When I become so progressive, I realize that it simply is unfair to punish those noble homeless people. And therefore, sorry children, it s time for you to see Bobby masturbating in the park while shooting up heroin. Today, on the show, Dr. Gad Saad is back. He s a visiting professor and global ambassador for Northwood University. In the pursuit of that noble objective, if we have to rape and murder truth, so be it. He is the best-selling author of The Parasitic Mind and his soon-to-be released new book, Suicidal Empathy.
00:04:00.640I realized that there was a war on reason, on science, on logic, right?
00:04:07.600And so what I did in The Parasitic Mind is I argued that in the same way that all sorts of animals, including humans, can be parasitized by actual brain worms.
00:04:18.780I mean, literal brain worms, real parasites.
00:04:22.700They can also be parasitized by a second class of brain worms.
00:04:27.360I call those ideological brain worms or parasitic idea pathogens.
00:04:32.860So postmodernism is a parasitic idea, social constructivism, radical feminism, cultural relativism.
00:04:41.340All of these ideas were originally spawned within the university ecosystem.
00:04:46.660And eventually, they broke free from the lab, so to speak.
00:04:50.540And then they've infected every facet of our lives.
00:04:52.960So the book basically traces the evolution of all of these ideological parasites.
00:04:59.040And then toward the end of the book, I offer a mind vaccine against this form of distorted thinking.
00:05:06.160Then I guess not enough people are reading the book, Gad, because more and more,
00:05:15.720I feel that this war on reason, science, and logic is gaining steam.
00:05:25.300And so many of us, I think this is why Rogan really strikes a nerve with people.
00:05:32.860Because I read a tweet, no, I'm sorry, I was listening to an interview he was doing.
00:05:39.060Ironically, this one was not with you.
00:05:41.120And he was saying he feels like people are just under a spell.
00:06:35.740So I try to answer that by looking at what makes these ideological brain parasites so compelling that they can actually flourish within someone's brain.
00:06:48.340To your point, how could someone believe all this nonsense?
00:06:50.700So I argue that in the same way, take, for example, let's draw an analogy with cancer.
00:07:01.720Pancreatic cancer is maybe different than leukemia and maybe different from prostate cancer.
00:07:05.700But what they certainly all have one thing in common, once you distill it to its most lowest common denominator, is that there is some form of unchecked cell division.
00:07:15.640And so in the case of these brain worms, I was trying to look, so what is common to all these brain parasites?
00:07:25.200And my answer is that they all start with a alluring, noble objective.
00:07:33.040And then in the pursuit of that noble objective, if we have to rape and murder truth, so be it, because there is a higher goal that we're trying to achieve.
00:07:44.820So let me give, because that sounds reasonable, but you have to give a tangible example.
00:07:49.840So take, for example, equity feminism.
00:08:15.540Then the radical feminists come along and say, well, we need to push this further.
00:08:20.360In order to eradicate the patriarchal status quo, we need to espouse the position that there are no differences between men and women.
00:08:30.620And to the extent that there are differences, they must be due to social construction.
00:08:35.740There can't be any innate biological-based, evolutionary-based sex differences, because then that would allow us to eradicate the sexist status quo more quickly, more easily.
00:08:47.500So in the service of what appears to be a noble goal, if I have to rape and murder truth, so be it.
00:08:55.260And that, by the way, speaks to an important distinction that I talk about in the book, and that is the difference between deontological ethics and consequentialist ethics.
00:09:04.620Deontological ethics is an absolute statement.
00:09:07.840So if I say to you, Jillian, it is never okay to lie, that would be a deontological position.
00:09:13.900If I said it's okay to lie in order to spare someone's feelings, that would be a consequentialist statement.
00:09:20.080Now, for many things in life, all of us are consequentialist, and that's perfectly fine.
00:09:24.440But there is a certain set of foundational principles that, by definition, have to be deontological.
00:09:31.700So the pursuit of truth has to be deontological.
00:09:35.200Presumption of innocence in the judicial system has to be deontological.
00:09:39.540Freedom of speech has to be deontological.
