The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - December 05, 2025


Somalia and Richard Gere's Rectal Lobotomy (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_929)


Episode Stats


Length

39 minutes

Words per minute

130.86607

Word count

5,211

Sentence count

298

Harmful content

Misogyny

15

sentences flagged

Toxicity

102

sentences flagged

Hate speech

29

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I continue my discussion of the outrage that has ensued since Donald Trump referred to Ilhan Omar as a "garbage person" in a recent tweet, and explain why this is not a deontological statement.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.480 Okay, so today I wanted to continue with my discussion of, you know, the big outrage that has ensued subsequent to Donald Trump saying that Ilhan Omar is a garbage person. 0.99
00:00:19.140 And that would be a compliment to garbage, because she is an execrable Cretan with zero gratitude. 1.00
00:00:31.280 There are Arabic words that capture how she is, which they aren't quite exactly the same translations in English. 0.98
00:00:39.700 So, referring to a single individual as a garbage person, while, yes, it's, you know, it's nice for us to always speak diplomatically and be kind and so on.
00:00:55.600 As I explained in the parasitic mind, to judge someone is an inherent part of to be human, right? 0.52
00:01:03.160 Even as I explained in the parasitic mind, the injunctions against, you know, judging others, right?
00:01:10.960 Don't cast the first stone, you know, your house may be made of stone as well and so on.
00:01:15.640 Those sort of New Testament injunctions are not saying that it's a deontological statement.
00:01:20.780 Don't cast judgment on anyone under any circumstances.
00:01:24.440 Who am I to judge? Who are we to judge?
00:01:26.780 I haven't lived it. No, no, no. Judge, right?
00:01:30.400 I belong to a scientific society called judgment and decision-making, right?
00:01:36.300 To judge and evaluate something, whether it be another person as a potential friend, as a potential partner for marriage.
00:01:45.200 By the way, I'm sitting here doing this today.
00:01:48.860 Today, December 5th, is the 26th anniversary and I'm sitting here.
00:01:54.900 Why? Because my commitment to truth doesn't take a break.
00:01:59.740 And so, went out earlier this morning with my beautiful wife.
00:02:04.040 I had a great brunch.
00:02:06.440 And then, tonight, going out with the entire family, with the kids, to a new restaurant that we've never been to.
00:02:12.360 But, hey, truth is constantly attacked, so let's get to it.
00:02:17.280 So, to judge someone is perfectly normal. 1.00
00:02:19.500 I judge John Wayne Gacy, the serial pedophile, killer, serial killer, as a garbage person, to use Trump's term. 0.99
00:02:30.080 That doesn't make me a mean person who is marginalizing all clowns. 0.99
00:02:34.460 For those of you who don't understand the reference, he famously used to go to children's party wearing a very eerie clown costume, right? 0.96
00:02:44.060 I judge Adolf Hitler as being a genocidal maniac. 1.00
00:02:48.740 He's a garbage person. 1.00
00:02:50.820 Ilhan Omar exhibits all of the traits that you would exactly wish to avoid in any prospective immigrant. 1.00
00:02:59.760 We would certainly want to see, take, for example, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who is also from Somalia.
00:03:07.640 Ayaan Hirsi Ali is Somali.
00:03:10.000 Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a distinguished, dignified, beautiful, free-thinking individual.
00:03:31.460 So, it's not all Somalis are evil.
00:03:35.040 What we're saying about Ilhan Omar is that she exemplifies certain traits that we find to be terribly distasteful. 0.92
00:03:43.680 So, there is absolutely nothing wrong in saying Ilhan Omar is a vile human being.
00:03:51.360 And she truly is.
00:03:52.980 Okay, number one. 0.99
00:03:55.200 But now we come to, let's talk about, can we say Somalia is a garbage country? 1.00
00:04:02.800 And I already explained to you, and actually it's gone unbelievably viral, the one that I did a couple of days ago, completely impromptu, 1.5 million views on X, quickly approaching 100,000 views on my YouTube channel.
00:04:17.440 And in that clip, that X spaces, I simply went to the Corruption Perceptions Index, which is an index that has existed since 1995 for 30 years.
00:04:32.060 And I looked at the average ranking that Somalia has received since it first entered the ranking, which was in 2005, so 20 years.
00:04:42.660 And its average ranking is 180th.8, 180.8 out of, on average, 180 countries being ranked.
00:04:54.800 So, it is the most orgiastically corrupt, degenerate society that exists.
00:05:02.980 But that's using very clear metrics.
00:05:06.860 There are a set of metrics that you can use to establish the extent to which a society is corrupt.
00:05:12.660 But that's only one metric, right?
00:05:14.140 There are many other metrics that we could judge the health of a society. 0.96
