Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind

by Gad Saad

READ BY THE AUTHOR

The bestselling author of The Parasitic Mind shows why empathy in politics leads to civilizational collapse.

What happens when a society elevates victimhood to a virtue and decides that punishment is cruel? You get the disease Dr. Gad Saad calls suicidal empathy. And the West may be terminally infected.

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 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.

This crisis of empathy creates a horrifying system of inverse morality where the strong and successful are demonized, and the destructive are celebrated. Just look at the insane inversions we tolerate we prefer illegal migrants over our own legal citizens and veterans, permit drug addicts to threaten children’s safety in parks, and elevate transgender 'women' above biological women in sports and safe spaces. Common sense is dying in a deluge of misguided compassion.

Suicidal Empathy is your wake-up call. Stop ignoring your survival instincts in the name of political correctness. This isn't just misguided policy; it is the ultimate expression of a culture actively choosing its own demise.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Psychology, Philosophy, Sociology, History, Audiobook

Audible Audio

Published May 12, 2026

About the author

Dr. Gad Saad is Professor of Marketing, holder of the Concordia University Research Chair in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences and Darwinian Consumption, and advisory fellow at the Center for Inquiry. He was an Associate Editor of Evolutionary Psychology (2012-2015) and of Customer Needs and Solutions (2014- ). He has held Visiting Associate Professorships at Cornell University, Dartmouth College, and the University of California-Irvine. Dr. Saad was inducted into the Who’s Who of Canadian Business in 2002. He was listed as one of the “hot” professors of Concordia University in both the 2001 and 2002 Maclean’s reports on Canadian universities. Dr. Saad received the JMSB Faculty’s Distinguished Teaching Award in June 2000. He is the recipient of the 2014 Darwinism Applied Award granted by the Applied Evolutionary Psychology Society and co-recipient of the 2015 President's Media Outreach Award-Research Communicator (International). His research and teaching interests include evolutionary psychology, consumer behavior, and psychology of decision making.

Professor Saad’s trade book, The Consuming Instinct: What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift Giving Reveal About Human Nature (Prometheus Books), was released in June 2011, and has since been translated to Korean and Turkish. His 2007 book, The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption (Lawrence Erlbaum) is the first academic book to demonstrate the Darwinian roots of a wide range of consumption phenomena. His edited book, Evolutionary Psychology in the Business Sciences, was also released in 2011 (Springer), as was his special issue on the futures of evolutionary psychology published in Futures (Elsevier).

He has over 75 scientific publications covering a wide range of disciplines including in marketing, consumer behavior, psychology, economics, evolutionary theory, medicine, and bibliometrics. A sample of outlets wherein his publications have appeared include Journal of Marketing Research; Journal of Consumer Psychology; Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes; Journal of Behavioral Decision Making; Evolution and Human Behavior; Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics; Marketing Theory; Journal of Social Psychology; Personality and Individual Differences; Managerial and Decision Economics; Journal of Bioeconomics; Applied Economics Letters; Journal of Business Research; Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences; Psychology & Marketing; Journal of Consumer Marketing; Medical Hypotheses; Scientometrics; and Futures. His work has been presented at 170 leading academic conferences, research centers, and universities around the world.

Dr. Saad has supervised or served on the committee of numerous Master’s and Doctoral students, as well as one post-doc. He has been awarded several research grants (both internal as well as governmental). Using his own grant money, he created an in-house behavioral marketing lab. He serves/has served on numerous editorial boards including Journal of Marketing Research; Journal of Consumer Psychology; Psychology & Marketing; Journal of Business Research; Journal of Social Psychology; Evolutionary Psychology; Open Behavioral Science Journal; Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics; Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology/Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences; The Evolutionary Review; and Frontiers of Evolutionary Psychology; and is an associate member of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. He has consulted for numerous firms, and his work has been featured in close to 500 media outlets including on television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and blogs. He has been designated Concordia's Newsmaker of the Week five years in a row (2011-2015).

