THE PARASITIC MIND: How Infectious Ideas are Killing Common Sense (a book by Gad Saad, PhD, Professor at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada and Consumer Behaviorist)
Some observations:
I read voraciously. It is my preferred wont and an affliction (if you wish to regard it as that, in an age of smartphone-derived ‘intelligence’) that has been with me since early childhood. Part of my motivation for exhaustive reading stems from being an inherent pseudo-autodidact. Part of it also derives from life-long ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder, exclusive of the hyperactivity component of the MSD 5’s ‘ADHD’ label).
Being a lesser autodidact with incipient ADD isn’t easy, I can assure you. I find that not only is it hard to focus and concentrate, it’s also challenging for me to stay focused and fixed for any length of time. This was a challenging liability in school, having a substantial impact on my studies, and it’s the principal reason (apart from a mediocre intellect) why I never progressed through doctoral studies at the higher levels of academia. When you have my specific type of ADD, you lack the normal ability most people have of being able to shut out unwanted distractions, noise, peripheral irritations and annoyances.
Nonetheless, as a thinker (profound or not), I try to absorb as much information as possible regarding all spheres of intellectual inquiry on a regular basis. Given the increasing complexity of both our environment and of corresponding (and associated) human affairs connected to them, this would presuppose steadily consuming and absorbing rather copious amounts of data and information, if one attempts to remain both current and relative to existing trends in human thought and behavior.
I could therefore recommend a large number of what I regard as seminal books on various topical subjects but of all of them, one of the most important (and most deserving of being read) is Professor Gad Saad’s 2020 book titled ‘The Parasitic Mind’.
Who is Gad Saad?
Dr. Saad is a Lebanese-born Jew who is now a naturalised citizen of Canada, having fled with his family from extremist violence in his native country that has so completely destroyed Lebanon (a nation formerly known as the ‘Switzerland of the Middle East’ before sectarian terrorism violently dismembered it). As one might imagine, both Christians and Jews suffered terribly from all the Islamic upheavals there. In Sadd’s case, his family experienced no unusual difficulties living in Lebanon until one day, almost without warning, they had to flee for their lives.
Lebanon’s loss has become Canada’s gain, consequently, and Saad (a consumer behaviorist) now teaches at Concordia University in Montreal.
Saad enjoys a sort of unique status in that he is Lebanese, a Jew AND a Canadian. Therefore, he is enviably positioned to comment on subjects that in America might be looked upon (by a rabidly ‘woke’ progressive liberal left) as the opinions of a socially and politically inflammatory provocateur ,and is, in my opinion, able to offer insights into issues that are presently ripping traditions of democracy in the United States apart from stem to stern.In daring to speak out against today's whacko and absurdist liberal dogmas, he has garnered a substantial number of 'outraged' enemies (the very people he dares to criticise). An apt analogue might be the same sort of regard journalist Andy Ngo drew from AntiFa.
Sadly, and due to the fact that there is so much to stay abreast of in modern society (if one wishes to remain apprised of developments), I was completely unaware of Saad’s writings until very recently. Ashamedly, I can say the very same thing about another brilliant mind (Thomas Sowell, one pof black America's foremost intellectuals) with whom I was also unacquainted until recent years and who also deserves a much wider following than he presently enjoys.
What is Saad’s central hypothesis? Reality vs. delusion
Saad is, among other things, an iconoclast and voice of crystal clarity and surgically incisive insight into the follies and self-delusions that currently riddle the liberal progressive leftist establishment here in America.
Dr. Paul A. Offit (MD), in his introduction to Saad’s book, offers perhaps one of the best descriptions of Saad’s uniquely courageous and daring assault on the left’s determined efforts to replace common sense with politically correct dogma and hyperbole.
Let me quote him here: “With disarming humor and withering logic, evolutionary behavioral scientist Gad Saad shows us that self-delusion is an equal-opportunity employer, not defined by race, ethnic background sexual orientation, political leanings or level of education. Nothing is taboo. To read ‘The Parasitic Mind’ is to understand why so many people either embrace Saad for his clarity or reject him for holding up a mirror to their inconsistencies.”
