The Ben Mulroney Show - Social Justice gone bad, Woke Politics and the death of Cancel Culture

Episode Date: January 16, 2025

Social Justice gone bad, Woke Politics and the death of Cancel Culture Guest: Dr. Gad Saad, Visiting Professor and Global Ambassador at Northwood University, Evolutionary Behavioral Scientist and Author If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a man's opinion that I have been looking forward to having a conversation all week. I'm so happy to welcome to the show Dr. Gad Saad, visiting professor and global ambassador at Northwood University, evolutionary behavioral scientist and author. In other words, far, far smarter than me doctor, welcome to the show. Oh, so good to be with you. Thank you so much for having me. So listen, I just finished your book, The parasitic mind. And I

would love if you could just give us the thesis, give us the thesis of the thrust of that book. Right. So in the animal kingdom, there is a field called parasitology, which basically studies how parasites and hosts have co evolved. So for example, a tapeworm looks to your intestinal tract to parasitize it. Neuroparasitology is when a parasite looks

for the host's brain to alter its neuronal circuitry to suit its reproductive interest. So for example, you have a wood cricket that hoars water. It wants nothing to do with water. But when it is parasitized by a hairworm, the hairworm needs the wood cricket to jump into water in order to complete, in order for the parasite to complete its reproductive cycle. And so that was my epiphany.

I thought, aha, I'm going to now use the neuro parasitological framework to argue that human beings can be parasitized by another class of brain worms and I call these idea pathogens and so what the book does is it traces where all these parasitic ideas come from and regrettably Ben they all come from university campuses because it takes professors to come up with some of the dumbest ideas. And then these ideas proliferate to every nook and cranny of society, as we've seen over the past 1015 20 years. And at the end of the book, I offer

hopefully an effective mind vaccine against the lunacy. Well, you argue about the sort of the duality of the human condition, the analytical mind, and the emotional mind, and you posit that in places and spaces, and you pause it that in places and spaces and in subject matter where we should be thinking analytically, we have chosen the emotional brain. And that's the cause of a lot of the issues that we deal with today in society. Yeah, that's, that's, that's a perfect synopsis. So look, it is a false dichotomy to argue that Perfect synopsis. So look, it is a false dichotomy to argue that reason takes precedence over affect or

feelings. We are both a thinking and feeling animal, but what matters in life is that you invoke the right system at the right time. So if I'm taking a shortcut to get home through a dark alley and I see four young men that look suspicious that are loitering around, I will have an emotional-based fear response that makes perfect evolutionary sense for me to have that response. On the other hand, if I'm trying to do well on a calculus exam, all of the fear response in the world is not going to make me perform better on that exam. So when it comes to, say,

choosing a prime minister or a president, you would like to think that the electorate is going to invoke their cognitive system, but regrettably to your synopsis, most people end up voting with their feelings. He's tall, he has beautiful hair, he's young, he looks empathetic. So at no point did the electorate say I like him or dislike him because of policy reasons, ABC, I simply use peripheral affective cues to make my judgment. That's not a good idea. So I guess through that lens, you know, you could explain some things that have boggled my mind, like how did we get from a

point in time where, you know, prior to the murder of George Floyd, which was a disgusting abuse of police power, but prior to his murder, we were living in which what at that point was the fairest, most equitable version of Western society at any point. Now, we weren't, we weren't perfect. We weren't where we want to be, but it's the struggle to get to that, that level that makes that makes Western society great. And then, but with that, with that catalyst of his murder,

people started feeling like society was unfair. People started feeling like there was a patriarchy. People stop, started feeling like everywhere you looked, people who look like me had our, our boot, uh, on our heel, on somebody's neck is, is, is that a fair way of looking at it? I mean, the part that I might, uh, you know, uh, disagree with is that, you know, George Floyd was the catalyst. Now it is true that George Floyd,

you know, instigated all sorts of subsequent realities downstream, but the parasitic ideas that allowed the post-George Floyd reality to happen have been festering in academic ecosystems for 50 to 100 years. So it's not as though we needed George Floyd's, you know, brutal murder to be where we are. The abyss of infinite lunacy has been unfolding, regrettably, for many, many years. So I'll give you an example. Postmodernism, I argue it's the grand daddy

of all parasitic ideas, is really a form of intellectual terrorism, because it says that it purports that there are no objective truths other than the it purports that there are no objective truths other than the one objective truth that there are no objective truths. Well, that framework then provides the room for us to say up is down,

freedom is slavery, war is peace, you know, women can have penises, of course men too can menstruate. So yes, the George Floyd incident served as a catalyst for some realities. But the problem is much more long standing than that. Was it sounds like yes, so much so much of this is coming from the universities in our place of higher education. Was that done by design? Was it orchestrated? Yeah, that's a fantastic question. So I argue in the book that each of these parasitic ideas, and let me just at the very least mention them so that, you know, your listeners have a clue of

