00:02:09.900Well, we're sort of talking about it in a lighthearted way,
00:02:13.360but for people who are maybe coming to some of your ideas for the first time,
00:02:16.740Just give everybody a bit of an overview, Gad.
00:02:18.960When you talk about idea pathogens and you talk about the election of Joe Biden over Donald Trump, the election of Justin Trudeau, re-election of Justin Trudeau over his opponents, you know, what are you talking about?
00:02:30.860When you say idea pathogens, what do you mean?
00:02:33.520Right. So first, maybe it's worthwhile repeating why I use the metaphor of parasitic mind, right?
00:02:40.320So as an evolutionist, one of the things that I do is that I oftentimes, when I'm trying to study a human phenomenon, I then try to look for homologous phenomena in the animal kingdom.
00:02:54.080And so in this case, I wanted to find a way to root the concepts that I was discussing in the book, which I'll talk about in a second, in an animal context.
00:03:05.720So in the animal kingdom, you have many cases of parasites, of course, that will infect a host.
00:03:11.740The sub-branch called neuroparasitology is when the parasite will end up in a host's brain,
00:03:19.580altering its circuitry and behavior to suit the benefits of the parasite.
00:03:25.420So Toxoplasma gondii, the mouse that is infected with it, will lose its innate fear of cats.
00:03:31.500As a matter of fact, it will become attracted to the cat's urine.
00:03:35.720which is not a really good thing for a mouse to be attracted to.
00:03:38.780So there are many, many examples in the animal kingdom
00:03:41.420where a host will engage in irrational, maladaptive behavior.
00:03:46.400So I had found the framework that I would use to then argue,
00:03:50.260well, human beings can be parasitized by actual brain worms like Toxoplasma Gandhi,
00:03:55.980but there's another class of pathogens that can parasitize our minds,
00:05:44.520And it's only our unique socialization that makes us who we are.
00:05:47.880So if Bubba can bench press more weights than Linda, it's not because there might be any morphological, anatomical, physiological, hormonal differences between men and women.
00:06:00.300It must be because he was socialized to play rough and tumble when he was a kid and Linda wasn't.
00:06:06.020Right. So we we root everything in social construction.
00:06:09.300Well, that's a lovely message because it presumes that we are all born with equal potentiality, but it's also a perfectly nonsensical message.
00:06:16.940So I basically in the book go through all of these idea pathogens. I demonstrate how they've all been, they've all started, they were all spawned within the university ecosystem. And then towards the end of the book, I offer a vaccine against these ideas.
00:06:32.640yes. Gad, let me ask you something. I love the way you talked about equal potentiality because
00:06:38.340I think this is a lot of where this may come from, which is these ideas. First, as you said,
00:06:44.900you eradicate the idea that there's a truth to be found via postmodernism. And then you furnish
00:06:51.480people with ideas that make them feel good because the truth is often unpleasant. We're not all
00:06:58.360equal. We're not born with equal potentiality. But if you want to feel good about the world,
00:07:03.060if you want to feel that, you know, you are where you are, not because of some inherent failings or
00:07:07.840disadvantages that you were simply born with, but rather because society is evil and oppressive and
00:07:12.640whatever, then these ideas all make sense. So how much of this is simply about creating a framework
00:07:17.960where you can get ideas in that just sound and make us feel really good about ourselves?
00:07:23.300So it's partly that. So let me back up and answer your question in a much broader way. When I was trying to look for commonalities across these idea pathogens, I thought, okay, well, each of these pathogens has a different structure to it, but is there any commonality?
00:07:45.160So then I, again, went to analogize with cancer in this case.
00:07:50.540If you look at cancer, each manifestation of cancer takes on a different trajectory.
00:07:56.520Leukemia is different than liver cancer, which is different than melanoma.
00:08:02.300They all have unchecked cell division.
00:08:05.340So notwithstanding all the differences of various manifestations of cancers, we could
00:08:11.120find something that is common across all of them.
