Suicidal Empathy

Evolutionary behavioral scientist Gad Saad, a professor at Concordia University in Montreal, builds on his 2020 book The Parasitic Mind, which examined how ideological thinking corrupts human cognition, by turning to the emotional counterpart: how the West's capacity for empathy has become dangerously miscalibrated. He introduces the concept of "suicidal empathy," a civilizational-level misfiring of an otherwise noble virtue that drives Western societies toward self-destruction through misguided kindness. Drawing on Thomas Sowell's The Vision of the Anointed (1995), which argued that elites adopt policies that make them feel virtuous while remaining insulated from negative consequences, Saad contends that suicidal empathy powers a range of related phenomena: moral licensing, in which a prior moral stance excuses later harmful behavior; luxury beliefs, or elite convictions whose social costs fall on others; and performative allyship, the public signaling of support for a cause without meaningful sacrifice.

In his opening chapter, Saad establishes empathy as an evolutionarily selected trait central to human sociality, surveys research on its role in mate selection and healthcare, and notes that it is partly heritable. Applying Aristotle's "everything in moderation" principle, he argues that while insufficient empathy produces psychopathy, indiscriminate hyper-empathy can be equally destructive. He identifies several ways the empathy system can malfunction: It can be too intense, directed at inappropriate targets, or deployed in contexts better served by rational analysis. He notes that sex differences in empathy, with women scoring higher across the lifespan and across cultures, predict greater susceptibility to ideologically captured empathy among women. To situate his concept historically, Saad surveys forms of collective suicide from the ancient Jewish siege at Masada to Japanese seppuku, the ritual self-disembowelment practiced by the samurai class, to modern cult deaths, distinguishing suicidal empathy from all of these by framing it as the West's unique tendency to destroy itself through the excessive exercise of a virtue. Citing historian Arnold J. Toynbee's observation that civilizations die by suicide rather than murder, and philosopher James Burnham's 1964 claim that liberalism is "the ideology of Western suicide" (16), Saad positions the current moment as one of collective self-destruction proceeding through a misfiring of empathy.

In Chapter 2, Saad argues that the suppression of inconvenient truths functions as "epistemological empathy," shielding marginalized groups from uncomfortable findings at the cost of reality. He presents the case of Roland G. Fryer Jr., the youngest Black professor tenured at Harvard, whose research contradicted accepted narratives about white supremacy in education and policing and who faced institutional retaliation. He identifies what he calls "faulty consequentialism," in which principles such as free speech, presumption of innocence, and journalistic integrity are selectively abandoned when their application might produce politically undesirable outcomes. He extends this analysis to the fat acceptance movement, which he characterizes as empathetic denial of medical reality, and to progressive linguistic reforms such as replacing "criminal offender" with "justice-involved individual." Saad also critiques progressive approaches to homelessness, arguing that external attributions, such as blaming landlords rather than mental illness and substance addiction, produce counterproductive policies.

Chapter 3 extends the psychological concept of "theory of mind," the ability to infer the mental states of others, to the cultural level. Saad argues that the West lacks "cultural theory of mind" when extending generosity to members of Islamic societies, whose members may interpret Western kindness as feminized weakness. He contends that not all immigrants are equally likely to assimilate and that treating them as interchangeable represents a categorization error. He details the British grooming gang scandal, in which organized sexual exploitation of young white girls by predominantly British Pakistani Muslim men occurred across numerous cities while authorities declined to intervene for fear of being accused of Islamophobia. Saad examines the global response to the October 7, 2023, massacre carried out by Hamas, the Islamist militant group governing Gaza, arguing that rather than increasing empathy toward Jews, the attack triggered an exponential growth of antisemitism. He contrasts this with his own empathetic response to the Camp Speicher massacre, in which ISIS, the jihadist militant organization, executed approximately 1,500 unarmed Muslim Iraqi air force cadets, noting that his compassion did not diminish because the victims were Muslim. He introduces the figure of the "Wood Cricket Jew," Jewish individuals who express hostility toward their own people to ingratiate themselves with those hostile to Jews, drawing an analogy to the wood cricket, an insect parasitized by a hairworm that causes it to drown itself so the parasite can complete its reproductive cycle.

