The other day, while I was browsing, I was interrupted by an ad for PragerU. I despise PragerU, the totally fake university that specializes in fake history and fake science, led by that smarmy old fraud, Dennis Prager. What caught my ear, though, is that this ad featured Gad Saad desperately pushing his new book, Suicidal Empathy.
I have not read the book. I will never read the book. Gad Saad is a pathetic figure, a pick-me guy for the right wing, who is a professor of marketing who rides the evolutionary psychology bandwagon. I’ve written about him a few times before, in particular his efforts to deny the existence of toxic masculinity while simultaneously exemplifying the attitudes and stereotypes that represent toxicity. Like any good evo psych wanker, he justifies treating women poorly by mentioning animals with aggressive, violent mating strategies, as if they apply to us.
Even Larry Moran, who doesn’t normally dip into culture war issues, ripped Gad Saad a new one. Saad is just a sad embarrassment of a man who desperately wants to be legitimized by more successful evo-psych grifters, but doesn’t quite have the smarts to assemble a coherent, logical argument.
I got the gist of his thesis from the ad. He’s trying to thread a needle here: he can’t quite say that empathy is bad, because he wants you to empathize with him, but at the same time he wants you to know that the empathy practiced by Leftists is undeniably evil and wicked. Empathy that leads you to regard Muslims as human beings is “suicidal,” after all. And don’t get him started on women and “effeminate” men!
The book is reviewed in Jacobin, and the review confirms everything I’d expect of Saad.
For those of you who don’t know who he is — likely a larger group than he’d be willing to admit — Saad is a Canadian professor at Concordia University who has spent the last few years as a major figure in anti-woke online spaces. Long regarded as a poor man’s Jordan Peterson, Saad has since grown in stature through his indomitable quest to kiss every square inch of Elon Musk’s ass. Elon has returned the favor by beating the drum for Saad’s ideas through a manic series of Tweets, frenetic even by his standards.
Reviews of Saad’s recent book, even by the ideologically sympathetic, suggest even his natural fan base is tuning out. Center-right outlet Quillette resented Saad’s “narcissistic ramblings,” while a scathing review in UnHerd described Suicidal Empathy as peddling “fake science” and relying “on a relentless drumbeat of fear-mongering regarding rape and crime.” That even his ideological friends are tiring of this shtick is a testament to how mind-numbingly boring Suicidal Empathy is.
Uh-oh–when an evolutionary psychologist loses the affection of Quillette, you know he’s on the way out. He relies on caricatures of left wing perspectives that he exaggerates into absurdity, so it’s no surprise that his arguments fall apart, even if you sympathize with his views. He has to distort everything to make his case.
Nominally the book is about the rise of “suicidal empathy.” Undeniably a catchy neologism, Saad defines suicidal empathy as a “dysregulation of an otherwise noble virtue.” While he acknowledges that empathy is valuable in some contexts, in the hands of woke progressives it has become an existentially damaging force. The “suicidally empathetic person feels guilty that they were born in the West, whereas others were not so fortunate. They feel guilty that they were born with white skin and hence suffer from ‘Dermatological Original Sin.’ By committing Civilization Seppuku, they can demonstrate their noble virtues as a form of pious self-hatred.”
This dysfunctional empathy, often emotionally adjacent to liberal narcissism via the drive to applaud oneself as more noble and altruistic, is at the root of virtually every progressive stance ever taken. For Saad, “epistemological empathy” is invoked in academia to silence those committed to a “deontological” quest for the truth. Toleration for Muslims is a form of “Islamophilic empathy.” Empathy for criminals leads us to care “more about the rights of rapists and felons than their victims.” Climate activism is “misguided empathy” from those who want to “protect Mother Earth from being raped by capitalism.” Socialism itself — which Saad points out is preferred by women, a point against it — is rooted in “misguided empathy.”
He’s playing a simple-minded game. If you don’t think black people should be discriminated against for the color of the skin, well, that must mean you hate and are ashamed of white people. If you think we should protect ecologies from raging industrialism, by golly, you really hate capitalism. And if you like socialism, you’re a woman, you pussy.
Now you can understand why I won’t read his book. The banality is exhausting. I’ve seen a few of his videos and read a few of his articles, and know that he’s simply a knee-jerk bigot. Hard pass.
To be fair, though, I should at least quote some of Gad Saad’s own words.