00:08:13.200The same principle applies with these idea pathogens. While they manifest themselves in different ways, what is common to them, and hence this will answer your question, what is common to them is that they start with some noble cause, which then metamorphosizes into nonsense in the service of that noble cause, right?
00:08:36.100So for example, if I am a militant feminist, I start off with the cause, there should be equality of the sexes, which makes perfect sense in terms of equality under the law. But then I say, in the pursuit of that noble goal, I must create a worldview that says that men and women are indistinguishable from each other.
00:08:59.660Because in promulgating that message, it will hopefully allow me to better fight the sexist patriarchal status quo.
00:09:08.040So it's a form of consequentialist ethics, which basically says it's okay to distort and murder the truth in the service, in the consequences of a noble goal.
00:09:19.060So whether the noble goal is to make a group feel better, make an individual feel better, it's okay to rape and murder truth in the pursuit of that noble lie.
00:09:29.660And of course, I argue that I could chew gum and walk at the same time.
00:09:33.460I could be totally supportive of noble justice, social justice goals, while never ceding a
00:15:38.860I recognize that while it is tragic that other children are suffering, it makes perfect
00:15:43.560adaptive sense that I spend my efforts investing in my own children, right?
00:15:47.960Well, progressives don't have that nuanced thinking. It is empathetic to allow all people. Open borders is empathy. Closed border is Himmler. So it's a form of kindergarten thinking.
00:16:05.240Evan Syed wrote a book on how liberals are engaging in a form of kindergarten logic.
00:19:18.700You know, they have to stand their ground when they're fighting for their rights, when they're fighting for truth.
00:19:23.480And if they do that, I truly think that if you have me on again in a few months, then hopefully we'll have even more optimism to share.
00:19:32.040Gad, why was it? So when, to me, the turning point came when George Floyd was murdered, that video was sent around the world.
00:19:41.840Now, obviously, it's a shocking video and it's vile and it's awful and the policeman's actions were completely indefensible.
00:19:48.700But why is it that had such an enormous impact, not just in America, which is understandable, but in Canada, in the UK, all around the world?
00:19:58.840We had it in our country where our police aren't even armed, the vast majority of them anyway.
00:20:04.540Look, humans are prone to episodic memory, right?
00:20:09.920So, for example, if I were to ask you, where were you when you heard of 9-11?
00:20:18.700pretty much everyone who is old enough to actually remember a memory would be able to exactly tell
00:20:26.140you. And that's known as an episodic memory, right? It really becomes. So, of course, people
00:20:33.140could say, where were you when you heard that JFK was assassinated? Well, none of us in this room
00:20:37.520was born at that point. But someone who's old enough could say, oh, I remember exactly where
00:20:41.960I was. And I could tell you where I was when 9-11 happened. Exactly. I mean, almost to the T.
00:20:48.700In some cases, you might remember episodic memory
00:21:17.920hijacks our capacity to think. Yes, it's a very powerful image. Yes, it's one that will become
00:21:25.440part of the indelible nature of my long-term memory to think back of this grotesque snuffing
00:21:31.460out of a human life in front of your eyes. But then I'm not a kindergartner. I'm able to say,
00:21:39.620is this an endemic story? Is this what's happening across the United States every day, right? Well,
00:21:47.240if I have a functioning brain, if I can look at data, I could separate the horrors of that imagery
00:21:55.060from the eventual narrative that happens. Most people, being cognitivizers, can't. Therefore,
00:22:02.980when LeBron James says, I am afraid to leave my house in Malibu to go to staple centers to play
00:22:09.920with the LA Lakers because the police are hunting me down. And it's, you know, I always feel ashamed
00:22:17.460at the horrors of what I went through in the Lebanese civil war when I escaped execution
00:22:22.620in comparison to the horrors that LeBron James is facing. He's got to take his own life in his hands
00:22:30.060to take that incredibly dangerous road from Malibu to Staples. Imagine what a whiny pig I am
00:22:37.340to complain about what we went through in Lebanon compared to the genocide that LeBron is facing
00:22:44.480every day. So that's why the George Floyd becomes so powerful, because you take a truly grotesque
00:22:50.540episodic memory and you then, in an incredibly silly way, generalize it to an existential
00:22:59.480zeitgeist. Well, it isn't true. There is no genocide that's happening in the United States of,
00:23:04.720I hate the term people of color. That's simply not true. But yet, it triggers my emotional system.
