The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense by Gad Saad

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


*** Possible Spoilers ***

The author makes a pretty good case for ideological biases in universities and on social media acting in a manner directly contrary to the stability and continuance of western society. There are a couple of things I think he overlooked. He assumes colleges and universities are mandated to be centers of learning and education where students are taught to deal with a plethora of ideas sorting out truth from fiction. I think more accurate keywords are 'should be'. In fact, I think universities and colleges are businesses with largely unemployable students arriving from high school being transformed into useful contributors to business and the economy in general. In the process, the business extracts large sums from tuition, government funding, and alumni donations. The administrators, it seems, focus more closely on the dollars and the product - i.e. graduates. As a result, they're all too willing to placate dissenters by whatever means necessary to keep the peace, and, by extension, keep the cash flow stable.

A second point where I think the author misses the mark to some degree is in his assessment of those not pushing back against the politically correct ideologies flooding campuses is cowardice. Admittedly there is some, but I think plain and simple laziness plays a larger role. With the flood of data filling every corner of the internet, it's difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff and doing so requires quite a bit of background research. For any issue it is possible to find any number of 'experts' pontificating on both sides. Developing sufficient factual knowledge to challenge even one issue is exceedingly difficult. It's small wonder then people fall into one of the two polarized camps rather than figuring out what is actually true.

Frankly I don't see any obvious solution to this, but it might help if universities and colleges completely closed their humanities departments and focused instead on STEM. Yes, there is some radical creep in these areas as well but most students in such programs are far too busy to bother with whining ideological rants. Humanities may have value but at the moment they're leaving their students unprepared for life after university and doing their best to poison minds and attack Western society.

This book was very well written and well worth reading, although if one considers him or herself 'woke' it probably won't do much for you.



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