Dr. Saad holds a PhD (Major: Marketing; Minors in Cognitive Studies and Statistics) and an MS from Cornell University, and an MBA (Specialization: Marketing; Mini-Thesis: Operations Research) and a BSc (Mathematics and Computer Science) both from McGill Uni

Reviews

[Jay Cresva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely potent, high-octane rage fuel.
Orgiastically cathartic.
Chilling.
Sure to be hated by 1) White liberal women 2) Radical Islamists


They are coming, and they will conquer the west through the wombs of your women and you might just offer them up in fears of being labelled a racist.


This is an extremely difficult read/listen. Not because it's complicated, filled with difficult academic jargon, but because of the subject matter it covers. It's filled with sarcasm and dry humor, reads like pop-psychology book, sure, but you can't laugh because it's no laughing matter. Each example of suicidal empathy and how it manifests itself hits you like whip on raw flesh; each lash enrages you.

Probably not for everyone. White liberal women won't touch this book because they will never be open minded enough. Radical Islamists won't touch this book, this is written by a Jew, it's more haram than a slab of delicious bacon, surely. Leaving Gad preaching to the choir, a Saad truth.

As a person who was born in an 'religion of peace'-country, but as a Christian, I cry for the west and the cancer it self-inflicted with. it starts with a self-assuring vowel, but ends with (almost) government sanctioned jew hunts (synagogue shootings, with slap-on-the-wrist punishments), grooming of the young (Pakistani grooming gangs, grooming white young girls in UK), and rape of innocents (rape of Europeans, they are 'Kaffir' and thus literal f-holes).
It is societal cancer, and always comes as stage IV, there is no 'moderate' or stage I, II, III..it skips all stage to stage Iv terminal cancer; they forever complicit, never condemning crimes committed in the names of their God, all participating in destruction of the host..which are mainly western Christian nations (is that odd?).



The most pathological thing about suicidal empathy for these people are pathological acceptance of their own cognitive dissonance; even rape victim starts to defend their rapists, in this bizarre, twilight-zone of a dimension where suicidal altruism is the religion.
One example that stuck with me, and will probably forever haunt me is BLM advocate in an African country getting raped repeatedly in a balcony, while she tries to convince her rapist that she's a specialist in Malcolm X and the black struggle, only to be slapped as he enters her repeatedly. She then blames the rape as the fault of white colonization instead, saying she's glad to have had this experience.

It's nothing short of being infected with those parasitic brain-eating Ophiocordyceps fungi that hijack the nervous systems of insects, primarily ants, forcing them to behave like zombies to spread spores to spread more of themselves.

The book goes into detail of how suicidal empathy normalizes crime, radicalism, over-taxation, with examples from all corners of the world. Canada and Justin Trudeau gets special mentions because Canada is a literal example of what suicidal empathy does to a nation. Only in Canada you find these:



In a suicidal empathetic Canada - it is totally normal to offer kids pamphlets on how to snort crack cocaine..

This book does not really offer any hope, because there probably aren't any for the west. It is dying a slow, sure death.

[Eri Bastos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great book from Gad Saad.

Following him on X gave me a pretty good idea of what to expect, and I was not disappointed. The book is full of real-life examples, many of them recent enough to still be fresh in my memory.

As an immigrant to Canada, like the author, I found parts of the book painful to read. Not because I disagreed with him, but because I kept nodding along as he described the civilizationally suicidal path our country seems determined to follow.

The delusions currently gripping Western society are already producing disastrous consequences. I will leave the reader to go through the book and draw their own conclusions.

My only frustration is that, like his previous book and others with similar warnings, it sometimes feels like preaching to the choir. The people who most need to read this book are almost certainly the least likely to pick it up.