what I'm talking about. So I just mentioned postmodernism and another idea pathogen is cultural relativism. Who are we to judge the rituals and behaviors and beliefs of another culture? Another one is political correctness. Another one is identity politics, social constructivism. Everything is due to social construction. Biology doesn't matter in explaining human affairs. So each of these parasitic ideas have served as, if you like, a plane of BS hitting our edifices of reason, right? Now each of these parasitic ideas, to your question, starts off with a noble cause. So no, it's not by some, you know, willful evil design that we got here. So let me, let me give a specific example. Equity feminism is a great idea. There should be no institutional or

legal reasons why men and women shouldn't be treated equally under the law. By that definition, both you and I would put up our hands and say, hey, we're proud equity feminists. But then radical feminists came along and said, in order for us to accelerate the squashing of the evil, toxic, masculine patriarchy, we need to argue that there are no innate sex differences between men and women. They're all due to social construction because that will allow us to better serve our ultimate goal of squashing the patriarchy. So in the service of what started originally as a noble goal, if we have to rape and murder truth, so be it. And so I argue that each of these parasitic ideas started from a noble place and then

metamorphosized into nonsense. And of course, this dovetails very nicely into your other book, the Suicidal Empathy that states that excessive compassion undermines societal cohesion, values and security. Exactly right. So let me kind of give you the background to the sort of the one to punch of those two books. And the parasitic mind, I'm arguing that our cognitive system, hence right, our thought processes could be parasitized by bad ideas. But as I mentioned earlier in our conversation, we are both a thinking and feeling animal. So not only could our cognitive system be parasitized,

so can our emotional system enhance suicidal empathy. Look, within certain functional norms, being empathetic is perfectly laudable, right? We've actually evolved empathy as part of our human sociality. I need to be able to put myself in your mind, this is called theory of mind, in order for you and I to have a productive exchange.

So it makes perfect evolutionary sense for social species to experience the sentiment of empathy. But of course, the devil is in the details. If empathy becomes hyperactive, if it targets the wrong targets, then it becomes dysfunctional. And then it can be taught. Dr. Saad, we're gonna take a quick break

and we're gonna come back on the Ben Mulroney Show, more in conversation with Dr. Gad Saad. This is the Ben Mulroney Show and this is the conversation with the author of Suicidal Empathy and the Parasitic Mind, Dr. Gad Saad. This is the Ben Mulroney show and this is the conversation with the author of Suicidal Empathy and the Parasitic Mind, Dr. Gad Saad. Doctor, thank you so much for sticking around. Three years ago, we could not have had this conversation without worrying, at least by myself, worrying that the online mob would come to cancel me. And something seems to have changed in society and I don't know what to put my finger on.

Well, it's a combination of things. You know, it takes a while for people to find their spines for them to find their testicular fortitude, if you excuse the term. And so like anything, for example, shingles is something that is within you and then something will or will not trigger it. So there are many triggers that resulted in people finally finding their voice. I mean, certainly it helped without wanting to turn this into a political conversation.

The fact that Donald Trump now won certainly is going to change the landscape, at least in the United States. Yeah, it feels, Doctor, it feels like we were, and I was talking about with my producer about this this morning, that nothing really changed in Donald Trump. The moment met him, the world that he was railing against years ago, that people thought he was crazy about has manifested. And he was, he went to where the puck was going to be. You're exactly right. And I mean, I will draw an analogy in my own personal life, right? Or my professional life. The exact same people who used to want to,

if this associate themselves from me in academia or ignore me or ostracize me, are now lining up to all send me letters of invitations and awards and so on because they've always loved my work. Well, unfortunately for them, I've kept a copy of the emails that I had received 20 years ago. And so while I wish to be charitable and not be too gleeful, you know, I've got the receipts. Is there a flashpoint? Is there a moment where the force of the cancel culture hurricane wane? I mean, I think there are several of them. Look, seeing a male pummel a bunch of

women in the Olympics is certainly one, right? I mean, people love to see things vividly, right? And so when you're talking in the abstract, it's difficult to get people to understand what the problem is. But if you're seeing a six foot five guy who used to be called John yesterday, now playing rugby with five foot two women, people will eventually wake up.