00:05:17.660 So, I did that analysis and showed, well, certainly based on its endemic corruption, you couldn't have, again, to use Donald Trump's terms, you couldn't have a more garbage society than Somalia. 1.00
00:05:34.300 But I could now go off and get you 75 different metrics, capturing all sorts of things, health quality, equality of women, journalistic freedom, individual freedoms, freedom of inquiry, endless.
00:05:57.820 But I'm just going to focus on two that I posted the day after my last clip, so that this would be yesterday.
00:06:06.140 So, let's start with the Human Freedom Index, which comes out of the Cato Institute and the Fraser Institute.
00:06:15.460 So, in the 20, I'm reading this, this is, so I asked, I mean, I'm familiar with all of these indices, but I asked Grok to generate, you know, the latest rankings.
00:06:27.660 And so, I'm reading here what Grok generated. 0.60
00:06:30.500 So, are you ready?
00:06:31.460 So, the Human Freedom Index, in the 2024 Human Freedom Index, covering data up to 2022, the latest available, Somalia scores 4.67 out of 10, ranking as the 164th out of 165 jurisdictions.
00:06:53.760 So, oh, I guess that's not garbage.
00:06:56.520 There is one single country in the world that scores less, I mean, you know, worse than Somalia. 1.00
00:07:06.560 This places it near the absolute bottom, tied with countries like Iran, Egypt, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia in the lowest quarter, quartile.
00:07:16.040 The index measures 86 different indicators across personal, civil, and economic freedom.
00:07:23.840 So, this is a very, very big, composite, aggregate measure of freedom.
00:07:29.100 With Somalia's low score driven by issues in security, rule of law, freedom of expression, and economic liberty.
00:07:35.640 It's also not particularly dispensing free love to religious minorities.
00:07:42.820 Oh, oops, wait a second.
00:07:43.900 There are no religious minorities in Somalia.
00:07:45.860 They've all magically disappeared.
00:07:47.780 So, let's summarize so far.
00:07:50.560 Last clip that I did for you, Somalia ranked dead last in the world in corruption. 1.00
00:07:56.800 That's just one measure of how garbage a society is.
00:08:01.560 Now, I brought you another measure, the Human Freedom Index measure, which is a very, very well accepted composite metric.
00:08:10.860 As I said, that comes out of two very well established institutes, think tanks.
00:08:17.060 And Saudi Arabia, I mean, Somalia ranks 164th out of 165.
00:08:22.980 Let's do another one.
00:08:24.580 The World Press Freedom Index, okay, ranks, Somalia ranks 175th out of 180 countries in the 2025 World Press Freedom Index with a score of 73.59 out of 100.
00:08:41.660 Higher scores indicate more freedoms.
00:08:43.820 This is in the very serious category, meaning very serious and having no freedoms.
00:08:49.620 It dropped 11 places from the previous year, highlighting extreme risks to journalists from violence, armed groups, and government restrictions in a conflict zone.
00:09:00.420 So, again, let's summarize so far. 0.98
00:09:02.480 When it comes to corruption, it is the garbage nation of the world. 0.99
00:09:06.580 When it comes to Human Freedom Index, it is the second worst garbage nation of the world. 0.99
00:09:12.320 When it comes to World Press Freedom Index, it is, oh, it's doing much better. 0.53
00:09:17.340 It's only 175th worse out of 180.
00:09:21.680 But now let's come up to another one.
00:09:23.920 You ready?
00:09:25.220 Oh, this is a good one.
00:09:26.780 Hold on a second. 0.56
00:09:29.840 I asked it because I know that in many of these countries, there is this beautiful practice of female genital mutilation, 1.00
00:09:41.000 which comes in various forms, but the most severe one is where you cut off the clitorises of little girls, right? 1.00
00:09:50.220 You know that pleasure center so that, you know, in a sexually reproducing species involving two phenotypes called male and female 0.96
00:10:02.800 that are going to have heavy bi-parental investment, you'd like both sexes to find pleasure in the act of mating. 1.00
00:10:13.460 Well, Somalia, I'll let you decide where they got their ideology from, what might be some religious ideology that might be behind it, 0.98
00:10:25.080 practices a beautiful form of female genital mutilation off with the clitoris. 1.00
00:10:32.080 So let's read here. 0.93
00:10:33.060 Now, this is coming from the Somali Health and Demographic Survey, in case you're thinking, oh, this is Zionist propaganda.
00:10:41.640 So according to the 2020 Somali Health and Demographic Survey, the most recent comprehensive national data available,
00:10:49.100 do you want to know what is the percentage of women from age 15 to 49 that have undergone female genital mutilation,
00:10:59.700 also known as female genital cutting, or in Arabic, 0.95
00:11:04.080 you are rending her pure because you're cutting off that clitoris. 1.00
00:11:10.020 That way she doesn't have those sexual desires. 1.00
00:11:14.440 You need to be able to rape her without the possibility of, you know, being concerned whether you should be an attentive lover or not. 0.99