00:09:42.440So all of these brain worms evolve and flourish because you apply a consequentialist ethos to the pursuit of truth.
00:09:50.700Meaning you allow for exceptions out of what initially are great intentions.
00:10:10.260You know, and I don't mean to reference Rogan again, but in his Netflix special, because for some reason I feel like he's just kind of that average guy that is wondering what the F is going on.
00:10:27.320And he was saying, he's like, I wish I had a tribe, right?
00:12:28.440And that's exactly what I need in this context.
00:12:30.920On the other hand, if I'm trying to do well on a calculus exam, triggering my emotional system so I start hyperventilating is probably not going to be the right way to go for me to do well on the calculus exam.
00:12:43.180Now, in the context of the parasitic mind and in the context of the Newsweek article that's coming out soon,
00:12:49.580I argue that when it comes to choosing your president, and when that president happens to be the president of the United States,
00:12:57.900or the most important country in the world, the leader of the free world,
00:13:02.940invoking your emotional system rather than your cognitive system is a disastrous reality.
00:13:11.020Now, I'm not trying to be political, and I remind people that I'm Canadian, so I don't vote in the American election.
00:13:18.720Unlike the illegal Guatemalans who get to vote, I don't vote because I'm Canadian.
00:14:22.720So I look at all of my colleagues who suddenly discovered that in the history of human thought, much more than Isaac Newton, much more than Charles Darwin, the true brilliant mind of history is Kamala Harris.
00:14:38.820Until 14 seconds ago, she was an abject moron who couldn't string together a single sentence.
00:14:46.080But now they're going to vote for her.
00:15:00.680But by the way, please don't think about the fact that she is the current administration.
00:15:05.080So we should run away from the current administration because she's going to institute change.
00:15:09.480So the capacity for people to be parasitized by bad ideas, to be parasitized by their emotional system is so profound.
00:15:20.180But to me, it's so disheartening because in some cases it may not matter.
00:15:26.000But when it comes to who's going to have their finger on the proverbial red button, nuclear button, maybe you want to do more than just think about joy and fun.
00:23:15.160And then Trump is like, it would never happen if I was.
00:23:17.940And it's like, well, is that because you wouldn't have pushed for Ukraine to join NATO?
00:23:22.600Like there's no, but Kennedy explains, okay, this is the history of this.
00:23:27.900And he might, you know, they're, they might not be a hundred percent perfect on how much money we gave to who and what,
00:23:33.740but there's something about him explaining things in detail that resonated with me because I did pick up that these platitudes are bullshit.
00:23:43.820And if you can't make it granular, I don't trust you.
00:23:47.840But for everybody else, it feels good.
00:23:50.220And even if I disagree with you, exactly.
00:23:52.040If you disagree with his explanation, at least there is substance, right?
00:23:57.120So I may say, yes, you gave me 10 steps in your causal explanation.
00:24:01.820I disagree with steps three to six, but my God, it demonstrates that there are neuronal firings in your brain.
00:33:33.040It's the mechanistic explanation of a phenomenon.
00:33:36.700There is a second layer that almost no person knows about, including most scientists.
00:33:42.580That's called the ultimate level of an explanation.
00:33:47.020Ultimate level doesn't mean ultimate, it's superior.
00:33:50.520It means it explains the Darwinian why.
00:33:53.860Why did the mechanism evolve to be of that form?
00:33:58.000I could address empathy from a proximate perspective or I could address empathy to your question, what is the evolutionary reason why we would have evolved our emotional system in general and this particular emotion in particular?
00:34:15.620Well, empathy is part of the group of emotions that you would need if you're a social species, right?
00:34:25.220Because part of being a social species, for you and I to have a meaningful interaction, we have to have a process called theory of mind.
00:34:36.740Theory of mind allows me to put myself in your mind so that I can experience things through your eyes.
00:34:44.980And it is that process that then allows us to have meaningful interactions.
00:34:49.140By the way, autistic children don't have theory of mind.
00:34:53.060So one of the ways that you're able to diagnose a young child, you can't give a blood test to know if somebody has autism.