[Maher Razouk · Rating 5 out of 5]

في فيلم "صمت الحملان" تجسد جودي فوستر دور متدربة في مكتب التحقيقات الفيدرالي (FBI)، حيث تطلب العون من طبيب نفسي وسجين في آن واحد، وهو القاتل المتسلسل الشهير الدكتور هانيبال ليكتر (أداء أنتوني هوبكنز)، وذلك لتعقب قاتل متسلسل آخر طليق يُدعى "بافالو بيل" (أداء تيد ليفين).
وفي أحد أكثر مشاهد الفيلم رسوخاً في الذاكرة، يختطف "بافالو بيل" امرأة بعد التظاهر بأنه يعاني من إعاقة حركية بسبب جبيرة في ذراعه، مدعياً حاجته للمساعدة في رفع أريكة إلى شاحنته. نجح القاتل في ذلك من خلال العزف على أوتار التعاطف لدى ضحيته المستهدفة، رغم أن غريزة البقاء لديها كانت تهمس لها بأن ثمة أمراً مريباً. هذه الحيلة تحديداً—استغلال التعاطف—كان يعتمد عليها القاتل المتسلسل الحقيقي "تيد بندي" لاستدراج النساء إلى سيارته؛ فالشخصيات السيكوباتية تدرك تماماً كيف تطوع هذا الانحراف في منظومة التعاطف البشري لمصالحها.

وبناءً عليه، وبدلاً من المقولة الشائعة "القتل بلطف"، فإن السيكوباتيين الساديين "يقتلون عبر اللطف"، مستغلين نزعتنا الفطرية نحو التعاطف كسلاح ضدنا.
وفي هذا السياق، يشير عالمَا الأنثروبولوجيا الدنماركيان "نيلز بوباندت" و"راني ويلرسليف" إلى أن للتعاطف وجهاً آخر بائساً وأكثر قتامة: "إن التوجه السائد في الدراسات الأكاديمية للتعاطف بمختلف تخصصاتها كان—ولا يزال—ينظر إليه ليس كملكة بشرية فحسب، بل كفضيلة إنسانية أيضاً. ونتيجة لذلك، جرى تأطيره باعتباره قيمة خيرية مطلقة ترتبط بالرعاية، والإيثار، والروابط الاجتماعية، كونه النقيض التام للخداع والعدوان والنزاع. بيد أن هذا الافتراض يغفل تماماً تلك الجوانب من الحياة الاجتماعية التي يتشابك فيها التعاطف مع الخداع والعنف، بل ويتحول فيها أحياناً إلى ركيزة أساسية لهما".
والجدير بالذكر أن البشر ليسوا الكائنات الوحيدة التي تقع في حبائل الخطر بسبب تعاطفها؛ فحيتان العنبر مثلاً، عندما تحاول حماية فرد مصاب من قطيعها، تتخذ تشكيلاً دفاعياً دائرياً يُعرف بـ "تشكيل مارجريت"، وهو ما يسهل على صيادي الحيتان محاصرة القطيع بأكمله وإبادته. وهكذا، يُستغل تعاطف الحيتان الفطري ليكون سبب حتفها.
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Gad Saad
Suicidal Empathy
Translated By #Maher_Razouk

[Matthías Páll · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book on important topics, especially that we must not stop at naive first-order thinking, but dive into the knock-on effect of every decision.

Written in an academic and sarcastic style, this book had me laughing out loud at times. Recommended to anyone interested in how crazy the zeitgeist has become.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

really great picture of where we are and where we’re headed

Lots of good stuff in this book I recommend it highly. I have two caveats. First , don’t get the audiobook. Saad isn’t the best reader. His pacing is off and he uses accented pronunciation when he says words based on other languages. It’s like AOC unsung Spanish phrasing. Second, be prepared for academic speak. Saad writes like an academic. He uses language that only an academic would use. It takes attention away from the real point of the book. I’ll bet he said deontological a hundred times. I mean, who really says that. Nonetheless, the book is a warning. We need to scale back our empathetic or we will be conquered.

[Wesley · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is not just suicidal empathy but homicidal empathy in the healthcare field. The belief that certain patients can’t handle a loving and truthful guidance leads providers to not help people live healthier and longer lives.

[Bill Powers · Rating 4 out of 5]

• The tsunami of empathetic insanity is drowning the West.

• The DIE cult has taken over academia along with countless other industries, all of which should be strictly guided by meritocracy (e.g., surgeons or airplane pilots).

• Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, which laid the groundwork for the American welfare state, and Joseph Stalin’s Soviet propaganda both relied heavily on mass empathy appeals. How ironic that the two great adversaries of the eventual Cold War each recognized the effectiveness of empathy-based appeals to justify their respective societal visions.