00:11:22.580 So, 99% of women in Somalia have undergone female genital mutilation. 0.99
00:11:34.000 The majority of cases involve type 3 FGM infibulation, the most severe form often performed on girls between the ages of 5 and 9.
00:11:45.780 I'll skip the rest of it, but hey, you have a certain number of people that live in Somalia.
00:11:55.960 In Somalia, 99% of people called women in Somalia have had female genital mutilation done on them.
00:12:08.360 So if you are someone who's liberal, if you are someone who's progressive, if you are someone who's a feminist, 0.99
00:12:15.340 if you are someone hashtag the future is female, hearing this beautiful data, 99%, 0.99
00:12:23.740 do you say, oh boy, this seems to support Donald Trump's statement that Somalia is a garbage nation, 0.99
00:12:33.040 or do you go, hey, who are you to judge whether other cultures choose to engage in the noble practice of cutting off clitorises and engaging in infibulation? 1.00
00:12:46.480 Who are you to judge, you disgusting racist? 1.00
00:12:49.160 Think, grow up. 0.99
00:12:54.620 So now I want to turn to, because I promise you that today's show is called Somalia and Richard Gere's rectal lobotomy.
00:13:04.660 Now, let me explain to you why the show is called that.
00:13:09.480 Well, because you may or may not know, now, of course, this could be strictly an urban legend,
00:13:18.360 but let's play along.
00:13:20.840 Many of you have heard about Richard Gere and the gerbil story,
00:13:25.140 that he had been found with a gerbil in his rectal area. 0.96
00:13:30.060 I don't know for what, maybe some sexual fetish.
00:13:33.700 Now, of course, my feeling is that this is completely a urban legend, you know, meme that has gone haywire.
00:13:42.580 I have a hard time understanding the physiology of how that could happen.
00:13:47.700 But I used that meme to then argue that it might actually,
00:13:53.260 there might be some veracity to the story, because if the gerbil got up his rectal area
00:13:58.620 and then burrowed its way all the way up to his brain,
00:14:04.400 so that then it could provide him a gerbil lobotomy, hence rectal lobotomy. 0.99
00:14:10.400 We start off in the ass, we burrow all the way up his body, and then we gnaw away at his brain. 0.97
00:14:15.980 It ends up with the clip that I reposted yesterday, 19 hours ago, where I wrote, 0.99
00:14:23.620 so this is a one-minute clip where Richard Gere, I mean, literally, who's got less intelligence, 0.99
00:14:30.360 less cognitive equity than the gerbil that may or may not have visited his ass. 0.99
00:14:36.360 And he says, and so this is what I'm going to summarize for you, 0.98
00:14:39.440 Richard Gere knows that people are driven by, quote, profound kindness.
00:14:44.800 Ooh, who's coming out with a book called Suicidal Empathy soon?
00:14:49.020 He knows that it's mean guys like Trump and Netanyahu and Putin that teach us
00:14:55.460 that Somali values might be different from American values.
00:14:59.600 The reality is that we are all the same, according to Richard Gere,
00:15:04.480 bathing in a beautiful warm pool of utopian suicidal empathy.
00:15:09.120 Our pathological compassion, coupled with our maladaptively irrational altruism,
00:15:16.400 liberates us from reality.
00:15:18.640 You see it?
00:15:19.640 So he's speaking to, I don't know, some podcasters, where he, yeah, because don't forget,
00:15:25.840 he's met the Dalai Lama and, you know, he's a Buddhist, plus he's an actor,
00:15:29.720 so he's obviously smarter than the rest of us.
00:15:32.060 And so he says, people only think that there might be differences between people 0.95
00:15:39.860 because of monsters like Donald Trump and Putin.
00:15:44.480 So, for example, when the Rwandan genocide happened, 0.93
00:15:48.400 where the Houthi and, Tutsi and Hutu, I can't remember their names,
00:15:53.000 were, you know, cutting off each other with machetes and almost, I think it was 800,000 that killed.
00:16:04.720 The reason why those two tribes, both of which are obviously Rwandan and black,
00:16:09.380 the reason why they killed each other and hated each other and had antipathy towards each other
00:16:13.520 in the 90s was probably because Donald Trump taught him that.
00:16:17.500 Because there is no thing called coalitional psychology, us versus them,
00:16:23.240 where people create delineation between the in-group and out-group.
00:16:27.380 This is only mean guys like Netanyahu that teach you that.
00:16:30.360 For example, Islam certainly has absolutely no injunctions or no historical record
00:16:36.880 of it ever doing something to the other group that is non-Muslim, to the kuffar, okay, 0.99
00:16:44.320 who are nejis, who are dirty. 1.00
00:16:46.460 There's no proof of that, none whatsoever, okay? 0.98
00:16:50.500 But we don't need to prove the point that people don't look at each other as equal beings.
00:16:57.880 By the way, when we're talking about equality, it means very different things.
00:17:01.580 Equality under the law does not mean that we are indistinguishable, okay? 0.99
00:17:06.880 So that's what this idiot gerbil-brained Richard Gere doesn't understand. 0.99