Saad posits that in today’s society, ‘reality’ is being increasingly asnd unrelentingly subjected to personal interpretations of quantity and quality. In other words, ‘reality’ is being replaced by subjective fantasy, or whatever you WISH it to be.
Saad discusses the many processes by which this occurs, but his arguments rest on the premise that human interaction with the physical and mental world we exist within balances upon two main axes of the human condition. Those are 1) emotionalism, and 2) rationalism.
Human beings are complex creatures, subjecting all their interactions to both emotional interpretation (feelings and intuition) and rational analysis (logic and science-based quantification). Maintaining a balance between these two contrasting dynamics that so affect the typical ‘human response’ requires great agility, dexterity and an equally volved equilibrium of thought. Given that the so-called ‘Western tradition’ presupposes that a person is ideally both emotionally stable AND intellectually rational, our democratic institutions rely upon that balance to maintain a steady and functional stasis. When that balance is shifted or altered, even slightly, our functional potential shears remarkably askew.
Thus, when many young progressive liberals begin to reject scientifically verified fact (a good example, perhaps the best, being that men can become pregnant and bear children…or that a woman has a penis!) in favor of fantastical delusions, it is often the emotional part of human make-up that is suppressing the rational, logical, quantificational aspect of our make-up. Quite often, if akll else fails, changing definitions and the language used to discuss topics serves as a further monkey-wrench to destroy further rational conventions. This has been called the 'la-la-la-I can't-hear-you!' tactic, sometimes alternately referred to as a part of the mechanisms of 'culture denial'.
Coincidentally, women tend to be more emotional in their aggregate responses and reactions than men. This has been borne out time and time again in studies conducted to gauge subjective responses by male and female test subjects to various stimuli. Women generally prefer, for example, subjective ‘people-oriented skills’, whereas men tend to prefer ‘mechanical or objective (impersonal) skills’. Although the reasons for this are still as yet unclear and not definitively understood, there does appear to be a heavily biochemical-influenced force underlying the contrast.
The fact that the demographic balance is also shifting in faver of both the greater influence and participation of women in all areas of society, suggests (at least in part) that ‘emotionalism’ or ‘feelings-based' mindsets are rapidly gaining the upper hand against more traditionally objective, scientific quantifications at all levels of our society.
When this dynamic is added to a milieu wherein younger people obtain their validity, justifications and awarenesses, not from traditional sources of knowledge but from peer association (e.g. ‘social media’), the substitution of highly emotional, ‘feelings-based’ coloration for objective (rational) analysis takes on added impact on our society.
This is where Saad’s main hypothesis comes into clearer focus, for he submits that, when fixed (physical) reality is replaced by emotionally unbalanced ‘feeling’, potentially catastrophic ideations are unleashed that can profoundly alter our lives.
Ostrich Parasitic Syndrome
Saad calls this paradigm the ‘Ostrich Parasitic Syndrome’, or the deliberate eschewing of scientifically demonstrated or validated fact for emotionally based ‘feeling’. The reference is to the sterotypical tendency of an ostrich to bury its head in the sand as an avoidance mechanism to ward off threats of danger or harm. The fact that this is a completely false behavioral allusion, with absolutely no basis in fact notwithstanding (ostriches do not bury their heads in the sand), the analogue is still colorful, apt and readily understandable by nearly everyone!
As Saad notes, “The desire to ignore or deny reality extends far beyond science. The human capacity for deception (and self-deception) is enormous; in fact some scientists suspect one reason for our intelligence evolved as it has is so that we can manipulate others. In the service of such manipulations, we have evolved a parallel proclivity to self-deceive, which protects us from betraying our duplicity. The first step to being a good (or successful) liar is believing the lie.”
Josef Goebbels certainly gave us many excellent examples of this semantic principle during the 1940s, under Hitler's Third Reich regime! I would add a corollary to that, namely that the second step is telling a BIG lie, since big lies are as readily believed as little ones, according (again, purportedly) to Josef Goebbels.
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[A few words about the ‘Big Lie’ from two masters of the genre
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
This is an excellent definition of the “Big lie,” however, there seems to be no evidence that it was used by Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, though it is often attributed to him.