00:23:12.980I get enraged. Hashtag BLM, down, down, white police.
00:23:18.580And Gad, another area where you talked about, you know, the erosion of truth and the replacement
00:23:23.340with things that make us feel good and an area of specialization for you personally is gender
00:23:28.940and toys. And there was a law recently in California sticking very much with California.
00:23:34.720you know, on this very subject. Tell us more about that, please.
00:23:39.340Well, yeah, thank you for asking. One of the things in my scientific career is, well, the main
00:23:45.420goal in my scientific career has been to try to Darwinize the business school. The idea being that
00:23:52.160you can't study organizational behavior and economic behavior and consumer behavior, which is,
00:23:57.200you know, my main area of interest, without understanding the biological drivers of what
00:24:02.760makes us consumers and employers and employees. We don't suddenly stop being biological beings
00:24:08.920when we put on those hats. We are what we are because of our biology. Well, so one of the
00:24:15.360things that long ago, perhaps prophetically, I had decided to do was to build what I call a
00:24:23.040nomological network of cumulative evidence. And I discussed this in the whole chapter seven of
00:24:28.420the parasitic mind is dedicated to this epistemological tool. A nomological network
00:24:33.040of cumulative evidence is a means by which you build distinct lines of evidence that point to
00:24:40.960a position that you're trying to defend. And one of the examples that I have used in my scientific
00:24:46.100work and that I discuss in that chapter is the sex specificity of toy preferences. The idea that
00:24:54.080Contrary to what social constructivists say, it's not true that little Johnny is simply taught to prefer the blue truck while little Linda is taught to prefer the pink doll because of the patriarchy.
00:25:07.880But rather, there are indelible reasons why these sex-specific toy preferences exist.
00:25:14.100Now, let me give you, I won't give you the full nomological network, but I'll give you a few lines of evidence that demonstrate how incontestable the evidence is, and then I'll link it to the law that brainless Gavin Newsom has come out with, okay?
00:25:29.840So I can show you data from developmental psychology whereby you take children who are too young to be socialized. So by definition, you're ruling out the socialization argument. And I could show you that they already exhibit the sex-specific toy preferences.
00:25:49.420little boys will tend to point to or try to reach or look at longer because you can't ask them
00:25:57.380through words right they're they're not yet they don't have the capacity for language yet
00:26:00.980so developmental psychology has already demonstrated the uh has ruled out the
00:26:07.460socialization argument so if i had only shown you that data that already destroys the social
00:26:12.860constructivist argument but when i'm building a nomological network of cumulative evidence
00:26:17.180I won't stop there. I'm going to drown you in a tsunami of evidence. So let's look at a second
00:26:22.820line of evidence. I'll do a few. I won't do the whole network, but hopefully it will become
00:26:27.880evident how powerful the methodology is. I could show you data across animals. So I can bring you
00:26:34.920data from vervet monkeys, from rhesus monkeys, from chimpanzees to show you that they exhibit
00:26:40.960the same sex specificity of toy preferences. So now I've gotten you data from developmental
00:26:46.040psychology. I've gotten you data from comparative psychology, comparative in the sense that you're
00:26:50.500comparing across species. I can now get you data from pediatric endocrinology. So I can get you
00:26:55.920data from, in medicine, you have a condition called congenital adrenal hyperplasia. This is
00:27:02.220when little girls who suffer from this condition have masculinized behaviors. Well, little girls
00:27:08.180who suffer from this disorder, what do you think happens to their toy preferences? They're
00:27:12.760perfectly reversed. They become like those of boys. Okay, so now I've given you data from
00:27:17.800developmental psychology, from comparative psychology, from pediatric endocrinology. I'll
00:27:21.880do one more, although I could have spent another 30 minutes giving you more data. I can bring you
00:27:26.800data from across cultures and cultures that are radically different than Western cultures and
00:27:33.140show you that they exhibit the same patterns. I could get you data from 2,500 years ago in ancient
00:27:39.300Greece showing you that in funerary monuments, little boys and little girls are depicted playing
00:27:46.480with the same sex-specific toys as we have today. So I'm getting you cross-cultural data,
00:27:51.860cross-temporal data, cross-discipline data, all of which point to the same ultimate fact.