00:17:12.420 If you go to Google Scholar right now and do a search on cross-cultural differences, 0.99
00:17:19.180 you will probably get, I mean, literally 10,000 articles, probably more.
00:17:25.560 There's a journal called Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, right?
00:17:29.080 That's, there's cultural anthropology.
00:17:31.700 What do these journals do?
00:17:32.940 They catalog cross-cultural differences.
00:17:36.820 What is inherent epistemologically to that scientific exercise?
00:17:42.600 It's the recognition that groups exhibit differences.
00:17:47.400 Now, sometimes these differences are morphological, yes?
00:17:51.100 So, for example, would it be wrong and evil?
00:17:55.600 And is it only Netanyahu that taught me that, on average, someone from South Sudan has darker skin
00:18:03.360 than someone from Sweden, indigenous Swedes, not Mohammed Ahmed Akbar al-Kbir from Sweden, right?
00:18:12.340 I'm talking indigenous Swedes.
00:18:14.000 Would it be racist to say that, on average, the skin hue of Swedes is less dark than that of South Sudanese?
00:18:23.760 No.
00:18:24.380 Would it be racist to say that the Dutch, on average, are taller than Indonesians?
00:18:32.880 No.
00:18:33.460 Now, does that mean that there isn't a single Indonesian person who is taller than a single Dutch person?
00:18:41.020 Of course not.
00:18:41.760 That's why there's this thing called, get ready, you ready for this?
00:18:44.940 It's called statistical distributions, right?
00:18:48.140 Men are taller than women, even though your Aunt Jenny is married to your Uncle Roscoe, and she's taller than him.
00:18:57.880 The fact that Aunt Jenny is taller than Uncle Roscoe doesn't negate the fact that, at the population level, men are taller than women. 1.00
00:19:08.500 So, because I saw an endless number of idiots on social media saying the following, 0.99
00:19:14.620 here is a beautiful Somali woman who just became a lieutenant police officer. 1.00
00:19:19.840 Is she garbage? 1.00
00:19:21.740 I mean, what kind of moron must you be to not understand that when Donald Trump says Somalia is garbage, 1.00
00:19:30.880 he is referring to the set of internalized realities that constitutes Somali society? 1.00
00:19:38.780 That doesn't mean that there aren't a million stunningly lovely Somali people.
00:19:46.060 Only either someone is willfully being political and partisan, or they are genuinely retarded in the true clinical sense. 0.97
00:19:58.820 They have the IQ of my shoe size. 0.99
00:20:03.400 Maybe that, maybe not.
00:20:05.380 Maybe they have the IQ of my discarded socks, right?
00:20:08.920 So, when you are making judgments about Ilhan Omar, she has a personhood.
00:20:15.540 That personhood might have some nice qualities, and she might also have some bad qualities. 0.99
00:20:21.560 When we put it all into the accounting of her personhood, we can decide she's the loveliest person in the world, 1.00
00:20:27.720 or she's the, she's a garbage person. 1.00
00:20:31.000 Again, I'm using Trump's vernacular. 1.00
00:20:33.320 So, therefore, there is absolutely nothing.
00:20:36.800 It's the most fundamentally human thing to judge others, right?
00:20:41.640 My wife and I, when we got together 26 years ago today,
00:20:45.840 remember, today is our 26th anniversary,
00:20:48.360 we decided, we judged each other in our totality,
00:20:52.800 and we each said,
00:20:55.060 yeah, this person that I'm sitting across from seems like the right kind of person I might want to settle down with and have a family.
00:21:03.320 We engaged in a judgmental process, right?
00:21:08.680 Other women I sat across, I arrived to a different judgment. 1.00
00:21:13.740 I thought they were garbage. 1.00
00:21:15.800 They were narcissistic. 1.00
00:21:17.440 They were idiotic. 1.00
00:21:18.860 They were vain. 1.00
00:21:20.140 They were self-absorbed.
00:21:21.400 They didn't agree with me that I was the sexiest man alive.
00:21:25.460 All of those reasons negates the fact that they should be my prospective wife, okay?
00:21:30.980 So, judging someone doesn't make you racist or bigoted.
00:21:35.600 Judge people.
00:21:36.920 That's okay.
00:21:37.740 It's fine.
00:21:38.640 What you don't want to do is hyperactivate your judgmental mechanism in wrong situations.
00:21:46.000 Life is about deploying the right strategy at the right time in the right amount.
00:21:52.860 Hence, my book, Suicidal Empathy.
00:21:54.860 So, when rectal lobotomized Richard Gere says we have profound kindness, how can you, we're not a kind of society that would judge others. 1.00
00:22:12.580 What are you talking about, moron? 1.00
00:22:14.580 What do you mean? 1.00
00:22:15.460 The United States is a society that has internalized a set of foundational principles on which the entire society has been erected on over the past 250 years.
00:22:29.380 Many of these values couldn't be any more different than Somali society. 1.00
00:22:35.440 That's why hundreds of thousands of Somalis tried to get into the U.S.
00:22:40.040 That's why no Americans tried to move to Somalia. 1.00
00:22:43.840 That is a measure of how garbage your society is. 0.98
