them to find their testicular

00:09:57.120 fortitude, if you excuse the term.

00:09:59.760 And so like anything, for example, shingles is something that is within you and then something

00:10:05.380 will or will not trigger it.

00:10:07.160 So there are many triggers that resulted in people finally finding their voice.

00:10:12.320 I mean, certainly it helped without wanting to turn this into a political conversation.

00:10:18.160 The fact that Donald Trump now won certainly is going to change the landscape, at least

00:10:24.040 in the United States.

00:10:24.960 Yeah, it feels, Doctor, it feels like we were and I was talking about with my producer about

00:10:29.140 this this morning, that nothing really changed in Donald Trump.

00:10:32.100 The moment met him, the world that he was railing against years ago that people thought he was

00:10:37.780 crazy about, has manifested.

00:10:39.840 And he went to where the puck was going to be.

00:10:43.260 You're exactly right.

00:10:44.220 And I mean, I will draw an analogy in my own personal life, right, or my professional life.

00:10:49.400 The exact same people who used to want to, if disassociate themselves from me in academia

00:10:56.920 or ignore me or ostracize me, are now lining up to all send me letters of invitations and

00:11:04.300 awards and so on, because they've always loved my work.

00:11:07.480 Well, unfortunately for them, I've kept a copy of the emails that I had received 20 years

00:11:13.080 ago.

00:11:13.540 And so while I wish to be charitable and not be too gleeful, you've got the receipts.

00:11:19.540 I've got the receipts.

00:11:20.620 Is there a flashpoint, is there a moment where the force of the cancel culture hurricane

00:11:28.080 waned?

00:11:29.780 I mean, I think there are several of them.

00:11:33.020 Look, seeing a male pummel a bunch of women in the Olympics is certainly one, right?

00:11:41.920 I mean, people love to see things vividly, right?

00:11:45.840 And so when you're talking in the abstract, it's difficult to get people to understand

00:11:51.640 what the problem is.

00:11:52.640 But if you're seeing, you know, a six foot five, you know, a guy who used to be called

00:11:57.240 John yesterday, now playing rugby with five foot two women, people will eventually wake 1.00

00:12:02.680 up.

00:12:02.880 So I don't think there's a singular moment, but there is a confluence of factors that

00:12:08.040 led to the fact that there is now an auto correction taking place.

00:12:11.080 Yeah.

00:12:11.140 I think a lot of it had to do with people telling us that the reality that we could see

00:12:15.660 with our very own eyes and hear with our very own ears was not real.

00:12:19.560 Don't don't trust your own senses.

00:12:21.400 We're telling you everything's fine.

00:12:22.800 The house isn't burning down.

00:12:24.240 You can stay in your bed.

00:12:25.260 Everything's fine.

00:12:25.960 And at some point, a lot of rational people said, wait, hold on.

00:12:29.520 I can feel the heat and my clothes are on fire. 1.00

00:12:32.080 And you're not you're talking to me like I'm an idiot. 0.99

00:12:34.600 Right. 0.99

00:12:36.200 But what what upsets me, though, Ben, is that it takes for us to get this far into the

00:12:42.020 abyss of infinite lunacy before people wake up.

00:12:45.020 So, for example, I know of many very wealthy Americans, Jewish Americans who are now suddenly 1.00

00:12:51.980 waking up to the fact, oh, boy, we've got a real anti-Semitic problem at my alma mater.

00:12:58.680 Well, why weren't you able to put the, you know, connect the dots together when some

00:13:03.380 of us were standing on top of the mountain screaming for 30 years?

00:13:06.400 But the reality is that the architecture of the human mind is such that you only wake up

00:13:11.480 when it comes to bite you.

00:13:13.280 And then you suddenly realize that, oh, yes, there is such a thing as diabetes.

00:13:17.600 Until I get diabetes, it doesn't exist.

00:13:21.100 And I've got to wonder, you've got guys like Joe Rogan, who are a greater force in media

00:13:27.120 than I think all of legacy media combined.

00:13:30.280 You saw the numbers that Pierre Polyev got during his sit down with Jordan Peterson, bypassing

00:13:35.760 the traditional media altogether.

00:13:37.660 Are these buttressing forces against the pendulum swinging so wildly back to where it had been?

00:13:45.420 Right.

00:13:46.160 And by the way, you're exactly right.

00:13:48.120 Look, I am in the business of creating knowledge and spreading knowledge.

00:13:52.240 So I will go wherever I need to go in order to make that happen.

00:13:56.720 And so as you may or may not know, Ben, I'm one of the, I'm proud to say I'm one of the

00:14:01.000 guests that's been most often on Joe Rogan.

00:14:02.920 I think I recently reached 10 appearances on his show.

00:14:06.020 But I'll tell you a quick story, which I discussed in the parasitic mind.

00:14:09.160 I had gone to give a talk at the Stanford Business School in 2017.

00:14:14.300 You know, one of the meccas of prestige in academia.

00:14:17.340 And the gentleman who was a fellow professor, a consumer psychologist who had taken me out to

00:14:22.000 dinner the night before, looked down with unbelievable smugness at the idea that I would go on Joe

00:14:28.860 Rogan.

