In recent years, the Wake phenomenon, known in Hebrew as youth, has swept the West. The origin of the social and political movement in the American left, and its original purpose was to work for what its supporters define as social and gender justice. It didn’t take long until that “awakening” led to disturbing and sometimes violent events.
Until the last year, events of students barricading themselves around the campuses of the elite universities, anarchy in the streets, looting of stores, the worship of Osama bin Laden on TikTok, and even the firing of scientists and executives of high-tech companies citing findings that are not appropriate for identity politics, were phenomena that deal with what is happening in the US But since October 7, the phenomenon has also reached us As “freedom fighters”, Jewish students were forced to barricade themselves in the campuses due to fear of pro-Palestinian demonstrators, which even the heads of the respected institutions refused to condemn or denounce.
If in the past the trend was seen as “progressive trolling” that exists only on the margins, today it is already clear that it is something much deeper and significant.
Jewish-Canadian social science researcher Gad Saad believes that what drives these phenomena is a quasi-parasitic takeover of distorted thought patterns on the Western consciousness. In his groundbreaking and controversial book “Parasites – How the West Lost Common Sense” which was recently translated into Hebrew and is published in the “Shibolt” library, Saad tries to explain how progressive herd thinking destroys common sense and enables the re-flourishing of many evils, from eating disorders to anti-Semitism.
Prof. Gad Saad
personal: 60 years old, married and father of children. Born in Lebanon and lives in Canada
professional: Scientific researcher of consumer behavioral psychology and senior professor of marketing at Concordia University in Canada. Former associate editor of the journal Evolutionary Psychology. Author of the bestseller “Parasites” which was translated into Hebrew by Shibulat
one more thing: 330 thousand people follow his YouTube channel, The Saad Truth
After October 7 throngs of students went out to demonstrate against Israel even before it even reacted to the events. How would you explain it?
“This does not surprise me, this is the narrative of victimology. Most Western thinkers, and certainly those who study in North American universities, have been ‘treated’ to believe that when it comes to the story of the colonial versus the local, the oppressor versus the victim, the Jews are by nature the oppressors because they are the strongest. Look at the Zionist tank, and in contrast The poor Palestinian who only has a slingshot and can only throw a stone. These kinds of images activate our emotional system, and because most The people don’t like to make an effort and think, it’s much easier to activate the emotional system. That’s how they are led to believe that when it comes to the dynamics between Israelis and Palestinians – the Jews are clearly the bad guys here.”
Prof. Saad, a Jew who was born in 1964 in Beirut and fled with his family to Canada with the outbreak of the civil war in Lebanon in 1975, is a marketing lecturer, former head of the chair for evolutionary behavioral science research and Darwinist consumerism at Concordia University in Canada. He is a pioneer in the application of evolutionary psychology to consumer behavior.
“Detached from reality”. Protesters at Columbia University / Photo: Reuters, Lev Radin
“Speaking from the ivory tower regardless of reality”
I recently traveled to the US and noticed something interesting. In Brooklyn, in the middle-class and working-class areas, support for Israel was significant. On the other hand, in Manhattan and in more academic areas around Columbia University or NYU, support for Israel is non-existent.
“This is exactly the parasitic mentality. It takes intellectuals to come up with some of the stupidest ideas in humanity. This is because intellectuals exist in a rare world, completely disconnected from the feedback of reality. This is how you can sit in the ivory tower and speak with excessive confidence on subjects that have nothing to do with reality. An anonymous professor who teaches On campus he can react to all kinds of things, and this has no effect or friction with reality that will correct him. On the other hand, people The blue collar stuff you mentioned is rooted in reality. You can’t be a plumber who implements postmodernist plumbing or building bridges using postmodernist physics, so you don’t see so many of these parasitic ideas in engineering or business schools – but if You come from the humanities or the more activist fields in the social sciences, so you don’t get any friction with reality.”
When did you realize this was a serious problem in academia? After all, this is not your field of study.
“On my first day as a professor. My scientific research is as an evolutionary behavioral scientist, meaning I study human behavior through an evolutionary lens. In the same way that I can explain to evolution why our eyes are shaped the way they are, I can apply the evolutionary lens to the most important organ in the body, the brain “.