00:27:57.520Boys and girls have different toy preferences. So now that I've done all that, here comes
00:28:04.120the woke crusader who says, screw human nature, screw science. Remember, the Democrats are the
00:28:13.240science party. While I just gave you irrefutable 2,500 years worth of science across every
00:28:20.120imaginable discipline that boys and girls have different toy preferences, Gavin Newsom says,
00:28:26.600no, social constructivism is de rigueur. Therefore, there shouldn't be sex differences
00:28:33.620when it comes to toy preferences. Therefore, I will mandate into law that which is inscribed
00:28:41.380in human nature. Hey, retailers, you better not adhere to science and you better have gender
00:28:48.060neutral toys. Let me give you another example of folks who denied human nature. They're called
00:28:54.400communists. E.O. Wilson, the famous evolutionary biologist who is an entomologist who studies
00:29:01.980social ants, here's what he said regarding communism. He said, wonderful idea, wrong species,
00:29:10.800meaning communism is a wonderful idea for social ants because social ants, it is an indelible part
00:29:18.460of their nature to be non-hierarchical. Every worker ant is the same except one reproductive
00:29:25.140queen. Therefore, communism works wonders for social ants. It doesn't work for a species called
00:29:32.600humans because we are not worker ants. Some of us work harder. Some of us are dumber. Some of us
00:29:38.260are taller. Some of us are Lionel Messi. Therefore, when you impose a socio-political economic system
00:36:13.620Now, I understand that that may be a rare quality, but I'm probably not the first to
00:36:18.840say that the one who leads an honest life is the one who truly leads a happy life, which
00:36:25.340by the way, is what I'm talking about in my next book.
00:36:27.260So, no, I do blame them. I do look at those people with disdain. I understand that there are careerist, pragmatic realities, but then you're an asshole. You're a false person. You're a fake, right? There is nothing more beautiful than to be authentic because you are authentic to yourself and to others.
00:36:47.100I don't have to modulate any lies because everything that I say comes from a place of
00:38:34.520and say, well, look, a good marketer is one who understands human nature. If you create products
00:38:42.480that are antithetical to some fundamental precept of human nature, that product will eventually fail
00:38:48.300on the market. So for example, if I am a creator of romance novels, well, we know that romance
00:38:56.680novels are almost exclusively read by women all around the world. There is no culture where that
00:39:01.780pattern is reversed almost exclusively read by women and they you they read those books because
00:39:08.440it is a form of fantasy escapism right and so typically if you want to study the content of
00:39:13.120romance novels one of the things that you could do is study what is the typical archetype of the
00:39:19.600male hero in a romance novel and he's always the same guy he is tall he is a prince he's a
00:39:25.600neurosurgeon. He tackled alligators on his six pack and causes the alligator to submit. And he
00:39:33.200could only be tamed by the love of this one woman. This lion of a man can ultimately be reined in by
00:39:38.520this woman. I just explained every single romance novel that has ever been written since the
00:39:44.320Pleistocene era. That exists because romance novel writers are targeting women. Marketing is
00:39:54.220segmentation and targeting. They're targeting women. They understand the needs of women when
00:39:59.520it comes to purchasing that product, and they adhere to it. Now, a company that's progressive
00:40:04.100comes along and says, we want to free ourselves from the shackles of the archetype of the male
00:40:10.540hero. We want to create a new genre of romance novels where the male protagonist is pear-shaped.
