The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - Upcoming War with Islam in Europe ｜ Israel and the Left’s Parasitic Ideas (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_807)

00:00:00.000 When did the West lose its common sense? Why do top academics still insist on calling Islam a

00:00:06.500 religion of peace? Can we still rescue academia from the woke takeover? And perhaps the biggest 0.95

00:00:12.800 question of them all, how has Professor Gad Saad dodged cancel culture after openly mocking

00:00:18.380 wokeness and post-modernism? Hello everyone, I'm Atan Hasidim and welcome to the Spirit of the

00:00:23.420 Times podcast. Today I have the privilege of speaking with one of the most influential public

00:00:28.420 intellectual of our time, Professor Gad Saad, which today is a visiting professor and global

00:00:34.320 ambassador at Northwood University. Gad, welcome.

00:00:38.580 Ma shalomcha. 0.61

00:00:40.220 Shalomim etzuyan. Next time we're going to do maybe a podcast in Hebrew, but actually we're

00:00:45.180 doing this podcast today for your book, The Parasitic Mind, How Infections Ideas Are Killing

00:00:53.580 the Common Sense. It's now available on Hebrew.

00:00:56.980 It's Zeh Berutzah Chibbolet, Parasitim, Kitzadi, Beda, Marav, Eta, Egan, Abari.

00:01:01.380 So I just tested your Hebrew.

00:01:05.120 So we have a lot to unpack today, really. I have a lot of questions for you.

00:01:11.460 So let's start from maybe October 7th before getting to all the parasites that you write

00:01:17.880 about. You know, five years ago, calling the West in decline seemed maybe quite extreme.

00:01:26.120 But now, you know, with October 7th, I think that things have changed. I think that October

00:01:31.400 7th played a significant role in revealing the extent to which these parasites that we're 0.97

00:01:36.940 going to talk about have infiltrated the West. How do you view those events?

00:01:42.680 Look, October 7th crystallized, you know, the departure from reason for many people.

00:01:50.900 But I hate to say it, we didn't need October 7th for that realization to come true, right?

00:01:57.920 I've been standing on top of the mountain for my entire academic career, screaming into the

00:02:03.520 wind, most people ignoring me, saying this is coming. So it is regrettable that it takes

00:02:09.720 such orgiastic tragedies like October 7th to get some people to wake up. But really,

00:02:15.580 the problem has been festering for much, much longer than October 7th.

00:02:20.100 But do you agree that October 7th actually, you know, manifested something bigger that

00:02:27.100 happening in universities now, you know, as Douglas Murray said it, we know everyone where

00:02:33.180 it's, it's, it's, it's, it's old, you know, nobody can pretend anymore, you know?

00:02:41.400 Yes. Look, my home university, which is Concordia University in Montreal, has been called colloquially

00:02:51.420 as Hamas University and Gaza University for many decades, right? Benjamin Netanyahu was cancelled

00:02:59.240 in 2002 from coming to Concordia University. So again, from speaking at Concordia University. So

00:03:06.020 again, yes, you're right that the assortment of people's positions is much clearer once October 7th

00:03:14.300 happened. But believe me, this problem has been going on for much, much longer. So example, and we may

00:03:21.440 get into this later in greater detail. My life trajectory is one that precedes October 7th by

00:03:29.780 nearly 50 years, right? We had to escape Lebanon under the imminent threat of execution as the last

00:03:36.200 remaining, you know, Lebanese Jews. So October 7th is only a surprise to those who had their head in 0.95

00:03:44.000 the proverbial sand. That's why in the parasitic mind, I talk about ostrich parasitic syndrome, right?

00:03:49.140 We're going to talk about it, about the ostrich parasitic syndrome. Okay, I'll hold off to that.

00:03:54.040 Go ahead. Okay, so because you're such a prophet, you know, I'm kidding, you're on the right side of,

00:04:00.700 you know, of history, maybe we can say it like that. So in an interview I did with Melanie Phillips,

00:04:06.540 I mentioned a tweet of yours from when there were riots in England that took place in July, I think,

00:04:12.880 where you said that the war in Europe with Muslims is coming and probably it's inevitable.

00:04:18.420 Do you still think this is the case? Do you think it's possible to prevent it from reaching to that

00:04:24.920 point? It's, if it, if we stay on the current track, it's a 100% guarantee. It is as clear as you

00:04:35.680 jumping off a building and checking what the effects of gravity will be. It's as clear as that.

00:04:43.700 Because look, ideas have consequences. Islam is a set of codified ideas. There's only one of three 1.00

00:04:54.560 things that Islam can do. It can either promote individual liberties and freedoms, it could not 1.00

00:05:00.900 affect individual liberties and freedoms, or it could reduce individual liberties and freedom. There

00:05:05.940 isn't a fourth option, right? And so once you put Islam with Western traditions, they can't coexist. 1.00

00:05:16.080 Now that doesn't mean that we can't find endless cases in history where Muslims and non-Muslims did not

00:05:23.560 coexist for a period. But that period eventually is no longer peaceful, right? So it's kind of like

00:05:30.840 arguing, how could this guy have gotten a heart attack and died? Because every single day prior

00:05:37.660 to him having the heart attack, he was living and he was walking and jogging. Well, yes, but there was

00:05:43.520 stuff that was happening in the background that eventually led to the heart attack. That's what

00:05:48.240 happens with Islam, especially when it mixes with values that are perfectly antithetical to those of 1.00

00:05:54.860 Islam. So it is absolutely unequivocal that if the current trends continue, there will be massive 1.00

00:06:03.080 violence in Europe, but not only in Europe, everywhere where these realities are taking place,

00:06:08.460 right? The demography is destiny is truly the most fundamental prediction of how a society goes.

00:06:16.760 With greater Islam, there'll be fewer liberties and either the Europeans will wake up or else they will 1.00

00:06:23.380 become Islamized like the 56 other countries that are currently part of the OIC. 0.94

00:06:28.600 You know what's great? From my experience talking to Middle East scholars, the issue of many academics

00:06:33.360 face when not all of them are on the left or woke is that the academic method, which focuses on many

00:06:40.300 details, often prevents them from making a strong, clear statements and, you know, viewing the big

00:06:46.020 picture. So for example, when discussing Islam, I often hear Islam is no, is so diverse. How can you

00:06:53.820 talk about it as a one thing, you know, or the Islam of Spain's golden age was different or a one that

00:07:01.080 is very popular in Israel? I don't know if you've heard about it before. Can we really call the Shiite

00:07:06.240 ideology behind the Iranian regime authentic Shiite Islam? Like, of course, those scholars would say,

00:07:12.240 yeah, of course, Khomeini is evil and it's terrible and everything. But Khomeini incorporated Marxist 0.86

00:07:18.020 ideas into traditional Shiite Islam. So, you know, it's not the authentic Shiite Islam. How do you 0.92

00:07:24.680 respond to this kind of argument? Yeah, I respond to it in Chapter 6 of The Parasitic Mind, where I do

00:07:31.040 talk about Ostrich Parasitic Syndrome. So this is known, this is a cognitive bias known as the no true

00:07:37.460 Scotsman fallacy, right? So Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, the leading Sunni Islamic cleric of Islam from Al-Azhar

00:07:49.560 University, according to some of your academic colleagues, doesn't represent true Islam. So the