So I don't think there's a singular moment, but there is a confluence of factors that led to the fact that there is now an auto correction taking place. Yeah, I think a lot of it had to do with people telling us that the reality that we could see with our very own eyes and hear with our very own ears was not real. Don't don't trust your own senses. We're telling you everything's fine. The house

isn't burning down. You can stay in your bed, everything's fine. And at some point, a lot of rational people said, wait, hold on. I can feel the heat. And my clothes are on fire. And you're not you're talking to me like I'm an idiot. Right. But what what upsets me though, Ben is that it takes for us to get this far into the abyss of infinite lunacy before people wake up. So for example, I know of many very wealthy Americans, Jewish Americans,

who are now suddenly waking up to the fact, oh, boy, we've got a real anti-Semitic problem at my alma mater. Well, why weren't you able to put the, you know, connect the dots together when some of us were standing on top of the mountain screaming for 30 years. But the reality is that the architecture of the human mind is such that you only wake up when it comes to bite you and then you suddenly realize that oh, yes, there is such a thing as diabetes. Until I get diabetes, it doesn't

exist. And I've got to wonder you've got guys like Joe Rogan, who are a greater force in media, then I think all of legacy media combined, you saw the numbers that Pierre Poliev got during his sit down with Jordan Peterson bypassing the traditional media altogether. Are these buttressing forces against the pendulum swinging so wildly back to where where it had been?

Right. And by the way, you're exactly right. Look, I am in the business of creating knowledge and spreading knowledge. So I will go wherever I need to go in order to make that happen. So as you may or may not know, Ben, I'm one of the I'm proud to say I'm one of the guests that's been most often on Joe Rogan. I think I recently reached 10 appearances on his show, but I'll tell you a quick story, which I discussed in the parasitic mind. I had gone to give a talk at the Stanford business school in 2017, you know, one of the meccas of prestige in academia. And the gentleman who was a fellow professor at consumer psychologist,

who had taken me out to dinner the night before, looked down with unbelievable smugness at the idea that I would go on Joe Rogan. Well, to my earlier point, those same people who thought that it was beneath them to speak to the great unwashed that might listen to Joe Rogan now write to me and say, Oh, please, can you introduce me to Joe Rogan? That's what happens. But given the fact fact let's go back to the top of our conversation where we said that so many of these bad and toxic ideas stem from our universities in places of higher education,

how do we deprogram those faculties so that they don't keep churning out they're not the factories of misinformation and brainwashing. Well, I mean, the most important thing to I think we alluded to this earlier is to get people to find their courage to speak out. If your professor is espousing nonsense, like of course men too can menstruate, raise your hand and challenge him or her politely. If your friend at the pub is saying stuff that they learned in their lesbian dance

therapy class at Oberlin College about the evil Jews and so on, maybe challenge him. In other words, don't let any opportunity bypass you to at least challenge bad ideas. There is no magic recipe. You just have to be involved. I mean, I remember clear as day, the very first time I was in high school and had an original thought of my own. I remember it, I remember where I was, and it was such a defining moment for me. I said, oh, that's what education is, going up and challenging your teacher,

challenging your professor. And I looked forward to that. I engaged in that when I was in university. And for the past few years, it has been completely forbidden to be an outlier. If you're an outlier, you're you're a heretic. Indeed. And by the way, you don't know how thrilled I am to be speaking to you because, you know, it's unbelievable how much

Canadian media has ignored me, right? I mean, I can go to Belgium and people will know me. But I in my own backyard, nearly everyone has ignored me as they say, you know, profits are not appreciated in their homeland. And so I'm so glad to see that the tide is changing. And boy, I'm so glad to be able to be speaking to you because, you know, Canada, when it comes to woke metrics is certainly suffering from a fatal disease. Oh, no, we are we are behind the times as that pendulum is swinging. I said that this is this is woke culture is going to is going to find

a still find a home here in Canada and certainly in cities like Toronto that this will be their Stalingrad. Well, although if I may, I know that there's always a rivalry between Montreal and Toronto, you should come and walk around in my home university to really see what parasitized walksters look like. Oh, it's why I hear it's I hear it's terrible. I hear it's absolutely terrible. Well, it is so terrible that, regrettably, I've had to take a leave. That's why I'm at Northwood University, right? Where, you know, they truly believe in freedom, freedom of

inquiry, economic freedom, freedom of speech. I mean, those are the bedrock of Western civilization. But apparently, if you now espouse those positions, you are an extremist. So it's going to take years years you're saying before we before we peel away the the nonsense and the toxicity at our Canadian universities. Absolutely. And that's why I keep reminding people Ben that yes, you may be happy that Donald Trump won, but Donald

Trump is just a doorstop for this craziness, right? Yes, it's good that he's going to, you know, auto correct some lunacy. But it's a much longer battle. I'd like to think that it won't take 50 to 100 years to auto correct, but it certainly is a generational battle. Dr. Gad sad it has been a pleasure having you in conversation. Thank you so much for joining us on the Ben Mulroney show. Let's do it again sometime. Anytime. Thank you so much, sir.

What a treat. What a treat to speak with him. I really hope we who I am now. Inspired by the unforgettable true story. But I will be a doctor again. Emmy nominee Molly Parker. I will do everything I can to get my life back. DOC, new series Tuesdays on Global. Stream on STAC TV.