In other words, women are more likely than men to violate the deontological principles that define academic freedom, freedom of speech, and the pursuit and defense of truth, in the service of a consequentialist ethos rooted in misguided empathy. The rapid feminization of academia has been astonishing to watch. I have recently attended departmental meetings where it was unclear to me that it was not a kindergarten classroom in terms of the incessant focus on emotional safety and empathetic understanding.
Does that sound like a man anyone, especially any woman, would want to spend 5 minutes in conversation with? Does he even sound like he’s aware of the bigotry implicit in his words?
I’ve been in many departmental meetings, and yes, the safety and well-being of our students comes up fairly often — because it matters. If you were a student, would you want a professor who rolls his eyes at the thought of trying to understand you?
Is there any possibility he is an alien impostor that has not learned the whole human thing yet?
I am also reminded of Zelig, the one who adapted to whatever the local peer group was.
I always find it bizarre when POC support white male supremacy. Dude, you’re brown. No amount of pandering to white male supremacists will ever make them see you as an equal. Nobody feels guilty for their complexion, but plenty of POC do suffer injustice and oppression due to their melanin.
Yeah, this is cosmically stupid.
What this kook has done is invent a whole bunch of straw people, that he then kills.
We don’t believe any of that.
That I was born in the “Global West” like 1.2 billion people is just a fact that I had no control over.
That I am white is another simple fact like 1.5 billion people. I’ve never felt guilty about it. I’ve been annoyed that I have the sun damaged skin to show for it.
We aren’t committing civilizational suicide.
In fact, we in the West are far more likely to commit civilizational murder and we’ve done this often. What happened to the Incan, Mayan, Aztec, and North American Indian civilizations?
Western culture and technology has been sweeping over and remaking the world for several centuries now. Some people call this cultural imperialism.
When a young kid in Egypt is wearing a Star Wars T shirt, who and what is replacing who and what here?
This is that cuckoo White Replacement theory dressed up a little bit to sound even more dumb.
I’m white, live in the West and if we were committing civilizational suicide and being replaced, I/we would know it.
The reality is that we are the dominant culture and the closest thing to global rulers on the planet earth right now.
re #3: “With great power comes great responsibility”. Whether that power was justly or unjustly acquired there is an obligation (far too often dismissed) to not make things worse for anyone.
re#4: I have wondered for a long time why the sort of people who believe “that cuckoo White Replacement theory” have so little confidence in the civilization they claim to be so proud of. The ‘European Expansion’/’Western Imperialism’ has been – and continues to be – so overwhelmingly successful that for all the rest of human history the answer to lots of “why are things this way” will be “Industrial Revolution” and “European Colonialism”. The West won, and will continue to win even if Lagos, Djakarta, Beijing, New Delhi, and Mexico City, become the world’s most important cities. (as an aside, the optimum course for the US to prosper over the next century involves accepting, recruiting even, a lot more immigration – ten times or more – than it has over the last twenty years. The more connections the US has to the rest of the world the better….)
The problem I see is that he’s afraid we’re committing “cultural suicide” but trying to cut out colonialism and imperialism like the cancer they are.
I HAD forgotten he exists before you brought him up!
As many disgusting rtwingnut schools now say: ‘bend over, we’re gonna prager u.’
Does he even sound like he’s aware of the bigotry implicit in his words?
No, and that’s the whole point of his schtick: don’t ever sound like you’re aware that your views are bigoted, and don’t ever sound aware of the possibility that anyone might find bigotry implicit in your words.
I’m white, live in the West and if we were committing civilizational suicide and being replaced, I/we would know it.
Actually, we all know there ARE White people committing civilizational suicide — but it’s not the bleeding-heart empathetic libruls, it’s the Retrumplitarians and other fascist haters who are doing everything they can to undermine and destroy all the liberal-democratic/Enlightenment values we Westerners are rightly proud of. Along with all that other art, science and literature stuff they never bothered to learn about in the first place.
Tethys @2:
Wikipedia – Gad Saad
Eiynah Mohammed-Smith (Polite Conversations):
OP:
Now that sounds suicidal.
Ironically, Gad Saad, the guy with the typical Northern European name,is a huge beneficiary of our “empathy”, the property that says is our big mistake.
He is an immigrant, fleeing the Lebanese civil war, and sought asylum in…Canada.
He has since done well enough to become a Canadian professor and bite the hands that gave him asylum and a chance for a better life.
Hate, lies, and hypocrisy, Gad Saad has won the right wing xian trifecta.