00:07:56.920 leading Sunni cleric at the leading Islamic university in the world doesn't represent true Islam. What does 1.00

00:08:05.100 represent true Islam is your friend Ahmed, who is gay, eats prosciutto and drinks vodka. He's the true 1.00

00:08:13.960 representative of Islam. But Khomeini is not. The Saudi clerics are not. ISIS is not. Muhammad is not. 0.88

00:08:22.800 Muhammad's companions are not. So we can keep saying no true Islam until we find one that caters to our 1.00

00:08:31.120 Western sensibilities. He must be true Islam. So another question about Islam, as an evolutionary 0.99

00:08:37.780 psychologist, how do you explain the fact that societies adopting Islam often fall into,

00:08:45.780 of course, I'm not talking about every Muslim and Muslim, I have Muslim friends, but I'm talking about

00:08:50.880 societies in large, in general. So they fall into ignorance, into poverty, stagnation, violence,

00:08:57.260 things that are not beneficial from a survival standpoint. And yet, many people continue to

00:09:03.260 hold on to and embrace Islam. How do you explain this? So there are several ways to answer this,

00:09:08.780 one of which is that one of the beautiful things about most religions is that it cures our mortality

00:09:15.700 problem, right? So I just have to swallow whichever preferred religion I have, and then suddenly I become 0.64

00:09:22.500 immortal. So remember that under Islam, there is an afterlife that is actually much more glorious than 1.00

00:09:28.580 the current life. So viewed from that perspective, once I am parasitized by this eternal utopia, then the

00:09:35.980 fact that something bad happens within this earthly realm does not mean that this will bring about my death

00:09:43.440 because the real life begins after my current material death. And so there are many ways by which you

00:09:49.920 could explain how Islam can flourish from a Darwinian perspective. As a matter of fact, one of the truly 0.86

00:09:57.320 incredibly successful elements of Islam, if we are to use a evolutionary and Darwinian mechanism, 0.97

00:10:05.700 is that the memeplex of Islam, so just let me explain it for your listeners and viewers. A meme, 0.73

00:10:14.960 now everybody knows.

00:10:15.820 I haven't read Richard Dawkins, yeah.

00:10:17.580 Exactly. So Richard Dawkins, in his 1976 Selfish Gene book, talked about the fact that,

00:10:23.840 correctly so, that humans are both a biological and a cultural animal. Our genes spread and propagate,

00:10:30.740 but so do our memes. Memes are any ideas, beliefs, jingles, songs, religions that spread from one brain to

00:10:39.120 another. And so you can measure the memetic infectious score of a particular set of memeplexes. A memeplex is

00:10:50.760 just a collection of memes. So Judaism is a memeplex. Christianity is a memeplex. Islam is a memeplex. 0.98

00:10:58.140 Now, Judaism is a profoundly non-successful memeplex. So, or to use marketing terms, 1.00

00:11:05.940 it's terrible in its marketing abilities. Why? Because if you're trying to attract customers,

00:11:14.960 then Judaism seems to never increase. We're currently at around 15 million with no signs of improvement. 0.69

00:11:22.900 Why? Because it's not a proselytizing religion. You're not meant to convert others. If anything,

00:11:29.760 if people try to convert to Judaism, you're supposed to dissuade them. You're supposed to 1.00

00:11:35.180 make it as difficult for them as possible. That's not a very smart marketing tactic if you're trying

00:11:40.100 to bring people into your, quote, product. Islam, on the other hand, its memeplex is structured in 1.00

00:11:47.500 such a way that it is, evolutionarily speaking, profoundly successful. Hence, why one-fourth of

00:11:55.580 humanity, roughly 1.7, 1.8 billion people, a bit less than one-fourth of humanity, is Islamic. And 1.00

00:12:04.780 there are specific contents within Islam that allow that. I'll just mention one. Islam is the most 0.75

00:12:12.880 proselytizing of all religions, even more so than Christianity. Islam does purport that there will be 0.92

00:12:19.660 peace on earth. Once every single person on earth is united under the unifying flag of Allah.

00:12:28.940 So that is the goal, and that's why Islam spreads. Islam only requires a single sentence, 1.00

00:12:36.560 the shahada, that is proclaimed publicly and openly with witnesses, and voila, you become Muslim.

00:12:43.960 It takes a lot more to become Jewish. That's why you got 15 million Jews and 125 times as many 0.99

00:12:51.240 Muslims.

00:12:52.740 So the question is not about Islam. It was supposed to be about Judaism, you know?

00:12:58.380 And even what you said about afterlife, I don't think that we can apply to Judaism, because 0.95

00:13:03.860 afterlife is not really, you know, in the main religious, practical thought of Judaism.

00:13:12.440 Well, that's what I said when I was answering you. I said that the answer that I'm giving doesn't

00:13:18.720 cover all possibilities, because why do Jews support Islam the way that they do is a different 0.87

00:13:26.420 explanation that does not rely on the afterlife, which if you want, I can, do you want me to

00:13:31.320 get into why?

00:13:32.140 Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, of course.

00:13:34.420 There are, again, several possible explanations. I'll give one from my neuro-parasetological

00:13:40.780 framework. You may have heard me mention this before, maybe not, but certainly your viewers

00:13:45.880 may not have. Neuroparasitology is a field that seeks to understand the interaction between

00:13:52.460 parasites and hosts, which happen in countless ways in the animal kingdom. A neuroparasite

00:13:59.740 is different from just a regular parasite in that it seeks to, as its final destination,

00:14:05.520 go to the host's brain, altering its circuitry to suit the interest, typically the reproductive

00:14:12.160 interest of the parasite. So a tapeworm is a parasite, but it goes into your intestinal

00:14:18.540 tract. A neuroparasite wants to go to your mind. Hence, that's why I use that framework to

00:14:24.600 explain idea pathogens. Now, I'm going to come to the Jewish parasitized people in a second. 1.00

00:14:30.440 The wood cricket is one type of animal that is parasitized. It hates water. The wood cricket 0.76

00:14:37.420 doesn't want to do anything with water. But when it is parasitized by a hairworm, the hairworm needs

00:14:44.280 the wood cricket to jump into water in order to complete its reproductive cycle. So once the

00:14:50.080 hapless, zombified wood cricket is parasitized, it happily and merrily jumps into the water, commits

00:14:58.420 suicide in the service of the parasite. So many parasitized Jews are just two-legged versions of 1.00

00:15:09.040 wood crickets because they think they are, and again, there are several reasons for that. So for 0.94

00:15:14.200 example, if you are Jewish from a land where Islam ruled, hence you're a dimmi, a dimmi is a not even 0.91

00:15:23.440 second class, third class, fourth class citizen under Islamic law whereby you are tolerated until 0.69

00:15:29.960 you're not tolerated. Well, if I'm a dimmi, I develop the psychology of servitude, right? I want to

00:15:37.180 demonstrate respect, great respect and reverence to my overlords because they know, I know that at any

00:15:43.320 minute if any one of them notices that my daughter is really pretty, then I'm in trouble, right? And

00:15:48.840 therefore, there is an appeasement strategy of wood cricket Jews under Islamic lands that causes them 1.00

00:15:55.960 to say, no, Islam is beautiful, it's gorgeous. Now, what about Western Jews? Well, Western Jews 1.00

00:16:00.920 have also had to be at the forefront of fighting for civil rights and so on, right? So for example,

