The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - October 24, 2024


The Parasitic Ideological Detractors of the Family Unit (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_731)


Episode Stats


Length

19 minutes

Words per minute

144.70801

Word count

2,796

Sentence count

175

Harmful content

Misogyny

11

sentences flagged

Toxicity

9

sentences flagged

Hate speech

9

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode, Dr. Bruce Lipton talks about the evolutionary mechanisms that explain family dynamics, and the parasitic ideas that attack the family unit. Why is there such hostility toward the family? Why does the family matter so much to us?

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 .
00:00:00.160 So I'd like to talk about some of the evolutionary mechanisms that explain family dynamics,
00:00:05.920 and then I'll talk about some of the parasitic ideas that attack the family unit.
00:00:12.560 Why, at least in academia, why is there such hostility toward the family?
00:00:17.180 So those are the two key themes that I'll be covering.
00:00:21.720 So how did I first become interested in evolutionary psychology?
00:00:25.840 I read the following book, Homicide, which I highly recommend for everybody in the audience.
00:00:31.460 It's a book that looks at patterns of criminality from an evolutionary lens.
00:00:36.400 And there are two phenomena that are very relevant to the family.
00:00:39.780 These are ugly phenomena, bad things that happen in families.
00:00:43.060 Number one, the Cinderella effect.
00:00:46.280 I don't know if anybody's heard of it.
00:00:47.560 You've all heard of Cinderella.
00:00:49.040 She's the evil stepmother. 1.00
00:00:50.180 Well, it turns out that the number one predictor of there being child abuse in a home by a factor of a hundredfold greater than the second variable is if there is a stepparent in the home.
00:01:03.900 So simply having biologically intact families serves as a great protection against child abuse.
00:01:10.140 Now, that doesn't mean that most step-parents are evil, but to the extent that we want to try to mitigate child abuse, having biologically intact families helps.
00:01:20.920 The second phenomenon that I learned in this book many years ago is who's the number one most dangerous person in a woman's life around the world throughout all of time period.
00:01:33.260 It's not the guy hiding in the tree trying to attack you.
00:01:36.500 It's usually the husband.
00:01:38.760 And what is the number one reason that husbands go into homicidal rages, which again is perfectly explained from an evolutionary perspective?
00:01:47.300 It's because of suspected or realized infidelity.
00:01:51.780 Why are men so non-receptive to the idea of sexual infidelity?
00:01:58.580 Because there is such a thing as paternity uncertainty.
00:02:01.240 The idea is that there is no paternity uncertainty, but there is paternity uncertainty.
00:02:07.060 We are a bi-parental species.
00:02:09.180 Human dads invest a lot in their children.
00:02:12.100 And therefore, all of us in this room come from ancestors that cared that their women didn't go around with every second guy.
00:02:19.180 Because then I'd be spending 18 years raising the child of the sexy gardener rather than my own child.
00:02:24.840 Continuing with paternity uncertainty, when a child is born, across cultures, we have here, I think, something like 60 countries represented.
00:02:37.980 Across all cultures, when a child is born, what the people around the family say is that the child looks exactly like the father.
00:02:46.720 Even though, objectively speaking, that is simply not true.
00:02:51.260 And the mother's side of the family are the ones who are likely to insist that the baby looks exactly like the father.
00:02:58.080 So we didn't grow up with DNA paternity tests, but we've evolved cultural norms that try to convince us,
00:03:06.140 don't worry, this is your child, invest in that child.
00:03:08.720 So, for example, if you look at those two gorgeous children, please tell me that they look like me.
00:03:17.100 Otherwise, my wife has a lot of explaining to them. 1.00
00:03:20.500 She's sitting right here.
00:03:22.620 So anyway, so there are many of these phenomena that very much are in the family context
00:03:28.480 that demonstrate how our minds, the architecture of our mind has evolved precisely in the context of family dynamics.