These days, if someone like him applied for asylum in the USA, he would end up in an ICE concentration camp, and be deported to Rawanda.
I want to protect ecologies and I hate capitalism. I can do both.
“dermatological original sin” made my eyes roll so hard i don’t know where they’ve ended up
A few points here:
First of all, your blog is the only reason I know of this guy. Perhaps (if that’s at all imaginable) there could be more positive communication (perhaps like the very successful “Yes, We Can!” strategy). How did Uri Geller put it when exposed by James Randi? “There is no negative advertisement!”
Then, there are situations where empathy is of hindrance, but I doubt it is in the case the illogical guy you mentioned describes. For respecting the right to live is doubtlessly something good, and if we do have white skin, then if we don’t, we have little claim even to ethical equality.
Also, as far as I am concerned, masculinity becomes toxic when somebody is hurt. That’s why we don’t want rapey, violent dudes running around.
And finally, the “narcissism” argument referring to the desire to be “better” does remind me strongly of this line: “Ever you desired to appear lordly and gracious, as a king of old!” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlrAdKuwOFk, ca 0:50)
What? Name one.
Just before he was assassinated, Charlie Kick was peddling the idea that empathy was a bad thing. Waddling his scrawny ass to University Turning Points events to peddle this crap to students. A dangerous idea to be peddling.
“I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new-age term that…does a lot of damage.”
— Charlie Kirck
The word is derived from ancient Greek. empatheia
Tethys@2:
“I always find it bizarre when POC support white male supremacy.”
And there is no better example of related brain death than professional idiot Mark Robinson, who wants to bring slavery back so he can own a few. He is sufficiently stupid enough to not even realize which side of that relationship he would quickly end up on. He also bragged about being a black Nazi (extreme irony again) and got caught viewing pornography (he prefers the transgender version*). We know that lobotomies are optional, and not yet required in that state, since about half of the state isn’t quite that insane. Since he is in North Carolina, where just over half of the state voted for the OrangeTrumpenführer, it seems likely that about half of that state is inhabited by insane people.
https://www.newsweek.com/mark-robinson-history-controversial-claims-1957096
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Robinson_(American_politician)
*I admit that I didn’t even know that was an actual thing. MAGA never ceases to amaze with their rabid level of stupidity.
Who?
Gad Saad, so close to being the oxymoronic if symmetrical name of Glad Sand and aptly, I and many others will be glad when he is sad.
Where did that extra ‘N’come from? Glad Sad that was obvs intended to be.
[Well, better than Sand in the Gland…]
John @ 14
Soldiers refusing an order to bayonet babies? Though an example that absurd kiiinda makes your point for you.
That is personal ethos. A moral choice.
May be self-preservation, too. Surely they are illegal orders.
(How one empathises with a baby is left to the imagination)
Put it this way: it could even be that apparent empathy there can mean ‘this hurts me more than it hurts me’, which doesn’t stop people. I know that first-hand.
(Needs must and all that, right)
John @ 21
Many a personal ethos and moral choice is emergent from empathy.
My empathy to you.
Empathy is pointless, badland. A sentiment.
You know? “intent ain’t magic” thingy.
Do you stand by your claimed example of it being problematic?
I don’t even think it’s applicable.
I mean, gimme one such soldier, and I bet you they are not ’empathising’ with the babies.
(Your handwaving is not very good, is it?)
—
Here, for you: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/empathy
Get my previous snark? There are cases where people do indeed empathise with babies, it’s a known psychosexual kink. But your example was not that.
I saw a National Post headline last week stating that a “bestselling author,” or something along those line, was fleeing Canada. It turned out to be Saad. Sorry, but when I think of best selling Canadian authors I think of Margaret Atwood or Yann Martel. I suspect only the subset of Canadians who have really gone hardcore into alt right nonsense have heard of him. Then again I don’t peruse nonsense like Rebel Media.
:) I claimed nothing John.
I mean, see me supra.
Ick. That despairingly stretched hypothetical speaks far more to your character than mine.
Ahem.
“John @ 14 Soldiers refusing an order to bayonet babies?”
Pretty sure that was intended as naming one. No?
A claim, therefore.
Your claim, yes. That was to what I responded.
You can thereby infer I saw it, given that.
You are the one who suggested empathy with babies.
Yeah, I know. Sloppy language. You meant theory of mind, or sympathy, or pity, or similar.
But ’empathy’ is quite clearly defined. I adduced it.