00:40:18.260He's got a nasal voice. He plays video games all day in mom's basement. He sucks his thumb in a
00:40:23.900fetal position. He watches Bridget Jones' diaries while crying because he put on three pounds. Yeah,
00:40:29.960that's right. I'm the king of comedy. Okay. So therefore, we're going to create a new genre
00:40:36.220of romance novel that adheres to this more gentle, non-toxic masculine male. Well, what happens to
00:40:43.040that genre? It fails in the marketplace because women say, sorry, progressive company, we're not
00:40:49.580interested in fantasizing over this guy. We're not buying your product. So then I tell my MBA
00:40:54.720students, so do you understand why we have to be grounded in human nature? So now you can see how
00:41:01.020I'm coming back to your question. A good society is one that has certain features. You need to
00:41:09.640make sure that there is a police force, a military. There needs to be a mechanism to ensure that
00:41:16.240people can't come into my home and take what they covet from my home. But a good society is
00:41:22.440not one where Gavin Newsom tells free retailers how to organize the merchandise layout in their
00:41:32.420stores. That's not how you should organize society. A good society is not one where you put
00:41:39.840the collective as being more important than the individual. That's communism. I am first
00:41:48.240Gatsad before I'm a member of a tribe. So judge me for all my qualities and faults as an individual.
00:41:55.460So the reason why the West was such a miraculous anomaly is because classical liberalism
00:42:02.260recognized that. It said everything should be rooted in the ethos of individual dignity.
00:42:09.280And now progressives are saying, no, no, no. The great experiment of the Western tradition has proven to be faulty. Let's return to a collectivist ethos that will ensure that we will have a society, a flourishing, blossoming society like Lebanon, where everything is defined according to identity politics. So I hope that I've answered your question.
00:42:32.960You have, Gad, but I have a challenge for you because we just interviewed, well, we've interviewed a number of people who've made this point, but among them is Tim Stanley, a historian here in the UK, who's written a book about tradition.
00:42:45.080And one of the things we were sort of teasing out of him is a conversation about whether the pursuit of freedom can become self-destructive when it's taken to the extreme to the point where we are now, where I think particularly among people of our generation, Francis and I, and younger,
00:43:01.940there's a feeling and you know your your fellow canadian jordan peterson i think has become the
00:43:06.480superstar that he has because that feeling is widely shared that there's a crisis of meaning
00:43:10.880and that freedom in and of itself and personal autonomy in and of itself and classical liberalism
00:43:16.240dare i say in and of itself does not provide for some of the other things that give people meaning
00:43:21.620now i know what you're going to say you're going to say well i pursue truth and and all of that and
00:43:26.360you do and i really respect you for that and i try to do the same but the other things that give
00:43:31.160your life, meaning are your children, your family, your social relations, your community, etc. And
00:43:36.400those are not necessarily benefiting from the exclusive pursuit of freedom. Would you not agree
00:43:43.040with that? Actually, it might surprise you. I fully agree with you, right? It's not that the
00:43:50.060ethos of individual dignity as promised by the state is inconsistent with the recognition that
00:43:58.480humans are a social species, that humans exhibit traits that are communal in nature, right? So
00:44:06.640the fact that I have an innate mechanism to love my children, to love my spouse, to love
00:44:15.020my non-kin, you know, I'm sitting with you guys and I appreciate greatly what you guys are doing
00:44:21.380and I might feel a great kinship towards you, right? The term kinship implies as though we
00:44:26.880We're biologically linked, even though we're not.
00:44:29.100So it's not as though evolutionists say, oh, it's a, you know, a brutish world.
00:44:35.680Each man for himself pursues selfish interests.
00:50:46.060That that's not the default structure of the human condition. So it takes people who have existed in the default societies that are not congruent with the Western tradition, who then come to the West, see the traditions that we have and say, what the hell are you morons doing?
00:51:06.520How are you giving all this up away without anybody having even conquered you at the gates?
00:51:12.620You're saying that you will self-sabotage, right?
00:51:15.780That's why I am existentially angered all the time, because I simply can't believe what's