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

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.

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.

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.

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,

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

00:07:11.740 is the sex that's going to be smaller.

00:07:14.160 It's the sex that's going to be more sexually choosy,

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,

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.

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.

00:12:45.460 And so they created a romance novel line

00:12:48.480 where the male archetype was super sensitive,

00:12:52.800 where he cried a lot, where he sucked his thumb,

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?

00:13:02.940 No.

00:13:04.060 I'm not interested in your progressive new definition of male.

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.

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.

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

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

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

00:16:29.600 must be destroyed

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.

00:16:41.620 We've heard that

00:16:42.420 heterosexual mating

00:16:44.680 is inherently a form of rape

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.

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.

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

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...

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

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

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