To empathise with a baby means just that, and noting it’s in distress and feeling impelled to relieve it is not empathy.
—
My character is not at hand, BTW. You are the one who makes it about that.
I am about semantics and meaning.
@25. badland : “I mean, see me supra.”
I’m sure its a nice car but what’s that got to do with this? ;-)
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Supra )
@21. John Morales : “How one empathises with a baby is left to the imagination.”
Same way you empathise with any living thing.I’d say. Probably helps that the baby in question is human although that wasn’t directly specified.
Generally if a soldier bayonets any living thing without clear & sufficient reason -self-defence or wartime /training orders there’s a failure of empathy and quite possibly a war crime.
Bayoneting infants or small children is a heinous and appalling war crime obvs..
Would describing the situation in the episode where the Mandalorian opts to save Baby Yoda (Grogu) by instead killing his felloow bounty hunting albeit a robot one be a better example perhaps? Dunno.
Words mean things, StevoR.
People confuse effect with affect, and you (and others) confuse empathy with sympathy.
Empathy is affective resonance (internally experiencing a version of the other’s state), whereas sympathy is evaluative concern (apprehending their state externally).
—
Everyone is missing the point; empathy does not entail niceness.
Someone who was regularly raped by their parents and then regularly rapes their offspring has empathy.
They damn well know the situation and the feelings and the pain, but this time it’s them on top.
Humans are perverse, and I bristle when people talk about empathy as though it were a virtue.
It is not, per se; it is an input. Not an output.
[oh right. supra means ‘above’, and badland knew I’d know]
[sorry for the addendum, PZ, but… “Those who know you best can wound you most.” for you, StevoR — empathy]
And so yet another thread gets derailed, somehow, by someone. Who coulda seen it coming? Vampires are not known for being able to be sated folks.
You haven’t derailed this, indianajones. Relax.
@28. John Morales : “People confuse effect with affect, and you (and others) confuse empathy with sympathy.”
Maybe. Is the line really that clear? Not sure. You might well be right. The two words are often used interchangeably and perhaps technically wrongly.
But if if you say a rapist has “empathy” for their victim because they were peviously raped hemselves that sounds really, well, perverse and strange and wrong to me.
Okay but I kinda think whether you call it sympathy or empathy seeing others as equally human to yourself and equally deserving of kindness and fairness is a virtue and somethig that enables us to co-operate and work together in ways that we couldn’t if we acted out of strict Vulcan logic.
There’s a reichwing talking point that I’ve encountered myself – one that’s in the OP here used by Saad in his book title – that empahty (or sympathy?) is a bad thing. A vice. You have reichwing Christinianists condemning people quoting Jesus for being compassionate and sympathetic /empathic in his love thy neighbour – even if they are bloody heretical Samaritans that the ancient Judaeans hated – parable sense.
The reichwing regressives generally seem to festishise cruelty, ruuthlessness, lack of empathy or okay sympathy or whatever as a virtue.
I bristle at that and think it is a horribly wrong and toxic way of looking at the world.
Whereas the progressive left wing side tends to stress sympathising /empathising (both?) as a virture.
Maybe if we use compassion vs cruelty? Taking a cruel & selfish approach that ignores the harm to others and the world generally versus taking a compassionate approach that is less selfish and kinder.
Do you still bristle at that?
Is that more or less rational and reasonable? Is it that different if put in slighty different words?
I gave you the definition. If you doubt me, check.
That’s the thing. It is not a good thing, it is unfortunate, but yeah.
Torture. Same thing. People, eh?
I know. You do think that.
But thing is, that’s the Golden Rule, basically. Do unto others, no?
(Care to imagine what a masochist would do unto others, under that stricture)
@ ^ John Morales : Masochism as a kink is consensual and uses safe words. So, yeah, nah.
Masochists are also masochistic not stupid and know that pain giving them pleasure doesn’t apply to everyone else and that it is the desire for pleasure that people want done unto them not the specific method of getting that pleasure that matters.
is putting words in my mouth.
Again:
I know. You do think that.
But thing is, that’s the Golden Rule, basically. Do unto others, no?
(Care to imagine what a masochist would do unto others, under that stricture)
Law of identity: X = X.
As for alleged stupidity, I never ever made that claim. Wow.
Purely you.
‘do unto others’ was the thing. Your vague, inchoate apprehension of ’empathy’.
I can’t really explain further. Pointless, obs.
(I do unto you as I would have you do unto me. Enjoying it? It’s what you advocate!)