00:35:01.820So you usually administer to them a theory of mind test, which autistic children typically fail.
00:35:08.300So empathy, while distinct from theory of mind, fits that rubric, which is there is a bunch of emotional systems that are needed if you're going to live in bands.
00:35:21.680One of which is empathy, one of which is empathy, right?
00:35:24.000But there are also dark emotions that are part of our evolutionary repertoire.
00:35:29.100So for example, the opposite of, say, empathy or forgiveness and so on, those positive emotions, is vengefulness, is revenge, right?
00:35:40.360Which itself has an evolutionary argument, right?
00:35:44.480Imagine if we didn't evolve the capacity to severely retaliate if there's been wrongdoing done to us.
00:35:53.300Then we would be completely parasitized by the other, right?
00:35:57.300Because they could do anything they want to me and they would never have to fear me retaliating.
00:36:02.920So studying emotions from an evolutionary perspective yields all sorts of new insights that if you weren't coming from an evolutionary perspective, you would never tackle.
00:36:13.080Immediately when you talked about the necessity of vengefulness, I thought about Jesus and turning the other cheek.
00:36:21.340Why would we, you know, an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
00:39:29.960When I analyze this emotion, as we get into kind of a few examples here where you've got transgender athletes and you want people to sort of be empathetic to what it must feel like to be transgender, the struggle this person must be going through, to understand that we have to be sensitive and respectful in having the conversation.
00:39:54.120But equally, you want the other side to appreciate that biological males, people born with XY chromosomes, are going to be physically stronger than people born with XX chromosomes.
00:40:08.180But for some reason, number one, we apply our empathy to only one side.
00:40:16.060And I'm wondering, why is that happening?
00:40:20.800Why are we incapable of applying empathy?
00:40:25.880A pregnant mother, an unborn child, nuanced, but I definitely see both sides of this.
00:40:35.580Now, personally, I'm pro-choice, but there's no question that I see both sides.
00:40:41.080Israel, Palestine, I feel for both sides of innocence.
00:40:45.600Why are we Israel, Palestine, transgender, biological, why is this only going one way?
00:40:58.720Yeah, so that, I mean, you're asking the question that the next book is exactly meant to address, right?
00:41:06.240Which is the misapplication, the dysregulation of empathy results in policy decisions that are disastrous, right?
00:41:16.520So now we can then address the question of, but why is the dysregulation happening?
00:41:21.640But let's at first discuss more generally the idea of how we have all evolved to discriminate, not discriminate in the racist sense, discriminate as a psychophysical process, right?
00:41:38.460I discriminate when it comes to investing in my biological children versus random children.
00:41:54.020It makes me an evolutionary being that recognizes, whether consciously or not, I recognize it consciously because I'm an evolutionary scientist,
00:42:02.900but even if I didn't recognize it consciously, that my children, my biological children are my pathway to immortality.
00:42:12.500That's why I'm willing to jump in front of a truck, have myself killed so that my children can be alive.
00:42:21.340I'm going to be less likely to engage in that behavior if I'm going to take the risk to save a kid that is in Mauritania.
00:42:30.460Not because I don't wish for children in Mauritania to live fulfilled lives, but in a world of limited resources, we've evolved the emotional, the cognitive, and the behavioral systems that mets out our investments strategically in a discriminating manner.
00:42:50.920Discriminate doesn't mean discriminate in the ACLU sense.
00:42:55.160It means discriminate between targets of my altruism.
00:42:59.140It means discriminate across targets of my empathy.
00:43:04.760You're getting a preview of the next book, by the way.
00:43:06.900I hope that people will still buy it when it comes.
00:43:14.200So as you can see, it makes evolutionary sense that we all be strategic in the manner that we met out our investments, our time, our allocation of effort, our empathy, our compassion.
00:43:29.460What happens with the progressives, hence when you were on the left and the Cenk Uygur and so on, is that that mechanism misfires so that it alters the evolved calculus of how these things should be meted.
00:43:46.380It doesn't make evolutionary sense for you to care more about the homeless people in your children's park that are defecating, fornicating, and shooting up crystal meth more than you care about the children's rights to play without those stimuli there.
