Dr. Gad Saad
Appearances
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
Great to be with you. Have you recovered from seeing me in the red velvet suit at Mar-a-Lago?
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
All right, so suicidal empathy is the following, Charlie. Empathy is a great thing, but like most things in life, it has to be deployed to the right targets in the right amount at the right place, right? Aristotle already knew this many thousands of years ago. So to be empathetic, is certainly a virtue that, you know, we should applaud, but to be orgiastically empathetic.
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
So for example, American vets are less worthy of our empathy than illegal immigrants who are MS-13 gang members. Transgender folks who want to play in women's sports who are biological males are empathizing with them is more important than the hundreds of women who will lose a spot on the podium. So suicidal empathy is the misfiring of an otherwise adaptive emotion.
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
Orgiastic open borders is due to suicidal empathy. Choosing to never criticize Islam because it might marginalize the noble, peaceful Muslims that live next to me is a case of suicidal empathy. Arguing that all immigrants are equal and hence, I mean, yes, they're equal in the sense that they're equal under the law, but they're not equally likely to assimilate and internalize Western values.
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
There's nothing racist or bigoted about that, right? my my house cat is a feline so is the wild lion in the savannah jungle they're both feline one of them wants me to pet it the other one wants to eat me for lunch and so i'm not bigoted against cats because i recognize that a lion is not the same thing as fido my cat and so
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
Criminality, how we navigate through the penal system is a case of suicidal empathy. Why don't we give the noble criminal an 87th chance? He's already been criminalized by white patriarchy. If we now put him in prison, we're double whammying him. And so every lunatic public policy that you could think of that is truly insane ultimately is rooted in the reflex of suicidal and misguided empathy.
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
Yeah, so look, as you are, of course, I am elated that Donald Trump won, but I keep warning people, please don't be complacent. The fact that he won doesn't mean that all of the parasitic ideas, all of the suicidal empathy magically is eradicated, right? It took 50 to 100 years for each of these disastrous ideas and these misguided emotional responses to
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
to proliferate through every nook and cranny of society. So it's going to take more than just the four years of Donald Trump for us to win the battle. So yes, let's rejoice that he won and the opposite would have been, the alternative would have been a disaster, but it doesn't end here. A lot more work needs to be done.
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
Yeah, well, it's to remind people that orgiastic, unadulterated empathy is not a virtue, right? Like most things in life, We've evolved the capacity to discriminate between people. I'm more likely to jump in front of a moving bus to save my biological children than I am to save a random child in Namibia. That's not because I'm callous. That's not because I'm sinister.
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
It's because I've evolved the emotional system that allows me to met out my investments in a way that makes evolutionary sense. And so we need to remind people that it is perfectly reasonable to care more about your country than to care about a country that's 2000 miles away, to care more about your children than about some, you know, poorly mistreated child in Waziristan.
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
Again, that doesn't mean that we should never met out empathy and kindness to strangers, but it means that it has to be better regulated. And so the quicker we can remind people that it is perfectly reasonable, for example, to be patriotic, to love your family first, the quicker we can eradicate this reflex of suicidal empathy.
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
So I think it originally started with the parasitic ideas, right? So, you know, all cultures are equal. Who are you to judge other cultures? But of course, our own culture is not equal in that it's inferior, right? The West is inferior to the noble Afghanis, right? And what that does then is it creates a sense of what I argue in the book, in my forthcoming book, a sense of survivor guilt.
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
So let me expand on this idea. If you're in a plane crash, God forbid, and in your row everybody dies except you, at first you're elated, thank God I survived. But then you might go through a ruminative period where there is a constant intrusive thought in your mind, why did I deserve to live while all those perfectly lovely people survived?
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
Well, I argue that the West suffers from this kind of survivor guilt, but at the collective level. Why was I born in the West and therefore I've got all these privileges, whereas these poor people in Waziristan don't have my ability to thrive and flourish? And so there is several roots of the genesis for where that comes from. But it all originates from those parasitic ideas.
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
That's why my first book, Parasitic Mind, was about what happens to our cognitive system when it is zombified. And then the next book is what happens to our emotional system when it becomes zombified. If our cognitive system is zombified and then our emotional system is zombified, here we go to the abyss of infinite lunacy.