The original description of the big lie appeared in Mein Kampf. Adolf Hitler applied it to the behavior of Jews rather than as a tactic he advocated. Specifically, he accused Viennese Jews of trying to discredit the Germans’ activities during World War I. Hitler wrote of the Jews’ “unqualified capacity for falsehood” and “that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation…. From time immemorial, however, the Jews have known better than any others how falsehood and calumny can be exploited.”
The (WW2) OSS psychological profile of Hitler described his use of the big lie (as follows): Hitler's primary rules were, never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.
Goebbels did describe the big lie in different language in an article he wrote in 1941, “Churchill’s Lie Factory,” but he was accusing the British of a particular ploy: "The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous."
Randall Bytwerk argues that neither Hitler nor Goebbels would admit to lying. Goebbels, “...always maintained that propaganda had to be truthful. That doesn’t mean he didn’t lie, but it would be a pretty poor propagandist who publicly proclaimed that he was going to lie.”
(Note: The foregoing excerpts were taken from ‘The Jewish Virtual Library’ )
Sadly, the very best examples of formulaic use of lies and big lies are today to be found in Russian State propaganda releases, in Vladimir Putin’s truly grotesque distortions of truth, and in Iran’s use of the lie as ritualised state dogma!]
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Saad goes on to say, “The father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, noted the human capacity to suppress unpleasant information and referred to it as ‘this ostrich policy.’”
The following passage by Saad defines the ‘Ostrich Parasitic Syndrome’, in its attack on reason and ‘reality’: “This disorder causes a person to reject realities that are otherwise as clear as the existence of gravity. Sufferers of OPS deny the reality of their lying eyes. They construct an alternate reality known as ‘Unicornia’. In such a world, science, reason, rules of causality, evidentiary thresholds, a near-infinite amount of data, data analytic procedures, inferential statistics, the epistemological rules inherent to the scientific method, rules of logic, historical patterns, daily patterns, and common sense are all rejected. Instead, the delusional ramblings of an OPS sufferer are rooted in illusory correlations, non-existent causal links, and ‘feel-good progressive platitudes’. Ostrich logic is always delivered via an air of haughty moral superiority.”
In its extremity, I would argue that OPS produces totally fanciful substitutions of emotionally-augmented, utter fantasy as an avoidance of uncomfortable realities. As long as it achieves the desired effect, no other apparent justification seems to be required or needed by the OPS-prone!
Saad cites an interesting example, as his narrative continues, of the dynamic shear between Marxist/Engelsian doctrinaire dogma and reality-based scientific fact in the person of Soviet agronomist Trofim Lysenko (who actually hailed from the Ukraine). Back in the 1930s Lysenko rejected the established mechanism of heredity (Mendelian inheritance) and instead proposed his own pseudo-scientific theories that were perceived as more consistent with Marxist collectivism.
“Under the leadership of Josef Stalin, this allowed him to gain great political and scientific influence, including the capacity to severely punish contrarian Soviet scientists who dared to critique his quackery. His rejection of established theories in genetics went beyond the murder of truth. It led to agricultural practices in the Soviet Union and China that arguably led to the starvation of millions of people.”
Of note, in perfect syncopation with Lysenko’s delusional beliefs and theories, is the fact that millions of Ukrainians did in fact die from Stalin’s malevolently genocidal efforts to ‘eliminate’ the Ukrainian people with his agrarian reforms of their food production means. The many millions more (both in Russia and later in Mao’s China) that likely also died as an indirect result of Lysenko’s delusional pseudo-science are more than a matter of mere conjecture, but are demonstrably attributable to Lysenko’s politically-dominated Marxist dogmatism.
The Rise of the Social Justice Warrior, et al
Saad elaborates on many supportive arguments that perfectly substantiate his theses and explores a number of interesting manifestations of how the popular delusions of the progressive liberals are not just killing off the last vestiges of reality-awareness (among younger people) but effectively altering American society in numerous ways that portend growing chaos between those with both feet firmly planted in traditional norms and social customs and those who wish to substitute their own fanciful imaginings for factual reality.