00:44:04.680But when I become so progressive, so kind-hearted, I realize that it simply is unfair to punish those noble homeless people.
00:44:15.760And therefore, sorry, children, it's time for you to see Bobby masturbating in the park while shooting up heroin.
00:44:22.860So what ends up happening with all of these decisions from the super smarmy, smart progressives is it blows up their empathy system so that it's always targeting the wrong target.
00:44:37.900But to your point earlier, nobody is saying that transgender people don't have a right to live dignified lives free of bigotry.
00:44:48.160But that one person who's truly a transgender person, their rights don't supersede the rights of the 999 biological women who spent the last 10 years training to hopefully get on the podium.
00:45:10.380So no one is contesting that transgender people have rights.
00:45:14.620Their rights don't supersede those of biological women.
00:45:17.960So the entire book, Suicidal Empathy, goes through all of these decisions, demonstrating that once you have a dysregulation of this otherwise noble emotion, shit happens.
00:45:30.260Okay, I want to talk about the way you're discriminating with your empathy.
00:45:39.240And it's like I'll protect my kids before someone else's kids or my wife before someone else's wife because they are my legacy and my path to immortality.
00:45:47.600So inherently, and this is something that I've been struggling with personally, is empathy selfish?
00:45:54.360Because I always thought empathy meant you weren't selfish.
00:45:57.860You were this really good, selfless person.
00:46:00.220But as I have begun to analyze where I'm empathetic, I find it self-serving.
00:46:08.640And that makes, I don't even, that's why I'm asking this bigger question of what is this emotion and why has it evolved?
00:46:15.780And you've made perfect sense of it for me.
00:46:18.060Is there a form of empathy that isn't self-serving?
00:46:21.300Like even when I see somebody or something, like I saw an animal that was in distress and I wanted to save the animal.
00:46:29.360And I thought, like I'm on the freeway chasing it, don't even ask.
00:46:33.000And the long and the short of it is, I was like, am I trying to stop myself from feeling deeply upset if something happens to this animal?
00:46:48.440And the long and the short of it is, is it selfish what I'm doing when I see somebody who's struggling with something and I feel like my heart breaks and I want to fix it?
00:46:58.000I ran into a woman the other day who was morbidly obese and she just had brain surgery.
00:47:03.680And I swear to God, I was depressed the rest of the night.
00:47:06.480And I thought, okay, this isn't because I'm some sort of great person.
00:47:09.380This is obviously triggering something in me that makes me feel like the animal on the freeway or the woman that needs help.
00:47:15.800So is empathy really selfish because it's about the part of you that is self-preserving?
00:47:28.740First of all, I completely empathize with your position on the animal that's in distress.
00:47:37.540I just spent five weeks with my family in Newport Beach.
00:47:41.400And on one of our last days in Southern California, we saw a gorgeous female seal that had just beached itself on one of the beaches in Newport Beach.
00:47:54.620And she was acting in a very strange way that you wouldn't expect.
00:48:00.360And it turns out that she was suffering from exposure to a particular algae.
00:48:05.840I can't remember the name of the disease.
00:48:10.760I mean, literally, they're parasitized in a sense.
00:48:14.660I mean, not in the way that I've been talking, but it's literally affecting them neurologically and so on.
00:48:19.040Now, the marine biology center that handles these things came over, took her.
00:48:25.300I took the phone number and I have since, like we've been back now for almost three weeks.
00:48:30.740So they called, they now, they called her, they christened her Robin.
00:48:35.500So here I am, 3,000 miles away, texting them every few days saying, can you give me an update on Robin?
00:48:44.440And to your point, there is absolutely no evolutionary benefit that I am reaping in feeling this great empathy and love and compassion for an animal.
00:48:55.120So that mechanism could be channeled in different ways.
00:48:59.620Yes, empathy could be deployed for absolutely no benefits, but it's very rare.
00:49:09.460I'll tell you what it's going to take.
00:49:10.540Well, first of all, we all read Presidic Mind because you taught me how to fight back.