00:16:08.740 many of the leading civil rights activists in the civil rights movements in the United States 0.80

00:16:15.780 were, of course, either black or many of them were Jewish because Jews come from a history of bigotry

00:16:22.180 and so what better way to demonstrate that you're against all forms of bigotry? So take that idea and

00:16:29.120 now apply it to Islam. It feels wrong for me if I am a Harvard Jew to say that Islam is bad because I

00:16:40.200 have a lot of friends, Ahmad, Mahmoud, Muhammad, who've never killed anybody, who are perfectly

00:16:45.760 lovely and I sat at the dinner table at my home in Boston with my super progressive Jewish wood

00:16:52.860 cricket family members who always said that all Muslims are lovely and kind, so it feels gauche,

00:16:58.900 it feels wrong for me to criticize it. So there are different reasons why wood cricket Jews would be 1.00

00:17:05.560 in love with Islam, but of course they are all fools because none of them would have been saved 1.00

00:17:10.680 had they found their way at the Nova Film Festival. They would have gotten the exact same bullet whether 1.00

00:17:16.920 they were Gabor Mate who really loves Palestinians or not, they would have ended up in the exact same 1.00

00:17:22.880 place. Yes, would it be fair to say that today you are a Jewish observant, like you have a strong

00:17:30.920 Jewish identity, you don't eat pork for example, but you're not religious by any means? So it depends

00:17:38.700 how you define the term religious, right? If you mean am I wedded to my Jewish identity, then short of

00:17:49.100 Maimonides there's nobody more Jewish than me. If it means I better head home on Friday and light the

00:17:57.080 candle at 421 because the Chabad rabbi said it's 421, but 422 is a really big problem to Adonai,

00:18:06.540 then no, I'm not very religious. So remember that Judaism is a multifaceted construct. It is a shared

00:18:14.420 people, it's a shared lineage, it's a shared history. So from that perspective, I'm incredibly Jewish.

00:18:21.380 from the everyday rituals. Do I think it is a mortal sin to eat shrimp soup? No, I don't.

00:18:32.940 Well, not everyday practice, but from the perspective, I think that a lot of observant Jews would say

00:18:38.360 today if I can ask them if you practice Judaism. So it's like one person, he believes in God,

00:18:46.320 he prays, maybe. Look, two weeks ago, it was my son's bar mitzvah. We had the bar mitzvah in a very

00:18:55.000 serious way. He had to read from the Torah. I put on my tefillin. So, you know, am I Rabbi Schneerson?

00:19:03.600 No. Look, I lived my duty more than most Jews will ever live because I had to wear some really good 0.59

00:19:13.320 running shoes and outrun those who were going to behead me, right? That's it. Mic drop. I've done

00:19:20.700 my part. And what I do every day for Judaism makes me a lot more Jewish than whether I eat shrimp or

00:19:27.500 not. Yeah, no, I ask just because when I hear your talks and I hear you about speaking about religion,

00:19:33.520 so you speak a little bit like a neo-atheist, like it's like listening to Sam Harris a little bit.

00:19:40.100 You know, you can't understand me? Except that I'm not, I don't like the term new atheist. It's a silly

00:19:48.480 term, but I'm not hostile to religion and certainly not to Judaism as long as it doesn't infringe on

00:19:59.240 scientific truths. In other words, as an evolutionary psychologist, I actually have written about the

00:20:07.380 evolutionary roots of belief and of religion. In other words, it makes a lot more evolutionary sense

00:20:14.860 to be a believer than to be an atheist because to be a believer allows me to get through some very,

00:20:22.500 very dark realities in my existence, right? If your four-year-old son, God forbid, is stricken with

00:20:29.680 leukemia, it's a lot more comforting to wed that reality to a religious narrative than it is to say,

00:20:38.260 you know, bad stuff happens. Sorry, Timmy, I guess you got leukemia. It's comforting, but it doesn't say

00:20:45.540 that there is really a God that you pray and he can, you know, hear you listening to your prayers and

00:20:51.080 you know what I mean? Yes, exactly. Well, Blaise Pascal said this, the philosopher, when he offered

00:20:59.580 his explanation for why people should believe. I mean, he didn't use the term utilitarian and so on,

00:21:05.340 but he basically created a game theoretic model. You know, you can believe in God or not and he could

00:21:11.360 exist or not. So it's a two-by-two matrix. And now the idea is that under all scenarios, it makes more

00:21:17.700 sense to believe in God. So I understand the reflex to believe. But for example, if a rabbi were to say 0.82

00:21:25.780 to me, as many have, you know, how could you believe in evolution? We know that that's not the thing.

00:21:33.900 Now I have a problem because you are pitting a religious narrative against an incontrovertible

00:21:43.120 theory that has about 150 years of incontrovertible evidence. We build drugs, medicine, based on

00:21:52.100 evolutionary theory, not by looking at a particular code in the Torah, right? So religion is wonderful

00:22:00.700 because it weds us to a shared narrative. And there are, as I said, many functional values to religion.

00:22:07.760 My only problem with religion is once it becomes arrogant enough to offer a narrative that contradicts

00:22:16.900 science. So Stephen Jay Gould, for example, although I don't agree with his position, was what's called

00:22:22.720 a proponent of the NOMA principle. NOMA stands for non-overlapping magisteria, meaning that he was

00:22:32.700 saying, look, religion can exist in this space and science can exist in this space. And as long as

00:22:39.620 they don't infringe on each other, they don't overlap, then I think there is room for both. And

00:22:44.740 to that extent, I agree with him. The problem is, if I am a young earth creationist, I absolutely and

00:22:52.580 literally believe that the earth is a couple of several thousand years old. And the average three-day

00:22:59.440 old squirrel who studied geology knows that to not be true. So that's my only problem. So I'm not a new

00:23:06.420 atheist. I'm not hostile to religion. I just wish that religion would worry about our moral and spiritual 0.96

00:23:15.120 value and leave the science for others. Of course. I think that the one who wrote a better book than

00:23:21.840 Stephen Jay Gould was actually the Rabbi and the Lord Jonathan Zaks, the big partnership.

00:23:27.620 He actually wrote something similar to Jay Gould, but I think in a maybe a better way.

00:23:34.600 So thank you for telling me that, because I don't think I've read that. So I'll have to read that.

00:23:38.180 Yeah, it's a great book, great book. I think it was his best, best book by Rabbi Zaks.

00:23:42.640 So you talked briefly, you explained briefly about the parasites and how it connects to bad ideas. Can you

00:23:51.160 explain more about how they are destroying the West common sense today?

00:23:56.840 Right. So let me go back to the start of how

00:24:01.120 I first realized that there were these flourishing parasites on university campuses.

00:24:07.720 So my area of scientific research is largely at the intersection of evolutionary biology and

00:24:17.880 evolutionary psychology and applying it to human behavior in general and economic behavior and

00:24:24.360 consumer behavior in particular. So I study the biological fundamental underpinnings of why we do the

00:24:31.060 things that we do. Okay. Now, to me, that seems obvious, right? It can't be that you

00:24:37.700 study every single species on Earth while invoking that species' biological heritage, but there is

00:24:45.520 only one species called Homo sapiens that somehow exists outside the realm of biology. Or if biology

00:24:53.940 applies to Homo sapiens, it applies, but as long as it stops at the neck. So evolution can explain why we

00:25:01.040 have opposable thumbs. That's okay. Evolution explains why our liver works the way that it does. That's okay.