One of these phenomena is the erstwhile ‘social justice warrior’ on campuses, an individual who helps foster victimization as a pathology unique to his perception of reality as a struggle between oppressors and victims. Under this dogma, all life is reduced down to that core philosophy: you are either a victim OR an oppressor. And of course, all ‘people of color’ are automatically presumed to be in the latter group and all white European people are likewise consigned to the former.
Far worse than being mere matters of political correctness to be argued, ‘victimology’ creates the class of individuals that H.G. Wells so brilliantly parodied in his famed book ‘Animal Farm’ (“All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others”) except that it also institutionalises a new subclass of oppressors (as Wells did not put it, “All animals are equal, but some are far-less equal than others”).
Saad cites an instance involving the founder of Twitter (Jack Dorsey) whom he interviewed on an internet podcast that is of related pass-along interest here, relating to the ‘monitoring of people’s language on that platform’.
“Healthy human beings are anti-fragile. In other words, people have to be exposed to the ugliness of social interactions. They cannot be protected in a sanitized bubble expecting that all interactions be polite, uplifting and enriching. Just as immunotherapy against food allergies exposes young children to minute traces of allergens so that, with an incremental increase in the exposure dosage, the body will build immunity against a particular allergen, so too do people need to be exposed to the full repertoire of human interactions so that they can develop as intellectually and emotionally healthy individuals. And yet today we are creating a generation of young people who are too brittle to handle opposing opinions and who fold into a foetal position of feigned victimhood when confronted by so-called ‘micro-aggressions’, a concept that lacks scientific validity.”
As I read this in Saad’s book, it struck a parallel in my mind to the apologetic, virtue-signalling warnings by television news media reporters and anchors (when they are reporting on some new and violent atrocity) that “…some of the following images may be graphically disturbing and upsetting!” It’s exactly the same idea, except that here the media are ostensibly protecting fully grown and supposedly mature adults from experiencing ‘unpleasantness’!
Psychologists know this as being closely associated with ‘trigger warning’ tactics, yet here (in news media broadcasts) the tendency is to infantilise human resistance by coddling not young adults, but fully mature (and often very senior) adults. More needlessly protective and cosseted buffers against ‘nasty old realities’…
I recommend this book to all of you
There are many good reasons why I myself am so impressed by the immensely intelligent and cogent subject matter of Professor Saad’s 2020 book, The Parasitic Mind. It would be exhaustive to try to convey more than the few cited here and in excess of what I have already referenced. Suffice it to say that this is a book that anyone who is concerned with the continuing slide from balanced, rational understandings of American life into the sort of reality-detachment that characterises so many on the progressive liberal left these days, would benefit from reading.
Unfortunately, my meager intellectual resources are somewhat inadequate to the task of persuading you to read this illuminating book by one our very best and most highly qualified contemporary thinkers today. You need to read the arguments in Saad’s book yourself to benefit from the full impact of the brilliant, yet straightforward and no-nonsense insights his book offers.
Of course, as a Canadian Jew of Lebanese extraction, it is extremely difficult for the left to dismiss (or as they put it, “delegitimise”) Saad as just another raving ‘white, American conservative’. Given his clarity of expression, his disarming humor and surgically incisive commentary, but above all his intellectual erudition, these are 240 pages that will open whole new synaptical pathways in your thought patterns.
For me, it is another excellent book offering clarity into the frustrating and divisive social ferment that at present is tearing our traditional democracy apart at its seams and it takes its place in a reference library of similarly astute social analyses that we should all be privy to!
A Closing Note:
Last night at zero-dark-thirty hours, I awoke (NOT socially, thank Ghod!) and my mind briefly ran amok with all sort of ideas, thoughts and ruminative notions. I had just surfaced out of the usual, nightly weird dreams that I’m sure a good psychiatrist would not just have a field day with but use as the basis for a whole new paper on sleep disturbances and of course having ploughed through Gad Saad’s thoughtful tome, I suddenly found myself wondering if the Millennial obsession with ‘Super-Heroes’ might have a strong link to the fantastical self-delusions that permeate progressive liberal thinking, presently.