For most social scientists, he says, “it was crazy talk,” since to them what makes us human is that we transcend our biology. “For them, biology is a logical explanation for your dog’s behavior, but heaven forbid if you dare to use it to explain human behavior. We are cultural animals. But the truth is we are not – we are biological and cultural animals. And so early in my scientific work, when I saw the kind of resistance I faced To her, I thought it was strange how educated people would argue with me about things like hormones affecting our behavior? Of course they do. That was my first exposure to these parasitic ideas. As time passed, and I’ve been a professor for 31 years, I saw that the problem was getting worse.”
To what extent does this thing affect the ability to reach the truth in academia? Are there topics that should not be explored? If there are “wrong” results then should it be censored?
“This is common, especially in explosive topics – for example, gender differences. If you conduct research on gender differences and see that women are superior to men in something, then go ahead – publish it and you will be appreciated as great scientists. But if you find that men are superior in a certain task, it is better to file the research in a drawer In order not to publicize the sexist patriarchy.
“The problem is that science doesn’t work that way. Science doesn’t care about your feelings, it strives for the truth. And unlike religion where everything is static and the axioms must not be challenged, the truth changes. What we thought was true in science 300 years ago has been updated. So I will not say that a certain thing is true and will never change , but I believe that the unbiased pursuit of the truth is something worth doing.”
“Parasites” brought destructive ideologies to the West
In the sixth chapter of the book, “The Parasitic Ostrich Syndrome”, Saad compares biological parasites and their takeover of the host to the progressive ideas taking over the West. According to him, instead of confronting these destructive ideologies, the West ignores it, like an ostrich burying its head in the sand.
Every pathogen, every virus, starts from something. For example, I am blind due to mitochondrial disease, which I can trace back generations. When did the virus infect the West?
“First, I’ll explain why I used the neuroparasitic framework to explain how pathogens of ideas evolved. As an evolutionary scientist, I often look at animal behavior to draw parallels to humans, and I’ve come to the ground of studying parasites and hosts. Neuroparasitology is when a parasite seeks to reach the mind of the host, and change its circuit to serve its interest. Thus, for example, a wood cricket abhors water, but when a species A certain worm will take care of him, and the worm needs the cricket to jump into the water, he is willing to jump into the water with joy and kill himself in the service of the parasite. This was my epiphany, I realized that now I am going to argue that humans can be neuroparasited by ideological brainworms.
“Now to your question. What is the source of this conceptual parasite? I claim that each of the parasitic ideas came from a different source and time, but postmodernism is the grandfather of these ideas. It claims to claim that there is no objective truth, except for the objective truth there is no objective truth. It is a parasitic idea because above It’s down, left is right, women are men, free speech is silence, freedom is slavery, war is peace and so on absolute”.
According to Saad, the source of these parasitic ideas actually comes from a noble place. “Egalitarian feminism, for example, is an excellent idea, it means that men and women should be treated equally under the law. But a radical feminist will say that if we want to eradicate the sexist status quo and crush the patriarchy, we need to claim that men and women are indistinguishable, and that only social construction makes men Being physically stronger than women makes it possible to fight injustice better. So it started from a noble place and turned into nonsense logical. All parasitic ideas started as a good goal, which then led to the destruction of the truth.”
Does it have a clear starting point?
“No, it’s not that simplistic. I can give a different timing to each conceptual pathogen. Postmodernism was about 50 years ago with all the French friends like Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, who were the original heavyweight writers of The movement. So in the last 50 to 100 years, these bad ideas have entered the campuses and then burst out. Now, of course, there is a catalyst that makes us all feel the It is, but it didn’t start supernaturally a few years ago.”
After October 7th I realized something: these people will always criticize their own culture and excuse any problem in another culture as arising from the ill evils of the West.
“Exactly. One day I received an email from a colleague at the university who wrote to me: ‘Arabic is your mother tongue, you know a lot about Islam. I want to know if Islam loves Jews or not?’. So I wrote her back and said, ‘Well, instead of writing a long answer , I will share with you a clip that consists of a montage of many Muslim imams that simply shows what they say in the mosque about the Jews. She wrote back to me ‘It seems that you are no different from the extremists themselves Yours. So she asks me for evidence, and it shows how much I marginalize the noble, the peaceful, and the good. The parasitic mind is not reserved for one category of people, but what is clear is that the more educated you are Officially – the more likely you are to be a parasite.”