00:25:06.700 But surely, Professor Saad, you're not one of those Nazi professors who thinks that the human mind might have evolved through a process that is akin to every other species that has ever existed on Earth. 0.99

00:25:24.640 So that's when I first saw how could my colleagues be such imbeciles? How could it be controversial for the colleagues that I have? Very smart people, economists and organizational psychologists and consumer psychologists and psychologists of decision-making and operations researchers and behavioral finance folks. 0.98

00:25:49.300 All of these guys with huge degrees and super smart, all of these guys with huge degrees and super smart suddenly were unwilling to accept the fact that biology matters in explaining human behavior. 0.97

00:26:01.000 So that was my first exposure 30 plus years ago to the fact that very intelligent people could be fully parasitized by imbecility.

00:26:11.300 And then subsequently, and then subsequently, over the next 30 years of my career, I experienced that with increasing frequency. 0.73

00:26:19.900 And so I tell very early at the start of the parasitic mind that I have faced two great wars in my life.

00:26:26.500 First, the Lebanese Civil War, and two, the war on reason, science, logic, common sense, reality on university campuses.

00:26:34.400 So what the book does is it basically traces many of these parasitic ideas, and I'll explain a few in a second.

00:26:43.280 And then towards the end of the book, I offer a vaccine, an inoculation against these bad ideas.

00:26:50.240 So let me start with, as I call it, the granddaddy of all parasitic ideas, postmodernism.

00:26:56.360 Postmodernism purports that there are no universal truths other than the one universal truth that there are no universal truths. 0.99

00:27:07.840 So already it completely crumbles, but let's not let logic get in the way of our stupidity. 0.98

00:27:13.920 And so postmodernism becomes a form of intellectual terrorism, as I call it, or nihilism, 1.00

00:27:21.320 because up could be down, left is right, men are women, slavery is freedom, peace is war. 0.99

00:27:28.900 There are no objective truths to speak of.

00:27:31.600 So it is that framework that then allows a lot of the other nonsense to flourish.

00:27:37.660 So transgender activism could not have flourished were it not that I am afforded that ability through postmodernism.

00:27:45.800 Because postmodernism says, it is not true that there are only two sexes in a sexually reproducing species made up of the male and female phenotype.

00:27:56.020 No, sex is on a spectrum, right?

00:27:59.400 So this is like arguing, as I explained, that it is not true that human beings have, as part of their fixed traits, 10 fingers,

00:28:08.200 because my cousin Frank was born with a congenital condition with 11 fingers, and so fingers come on a continuum.

00:28:17.820 Some have 7, some have 11, and so on.

00:28:20.500 So that parasitic idea then allows all the other ones to flourish.

00:28:25.580 What are some of the other ones?

00:28:27.440 Social constructivism is a parasitic idea.

00:28:30.520 All human phenomena are construction.

00:28:34.980 There are no biological imperatives.

00:28:36.860 Here's another one, cultural relativism.

00:28:39.460 Who are you to judge the beliefs, the practices of another culture? 0.99

00:28:45.820 If another culture decides that they wish to cut off the clitorises of 5-year-old girls, 0.99

00:28:51.440 don't be a cultural imperialist and use your cultural reference points to judge others. 0.98

00:28:58.700 You have no right to do so.

00:29:00.000 So there are no moral truths.

00:29:01.880 There are no aesthetic truths.

00:29:04.140 There are no epistemological truths.

00:29:06.380 There are no musical truths, right?

00:29:08.860 So if I just start slamming and make noise, who are you to argue that that's not its own form of brilliant music?

00:29:17.180 Who are you to say that an empty canvas that is sitting at the Carnegie Museum is itself not a form of beautiful art?

00:29:25.880 By the way, I tell that story in the book where I had gone to visit a friend at Carnegie Mellon University in 1996 and I visited the Carnegie Museum.

00:29:35.140 I paid money to see art and then I am witnessing an empty canvas.

00:29:40.720 And so I demanded to see the curator of the museum.

00:29:44.540 They ended up sending someone else to see me, asked me, how can she help me?

00:29:50.240 And I said, well, why is there an empty canvas here?

00:29:52.620 And then, of course, she answered, well, you see, it is causing us to have a wonderful conversation.

00:29:58.200 So that's the value of it.

00:30:00.120 And so that's what you get with all of these parasitic ideas.

00:30:04.240 Because it's an attack on human reason.

00:30:07.080 And that's why we ended up in the place where we are today.

00:30:10.080 Okay, so that was a great summary.

00:30:13.100 You need to read the book, of course.

00:30:14.880 It's not, but, you know, I want to say like, a person like me, so I'm a conservative.

00:30:22.220 I have a nice keeper.

00:30:23.720 I listened to Dennis Prager and George Peterson for years.

00:30:27.520 So I read your book and I'm, you know, I'm biased.

00:30:30.460 Before our conversation, I took this book, I gave it to a progressive woman student that I know.

00:30:38.140 And she didn't really like it.

00:30:41.480 Okay, let's say it like that.

00:30:43.620 So the question is, your book, when you wrote it, you tried to convince the other side, like the woke students who are going to open it?

00:30:53.400 Or are you saying, okay, if someone is on the woke side, it's over?

00:30:57.920 Look, the regrettable part is that the people who most should be reading the book are precisely those like your wood cricket friend, who say, no, no, no, la, la, la, I don't want to hear it, right?

00:31:14.080 But I don't think she even read all the book, you know?

00:31:18.080 I'm sure she didn't.

00:31:19.280 But listen, I'm optimistic by nature.

00:31:23.840 I believe that most people are reachable.

00:31:26.240 Now, there are some that are absolutely unreachable, no matter what I might present to them.

00:31:31.320 And so one of the skills that you have to develop if you are in the business of trying to change people's minds is to know how to allocate your time strategically.

00:31:42.120 That's one of the reasons why, by the way, I refuse many, many invitations to debate people.

00:31:47.520 Not because I, you know, boo-hoo-hoo, I'm scared to debate them.

00:31:51.780 I could have debated them when I was six years old.

00:31:54.300 The problem is I know that there is nothing that I could ever say that could cause them to even have a modicum of intellectual humility to say, hmm, that's interesting.

00:32:04.380 I'd never thought of it, right?

00:32:05.580 So they come with their revealed truths and then it's la, la, la, and then they scream over you.

00:32:10.600 And so there's no point in me engaging you because I know it's going to be a waste of time.

00:32:14.480 But I do, I would like to think that most people are not as dogmatic as that.

00:32:20.580 And so that with enough time, they will change their position.

00:32:24.300 And if I may, I can give you one of a million such examples right now.

00:32:30.000 And actually, I discuss this case in The Parasitic Mind.

00:32:35.260 But then the finale of that story only happened a year ago, you know, after I had, of course, written The Parasitic Mind.

00:32:42.380 It's the girlfriend of your student that came to me?

00:32:45.680 No, no, no.

00:32:46.280 That's another good one.

00:32:47.240 Although I never spoke to the girlfriend of my student.

00:32:50.320 Although I can tell you that story, which has become a...

00:32:52.480 This could have been, wow, it could have been a shock, you know?

00:32:55.260 No, no, no, I wish I could tell you that I was able to flip her, but I never spoke to her after that evening.