00:14:29.400 Well, to my earlier point, those same people who thought that it was beneath them to speak

00:14:34.580 to the great unwashed that might listen to Joe Rogan now write to me and say, oh, please,

00:14:39.540 can you introduce me to Joe Rogan?

00:14:41.200 So that's what happens.

00:14:43.200 But given the fact, let's go back to the top of our conversation where we said that so many

00:14:46.540 of these bad and toxic ideas stem from our universities and places of higher education.

00:14:51.660 How do we deprogram those faculties so that they don't keep churning out?

00:14:57.040 They're not the factories of of of misinformation and brainwashing.

00:15:01.080 Well, I mean, the most important thing to I think we alluded to this earlier is to get

00:15:07.600 people to find their courage to speak out.

00:15:11.180 If your professor is espousing nonsense, like, of course, men, too, can menstruate, raise your

00:15:18.360 hand and challenge him or her politely. 0.98

00:15:21.360 If your friend at the pub is saying stuff that they learned in their lesbian dance therapy 1.00

00:15:26.400 class at Oberlin College about the evil Jews and so on, maybe challenge him.

00:15:31.020 In other words, don't let any opportunity bypass you to at least challenge bad ideas.

00:15:38.700 There is no magic recipe.

00:15:40.240 You just have to be involved.

00:15:41.980 I mean, I remember clear as day the very first time I was in high school and had an original

00:15:47.340 thought of my own.

00:15:48.280 I remember it.

00:15:48.960 I remember where I was.

00:15:50.140 And it was such a defining moment for me.

00:15:52.440 I said, oh, that's what education is going up and challenging your teacher, challenging

00:15:56.620 your professor.

00:15:57.160 And I looked forward to that.

00:15:58.520 I engaged in that when I was in university.

00:16:00.280 And and for the past few years, it has been completely forbidden to have to be an outlier.

00:16:07.360 If you're an outlier, you're you're a heretic. 0.95

00:16:09.600 Indeed.

00:16:11.600 And by and by the way, you don't know how thrilled I am to be speaking to you because,

00:16:15.860 you know, it's unbelievable how much Canadian media has ignored me.

00:16:21.700 Right.

00:16:21.900 I mean, I can go to Belgium and people will know me.

00:16:25.640 But I in my own backyard, nearly everyone has ignored me.

00:16:31.840 As they say, you know, profits are not appreciated in their homeland.

00:16:35.180 And so I'm so glad to see that the tide is changing.

00:16:39.960 And boy, I'm so glad to be able to be speaking to you because, you know, Canada, when it comes

00:16:45.280 to woke metrics, is certainly suffering from a fatal disease.

00:16:49.240 Oh, no.

00:16:49.540 We are we are behind the times as that pendulum is swinging.

00:16:53.340 I said, I said that this is this is what culture is going to is going to find a still find a

00:16:59.560 home here in Canada and certainly in cities like Toronto.

00:17:02.680 This is this will be their Stalingrad.

00:17:05.680 Well, although if I may, I know that there's always a rivalry between Montreal and Toronto.

00:17:12.180 So you should come and walk around in my home university to really see what parasitized

00:17:17.960 wokesters look like. 0.98

00:17:19.240 Oh, it's I hear it's I hear it's terrible.

00:17:22.100 I hear it's absolutely terrible.

00:17:23.860 Well, it is so terrible that regrettably, I've had to take a leave.

00:17:27.300 That's why I'm at Northwood University.

00:17:28.620 Right.

00:17:28.960 Where, you know, they truly believe in freedom, freedom of inquiry, economic freedom, freedom

00:17:33.780 of speech.

00:17:34.360 I mean, those are the bedrock of Western civilization.

00:17:38.120 But apparently, if you now espouse those positions, you are an extremist.

00:17:43.000 So it's going to take years, you're saying, before we before we peel away the nonsense and

00:17:48.020 the toxicity at our Canadian universities.

00:17:51.220 Absolutely.

00:17:51.940 And that's why I keep reminding people, Ben, that, yes, you may be happy that Donald Trump

00:17:56.680 won, but Donald Trump is just the doorstop for this craziness.

00:18:00.200 Right.

00:18:00.720 Yes, it's good that he's going to, you know, autocorrect some lunacy, but it's a much longer

00:18:06.320 battle.

00:18:06.680 So I'd like to think that it won't take 50 to 100 years to autocorrect, but it certainly

00:18:11.480 is a generational battle.

00:18:13.820 Dr. Gad Saad, it has been a pleasure having you in conversation.

00:18:17.300 Thank you so much for joining us on the Ben Mulroney Show.

00:18:19.420 Let's do it again sometime.

00:18:20.920 Anytime.

00:18:21.540 Thank you so much, sir.

00:18:22.480 What a treat.

00:18:24.260 What a treat to speak with him.

00:18:25.900 I really hope we get to do it again.

The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - January 16, 2025

Social Justice Gone Bad, Woke Politics, and the Death of Cancel Culture (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_785)

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