00:22:48.560 How many people who are not Somali are rushing to the Somali embassies to receive permanent residency in Somalia? 1.00
00:22:56.320 Could that be a measure of how garbage your society is? 0.98
00:23:00.000 And that doesn't take away from the fact that I could play soccer with Somalis and I love every single one of them. 0.99
00:23:08.240 And they might jump into the river to save my life.
00:23:10.980 So again, making a statement about a religious ideology or a set of cultural values says nothing about individuals from that society.
00:23:25.460 Now, let me just very quickly here explain.
00:23:29.160 I mentioned, you know, height difference between the Dutch and Indonesians.
00:23:34.120 How about cuisine, cross-cultural cuisine?
00:23:37.320 Wouldn't we say, oh, Mexican food is spicier than Swedish food, right? 0.99
00:23:42.440 Are we saying that one is superior than the other?
00:23:46.900 No, we're recognizing that they are different, right?
00:23:50.160 So don't mistake equality under the law from indistinguishability.
00:23:56.440 Somalis are very distinguishable in the values that animate their daily lives from those of Americans.
00:24:07.420 Nothing could be clearer than that.
00:24:09.640 So it is literally the case that Richard Gere is, if not rectally lobotomized by a gerbil, 1.00
00:24:19.720 he is lobotomized by his stupidity, his imbecility, his lack of knowledge. 1.00
00:24:27.340 He just uses a shortcut to always demonstrate that he doesn't cast judgment on anybody else, 1.00
00:24:34.380 hence rendering him suicidally empathetic.
00:24:37.580 It's too bad that I've already sent off my book to the publisher
00:24:40.540 because I would have a whole section called The Rectal Lobotomy of Richard Gere.
00:24:46.680 That would be a beautiful reading.
00:24:49.280 Okay, cultures vary on, for example, how much they adhere to punctuality.
00:24:57.400 Different cultures have internalized different time norms.
00:25:02.420 So in one society, when I say I'm going to meet you at two o'clock,
00:25:06.280 it means between two and two thirty.
00:25:08.040 And in another culture, if you don't, if you show up at two o'clock,
00:25:11.520 then you have committed a serious social faux pas.
00:25:16.160 Cultures are different.
00:25:18.040 That's why we map cultures.
00:25:20.300 Okay.
00:25:21.240 How direct you are in a society varies.
00:25:25.380 In some societies, let's say Japanese societies,
00:25:28.000 there's a whole protocol of how you engage someone else
00:25:32.520 because you don't want to appear abrasive.
00:25:35.900 You want to appear proper.
00:25:37.700 It's a collectivist society.
00:25:39.260 When you go to Israel, 0.94
00:25:41.480 people will, you know, beat up the pregnant woman to sit first in a bus. 1.00
00:25:51.260 They're combative.
00:25:52.960 They're cantankerous.
00:25:54.180 Now watch, I'm going to receive now a bunch of emails from Israelis. 1.00
00:25:59.040 Why do you hate the Jews, Gatsad?
00:26:01.300 Jewish Gatsad.
00:26:02.440 Why did you insult the Israelis?
00:26:04.720 Right?
00:26:05.320 It is a fact that the way that Israelis speak and interact, 1.00
00:26:09.500 perhaps because they live in a very tough neighborhood,
00:26:12.000 is a very aggressive and hostile way.
00:26:15.480 That doesn't mean that there aren't millions of polite and lovely Israelis.
00:26:19.160 But we can safely say that the communication style of Israelis 0.92
00:26:23.840 is different than that of the Japanese, 0.96
00:26:26.860 beyond the language difference, right?
00:26:29.960 How direct they are,
00:26:31.760 how easily offended you might be varies across cultures.
00:26:36.400 Your handshake varies across cultures.
00:26:39.000 I remember when my wife was working as a HR head of human resources
00:26:45.700 at a media, you know, telemarketing company.
00:26:49.700 She would often interview men from Africa.
00:26:55.180 And she would tell me that the way they would shake her hand,
00:26:58.900 even though they, you know, they had nice voices,
00:27:01.560 you know, because you want,
00:27:02.680 certainly in telemarketing, someone that has a nice voice,
00:27:07.440 their handshake was very limp.
00:27:09.840 So it's not as though these guys were not masculine,
00:27:12.060 but they had a difference.
00:27:12.860 Whereas in the, you know, Western thing,
00:27:15.540 you know, it's an erect handshake,
00:27:17.320 it's a firm handshake,
00:27:18.760 it demonstrates, you know, self-assuredness.
00:27:21.800 So something as simple as a handshake
00:27:25.040 is, you know, is deployed differently
00:27:31.100 depending on the culture, I mean, that you come from.
00:27:34.000 If you teach a course in international advertising
00:27:36.380 or in international marketing or international business,
00:27:39.160 you can spend your entire course cataloging
00:27:44.420 all of the cross-cultural differences
00:27:46.480 that can result in huge misunderstandings,
00:27:51.840 you know, international business mishaps.
00:27:54.000 What is at the root of that
00:27:55.660 is that you're recognizing