00:33:01.540 Although I'm still very much in touch with the student who has now become himself a professor.

00:33:10.720 No, this is the story of a woman who, I think it was 2010, if I'm not mistaken, had written to me saying, she's Jewish, by the way.

00:33:22.100 And she has grandparents who, you know, were in the Holocaust.

00:33:27.500 So you would think she would be open to not being a wood cricket, but she wasn't.

00:33:34.760 So she reached out to me and said, I am friends with a Muslim PhD student who's studying Islamic theology and so on for a PhD.

00:33:45.360 And she told me that, no, no, no, Islam is absolutely in love with the Jews.

00:33:50.420 Now, I know you're Arabic, you're from an Arabic country, you grew up in the Middle East, you speak Arabic, you know about Islam.

00:33:57.820 So what's the real position?

00:34:00.600 Does Islam love the Jews or not?

00:34:03.460 And so I...

00:34:04.300 Do you remember the story, by the way?

00:34:05.720 Yeah, of course, of course.

00:34:08.280 So then I said, okay, let me...

00:34:11.260 Rather than start quoting her a million things, why don't I share with her a montage?

00:34:15.440 Which, by the way, I shared this montage very recently on my XFeed, maybe two, three months ago.

00:34:22.920 So there's a montage of, I think it's about 20-something minutes, of imams, journalists, writers, children,

00:34:33.660 all sorts of folks from the noble lands of perpetual peace, speaking about their views of the Jews.

00:34:40.040 Now, these are imams from very, very prestigious mosques and Islamic learning centers and Al-Azhar University and so on, right?

00:34:49.540 And their positions on the Jews were not very friendly, right?

00:34:54.760 So that would be, hopefully, devastating information that might contradict what her friend said,

00:35:03.040 which is, no, no, no, Islam loves the Jews.

00:35:05.460 The Jewish student wrote back to me, subsequent to me, simply sharing that montage with her.

00:35:14.920 And she said, you know, by the way, I still have those emails.

00:35:19.140 I never get rid of those emails, so I can go back to it and marvel at her with crookedness.

00:35:26.020 And she said, you are no different in your extremism than they are.

00:35:31.620 So, them explaining how, for example, so in Arabic, there are these lamentations.

00:35:39.380 Why God, right?

00:35:42.440 So, there are these lamentations where the noble, peaceful Muslims are showing footage of the Jewish bones in the Holocaust

00:35:53.960 being taken with the bulldozers into the mass graves, and the imam is lamenting to Allah,

00:36:02.560 why did you not give us this pleasure?

00:36:06.480 Why is it that you made the Nazis have this pleasure and not us, your people, right? 0.53

00:36:13.220 So, it's a level of evil that's difficult to comprehend for the typical human mind.

00:36:18.460 And she didn't think that that was evil.

00:36:21.960 She thought that me sharing that clip made me no different in my extremism.

00:36:27.300 I'm also full of hate by sharing those clips.

00:36:31.020 Well, the point of the story is that about a year ago, that person wrote me an email. 0.97

00:36:39.440 And if I can paraphrase what she said, this is her speaking, I was an utter moron, and I should have listened to you more carefully. 0.97

00:36:51.240 Wow. 0.97

00:36:52.440 Those are not the words that she used, but it's roughly that.

00:36:56.300 So, even for someone who was as lost as her, I was able to get through to her.

00:37:02.600 And I've had millions of those stories.

00:37:04.920 So, notwithstanding your friend who wasn't willing to read the book properly, I think that if you approach people with the right persuasion strategies, most are willing to listen to you.

00:37:18.620 So, as you said a couple of times in our short conversation, you grew up in Lebanon.

00:37:24.240 And believe it or not, Israelis from my generation don't know a Jew could actually grow up in Lebanon.

00:37:31.040 Can you share a little bit what it was like growing up as a Jew there?

00:37:36.960 Right.

00:37:37.340 So, we were, we meaning my immediate family, my nuclear family.

00:37:43.520 This is my father, my mother, and we are four brothers and sisters.

00:37:48.660 I have two brothers and a sister and myself.

00:37:51.020 So, we were part of the last remaining group of Jews in Lebanon.

00:37:56.380 Most Jews who had been in Lebanon in the 20th century had already left by the time of the start of the Lebanese Civil War in 75.

00:38:06.360 So, my extended family, meaning my aunts, my uncles, my cousins, my grandparents, had all left Lebanon way before.

00:38:18.220 Most went to Israel, but some went to France, some came to Canada, and so on.

00:38:23.540 So, it's very rare, actually, to find in Israel Jews from Lebanon.

00:38:28.280 It is rare because there aren't too many.

00:38:31.200 But, you know, at the maximum point of Jewish life in Lebanon, you had several thousands.

00:38:39.300 As a matter of fact, the parliament in Lebanon, it's called the confessional parliament, meaning that you assign seats in parliament as a function of the number of, you know, people you have of that faith.

00:38:52.420 The parliament had one seat for Jews in Lebanon.

00:39:00.080 And so, there has, of course, been Jewish presence in all that region since forever.

00:39:06.300 So, we were, now, some of my most immediate ancestors are Syrian Jews who left Syria to Lebanon because of some of the difficulties they faced.

00:39:17.420 But my own family had decided to stay in Lebanon, even though my siblings had left Lebanon.

00:39:24.820 So, my siblings are much older than me.

00:39:28.520 The youngest one after me is 10 years older, 12 years older, and 14 years older.

00:39:33.440 And they had moved to, my brother had moved to France.

00:39:40.800 One of my brothers, my youngest brother, who's 10 years, I mean, the next youngest, who's 10 years older than me, was a judo champion of Lebanon for many years in a row.

00:39:51.380 And he had been approached, this is before the civil war.

00:39:54.400 This is when Lebanon was super peaceful and progressive and tolerant.

00:39:59.180 Barrett was called, I think, Paris of the Middle East, right?

00:40:01.880 Right, right.

00:40:02.480 But you should put kind of quotes around that because tolerant in the Middle East has a different meaning than tolerant in the rest of the world, or certainly in the West.

00:40:12.280 So, and now I'm going to give you an example of what tolerance looks like in Lebanon.

00:40:17.240 So, my brother was approached by some men who explained to him that it was time for him to retire because it's a bit shameful for a Jew to be winning these kinds of tournaments all the time.

00:40:28.140 And so, because he wasn't willing to retire, he ended up moving to France.

00:40:32.280 And he did so before the start of the civil war.

00:40:35.040 My oldest brother decided to leave Lebanon in 1974, so one year before the civil war, because it was also becoming very dangerous for him and his wife.

00:40:46.840 He had married a Palestinian woman, which didn't go too well either with his family or with my family, Palestinian Christian woman.

00:40:55.740 And he had some difficulties with the PLO and so on, and so he also left.

00:41:01.020 And my sister had also moved to Montreal prior to the civil war.

00:41:05.860 But I was very young.

00:41:07.340 When the civil war started, I was 10.

00:41:09.300 My parents were there.

00:41:11.200 And so, we were going about our business until it was impossible to be in Lebanon.

00:41:17.220 Now, how was it growing up in Lebanon?

00:41:19.660 As I explained in the parasitic mind, although I only shared a few poignant stories, 0.97

00:41:26.320 you always knew that trouble could be around the corner.