00:49:15.180And that's what everyone needs to learn to do.
00:49:17.020So if you're awake and you're wondering what the hell is going on, you need to learn how to steel man your arguments and how to plant yourself firmly in your area of expertise.
00:49:29.620So there is an immediate way to solve it and there is a long-term way.
00:50:06.960The short view is you need to put people in power who could enact cataclysmic changes.
00:50:14.700That's why Donald Trump is so despised because he is such a danger to the status quo, to the globalists, to the, in French, you say, les bien-pensants, the anointed ones, the good thinkers, the people with the progressive lisp.
00:50:33.380You see, now I'm speaking with a lisp because I am haughty.
00:50:48.740By the way, just for you to know, in Canada, we've had now Justin Trudeau for three terms.
00:50:53.940Do you know how many thousands of people have written to me and said, oh, my God, I wish I would have listened to you when you were warning us on the top of the mountain?
00:51:04.840I'm saying this not to be gleeful and to be the guy who said, I told you so.
00:51:08.320But it's precisely because people get raptured.
00:51:12.560In Arabic, I may have said this before, maybe not, but it's worth repeating even if I've said it.
00:51:17.000Imagine this is the cork of the wine bottle.
00:51:19.180Do you know what I'm about to do or you've never seen me do this before?
00:51:23.840So imagine if this is the cork of the wine bottle.
00:51:26.300There is an expression in Arabic that says, getting drunk by smelling the cork of the wine bottle, which basically is a metaphor for someone who is of weak constituency.
00:51:39.380In other words, I don't need to actually drink the entire bottle of wine to get drunk.
00:51:43.940I just smell it and I'm already drunk.
00:51:46.980Now, how does this apply to what we're talking about?
00:51:50.020Look now, I'm going to get drunk by the Kamala cork, right?
00:54:09.820So I would, so my earlier books are more technical, academic, scientific books.
00:54:15.000So they're great, but many people might not, might find them a bit more difficult to read, although they certainly can.
00:54:20.960So I would suggest if you're interested in, today we actually touched upon a lot of this evolutionary psychology stuff and evolutionary theory stuff.
00:54:28.860So if they're interested in that stuff, then this book right here, The Consuming Instinct, what juicy burgers, pornography, Ferraris, and gift-giving reveal about human nature.
00:54:39.340So this is a book where I demonstrate how you could apply evolutionary psychology to consumer behavior and to behavior in general.
00:54:47.160If you want to inoculate yourself against all of these ideological brain worms, then of course The Parasitic Mind.
00:54:53.840And then my most recent book, the one before the one that I'm writing now, Suicidal Empathy, is The Sad Truth About Happiness, which is a book that's very, very different than The Parasitic Mind.
00:55:03.760The Parasitic Mind is what happens to brains when things go wrong.
00:55:07.520The happiness book is what are some mindsets that we can adopt based on my personal experience, based on ancient wisdoms, based on contemporary science that can lead us to be happy.
00:55:19.060Now, that was a daunting book to write because, you know, many people have written about how, I mean, going back to the ancient Greeks about how to live a good life.
00:55:55.680Yeah, you know, it's amazing because, you know, I just opened the laptop in 2014, not having a clue whether I would get one viewer or five or ten, but I really had the sense of self-assuredness that, you know, I think I've got a certain set of skills that maybe people will resonate with.
00:56:13.740And to your kind point, or, you know, 10 years later, 35 plus million views, millions of downloads.
00:56:23.920And that's what, by the way, makes it difficult for me to revert back to only writing academic papers.
00:56:31.920Although I remain very much of an academic at heart, you write an academic paper, it takes you three years to do it, and then 50 people will cite it in 10 years.
00:56:42.440So it's very hard when you live in a world with limited time currency, do I want to get on Jillian Michaels' show where I might reach, I don't know, thousands and thousands of people?
00:56:54.000So this is where I currently am in my career.
00:56:57.180Do I continue down the pathway of all popularizing science?
00:57:01.540And so, yeah, it's a tough decision to make, but it's a good conundrum to have.