00:27:57.060 that cross-cultural differences exist.
00:28:00.540 So again, when all the progressives
00:28:02.760 and all the Democrats and the Richard Giers 1.00
00:28:04.760 and all the other idiots say things like, 1.00
00:28:06.980 well, why are you castigating a whole group? 1.00
00:28:12.760 Well, because what Trump is saying
00:28:15.820 is that, again, not to be repetitive,
00:28:19.780 Somalia does not exhibit 0.98
00:28:23.020 the types of traits
00:28:25.640 that permit a society to flourish.
00:28:30.180 And I only shared a few, right?
00:28:31.980 I shared with you the corruption perception index,
00:28:34.940 I shared with you the world, you know,
00:28:38.180 press freedom index,
00:28:40.440 I shared with you the human freedom index,
00:28:42.580 I shared with you female genital mutilation. 0.99
00:28:45.120 99% of women in Somalia
00:28:47.960 have had female genital mutilation.
00:28:51.160 I mean, it's mind-blowing. 1.00
00:28:52.860 Like, what could be more garbage data? 0.99
00:28:56.820 It's a country that's failed. 1.00
00:28:59.040 It's a country that has tribal warlords 1.00
00:29:01.860 killing each other since forever.
00:29:03.740 However, does that mean
00:29:05.280 that every Somali is a bad person?
00:29:06.900 Of course not.
00:29:07.960 Is Somalia a failed society?
00:29:12.420 I mean, what would you need
00:29:13.680 to establish that it's failed
00:29:15.180 if you don't already have all those metrics?
00:29:17.700 I'll just mention one or two things,
00:29:19.200 I'll leave it at that.
00:29:21.240 Geert Hofstad, some of you may know him,
00:29:24.160 he was a Dutch psychologist
00:29:25.860 who famously in the early,
00:29:28.400 I think it was 1980,
00:29:29.640 did a study to map out
00:29:32.620 key cross-cultural differences and values.
00:29:36.980 And in the same way that
00:29:38.080 in individual psychology,
00:29:40.480 in personality psychology,
00:29:41.700 you talk about the big five, right?
00:29:43.980 There's the, what I call the ocean, right?
00:29:47.500 You know, openness to experience, 0.65
00:29:50.860 how neurotic you are, 0.86
00:29:53.700 how agreeable you are, 0.98
00:29:55.100 and so on and so forth,
00:29:56.680 those five, the big five traits.
00:29:59.260 Well, he developed something akin to those,
00:30:02.260 called, they're the big five,
00:30:03.800 but at the cultural level.
00:30:05.180 The idea being that
00:30:07.000 you can map different societies
00:30:10.800 on these five cultural traits
00:30:13.860 to establish, if you'd like,
00:30:16.740 the cultural personality profile of a society.
00:30:19.640 Well, what does this whole exercise imply?
00:30:23.900 It implies that cultures are different, right? 0.51
00:30:26.420 If we wouldn't have to do that
00:30:28.740 if we didn't know that cultures are different.
00:30:32.140 They're not indistinguishable.
00:30:34.140 Let me just mention what those traits are,
00:30:35.860 and I've actually published scientific papers
00:30:38.340 on some of this stuff.
00:30:41.160 So power distance index,
00:30:43.040 how hierarchical a society is.
00:30:45.740 In some societies,
00:30:46.720 you have very clearly established
00:30:49.880 and delineated hierarchies.
00:30:51.480 In other societies,
00:30:52.540 lesser so.
00:30:53.620 Now, I know this, for example,
00:30:55.300 in the way that people will address me
00:30:58.400 professionally.
00:30:59.940 So if you go to Germany,
00:31:01.640 it's Professor Dr. Gadsad, right?
00:31:04.840 Because, I mean,
00:31:05.660 the official full way to address
00:31:08.380 a professor who also is a holder of a PhD, right?
00:31:12.020 It's Professor Dr. So-and-so.
00:31:14.100 Whenever I receive an email from someone,
00:31:16.340 and I'm addressed as Professor Dr. So-and-so,
00:31:19.020 I usually know they're from Austria,
00:31:21.200 they're from Germany.
00:31:22.760 Very hierarchical societies.
00:31:24.940 Therefore, your titles matter
00:31:27.240 in delineating yourself from others.
00:31:29.380 If you go to Israel, 0.98
00:31:30.980 a three-year-old will call me Gad.
00:31:33.880 Because there it's supposed to be,
00:31:35.400 we all live communally in the kibbutz.
00:31:37.880 We're all equal.
00:31:39.080 So it's a very non-hierarchical society.
00:31:41.860 In Japan, it's a hierarchical society.
00:31:44.920 How you bow,
00:31:46.340 and the extent to which you bow,
00:31:48.340 and the whole ritual of bowing,
00:31:50.460 completely recognizes all of the integral rules
00:31:54.340 of the non-verbal cues of the bowing ritual.
00:31:59.260 That's hierarchical.
00:32:00.220 Individualism versus collectivism is another trait.
00:32:04.160 And that one,
00:32:05.240 I've actually published a paper
00:32:06.800 looking at individualism versus collectivism
00:32:10.520 and the likelihood of people
00:32:12.180 that come from those two societies
00:32:13.600 of doing well on a brainstorming session.
00:32:16.840 Very, very cool scientific paper
00:32:19.100 that I published a few years ago.
00:32:21.560 Well, of course,
00:32:24.120 Western societies tend to score high
00:32:25.840 on individualism.
00:32:27.400 The Middle East,
00:32:29.160 the Far East,