00:41:30.760 So, when I was, the first story that I tell about sort of facing Jew hatred in Beirut as a young boy was when Gamal Abdel Nasser,

00:41:41.280 the president of Egypt, passed away in 1970.

00:41:45.120 I was not quite six years old then.

00:41:47.280 And then, as I mentioned earlier, there are always these lamentations and screaming in the streets in the Middle East.

00:41:53.140 So, people were protesting on the street because he had just died. 0.99

00:41:57.740 And the most frequent message being screamed was death to Jews, death to Jews. 0.97

00:42:05.700 And I was a bit confused because I didn't understand why they were screaming death to Jews because an Egyptian president had died. 0.72

00:42:11.780 So, that was my first exposure to what it was like growing up in an Islamic or Arabic country.

00:42:18.420 At the time, Lebanon was not quite Islamic yet.

00:42:20.420 It was actually a majority Christian.

00:42:21.720 The second time, the second story I tell in the book is about a year or two before the Civil War started,

00:42:31.400 the teacher had asked us to stand up and tell the class what we want to be when we grow up.

00:42:36.660 And so, the usual stuff, I want to be a fireman, I want to be a soccer player, I want to be a doctor, I want to be a policeman. 0.98

00:42:42.820 And one kid gets up and says, when I grow up, I want to be a Jew killer. 0.97

00:42:46.760 And, of course, everybody laughs and claps. 0.97

00:42:48.880 Now, that kid knew that I was Jewish and there was another Jewish kid in the class. 0.99

00:42:52.520 But it didn't stop him from expressing what seemed very natural, that, you know, when I grow up, I'm going to kill Jews. 0.99

00:42:59.380 And so, Jew hatred was everywhere. 0.99

00:43:03.520 It was even banal, right? 0.98

00:43:05.620 If it rained, it's because of the Jews. 1.00

00:43:07.960 If, as you know, this is after the Civil War, when Egypt had a bunch of shark attacks in Sharm el-Sheikh,

00:43:17.380 it was because the sharks had been trained by the Zionists. 0.92

00:43:21.040 By the Mossad, yeah.

00:43:22.380 By the Mossad. 0.96

00:43:23.220 And so, everything in the Middle East is viewed through the prism of the diabolical puppeteering Jew. 1.00

00:43:30.800 So, yes, it's the Paris of the Middle East in that, yes, on a daily basis, people are not getting killed all over the street before the war. 0.90

00:43:39.780 But then something happens and then it's no longer okay to be Jewish.

00:43:45.040 This is the story for the past 1,400 years.

00:43:47.480 So, that's my story growing up in Lebanon.

00:43:50.020 When you see today what's happening in Lebanon, how it makes you feel?

00:43:53.920 Well, I mean, there are several ways to answer this.

00:43:58.220 One thing is it makes me feel so regretful that I've never been able to share that heritage with my children, right?

00:44:09.080 I greatly regret that I can't go back to Lebanon and see the school where, you know, it's as if this is something that happened to someone else.

00:44:19.020 It's in the back of my mind from 50 years ago.

00:44:22.640 But I would like to go back to where I used to go and buy the cake, where I used to go play soccer.

00:44:29.420 I want to show that to my children.

00:44:31.460 I can't.

00:44:32.580 And regrettably, I don't think it'll ever happen in my lifetime because I truly think that Lebanon is a failed state. 0.99

00:44:39.840 It's not only failed because of its religious, I mean, you know, problem, identity politics,

00:44:46.760 but also the corruption is unbelievable, right?

00:44:49.920 People's entire savings disappear and you can no longer go to the bank.

00:44:55.280 You've spent your life, you know, saving all your money and you no longer have access to it.

00:45:00.060 So, it hurts my heart because I always think that if the Middle East were to free itself of all of that craziness, 1.00

00:45:10.940 it is so filled with history.

00:45:14.220 By definition, it really is the cradle of civilization.

00:45:17.420 It is filled with such beautiful cultural values, hospitality, warmth.

00:45:24.800 And it's a beautiful country, you know.

00:45:26.400 Beautiful country, the topography, the beach, the skiing and the mountains that I would love to be able to share this with my family,

00:45:34.420 but I don't think it will happen.

00:45:36.280 As we say in the Middle East, inshallah.

00:45:40.020 So, you know, what's very interesting, I've spoken to some conservative intellectuals, you know,

00:45:44.980 like people like Neil Ferguson and Ayaan Hirsi Ali,

00:45:48.860 who started a new institution, academic institutions, because the old ones, they think, are too corrupt.

00:45:56.400 In general, the vibe I get from you seems more optimistic when I hear lectures of you.

00:46:01.300 Do you stay where you are today in Montreal because you think there's still something to fix there?

00:46:10.220 And what do you views about how to save the Western academia, let's say?

00:46:15.660 Yeah.

00:46:15.920 So, I mean, I don't think that the university in general is irrevocably, you know, on its deathbed.

00:46:24.680 Because most students and most professors still want to go about their business doing good work, enriching their minds.

00:46:32.880 But it doesn't take too many intellectual terrorists to poison the well for the rest of us, right?

00:46:38.920 And the analogy that I draw here is how many bad folks did it take to change the New York City skyline forever?

00:46:47.840 Was it 190 million terrorists?

00:46:50.100 Was it 1.9 billion terrorists?

00:46:52.420 Was it 190,000 terrorists?

00:46:54.140 No, it was 19 terrorists.

00:46:56.420 It only took 19 people to alter the landscape.

00:46:59.700 So you don't need millions of, you know, activists to make the place unbearable.

00:47:07.140 But that doesn't mean that we need to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

00:47:11.460 Yes, I think the reflex to create new institutions, and by the way, I was, they'll be happy that I'm promoting them now.

00:47:18.280 I was recently at the University of Austin, which is one of the new universities that is being put together.

00:47:25.560 I've seen the lecture, yeah.

00:47:27.080 Yes, Neil Ferguson is, both he and Ayaan are good friends of mine.

00:47:31.800 Neil sits on the board of trustees.

00:47:33.720 I was incredibly impressed with the place.

00:47:36.480 I thought the students were incredibly, you probably listened to the questions.

00:47:40.780 Yeah.

00:47:40.960 They were mature, they were poised, they were well-informed.

00:47:45.080 So I think it's a two-pronged approach.

00:47:47.860 I think we can create new institutions from the ground up that have the correct values, but we can also hopefully vaccinate the current universities against the nonsense and reclaim reasons.

00:48:02.560 So I think both are possible.

00:48:04.840 I don't think that universities are on their deathbed.

00:48:08.480 I think we can turn it around.

00:48:10.460 I want to ask about another work you wrote about happiness.

00:48:14.700 From what I've read, researchers distinguish between emotional happiness and happiness through meaning.

00:48:21.780 What do you think are the key factors in achieving happiness in life?

00:48:25.880 And how important is finding meaning in life for being happy?

00:48:31.260 Yes, great question.

00:48:32.140 If you would have asked me immediately after I finished Parasitic Mind what my next book would be,

00:48:40.120 I would be lying to you if I told you that I was going to write a happiness book.

00:48:44.860 That one sort of came up organically in part.

00:48:49.160 As a reaction maybe.

00:48:51.140 Well, first, yes, the previous book was what happens to minds when they are negatively affected.

00:48:56.600 So it's nice to write a positive book.