How will Trump affect, and what is the situation in Israel
After Donald Trump’s victory, many people said it was the death of the Woke. do you think this is true
“It’s definitely a stinging loss for a lot of these things, but immediately after the celebrations I would ask not to be complacent. Trump will come and go. His victory is definitely a better reality than what would have happened if Kamala Harris had won, but that doesn’t mean that magically all these parasitic ideas will cease to exist Once he gets into the White House it will take decades for this collective virus to rise from campuses and other elite institutions into general society. I would like to think it won’t take decades To eradicate these ideas, but it will take much more than four years. And if the next president supports these ideas, then we will also return to the starting point. This is a long-term ideological war.”
Symbolizing the death of the Wake? Trump / Photo: ap, Rick Scuteri
Saad seeks to demonstrate some of the madness of youth, and recounts how he was summoned to the Canadian Senate in 2017 to give expert testimony confirming that there are two sexes, male and female: “It turns out that in the 21st century you really need a professor of evolutionary behavioral science to confirm that there is a male and a female. Until before For 15 minutes it seemed that the 117 billion people on Earth easily navigated this difficult problem.”
He also mentions the new US Supreme Court judge, Katanji Brown Jackson, who was asked at a Senate hearing ‘what is a woman’ and refused to answer. “The fact that such a senior person is so far from reality indicates that the problem will not disappear just because Trump comes in to the White House for four years.”
The Israelis are not so influenced by this ideology. why?
“This is an interesting question. It is likely that Israeli academics are affected by this matter just like in the world, those who study at university for a long time are going to fall prey to the same stupidity. But the average Israeli is more like the previous example about the working class in the USA. The average Israeli is too busy making sure his country is not disowned by the ‘friendly’ neighbors to bother with this nonsense. Reality has a way of slapping you with common sense, and the harsh environment of the Israelis provides them with a natural vaccine.”
Everything eventually leads to socialism
Do people who are influenced by the youth movement tend to be less capitalist and more in favor of state control of the economy?
“All these pathogens naturally lead to socialism. In socialism the individual is much less important than the collective. I like to quote one of the famous entomologists, who studied ants. The type of ants he studied has a reproductive queen and a team of soldier and worker ants. They all exist only for the benefit of the ant colony. When asked What are his views on communism, socialism and the like, he said, ‘Excellent idea, Only for the wrong kind. That is, this socialism does not work with people who work harder, who are more ambitious. Therefore, a political-economic system that is against human nature is doomed to fail. For all these reasons , it is much more likely that it is socialist people who are infected with the parasite of youth.”
In 2007 you published a book called “The Evolutionary Basis of Consumption”, which applies Darwinian principles to understanding our consumption patterns. What did you actually check and what is the innovation here?
“In fact, I invented a new discipline that I call evolutionary consumption. The idea is simple: contrary to what we are taught in economics, organizational behavior, personnel psychology and entrepreneurship and leadership, it is impossible to study all these phenomena in complete isolation from the biological forces that shape them. If there are 2 million species on Earth, and were I a scientist studying 1,999,999 other species, I would never do so without mentioning the The biological heritage of this species Until I entered the field, there was an opinion in academia that only one species could be studied in complete isolation from biology – humans.
“Well, how can we study consumer behavior without looking at the biological forces that shape our consumption? Surely the reason any human would prefer some fatty food to raw celery must be rooted in our biological heritage. The fact that we all have certain universal mate preferences is also related to biology This has a significant impact on our consumption habits in a variety of areas.”
In his research, Saad tries to apply the principles of evolution to explore the biological basis of what makes us consumers. “Take for example a somewhat blatant example: when you travel around the US, in almost every city you will see many strip clubs that are intended for men and almost zero that are intended for women. The common man, who looks at the economy without the biological insights, may say that there is an incredible business opportunity here and we need to quickly open women’s clubs. But factually it will not work on a mass level. why? Because there are biological preferences between men and women that influence consumer behavior,” he says.
“As soon as you understand this critical thing, that a person is not a production that is disconnected from his natural biology, then the attitude of those who want to appeal to the consumer changes,” Prof. Saad concludes. “Scientific truths cannot be ignored. In the end, in order to understand the market and the consumers within it, it is critical that we understand the biological field that leads people to certain preferences.”