00:03:36.580 So to have parasitic ideas that try to dissuade us from having families is literally anti-human nature.
00:03:46.000 Now this, I love to tell this story because it, well, you'll see in a second why.
00:03:51.880 So as I told you a minute ago, when a child is born, people say he looks exactly like the father.
00:03:58.580 But this is the first example ever where that phenomenon happened in utero.
00:04:04.120 Let me explain.
00:04:04.820 So when our, so my wife and I have two children together.
00:04:10.120 Yes, we are below the 2.1 replacement rate and I apologize for that.
00:04:15.060 But this is the photo of any of you who've had children, the first ultrasound.
00:04:21.080 You put it up on the fridge.
00:04:22.920 You're very proud to be new parents.
00:04:24.720 And so this is the exact image that we had on our fridge when my mother-in-law came over.
00:04:32.260 Now this image, you can't tell if it's a dinosaur.
00:04:35.680 You can't tell if it's a COVID virus.
00:04:37.780 But apparently my mother-in-law looked at it and said, oh my God, Dad, the baby looks exactly like you.
00:04:45.980 So maybe I should be worried about my wife.
00:04:49.400 Because apparently my mother-in-law was trying to convince me that it is my child, even when the child was inside my wife's stomach. 0.99
00:04:56.860 So there are four key Darwinian mechanisms that drive much of our behavior.
00:05:04.140 There's the survival mechanism, things that are related to survival.
00:05:08.620 There's reproduction mechanism, things related to sexual selection.
00:05:12.800 Of relevance to this conference is the third one, kin selection.
00:05:18.000 Kin selection refers to why it is that we would have evolved altruistic behavior towards our kin.
00:05:24.820 Well, if you understand that evolution operates at the gene level,
00:05:29.020 then it makes perfect evolutionary sense for me to jump into the river to save three of my children.
00:05:34.860 Even though I may perish, even though I may die, from an evolutionary calculus perspective,
00:05:40.000 it makes perfect sense for this type of altruism to have evolved.
00:05:44.940 And so kin selection, again, of relevance to this conference, family dynamics,
00:05:50.300 is embedded within the architecture of the human mind.
00:05:54.260 So nothing could be more natural than to promote family life.
00:06:00.740 So what are some family dynamics that are very much related to evolution?
00:06:05.540 I'll talk maybe about the first couple.
00:06:07.800 So as I said, we are a bi-parental species.
00:06:10.840 Human dads are truly super dads.
00:06:13.200 We may not invest as much as mothers do, 1.00
00:06:15.740 but compared to other animals, we truly are super dads.
00:06:19.300 And our children have a very long period of juvenility,
00:06:23.140 meaning that it takes a very long time of investing in them
00:06:28.100 before they enter the sexual maturity.
00:06:32.000 And so it makes perfect evolutionary sense for us to have evolved
00:06:35.620 the desire for monogamous long-term coupling.
00:06:38.620 So romantic love is an emotional system that evolved precisely because we are a bi-parental species.
00:06:44.920 The second phenomenon that I'll quickly talk about is parental investment theory.
00:06:50.460 Parental investment theory explains patterns of sex differences across every sexually reproducing species,
00:06:58.360 including humans.
00:06:59.200 And it basically says the following.
00:07:01.600 You look within a species at the two sexes.
00:07:06.240 Whichever sex provides the greater minimal obligatory parental investment 0.81
00:07:11.740 is the sex that's going to be smaller. 0.89
00:07:14.160 It's the sex that's going to be more sexually choosy, 0.97
00:07:17.740 that's going to be less risk-taking.
00:07:19.920 Why?
00:07:20.600 Because if for women's case they make a wrong maid choice, 1.00
00:07:25.060 the costs loom much larger than it does for men, for obvious reasons.
00:07:28.780 And so patterns of sex differences exist not because of random socialization,
00:07:34.940 not because of the patriarchy, not because of cultural learning.
00:07:39.120 They are embedded within the most fundamental features of our biology.
00:07:43.020 One more point, I won't talk all in this third one since we're talking about fathers.