00:48:58.180 But it really came from hearing so many people write to me saying, how is it that you can maintain your humor and you're always smiling and you're playful with all of the difficult stuff that you've gone through in your life and all the difficult topics that you deal with?

00:49:15.100 What's your secret, professor?

00:49:16.780 And so I thought, OK, you know what?

00:49:18.120 Why don't I write a book that explains those secrets?

00:49:20.780 Hence, eight secrets for leading the good life.

00:49:23.300 But I was a bit hesitant at first because if you do a cursory overview of probably the topic that has been most written about by ancient philosophers till today, certainly the ancient Greeks, they've already written a lot of stuff about how to live the good life.

00:49:42.000 And so my concern was, can I come up with a book that is truly unique?

00:49:47.420 And I'd like to think I have because I'm taking my unique insights coupled with ancient wisdoms and contemporary science, putting them together to hopefully come up with something fresh and novel.

00:49:59.140 What are some secrets and regarding your question about meaning?

00:50:02.840 So one of the things that I talk about in the book early in the book are the two decisions that you make that can either impart the most amount of happiness or regrettably the most amount of misery to your life.

00:50:14.920 And that is choosing the right spouse and choosing the right profession.

00:50:19.420 And the meaning part comes from the profession.

00:50:22.000 So let me address that part.

00:50:23.540 So I argue that all other things equal to the extent that it's possible to do so.

00:50:28.640 Anything that allows you to instantiate your creative impulse will give you purpose and meaning and hence will lead to, if you like, existential happiness.

00:50:40.220 Because now, what does it mean to instantiate your creative impulse?

00:50:43.620 A stand-up comic is being creative because he's creating a unique set of jokes that didn't exist until he created them that hopefully are going to make members of the audience happy.

00:50:56.880 A chef is creating something new.

00:50:59.420 An architect is creating something new.

00:51:01.800 An author and professor is creating something new.

00:51:04.060 So there are many, many ways by which I can satisfy my creative instinct.

00:51:09.660 But doing so immediately immerses me in meaning and purpose, right?

00:51:15.520 Now, that doesn't mean that we don't need bus drivers and that their lives are not valuable.

00:51:21.080 And it doesn't mean that insurance adjusters are also not important and accountants.

00:51:26.000 But very few people wake up in the morning and say, I am existentially happy and satisfied because I am an accountant and an insurance adjuster.

00:51:37.780 That just becomes a job that I have to do to pursue other interests.

00:51:41.760 But if your job itself can be a form of play, can be a creative lab of creation and innovation, then you've really hit the jackpot.

00:51:52.580 And so one of the reasons why I'm happy every day, other than, by the way, I should mention, and I mentioned this early in the book, about 50% of individual differences in happiness stem from our genes.

00:52:04.740 But that still leaves about 50%.

00:52:07.760 It's depressing a bit.

00:52:09.400 Well, no.

00:52:10.320 It depends if you look at it as half full or half empty.

00:52:13.480 If 50% of our happiness is inscribed in our genes, that still leaves 50% within our, right?

00:52:22.480 So I could be born with a sunny disposition and you're born with a sullen disposition.

00:52:27.980 That puts me ahead in the game.

00:52:29.940 But then I could make all the wrong decisions and adopt all the wrong mindsets and you do the opposite and suddenly you get to the top of Mount Happiness much quicker than I do.

00:52:40.640 I don't think it's really depressing.

00:52:42.360 I think it's actually a message of empowerment.

00:52:44.980 And so I mentioned earlier, I mean, I can go through all of the prescriptions, but maybe I'll mention one or two.

00:52:52.880 Live life as though it's a playground.

00:52:55.800 It sounds like a cliche and banal, but it really isn't because I'm constantly in a playful mood.

00:53:03.660 That's, by the way, I get more people coming up to me in the street who recognize me, who refer to something humorous that I've done more than all of my fancy professorial stuff.

00:53:18.020 Why?

00:53:18.600 Because people bond with humor.

00:53:22.380 That's why I explain always that dictators, they don't get rid of guys who are tall with big muscles first, because those are easy to get rid of.

00:53:33.500 They get rid of the ones who have sharp tongues, the ones who write with poisonous pens, the humorous, the satirists, because they're the ones who serve as an existential threat to my power.

00:53:47.160 I need to, and hence, that's why you say the pen is mightier than the sword.

00:53:51.040 So using satire, using sarcasm, using humor.

00:53:56.780 By the way, I was recently, I'm often told by people, don't you think, though, that your humor takes away from sort of your professorial authority?

00:54:08.500 Absolutely not.

00:54:09.620 It's the exact opposite. 1.00

00:54:10.820 As a matter of fact, it's precisely because I am so self-confident about my personhood that I could wear the pink wig and make fun of the idiots. 0.99

00:54:21.800 If I were insecure, that's when I would have to put on the air of the fancy professor smoking a pipe and looking into the air and looking down on people. 0.98

00:54:33.560 But it's precisely because notwithstanding all of my fancy degrees, I'm just a regular guy who's a professor of the people.

00:54:41.260 That's why I resonate with people.

00:54:43.940 So the people who tell me, why do you use humor? 1.00

00:54:47.000 It diminishes you, are imbeciles. 1.00

00:54:49.500 They're wood crickets. 1.00

00:54:50.760 And if we started with the biggest question of them all, you know, how has Professor Gadsar dodged cancel culture after openly mocking wokeness in postmodernism?

00:54:59.520 Maybe humor is one of the answers.

00:55:03.280 I think so.

00:55:03.800 That's exactly right.

00:55:04.580 So there are several ways to look at that.

00:55:09.200 First of all, it's hard to dislike someone who has a warm disposition.

00:55:14.980 Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't people who dislike me for all sorts of reasons.

00:55:18.660 There are many, many haters.

00:55:20.280 But I'm not sullen.

00:55:22.920 I'm not cantankerous.

00:55:24.500 I'm warm.

00:55:25.700 Not recently.

00:55:26.540 This was a few years ago.

00:55:27.860 There was someone who was interviewing me on their show.

00:55:29.880 And at the end of the show, I can't remember if it was offline or online.

00:55:32.960 And he looked at me.

00:55:34.440 He goes, you know, God, I'm very upset at you.

00:55:37.320 I said, why?

00:55:38.880 He goes, because I had every intention of disliking you by the end of this conversation. 0.95

00:55:45.680 And God damn it, I really like you. 0.68

00:55:49.520 Way to the offline, what are you going to say to you? 0.98

00:55:52.080 Okay.

00:55:52.420 Exactly.

00:55:52.900 So I think using humor, not taking yourself seriously, people who truly read my message know that I'm filled with zero hate.

00:56:02.520 I attack ideas.

00:56:04.880 I harbor no hatred towards individuals.

00:56:08.100 And plus, I'm always armed with the right facts, right?

00:56:11.680 You could never catch me in a moment where I said something where I half-assed it.

00:56:19.900 Because I'm very well disciplined to never say something with authority unless I've got a tsunami of evidence backing me.

00:56:29.460 Yes, it's chapter seven in the parasitic mind.

00:56:34.300 Yeah, I read it.

00:56:35.080 God, I read it, really.

00:56:36.540 One question that fascinates me, you know, we've been talking about the meaning of the individual.

00:56:41.300 And let's wrap it all up and talk about the decline of the West.

