The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - May 26, 2026


Suicidal Empathy Video - Produced by the Wonderful Team of PragerU (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_1000)


Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

140.41312

Word count

818

Sentence count

59

Harmful content

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 How do civilizations die?
00:00:04.040 The great British historian Arnold Toynbee asked himself this question.
00:00:08.820 Here is his answer.
00:00:10.320 They die not by murder, but by suicide.
00:00:13.160 We in the West, the inheritors of the greatest civilization ever created, are witnessing
00:00:18.880 this right before our very eyes.
00:00:21.460 I call this phenomenon suicidal empathy.
00:00:24.900 As an evolutionary behavioral scientist, I believe empathy is a noble virtue and a central
00:00:30.560 feature of our humanity.
00:00:32.260 The Oxford Dictionary defines empathy as the ability to understand and share the feelings
00:00:37.760 of another.
00:00:38.760 It sounds great, and often is, especially when you're empathetic toward the people close
00:00:43.280 to you, your spouse, your children, your friends.
00:00:46.900 But empathy can lead us astray.
00:00:48.880 When empathy serves as the only filter for decision-making, replacing a rational and
00:00:53.860 adaptive calculus of prudence, discernment, and justice, empathy can cause great harm.
00:01:00.260 In fact, it can be fatal. The serial killer, Ted Bundy, used empathy to lure women to their violent
00:01:08.020 deaths. He would pretend to be injured, sometimes with a fake sling or cast on his arm. He would
00:01:14.340 ask his soon-to-be victim for help loading items into his car, and then, when they turned their
00:01:20.500 back, he would strike. Bundy killed through kindness, exploiting the natural proclivity
00:01:26.360 to be empathetic. Suicidal empathy endangers not just well-meaning individuals, it threatens
00:01:32.780 entire societies, indeed, all of Western civilization. Let's look at a couple of general
00:01:38.940 and then more specific examples. Mass immigration. In 2015, the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel,
00:01:46.600 instituted an open-door immigration policy, especially for Muslim migrants, most of whom
00:01:52.620 had no intention of assimilating into their host societies. Perhaps her suicidal empathy 0.88
00:01:58.240 toward migrants was meant as penance for her country's crimes against humanity. But a decade 0.89
00:02:04.200 later, Germany, as well as most of Europe, nearly all of whom have followed Merkel's example,
00:02:10.480 is dealing with the consequences. Vastly increased rates of rape, murder, and social disintegration.
00:02:16.600 Defund the police
00:02:18.900 In the wake of the death of drug-addicted felon George Floyd in May 2020, an idea arose,
00:02:25.700 namely that a racist police system was murdering innocent people of color.
00:02:30.960 Though this was easily refuted by the actual data, suicidally empathetic mayors and city
00:02:36.320 councils in places like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Philadelphia cut their police budgets.
00:02:42.480 Who suffered?
00:02:43.100 The very people who were supposed to be protected.
00:02:46.380 Let's look at a few specific cases of suicidal empathy.
00:02:50.340 Canadian-born Omar Khadr joined the Taliban and murdered an American soldier in Afghanistan.
00:02:56.820 The U.S. gave him a 40-year sentence, but turned him over to Canadian authorities after
00:03:02.120 10 years at Guantanamo Bay.
00:03:04.280 Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government, which suffered from stage 4 suicidal empathy,
00:03:09.940 gave Khadr $8 million and apologized for his detention.
00:03:15.140 The University of Minnesota Twin Cities Medical School
00:03:18.100 required the class of 2026 to pledge their support
00:03:22.220 for diversity, equity, and inclusion,
00:03:25.100 not to mention honoring all indigenous ways of healing
00:03:28.460 that have been historically marginalized
00:03:30.780 by Western medicine.
00:03:32.760 Because as they wheel you into the operating room,
00:03:35.780 what you really want to know is that your surgeon
00:03:38.540 who got there for some reason other than merit
00:03:40.860 is up on how the local tribes handled medical problems 500 years ago. Under the Biden White
00:03:47.820 House, the Federal Aviation Administration implemented a recruitment program for people
00:03:53.460 with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities. Imagine how safe you'll feel
00:03:59.560 when that woke logic reaches the cockpit. No society can long survive such an explosion
00:04:07.000 of suicidal empathy. Is there a cure? Yes. But first, we must understand where this madness
00:04:14.020 comes from. Suicidal empathy is driven by misplaced guilt. The suicidally empathetic
00:04:20.100 person feels guilty for being born in the prosperous, free West. We might call this
00:04:26.260 privilege guilt, a common affliction among Westerners, especially affluent, highly educated
00:04:32.500 ones. To inoculate yourself against this parasitic idea, you must take at the very least these three
00:04:38.840 actions. First, never shut off your rational mind. Suicidal empathy tries to override your capacity
00:04:46.400 for reason. It hijacks your desire to be kind, misdirects it to the wrong recipient in the wrong
00:04:53.500 amount, and in so doing harms you and others. Second, always ask, what happens next? Cause and
00:05:01.320 effect is an immutable law. Actions have consequences, sometimes very bad ones. Third,
00:05:08.000 don't be tolerant of all viewpoints. Not everything is as good as everything else.
00:05:13.660 Some ideas are better than others. Some cultures are better than others. Some religions are more 0.96
00:05:19.380 peaceful than others. These actions were once the default operating system for nearly everyone born
00:05:25.640 in the West. Now, they are a matter of civilizational survival. The good news is this, suicide is a
00:05:32.600 choice. The West still has time to save itself, but not much. I'm Gad Saad, author of Suicidal
00:05:39.220 Empathy, Dying to be Kind, for Prager University. Thank you for watching this video. To keep Prager
00:05:45.620 U videos free, please consider making a tax-deductible donation.