00:07:50.100 It turns out that whether a father is present in the home or not present in the home,
00:07:55.800 it affects something as physiologically intimate as when a young girl first has her menstrual cycle.
00:08:04.460 So imagine here the interaction between an environmental variable,
00:08:08.580 presence or absence of a father,
00:08:10.280 and something as fundamental as when you first have your menstrual cycle.
00:08:14.420 When a father is absent from the home,
00:08:17.160 young girls enter menarche, which is the first menstrual cycle, earlier. 0.65
00:08:23.300 In other words, they enter the reproductive window earlier if her father is not absent.
00:08:28.140 So again, there are very profound psychological, emotional and physiological reasons
00:08:34.200 why it makes sense for young children to grow up in biologically intact families.
00:08:40.280 Speaking of this idea of kin, kin is the fancy term for families, bloodlines,
00:08:48.620 I just want to mention a few studies that have been done,
00:08:51.140 some of them have been done by myself and some of my teammates,
00:08:54.420 some of my co-authors,
00:08:56.220 looking at, for example, gift giving.
00:08:59.000 How much we spend on gifts is perfectly correlated to the genetic relatedness between the giver and the recipient.
00:09:07.740 Now many people don't know this on a conscious level,
00:09:11.100 but we've evolved the mental calculus to exactly strategically allocate our investments based on genetic relatedness.
00:09:19.280 How much money I give to various family members if I win the lottery follows that.
00:09:25.900 Wills, when you pass away, what you bequeath follows that.
00:09:30.140 How much pain you're willing to incur physically to help a family member follows that.
00:09:35.940 So again, this calculus is embedded within the architecture of the human mind.
00:09:41.220 Families are a fundamental feature of being human.
00:09:44.520 From a cultural perspective, many of, you know, the biblical stories, the Greek tragedies,
00:09:54.420 the Shakespearean plays, the top television shows and movies,
00:09:58.340 all happen in family contexts.
00:10:01.840 And that's not by accident, it's precisely because both some of the most beautiful things
00:10:06.820 and some of the most dramatic things happen within family dynamics.
00:10:12.200 Okay, so now I'm going to switch to,
00:10:15.200 if we have evolved to build families, to reproduce, to invest in children,
00:10:20.740 why are there such movements that are attacking families?
00:10:25.440 And so before I do that, let me just mention with this one slide,
00:10:28.200 government policies, products, commercial products, political systems
00:10:37.060 that do not recognize our innate human nature, they always fail.
00:10:41.780 You can't create policies, products, and, you know, political systems
00:10:48.400 that are antithetical to human nature.
00:10:49.920 Let me mention three cases.
00:10:50.920 So in the U.S. right now, many of you know,
00:10:55.140 a lot of progressive district attorneys and progressive judges
00:10:59.460 are trying to do away with, you know, a punishing penal system.
00:11:04.080 The idea is that a criminal has already been victimized by society,
00:11:09.680 so it would be wrong of you to double victimize them by punishing them.
00:11:14.560 But of course that violates a fundamental feature of, you know,
00:11:18.180 the consequences of your action, right?
00:11:20.280 So, for example, in San Francisco now,
00:11:22.480 if you steal less than $950, well, then that's just, that's okay.
00:11:28.380 It's only when you get to $951 that maybe will pay attention to you.
00:11:33.420 It doesn't take a fancy evolutionary psychologist
00:11:35.720 to recognize that that's going to result in negative consequences on society.
00:11:41.580 Consequences matter.
00:11:43.300 You should be held accountable for your actions.
00:11:45.100 The second example is one that I often discuss when I teach consumer psychology.
00:11:51.840 So if you want to understand the psychology of women,
00:11:56.760 study romance novels.
00:11:58.560 Why?
00:11:59.380 Because romance novels are almost exclusively read by women around the world.
00:12:04.460 And the male archetype in the romance novel is the exact same male archetype
00:12:12.340 in every single romance novel that's ever been written.