00:56:44.960 So let's talk about the maybe problem of meaning in the West.

00:56:49.200 So one question that fascinates me is whether the West will need to return to religion in order to survive.

00:56:55.840 Take, for example, a person like Jonathan Rauch.

00:56:59.060 For example, he's an atheist and liberal who's written about happiness too.

00:57:04.100 But now he sees the decline of Christianity in public life as a major factor in the erosion of social cohesion in America.

00:57:11.860 And as a gay Jewish liberal, he now supports the return of religion to the public life in the United States.

00:57:20.080 What do you think about this shift among liberals and state of the West in general?

00:57:26.540 Specifically as relating to the presence or absence of religion?

00:57:30.460 Yeah.

00:57:30.680 So, in a sense, we briefly touched on this earlier in our conversation.

00:57:38.360 I don't like the idea of saying that the only way for people to find purpose, meaning, solace is only through religion.

00:57:49.860 I fully understand, as I mentioned earlier, the reflex to do so and more power to you,

00:57:57.240 as long as in the pursuit of your religiosity, you never infringe one millimeter on the right of another.

00:58:06.180 But now you're talking, again, about the individual, okay?

00:58:10.640 In the individual level, I can understand.

00:58:12.780 But when I'm talking about the clash of civilizations, let's say, between the secular West to Islam, 1.00

00:58:21.580 and I see the Islamic populations filled with very strong identity, very strong religion.

00:58:31.020 I see the secular West with no such thing.

00:58:35.660 And in the core of civilization, even the West, we need to find the, you know, the religious core.

00:58:45.300 Sure. Yeah. Impulse. So, it's different from the individual level.

00:58:50.180 Yeah. You mentioned earlier Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

00:58:52.720 Right.

00:58:52.980 She would be exactly with you, right?

00:58:54.860 Because she left Islam, went to atheism, and then realized that, pragmatically speaking, 0.93

00:59:03.260 to call people to atheism becomes a lot more difficult when combating, you know, a supremacist religion

00:59:12.060 that wants to take over. And therefore, she kind of argued, I don't mean to put words in her mouth,

00:59:20.600 but, you know, maybe an easier jump is to go to, let's say, Christianity,

00:59:25.840 because you replace one belief system with another.

00:59:28.780 Exactly. So, again, I understand that reflex, and I can understand it pragmatically.

00:59:35.900 But, again, being a purist, it disappoints me that that would be the only way to do so.

00:59:44.620 Reason could also be what bonds us together. Science could also be.

00:59:51.080 An earthly apakhtonance to Judaism could do that. 0.98

00:59:55.100 So, as I said, I'm very, very Jewish without necessarily thinking that whether I wear a kippah or not

01:00:01.700 is the means of expressing my Jew.

01:00:03.700 So, I fully understand that reflex, and I get it.

01:00:08.120 I'd like to think, though, that that's not the only way for us to combat ideologies that are contrary to our values.

01:00:16.460 So, for example, communism was also once a very dangerous ideology.

01:00:22.900 We didn't need necessarily Judeo-Christianity to combat it.

01:00:27.700 Capitalism, in this case, was a system that proved to be superior in allowing the maximal flourishing of individuals.

01:00:35.120 So, yes, I get the reflex that fighting one religion is probably easiest to do via another religion, 0.99

01:00:43.060 but it's certainly not the only way.

01:00:44.720 Last question about Israel as a role model for the West.

01:00:49.680 So, we started with October 7th, and for the first time, this is my thoughts.

01:00:56.180 I believe that Israeli society has found a nearly, maybe, universal role to be something like a role model for the West,

01:01:04.900 of a functional society with tradition, with big families, with good economy.

01:01:11.780 You know, it has its problems, of course, but unlike the West, it doesn't seem to have the same deep patterns of decline

01:01:18.520 if talking about all of elites being woke, you know.

01:01:23.920 Do you think I'm exaggerating, or can you see it in this lens?

01:01:29.040 So, I recently had several chats with the Israeli hosts.

01:01:34.900 And I think in several of those conversations, I think certainly with Ariel, if I'm not mistaken,

01:01:49.280 he asked, you know, what is it that makes Israelis probably less susceptible to succumbing to the parasitic ideas?

01:01:56.580 Although I did explain that at the university level, you have a lot of wood cricket professors who are Israelis. 0.96

01:02:03.400 But my answer, which I'll repeat here, is it's a lot less likely for people to fall prey to gigantic imbecility 0.66

01:02:16.380 when you are in the neighborhood of Israel, right? 0.60

01:02:20.560 So, in my daily reality of being an Israeli, where I don't know who's going to come at me from which corner, 0.99

01:02:29.500 I don't have the luxury to spend my time discussing whether some women have nine-inch penises, right? 1.00

01:02:38.540 And therefore, there is an inherent inoculation against parasitic ideas by virtue of me being in a very dangerous neighborhood, right? 0.97

01:02:48.340 So, that reality slaps me into not adopting these, you know, nonsensical ideas.

01:02:55.720 And this is, I draw an analogy here with anorexia nervosa.

01:03:01.620 So, anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder that historically is only found in societies of plentitude,

01:03:11.720 meaning it is only in societies where you don't have to worry about truly facing endemic famine

01:03:20.580 that you can afford the luxury of being anorexic.

01:03:25.260 You don't have many anorexic women in Ethiopia, but you have them in some places in ancient Greece 1.00

01:03:33.980 where there was plentitude, and you have them in the West.

01:03:37.140 You don't have them in places where you have famine. 1.00

01:03:40.260 I think that's the exact same mechanism that explains why Israelis don't fall prey to the stupidity 1.00

01:03:46.620 because they're too busy running into the bomb shelters to protect their children. 1.00

01:03:50.520 So, it's less bombastic as I phrase it, but yeah, it's still something.

01:03:58.220 Professor Gadsad, thank you very much.

01:04:00.300 When are you coming to Israel?

01:04:02.400 Well, soon, I hope.

01:04:05.380 I hope so, too.

01:04:06.960 Look, I was recently invited to come to do a tour, which I'm very, very excited to do.

01:04:13.160 It's just very hard for me now because of all of my scheduling conflicts.

01:04:17.960 So, now we've changed it from this spring to hopefully, inshallah, next fall.

01:04:24.420 And hopefully, I'll get to meet you in person.

01:04:26.800 Okay.

01:04:27.440 So, see you there, inshallah.

01:04:29.520 And I would like to say in Arabic, Nawwarti al-Mahal.

01:04:32.400 Really, it was a pleasure.

01:04:33.940 I take al-Afiyah.

01:04:35.380 Shukran, Habibi.

01:04:36.900 Shukran.

01:04:37.820 Thank you very much.

01:04:38.880 Goodbye.

01:04:39.140 Goodbye.

01:04:39.820 Bye.

01:04:40.040 Bye.

01:04:40.140 Bye.

01:04:42.140 Bye.

01:04:44.140 Bye.

01:04:46.140 Bye.

01:04:46.200 Bye.

01:04:46.220 Bye.

01:04:46.240 Bye.

01:04:46.280 Bye.

01:04:46.300 Bye.

01:04:46.320 Bye.

01:04:46.340 Bye.

01:04:46.360 Bye.

The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - March 19, 2025

Upcoming War with Islam in Europe ｜ Israel and the Left’s Parasitic Ideas (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_807)

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