In Chapter 4, Saad argues that suicidal empathy leads to treating criminals as victims of societal forces rather than as responsible agents. He presents data showing that nearly one-third of US male prisoners have had five or more prior incarcerations, and cites cases in which extreme empathy toward criminals led to further victimization. He discusses the case of Daniel Penny, a Marine veteran who subdued Jordan Neely, a homeless man with a mental health condition who was threatening passengers on a New York subway, resulting in Neely's death and criminal charges against Penny. Saad argues that progressive culture pathologizes heroic masculinity as "toxic masculinity" while elevating performative male empathy, and presents case studies of lenient judicial responses to sexual assaults committed by migrants across Europe.

Chapter 5 critiques the invocation of "settled science" in COVID policy, climate activism, and transgender activism. Saad invokes philosopher Karl Popper's falsification theory, which holds that scientific claims must be testable and potentially disprovable, to argue that the concept of settled science is inherently anti-scientific. He contends that COVID lockdowns reflected single-objective optimization, minimizing deaths without accounting for trade-offs, and that climate extremism treats the environment as an optimization problem with no constraints. On transgender issues, he reproduces his 2017 testimony before the Canadian Senate on Bill C-16, which incorporated gender identity and gender expression under Canadian human rights and hate crimes law, warning that biological realities were being subordinated to empathetic demands. He cites a 2024 United Nations report finding that more than 600 biological women lost over 890 medals when competing against biological males across 29 sports.

In Chapter 6, Saad argues that the diversity, inclusion, and equity (DIE) movement functions as a modern secular version of selling indulgences, the medieval Catholic practice of purchasing absolution, through which Western institutions seek to expiate civilizational guilt by dismantling meritocracy. He documents the penetration of DIE requirements in academic hiring and critiques the elimination of standardized testing from admissions. He presents the recommendation from the Anti-Racism Expert Working Group of CanMEDS, a Canadian medical education framework, to "centre values such as anti-oppression, anti-racism, and social justice, rather than medical expertise" (129). He extends the analysis to corporate life, arguing that "woke capitalism" subordinates profit maximization to social justice signaling.

Chapter 7 contends that socialism, the welfare state, and the nanny state are all rooted in suicidal empathy. Saad provides an extended personal account of transferring more than 50 percent of his earnings to the Quebec and Canadian governments, arguing that progressive taxation punishes entrepreneurship and creative output. He critiques governmental waste, defends entrepreneur Elon Musk's economic contributions against calls for confiscatory taxation, and describes the Canadian healthcare system as nominally free but plagued by interminable waiting lists. He argues that woke ideology has degraded military readiness, citing the US military's embrace of critical race theory and identity-focused recruitment under the Biden administration.

In his concluding chapter, Saad offers prescriptive strategies to counteract suicidal empathy. He advises resisting the immediate dopamine hit of appearing empathetic and avoiding what he calls empathetic myopia: focusing only on a policy's immediate consequences while ignoring its downstream effects. He urges rejecting the false equality bias that treats all individuals and cultures as interchangeable, and demanding reciprocity in all relationships, applying game theorist Robert Axelrod's Tit-for-Tat strategy to argue that empathy must be tethered to rational boundaries. He introduces the concept of "empathy agnosia," an inability to identify the appropriate targets of one's empathy, and argues that the defense of truth represents the highest form of empathy. Saad cautions that Donald Trump's 2024 presidential victory does not end the threat, comparing the persistence of parasitic ideas to a dormant virus that can reactivate. The book closes with the author's dictum: "A society dies when it cares more about exhibiting infinite tolerance and empathy than invoking its survival instinct" (167).