I refer here to the powerful influence that comics characters have had on a whole generation of young people, but not limited strictly to their susceptibility to the notion of ‘having super-powers’ (wish fulfilment, et al). There is also the prominent role played by the so-called entertainment industry to consider, in further entrenching and institutionalizing this process in young people (I refer here to those under the age of roughly 35 or so) in scores of Marvel Comics exploitation movies.
Super-heroes have been around a long, long time, notably since at least the 30s, with the rise of William Moulton Marston’s seminal (no pun intended, despite the strong sexual inuendo underlying Marston’s original comic concept) heroine, Wonder Woman (since adopted as the allegorical heroine of radical feminists everywhere). When Marvel Comics’ Stan Lee came along and created a whole pantheon of characters with extraordinary (super-human) powers, back in the 50s, what was formerly regarded by adults as merely a ‘phase’ adolescents pass through (“comic books”) became a persistant psychosocial phenomenon that was rapidly embraced by younger individuals.
A decade or so on, Hollywood seized the bit and began to churn out licensed tales of super-heroic characters (I think here of the markedly exploitative character ‘Black Panther’, just as a convenient example of blacksploitation) using the latest leading-edge CGI technology, which perfectly fed all the simmering nerd tantasies out there, whose underdog fantasies they thrived upon.
‘Super-hero’ comics characters thus became a strong influence in the lives of vast numbers of adolescents afflicted with pronounced social anomie who felt as if their lives were empty, meaningless and unfulfilling. By that time, what was formerly a relatively small contingent of introverted and socially handicapped nerds expanded into a popular wave of angst-filled adolescent sentiment (“revenge of the nerds”, et al). As these nerds began to gravitate to the internet and discovered the world of computers, gaming and related areas of graphic fantasy art (such as ‘Animae’, to which the Japanese infused a strongly erotic flavor), their formerly marginal presence became more and more a part of the mainstream.
My theory (and I have not heard anyone yet study this formally, although I suspect who scholarly papers that I remain unaware of have been written about it) is that the fantasised, wishful ideal of the humble, ostensibly ‘powerless’ entity suddenly being invested with super-human abilities has been somehow absorbed into the unconscious raison d'être that underlies much of the present youthful progressive liberal insistence on denying scientifically provable (or proven) fact for emotionally ‘feel-good’ nonsense.
Today, instead of small clusters of socially intraverted comics fans who gather together in nerdly concert to celebrate their fantasies privately (and again thanks largely to co-optional, highly profitable commercial exploitation of youth trends to generate revenues), we have an exponentially broader area of social activity that subconsciously ‘believes’ that it has the power to convert unpleasing realities into ‘unhurtful’ pseudo-reality that is far less ‘offensive’ than the rough and tumble of real life experience (that Gad Saad reiterates all human beings MUST be exposed to, in order to successfully learn how to cope,, together with all its uncertainties and less-than-perfect outcomes).
To shouldn't fail to be noted, despite its unignorably influential efforts to foster such deviations from hard and fast rational reality, that Hollywood (i.e. the whole entertainment industry in all its sub-manifestations) adamantly denies any culpability whatsoever. The same ‘Ostrich Parasitic Syndrome’ denials have been notable over past decades, filled with many thousands of violence-filled videos, computer games, movies and television serials, when it comes to accusations by social watchdog groups that Hollywood bears a primary culpability for fostering a culture of extreme violence (“We’re just giving them what they want! Honest!”) in America.
Giving whom what they want? Certainly not me and hundreds of thousands of others who try to hew to Antonus Marcus Aurelius’s famed admonishment, "The object of life is not to be in the majority, but to not join the ranks of the insane!”
Right now, sadly enough, insanity seems to enjoy a majority, thus the battle has already been joined. If you agree, again I strongly suggest reading Professor Saad’s fascinating (2020) book, ‘The Parasitic Mind’. The lessons to be learned within its pages are valuable beyond reckoning, in my opinion.
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Finally: To any who read the above with the corrective aim of a professorial eye, and who wish to correct grammar, spelling and or contextual errors, please kindly refrain, since I am constantly rereading and correcting in subsequent days. All of your concerns shall, therefore, sooner or later be addressed and resolved. Aloha!
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