Suicidal empathy
I mentioned Gad Saad’s new book the other day, and I thought I’d highlight it here. It’s called Suicidal Empathy. Catchy title, isn’t it?
I’ve watched many of Saad’s YouTube videos, and he’s a no-nonsense guy, a Jew who was raised in Lebanon and whose family was one of the last to leave. He’s been living in Canada although I think he’s in the US now. At any rate, here’s something about his book, from the description at Amazon:
In his new book, Suicidal Empathy, Saad unleashes a blistering critique of maladaptively irrational altruism that has gripped our culture. This mind parasite hijacked the empathy module of our progressive elite, leading to a catastrophic miscalibration of moral priorities. The results are everywhere: from coddling violent criminals to protecting rapists to branding self-defense as toxic behavior. We are witnessing a civilization in rapid decline. Lunatic policies are instituted because we prioritize the feelings of ostensibly marginalized groups over The Truth, criminals over victims, and squatters over homeowners. This is not humane; it’s an active dismantling of the pillars that keep us safe and free.
Saad is a professor, but he seems to be very realistic as well. His thesis makes me think of Robert Frost – yes, that Robert Frost. For example, this post of mine from 2019 contains the following thoughts from Frost:
Frost was convinced that the conflict between justice and mercy in human affairs is an eternal and universal moral problem of humanity, and not merely a contemporary political partisan concern…
With these facts in mind Frost’s criticism of the New Deal as “nothing but an outbreak of mass mercy,” is clearly more than mere partisan politics. In 1936, in the midst of attacks on [his collection of poetry] A Further Range by the political Left, Frost wrote to Ferner Nuhn, a young New Deal acquaintance and friend of Henry Wallace, that “strict justice is basic” for a free society, and freedom implied that some people succeeded and others failed. The winners reaped the rewards of their talents and efforts, but what about the losers? Frost acknowledged that government “must do something for the losers. It must show them mercy. Justice first and mercy second. The trouble with some of your crowd is that it would have mercy first. The struggle to win is still the best tonic. . . . Mercy . . . is another word for socialism.” Frost believed that what was commonly called “distributive justice,” the attempt to spread the wealth of society to the masses, through graduated in-come taxes and other such devices, was really distributive mercy misnamed.
Frost was writing about socialism in 1936, whereas Saad is writing more generally. But the principle is much the same. Empathy – similar to Frost’s mercy – is part of human nature and definitely has its uses. But taken to an extreme, and misapplied, it is dangerous and can lead to either failure of an economic system or cultural suicide or literal deaths, as well as restraints on liberty in the name of kindness.
According to his X account, Saad has found that leaving Canada will cost him 55% of his net worth to the “exit tax.” Unbelievable.
But who is to.decide?
I reckon Frost mentioned socialism because the word could still shock the conscience of a liberal. Saad avoids it because the word alone doesn’t do the work it once did—he needs to explain why this now-popular thing is bad, and its popularity would taint his argument on the front end. Saad wants to convince our opponents, not signal his unity with us.
“The results are everywhere: from coddling violent criminals to protecting rapists to branding self-defense as toxic behavior… Lunatic policies are instituted because we prioritize the feelings of ostensibly marginalized groups over The Truth, criminals over victims, and squatters over homeowners. This is not humane; it’s an active dismantling of the pillars that keep us safe and free.”
Those who cannot recognize and acknowledge the common sense & wisdom in Adam Smith’s maxim that, “Mercy to the guilty… is cruelty to the innocent.” make themselves complicit in these injustices.
Geoffrey Britain:
There’s an even older maxim, from the Talmud (apparently sometime around the 4th century), that is often translated as “Those who are kind to the cruel end up being cruel to the kind.”
Those old Jewish writers are in hog heaven!
I recently got the book and it is so on point! Love Gad Saad appearances and his comments on X so it was a natural to get the book. He is SO right. Little heavy reading in the technical examination as I’m out of the habit of reading “deep” stuff, but it so well encompasses what is going on in our society, and growing in our socirty – very frightening to me because so many of these Social Democrats do not have enough historical and/or civics knowledge upon which to build their positions and legitimize them ….they cannot support their statements (decrees?) to make them appear legitimate. The problem is many of these new DSC memberds neither care, and will just create new statements trying to fool those who follow them… Unfortunately, that’s not taking much to convince easily malleable minds.
I think “empathy” is misused much of the time. To me it means the capacity to understand almost exactly what someone else is experiencing/feeling. This gets mixed up by many with “sympathy” which involves concern of some sort about others. Lack of “empathy” is often attributed to conservatives because they are more aware of the fallen state of mankind and state it while many liberals seem to lack knowledge of their dark sides and that of certain “groups”.
SENNACHERIB
We decide. The collective voters of this country decide.
Re: Cruel to be kind
Shakespeare got there in Hamlet: “I must be cruel only to be kind.”
Nick Lowe got there in 1979:
______________________________
You’ve gotta be cruel to be kind in the right measure
Cruel to be kind, it’s a very good sign
Cruel to be kind means that I love you, baby
(You’ve gotta be cruel)
You’ve gotta be cruel to be kind
–“NICK LOWE – CRUEL TO BE KIND – HQ Best Version. New Audio.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czKmfsPfvMQ
______________________________
The girlfriend is saying those lines to her boyfriend, I was never sure their’s was a healthy relationship.
The video is actually scenes from Nick Lowe’s marriage to Carlene Carter.
Richard Cook,
I agree, but the decision is never quite what we like.
I would posit that toxic empathy actually misstates the problem. It’s not so much that the trendy Lefties and academics and so forth empathize with bad people. It’s that they loathe their own civilization and nations and fellow citizens. It’s not toxic empathy, it’s a deep seated oikophobia (IMHO). Possibly, in turn, based on self-hatred, but I don’t know.
That oikophobic tendency is why the Left and the Western educated elites reflexively side with whoever is against their own civilization and polities. Sometimes they flip support based on that.
For ex, Zionism was a Lefty cause at one time. They flipped, in part I think because Israel grew strong and powerful and was clearly Western-based, and partly because the Israelis gave up the socialist economic orientation they held in the early days of the state.
(Netanyahu played a significant role in that process, that’s part of why the Left hates him so much.)
They supported gay marriage not because they thought it was a great idea, but because it was against Judeo-Christian belief and tradition. If the conflict between the gay agenda and Islam keeps growing, I fully expect a lot of the elite Left to start telling gays that it’s time to get back in the closet.
HC68: “Zionism was a Lefty cause at one time”
Interesting subject. There is certainly some truth to that since many early Zionists were socialists, I believe that is the root of the kibbutz movement. And the Labor party that dominated Israel until the mid-70s was leftist/socialist.
However I believe the international left turned on Israel quite a while before that and long before Israel became as strong as it is now. Mainly they were following the Soviet bloc who was surprisingly sympathetic to Israel in its very early years but by the late ’50s had thrown in their lot with the Arabs. And Zionism also included the “Revisionist” Zionists led by Jabotinsky who were ancestral to today’s right-wing Likud.
In the US most leftists/liberals outside a radical subset stayed pro-Israel for quite a while longer, not least because of the large Jewish presence in the Democrat party. As long ago as the 1980s though polls showed Republicans were already slightly more pro-Israel than Democrats. Now it is a huge gap.