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
It's a prime example. It is front and central in my next book, in my book, Salah Empathy. Let me draw an analogy for you, Charlie, from evolutionary psychology. The number one predictor of child abuse in a home, I don't know if you've ever heard me mention this. If you haven't, can I ask you to guess without putting you on the spot?
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
Can you guess what is the number one predictor of child abuse in a home?
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
No, not quite. If there is a step parent in the house, there is a hundredfold- Meaning what religion they have, but yes. So go ahead, but just to be clear. No, I got you, I got you. Yeah, you know, I got it. So if there is a step parent in the house, there's a hundredfold increase of there being a child abuse in that home.
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
Now, me saying that, which is an absolute incontrovertible fact, doesn't take away from the fact that most step-parents are perfectly lovely and are not abusers, right? Both those statements hold true.
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
What happens in the British grooming gangs is the minute that you say that there is an epidemiological reality whereby Pakistani Muslims are the primary perpetrators of those crimes, then someone comes along and says, yes, but my uncle Ahmed is a lovely guy and he would never rape a child, right? That is that suicidal empathy reflex, which is,
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
Upon hearing something that might marginalize the noble Muslims, please shut that information down. So yes, that is a perfect example of suicidal empathy.
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
Well-regulated empathy, right? So let me give you another example that I think will drive that point home. OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder, is a psychiatric dysfunction, right? I will spend eight hours washing my hands and scalding hot water until my skin falls off, and then I don't get to work, and then I get fired. It's a dysfunction.
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
But the root of OCD is rooted in an actually adaptive evolutionarily sensible mechanism, which is... It makes evolutionary sense for us to scan the environment for potential threats.
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
So if you and I meet, Charlie, and I notice that a second ago you sneezed into your hand and then you put out your hand to shake mine, I might wince at the possibility of shaking your hand precisely because I might get your cold or your bronchitis or whatever it is, right? And therefore it makes evolutionary sense for me to be scanning the world for environmental threats.
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
The problem becomes when that warning flag misfires, it becomes hyperactive. So I check that the back door is closed, but then I'm stuck there for the next four hours checking that the door is closed. Well, this is the same idea with empathy. Yes, be empathetic, but not orgiastically so, right? Like life is about regulation. It's about how
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
having the right amount in the right place to the right people. So yes, empathy is good within normal ranges.
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
Oh, of course. Big time. I mean, all of them were in mourning when the ultra-empathetic Justin Trudeau resigned recently, right? All of them were big champions of his because he was so kind. He was so warm. He was about land acknowledgements. He was about diversity, inclusion, and equity. He's about indigenous knowledge instead of, you know, the white supremacy scientific methods.
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
So, of course, they are, you know, stricken with suicidal empathy. Now, I should say to your earlier point that there is a bit of a pushback. I'm happy to report to your audience, Charlie, that I'm now receiving a growing number of emails from academics who are saying, wink, wink, I'm on your side. Much more than I have in the past. So maybe they're waking up.
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
So we can be at least a bit optimistic.
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
I do. I do. Look, life, as you know, is full of cycles, down cycles, up cycles. I'd like to think that what we're seeing now, this kind of new renaissance, this new optimism, is not just a little bleep of a Donald Trump positive outlier, but rather he started the train onto a new renaissance period. So I'd like to think that you're absolutely right. We went through a very difficult period.
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
And when I say we, I don't mean just the United States. I mean Canada. I mean the West. But hopefully things are definitely turning around for the better today.
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
The Parasitic Mind, The Sad Truth About Happiness, and I am feverishly working on Suicidal Empathy every day, every minute, every hour. Hopefully it should be out in the next few months. Thank you, Charlie.
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
My heart goes out, obviously, to the people with their homes. And I'm watching the small businesses around us go up in flames. This is people's livelihoods. So it's devastating. But what is most concerning to me is our first responders and our firefighters who are trying to battle this. There's no water in the Palisades. There's no water coming out of the fire hydrants.
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
This is an absolute mismanagement. By the city. Not the firefighters' fault, but it's by the city. And I'm going to be very honest. We've got a mayor that's out of the country, and we've got a city that's burning, and there's no resources to put out fires. So if you look at your pictures, you don't see the firefighters there because there's nothing they can do.
The Charlie Kirk Show
California Burns While Its Leaders Vanish
And it looks like we're in a third-world country here. Peachy.