00:12:16.360 He's tall.
00:12:17.720 He's a prince.
00:12:19.360 He's also a neurosurgeon.
00:12:21.560 He wrestles alligators on his six-pack and he wins.
00:12:26.300 And he's reckless and a risk-taker and he can only be tamed by the love of this one woman.
00:12:32.420 I just described every romance novel ever written.
00:12:36.040 Now, there is a company that was progressive
00:12:39.620 that wanted to get rid of this view of toxic masculinity. 1.00
00:12:45.460 And so they created a romance novel line
00:12:48.480 where the male archetype was super sensitive, 0.65
00:12:52.800 where he cried a lot, where he sucked his thumb, 0.75
00:12:55.220 where he went into a fetal position.
00:12:57.800 Guess what the women in Bolivia and Nigeria and Japan said? 1.00
00:13:02.940 No.
00:13:04.060 I'm not interested in your progressive new definition of male. 0.93
00:13:08.840 I'm very good with my own sexual fantasies.
00:13:11.640 Thank you.
00:13:12.460 So again, if you create products that are contrary to human nature,
00:13:16.520 the market will correct you.
00:13:18.760 Okay?
00:13:19.760 And the third example,
00:13:21.100 which speaks to political systems that are antithetical to human nature,
00:13:26.200 E.O. Wilson, some of you may know him.
00:13:28.300 He recently passed away.
00:13:30.260 And one of my great regrets is I never got to know him,
00:13:33.120 even though we have a lot of scientific topics in common.
00:13:38.220 He was a Harvard biologist who studied social ants.
00:13:43.640 Now, social ants have a very unique social structure.
00:13:48.280 There is a reproductive queen and everybody else is equal. 1.00
00:13:52.500 They're all worker ants and soldier ants.
00:13:54.900 And so when he was asked,
00:13:57.560 Professor Wilson,
00:13:58.940 what do you think of Marxism slash communism?
00:14:01.960 He said,
00:14:02.780 great idea, wrong species.
00:14:05.660 Meaning that if you try to impose communism,
00:14:09.180 where we're all supposed to be equal outcomes,
00:14:11.860 to humans,
00:14:13.020 where we're not equal.
00:14:14.600 We're equal under the law.
00:14:16.460 But we're not equal.
00:14:17.540 Some of us work harder.
00:14:18.580 Some of us are more talented,
00:14:19.840 less talented,
00:14:20.640 taller,
00:14:21.100 shorter,
00:14:21.860 funnier,
00:14:22.700 more charisma,
00:14:23.320 less charisma.
00:14:24.840 And so to try to impose a political system
00:14:27.040 that is contrary to human nature,
00:14:28.920 it will fail,
00:14:29.760 as it has failed in every society
00:14:31.900 that's ever been trying.
00:14:33.540 So it's important to understand evolutionary theory
00:14:36.180 because it can help us design better policies,
00:14:38.980 better products,
00:14:39.800 better political systems,
00:14:40.880 and so on.
00:14:42.180 So what are some parasitic ideas?
00:14:46.480 So this comes from my two books ago,
00:14:50.000 my last book.
00:14:50.680 I think I heard them mention it in Hungarian.
00:14:53.320 The book is called The Parasitic Mind,
00:14:56.360 where I talk about how these parasitic ideas
00:15:00.320 were first spawned on university campuses,
00:15:03.620 how they proliferated outside the university,
00:15:07.040 how they become the prime minister of Canada,
00:15:10.660 where I come from, regrettably,
00:15:13.420 and then what could be some mind vaccines
00:15:16.940 that we could use to try to inoculate us
00:15:19.540 against some of these parasitic ideas.
00:15:21.940 Well,
00:15:22.200 these parasitic ideas are actually at the root
00:15:24.740 of many of the attacks on the family.
00:15:27.640 So postmodernism
00:15:28.760 is probably the granddaddy of all idea pathogens
00:15:33.180 because it basically purports
00:15:35.360 that there are no universals
00:15:37.460 other than the one universal,
00:15:39.220 that there are no universals.
00:15:41.500 And so what is mother?
00:15:43.940 What is father?
00:15:44.800 What do you mean male?
00:15:45.880 What do you mean female?
00:15:46.900 That's all up for debate.
00:15:48.440 There are no universals
00:15:50.280 that we could agree on.
00:15:51.660 So it offers you
00:15:52.740 the philosophical framework
00:15:54.960 to then have some of the insanity
00:15:57.860 that we see today.
00:15:58.940 It's postmodernism
00:16:00.040 that allows us
00:16:00.920 to then have debates
00:16:02.300 as to what is