00:32:31.460 scores much higher on collectivism.
00:32:33.480 In one society,
00:32:34.400 I'm an individual first,
00:32:35.700 then I'm a member of a group.
00:32:37.140 In other societies,
00:32:38.300 I'm a member of a group first,
00:32:40.040 then I'm an individual.
00:32:41.860 Right?
00:32:42.180 My personal identity
00:32:43.560 is superseded by the group
00:32:46.100 that I belong to.
00:32:47.440 Okay?
00:32:48.800 That's, by the way,
00:32:49.660 exactly what happens
00:32:50.660 with Somali societies
00:32:51.860 in terms of how they delineate
00:32:53.700 which group they have a partenance in.
00:32:56.940 Well, Somali society, 0.96
00:32:58.980 I first belong to the Somali community.
00:33:02.040 I first belong to the Islamic community. 1.00
00:33:05.640 Fuck off, United States. 1.00
00:33:08.360 You score much lesser 1.00
00:33:10.140 in how I define my identity.
00:33:13.940 Okay?
00:33:14.780 That's not a good thing
00:33:16.160 because what made the United States great
00:33:18.380 is you could come from Italy
00:33:19.800 and you could come from Lebanon
00:33:21.620 and you could come from Venezuela
00:33:23.100 and you could maintain elements of that
00:33:26.540 but then you all band together
00:33:29.120 around the American ideals.
00:33:32.900 You all band together.
00:33:34.380 Yes, you might have come from Venezuela
00:33:35.840 or Lebanon
00:33:36.520 but now your allegiance
00:33:38.420 is to the United States.
00:33:40.800 I can assure you,
00:33:42.400 you can actually go and watch
00:33:44.380 video clips
00:33:45.940 of interviewing Somali communities
00:33:48.860 and most of them will tell you,
00:33:50.720 no, I'm Somali first,
00:33:51.920 I'm Muslim first. 0.86
00:33:53.760 Okay?
00:33:55.040 In Islam, you have the Ummah, 0.98
00:33:57.020 the Islamic nation.
00:33:58.440 So I could be from Indonesia
00:34:00.140 or I could be from Iraq
00:34:02.600 or I can be from Somalia,
00:34:04.980 okay,
00:34:05.240 or from Mali.
00:34:06.360 Those are very different races,
00:34:07.940 very different ethnicities.
00:34:09.020 But if we're all Muslim,
00:34:10.480 that means we are part of the Ummah.
00:34:12.600 That's who precedes all.
00:34:13.780 That matters,
00:34:15.680 rectally lobotomized Richard Gere.
00:34:17.960 That means that we are different.
00:34:20.880 That means the likelihood
00:34:21.780 of being able to assimilate
00:34:23.400 is varied
00:34:24.900 depending on how I internalize
00:34:27.040 my identity.
00:34:29.340 Let me just mention the other traits
00:34:31.440 that Hofstad had talked about.
00:34:33.720 Masculinity versus femininity. 0.96
00:34:34.780 Femininity,
00:34:35.620 it's basically how much
00:34:37.540 there is a internalized,
00:34:40.500 strict code of,
00:34:42.700 you know,
00:34:43.120 for example,
00:34:44.740 gender roles 0.99
00:34:45.440 or, you know,
00:34:46.320 is there a preference
00:34:47.340 for achievement
00:34:48.240 versus cooperation?
00:34:50.480 Achievement is typically viewed
00:34:51.680 as more masculine.
00:34:53.320 Cooperation is viewed
00:34:54.440 as more feminine.
00:34:55.460 So for example,
00:34:55.940 when we now talk about
00:34:56.740 the feminization
00:34:57.440 of the university,
00:34:59.500 well,
00:35:00.440 come to some of the
00:35:01.200 departmental meetings
00:35:02.080 that I was at
00:35:02.660 that were led by women.
00:35:03.920 It's as if you're
00:35:04.520 in a kindergarten class.
00:35:05.680 How is everybody doing?
00:35:07.440 You're all looking so nice.
00:35:09.300 It's so nice to see
00:35:10.380 all of you, right?
00:35:11.540 It's all done
00:35:12.460 with a lot of empathy,
00:35:13.900 with a lot of cooperation.
00:35:15.740 How are your feelings doing?
00:35:17.620 Now,
00:35:17.820 that doesn't mean
00:35:18.380 that every man
00:35:19.660 is of one type
00:35:20.540 and every woman
00:35:21.180 is of the other type,
00:35:22.200 but it means that
00:35:23.080 there are statistically
00:35:24.640 predictable
00:35:26.960 distributional patterns, okay?
00:35:29.880 Uncertainty avoidance
00:35:30.800 is another one
00:35:31.420 of those cultural
00:35:32.040 traits.
00:35:32.420 How much does a society
00:35:34.040 tolerate ambiguity
00:35:36.300 and uncertainty, right?
00:35:38.440 Try to go
00:35:39.260 in some of the countries
00:35:40.340 in the Middle East
00:35:41.280 having a Mohawk
00:35:42.600 with plenty of tattoos.
00:35:44.460 That's probably going
00:35:45.500 to be less acceptable
00:35:47.040 than in other societies
00:35:48.860 where there's a lot more,
00:35:50.180 you know,
00:35:52.220 tolerance towards
00:35:54.400 uncertainty avoidance.
00:35:55.780 And then there is
00:35:56.500 what's called
00:35:56.940 long-term
00:35:57.440 versus short-term
00:35:58.280 orientation.
00:35:59.260 This is how a society
00:36:01.140 kind of contextualizes
00:36:03.700 itself
00:36:04.300 vis-a-vis,
00:36:05.900 you know,
00:36:06.200 does it focus more
00:36:07.040 on future-oriented
00:36:08.020 long-term virtues
00:36:09.260 or, you know,
00:36:10.460 immediate virtues.
00:36:12.980 So,
00:36:13.260 it's how you view time.
