Evolutionary psychologist Gad Saad joins Joe Rogan to discuss his new book Suicidal Empathy, which examines how excessive empathy becomes self-destructive when applied to wrong targets. Saad, a Lebanese-Jewish-Canadian professor moving permanently to University of Mississippi, shares personal experiences of antisemitism and death threats that forced him to leave Concordia University.

The conversation explores how Suicidal Empathy builds on Saad's previous work The Parasitic Mind by examining how emotional systems can be hijacked alongside cognitive ones. Saad uses the wood cricket metaphor - an insect that abhors water but jumps to its death when parasitized - to explain how people can be manipulated into acting against their survival instincts.

They discuss the relationship between empathy and rational thinking, examining cases where rape victims show empathy toward their attackers and societies that tolerate ideologies antithetical to their values. The conversation covers Islam's expansionist nature, market dominant minorities, and the demographic changes affecting Western societies.

The Wood Cricket Metaphor and Suicidal Empathy Framework

Suicidal Empathy builds on The Parasitic Mind by targeting emotional systems after cognitive hijacking: 'If I can hijack both your cognitive and emotional systems, you become a wood cricket' - Saad

The wood cricket abhors water but when parasitized by a brain hairworm, it 'happily and merrily commits suicide by jumping into the water' because the parasite needs this for reproduction

Empathy follows Aristotle's golden mean - too little makes you a psychopath, too much creates suicidal empathy when 'invoked in the wrong situations toward the wrong targets'

Examples include a Norwegian rape victim feeling guilt when his Somali attacker faced deportation, and a German rape victim lying about her attackers' language to protect their communities from marginalization

Cultural Relativism and Immigration Policy Failures

Cultural relativism as a parasitic idea renders people 'impotent when making judgments about who should be let into your country' by forbidding criticism of other cultures

This leads to suicidally empathetic open borders policies assuming 'all immigrants are equally likely to assimilate within the American ethos or the Western ethos'

Cultural theory of mind explains how Western values like 'magnanimity, generosity, kindness, empathy' are interpreted by other societies as 'weakness, weakness, weakness, and weakness'

In Arabic culture, Saad was told 'the West is a woman to be mounted' - reflecting how Western empathy is perceived as exploitable vulnerability

Islam's Expansionist Nature and Demographic Trajectory

Islam operates on dual logic dividing the world into 'Dar al-Harab and Dar al-Islam, the house of Islam and the house of war' - any non-Islamic territory is classified as house of war

As a 'fully proselytizing religion,' Islam requires converting the entire world, while Judaism is 'precisely the opposite' as an 'anti-proselytizing' faith that makes conversion deliberately difficult

Islam's marketing success: 'one out of every four human beings is Muslim' achieved in only 1400 years, while Judaism 'sucks at marketing' with only 15 million adherents globally

Demographic trajectory predicts conflict levels: '0 to 2%, you're just the quiet exotic minority. When you're 3 to 5%, you become a lot more engaged politically. When you become 6 to 10%, you start creating sharia no go zones'

Market Dominant Minorities and Antisemitism Patterns

World on Fire author Amy Chua's concept of 'market dominant minorities' explains why small successful groups face resentment: 'when you have a small minuscule group of people in any cultural ecosystem that are boxing well above their weight class'

Jewish success stems from 'a punishing culture of excellence' - Saad's mother considered taking a break between MBA and PhD as 'dropping out of school' that would 'bring shame to the family'

Thomas Sowell's one-word answer to ending antisemitism: 'Fail' - because 'if the Jews were suddenly no longer succeeding in ways that are anomalous to their per capita numbers, then maybe they wouldn't be as hateful'

This pattern isn't unique to Jews - 'the Armenians also get that treatment in some ecosystems. The Lebanese get that treatment. Indians get that treatment' when they become market dominant minorities

Personal Experiences and Campus Antisemitism

Saad received death threats requiring security escorts at Concordia University starting in 2017, where he had to 'lecture and then be ushered out' while his wife waited

In 2022, a man approached Saad while walking with his 9-year-old son, saying 'I'm not going to do anything to you out of respect for your son today'

Police couldn't show Saad a lineup to identify the perpetrator 'because it would be racist to do so' since the man 'was black' and 'looked Somali'

Concordia University has been 'colloquially referred to as Gaza University for 25 plus years' and canceled Netanyahu's 2002 speaking event when he was a private citizen

Middle East Geopolitics and Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Saad argues anti-Israel sentiment post-October 7th is rooted in antisemitism: 'if you scratch enough the onion and peel enough the stuff, is rooted in Jew hatred'

Israel is 73% Jewish with Muslim valedictorians, hijab-wearing medical school graduates, and Muslim Knesset members, demonstrating it's 'a place where everybody has equal rights'

Hamas leader Sinwar was saved by Israeli neurosurgeons who removed his brain tumor, then 'was let go in one of those swaps' before architecting October 7th attacks

Pew Survey data shows 95-98% of people in Middle Eastern countries express negative opinions toward Jews specifically, not just Israel