00:16:03.120 whether men can menstruate or not.
00:16:06.740 Radical feminism is another one. 1.00
00:16:09.340 So here are two quotes
00:16:10.380 that perfectly capture
00:16:12.100 some of the animus
00:16:14.660 that radical feminists 1.00
00:16:16.040 hold towards the family.
00:16:17.860 So let me read both of them.
00:16:20.360 We can't destroy the inequities
00:16:22.080 between men and women 0.90
00:16:23.700 until we destroy marriage.
00:16:25.580 That seems very nice.
00:16:27.220 And then the next one,
00:16:28.420 the nuclear family 0.98
00:16:29.600 must be destroyed 0.82
00:16:30.800 whatever its ultimate meaning.
00:16:33.240 The breakup of families
00:16:34.420 is an objectively
00:16:35.420 revolutionary process.
00:16:37.700 And we also have heard
00:16:38.540 marriage is a patriarchal tool. 0.84
00:16:41.620 We've heard that
00:16:42.420 heterosexual mating 0.99
00:16:44.680 is inherently a form of rape 1.00
00:16:47.960 because it is penetrative.
00:16:49.880 This is not me engaging in satire.
00:16:52.440 This is really what is taught
00:16:53.720 in women's studies courses.
00:16:55.800 Well, it doesn't again
00:16:56.800 take a fancy evolutionary psychologist
00:16:58.620 to realize that
00:16:59.980 for a sexually reproducing species
00:17:01.840 maybe having penetrative sex
00:17:04.320 is something that we need to do. 0.96
00:17:07.540 Social constructivism
00:17:08.980 is another idea pathogen
00:17:10.640 that is problematic
00:17:11.400 in all sorts of ways
00:17:12.520 because it purports
00:17:14.020 that there are no
00:17:15.180 biological blueprints.
00:17:16.680 We are all born
00:17:17.540 tabula rasa,
00:17:18.700 empty minds,
00:17:19.820 and it's only
00:17:20.500 the vagaries of socialization
00:17:23.020 that teach us what to be.
00:17:24.380 So there is no such thing
00:17:26.380 as an innate role
00:17:28.420 of fatherhood,
00:17:29.440 innate role of motherhood. 1.00
00:17:31.080 Anything goes,
00:17:32.300 it's just whatever society
00:17:33.520 teaches you.
00:17:36.120 Biophobia
00:17:36.760 is something that I felt
00:17:38.840 experienced throughout my career.
00:17:41.020 I tried to
00:17:41.800 darwinize the behavioral sciences,
00:17:44.960 applying biology
00:17:46.040 to understand human behavior,
00:17:47.860 while most social scientists
00:17:49.420 detest biology 0.80
00:17:50.840 because most social scientists
00:17:52.800 argue that
00:17:53.380 what makes us human
00:17:54.420 is that we transcend
00:17:55.760 our biology.
00:17:57.080 Yes,
00:17:57.420 biology matters
00:17:58.260 for the mosquito,
00:17:59.260 for the zebra,
00:18:00.140 for the dog,
00:18:01.240 but come on,
00:18:01.860 professor,
00:18:02.280 it doesn't apply for humans.
00:18:03.880 It doesn't apply
00:18:04.500 to consumers.
00:18:05.580 Well,
00:18:05.800 of course it applies
00:18:06.480 to consumers.
00:18:07.160 We don't exist
00:18:07.720 outside of our biology.
00:18:10.700 Other parasitic ideas
00:18:13.440 that attack the family,
00:18:15.200 many collectivist ideologies,
00:18:17.280 Marxism,
00:18:18.580 Socialism,
00:18:19.380 Communism,
00:18:20.820 Black Lives Matter,
00:18:22.980 even communal farming
00:18:24.880 in the Israeli context,
00:18:27.080 in Kibbutzim,
00:18:28.460 had some animus
00:18:30.080 to the family
00:18:30.720 because they believed
00:18:31.940 that you should rear children
00:18:33.580 in communal environments,
00:18:35.620 not within family units.
00:18:37.540 So whenever you have
00:18:38.500 a collectivist ideology,
00:18:40.360 you often have an attack
00:18:41.680 on family structure.
00:18:44.020 And then,
00:18:44.320 of course,
00:18:44.780 the most recent idea pathogen,
00:18:46.400 please don't have children
00:18:48.280 if you love Mother Earth.
00:18:50.260 And this is what
00:18:51.180 climate change extremism
00:18:52.980 is all about.
00:18:54.940 So there you have it.
00:18:58.760 Now,
00:18:59.400 this next slide,
00:19:00.240 I have it up
00:19:00.900 because my most recent book,
00:19:03.140 which just came out last week,
00:19:04.600 is on happiness.
00:19:06.100 It's actually titled
00:19:07.320 The Sad Truth About Happiness,
00:19:09.620 sad being my last name,
00:19:10.960 S-A-A-D.
00:19:12.300 And so in the book,
00:19:13.440 I look at many predictors
00:19:16.580 of happiness,
00:19:17.880 while there's a very clear...