00:36:15.020 So,
00:36:15.160 you can imagine
00:36:15.660 the earlier example
00:36:17.100 that I mentioned
00:36:17.660 with punctuality
00:36:18.760 might be subsumed
00:36:20.180 within that trait.
00:36:21.020 And now,
00:36:21.360 more recently,
00:36:21.860 there's been a fifth
00:36:22.860 trait added
00:36:23.660 called
00:36:24.400 indulgence
00:36:25.220 versus restraint.
00:36:26.200 some societies
00:36:28.340 are more about
00:36:29.660 being indulgent
00:36:31.540 and, you know,
00:36:32.260 more immediate gratifications.
00:36:33.800 Others are more about,
00:36:35.320 you know,
00:36:35.800 there's a stricter
00:36:36.960 code that you have
00:36:38.360 to follow,
00:36:39.240 save for a rainy day.
00:36:40.760 So, again,
00:36:41.680 some of those traits
00:36:42.880 could be internalized
00:36:43.940 at the individual level
00:36:44.960 or they can manifest
00:36:46.100 themselves
00:36:46.600 at the cultural level.
00:36:48.700 And when they do so,
00:36:49.900 they result
00:36:50.640 in very predictable
00:36:51.940 cultural differences
00:36:53.440 that have
00:36:54.500 very clear
00:36:55.680 downstream
00:36:56.640 effects.
00:36:59.400 Okay?
00:37:00.260 So,
00:37:01.060 let's conclude
00:37:01.840 and then I'll head back
00:37:03.480 to spending time
00:37:04.980 with my wife
00:37:06.180 and kids
00:37:07.220 who are coming home soon
00:37:08.280 for our 26th anniversary.
00:37:12.620 Cultures
00:37:13.420 are different
00:37:14.960 in a myriad of ways.
00:37:19.120 They're different
00:37:19.720 in their behavioral patterns,
00:37:21.240 they're different
00:37:21.760 in their cultural traditions,
00:37:23.220 in their attire,
00:37:24.680 in their languages,
00:37:26.460 in their customs,
00:37:27.480 in their religions,
00:37:28.680 in every conceivable way.
00:37:31.320 And, of course,
00:37:31.820 that's what makes
00:37:32.580 the world a beautiful place.
00:37:33.740 That's what makes us
00:37:34.700 want to visit the world
00:37:36.160 and enmesh ourselves
00:37:38.960 in the rich tapestry
00:37:40.680 of, you know,
00:37:43.200 cultures.
00:37:44.460 Of course,
00:37:45.100 there are human universals,
00:37:47.060 right?
00:37:47.320 As an evolutionary psychologist,
00:37:48.780 I fully understand
00:37:50.060 and appreciate
00:37:50.620 that there are
00:37:52.180 underneath all these
00:37:53.420 cross-cultural differences
00:37:54.600 certain fundamental,
00:37:57.540 common,
00:37:59.240 universal traits
00:38:00.220 that
00:38:01.060 precisely speak
00:38:02.500 to the fact
00:38:03.000 that we share
00:38:04.220 a biological heritage.
00:38:05.880 But again,
00:38:07.560 when we are here
00:38:08.440 pointing to the fact
00:38:09.660 that
00:38:10.520 Somali society
00:38:12.780 might be
00:38:14.300 lesser than
00:38:16.160 American society,
00:38:17.640 there's nothing racist
00:38:18.720 about that.
00:38:19.540 There's nothing
00:38:19.960 bigoted about that.
00:38:21.700 Every single person
00:38:24.320 who feigns
00:38:25.960 that they are
00:38:27.000 offended by it
00:38:29.020 absolutely knows
00:38:30.700 in the privacy
00:38:31.780 of their thoughts 1.00
00:38:32.560 that they're full of shit. 1.00
00:38:34.160 But they have to say that 1.00
00:38:35.980 because they've been
00:38:36.780 inculcated with the reflex
00:38:38.380 that it is gauche
00:38:39.820 to point to another culture
00:38:41.800 and argue
00:38:42.680 that they might do things
00:38:44.640 less well than you do,
00:38:46.640 especially if that culture
00:38:48.760 is Islamic.
00:38:50.140 Allah,
00:38:50.820 Allah,
00:38:51.540 Allah,
00:38:52.120 Allah,
00:38:52.580 no,
00:38:52.880 no.
00:38:54.140 Okay?
00:38:54.800 We wouldn't want
00:38:55.840 to ever criticize
00:38:57.040 in Islamic society.
00:38:58.300 We don't want to criticize
00:38:59.180 in Islamic society
00:39:00.380 where the people
00:39:01.560 from that society
00:39:02.360 have darker skin
00:39:03.300 than us.
00:39:03.820 Then we are
00:39:04.340 doubly racist
00:39:05.500 and bigoted. 0.99
00:39:06.640 Okay?
00:39:07.340 So,
00:39:08.000 Richard Gere,
00:39:09.220 why don't you spend
00:39:10.020 the weekend
00:39:10.580 going to a pet store
00:39:12.240 finding,
00:39:13.120 you know,
00:39:13.620 more gerbils
00:39:14.280 to have fun with.
00:39:15.740 Leave the heavy thinking
00:39:16.940 for those
00:39:18.260 that are well-trained
00:39:19.480 to do the heavy thinking
00:39:20.500 and you could
00:39:21.620 F off back 1.00
00:39:22.440 to your bullshit movies 1.00
00:39:23.720 and maybe 1.00
00:39:26.380 grow a spine,
00:39:27.480 maybe have some 0.85
00:39:28.220 testicular fortitude 0.95
00:39:29.360 and stop
00:39:30.460 gaslighting 1.00
00:39:31.240 the idiots 1.00
00:39:31.840 who actually 1.00
00:39:33.240 turn to you
00:39:34.440 for their opinions.
00:39:37.380 Shabbat shalom,
00:39:38.080 everybody.
00:39:39.060 Have a great weekend.
00:39:40.820 Don't forget,
00:39:42.220 Suicidal Empathy
00:39:42.940 will soon be ready
00:39:43.740 for pre-order.
00:39:44.840 Every single one of you
00:39:46.200 better pre-order it.
00:39:48.240 Take care, everybody.
00:39:48.980 Cheers.