• “Sharing is caring” is a very nice motto when you are in grade one, but it is less so when more than 50 percent of your earnings are taxed by the socialist welfare state.

• Given that women score higher on empathy than men, they are more likely to prefer socialism over capitalism,

• Taxation is theft, purely and simply, even though it is theft on a grand and colossal scale which no acknowledged criminals could hope to match. It is a compulsory seizure of the property of the State’s inhabitants or subjects.

• Canada went from first levying income tax in 1917 as a temporary measure to more than a century later, stealing more than 50 percent of your income (once all taxes are combined). It is all justified under the banner of being an empathetic citizen.

• If the mafia extorts 3 percent of your revenue to provide you with some much-needed neighborhood protection, this is illegal. If your government empathetically takes more than 60 percent of your income, this is legal. Once the insatiable taxation apparatus is unleashed, the parasitic gluttony only worsens. The United States income tax code grew from 27 pages when it was first enacted in 1913 to 17,427 pages as of April 2024; furthermore, the opportunity and out-of-pocket costs of complying with the tax system in the United States in 2024 were estimated at $414 billion. How do we go from an income tax of 0 percent to one greater than 50 percent and from a tax code that expands from 27 to 17,427 pages?

• Suicidally empathetic socialists would love to see Elon Musk taxed at a nearly 100 percent rate, as he is apparently “unfairly” wealthy when other Americans must rely on food stamps to survive. These same folks fail to realize that Musk’s companies have injected $338+ billion into the US economy over the past five years alone, stemming from $110.7 billion in salaries, $46 billion in taxes levied, and $182.2 billion in procurement. Musk’s ability to generate and allocate capital is astoundingly greater than would be the case of a “caring and empathetic” centralized government agency.

Dr. Sad has done an excellent job in describing the current state of Western civilization with regard to suicidal empathy. It is hard to see how we have fallen so far, so fast, and even harder to see how we will dig ourselves out of this hole!

I highly recommend Suicidal Epapthy: Dying to be Kind. It’s a book we should all read.

[Tyler · Rating 1 out of 5]

Here is the prompt.

Chatgpt write a nonfiction book titled Sucidal Empathy structured around a single central thesis: that a specific well-intentioned cultural or intellectual trend driven by misplaced compassion, groupthink, or ideological capture is actively undermining human flourishing, free inquiry, or civilizational resilience.

The book should:
Open with a compelling personal story or observation that frames the problem
Define the central concept clearly and show how it manifests across institutions (academia, media, government, medicine)
Use evolutionary psychology and behavioral science to explain why humans are susceptible to this kind of thinking
Provide real-world case studies where the trend caused measurable harm
Anticipate and steelman counterarguments, then dismantle them
Write in a tone that is serious but readable occasionally sardonic, never dry

End with a false call to intellectual courage and epistemic honesty

Target audience: Politically conservative and libertarian readers who are skeptical of progressive ideology, concerned about free speech and institutional overreach, and frustrated with what they see as ideological capture of media, academia, and government. Fans of podcasts like The Joe Rogan Experience or thinkers like Elon Musk who value contrarian, unfiltered takes on culture and politics.

Aim for 250–300 pages across 10–12 chapters

[Mattias Peters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love this book

[Michael Cawley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant, fascinating, and thought-provoking exploration of the interplay between empathy, justice, and prudence.

[Jeffrey Horelick · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Brilliant Wake-Up Call on Modern Empathy

Suicidal Empathy by Gad Saad is one of the most intellectually engaging and thought-provoking books I have read in years. I read several books every week, and very few stand out as true learning experiences the way this one did. From beginning to end, Professor Saad demonstrates an extraordinary level of intelligence, courage, and dedication in explaining the behavioral and psychological roots of many of today’s cultural and societal conflicts.

I would also like to thank Elon Musk for recommending this book. Without that suggestion, I may never have discovered such a fascinating and important read.

What makes this book so compelling is the way Gad Saad combines psychology, evolutionary behavioral science, current events, history, and real-world examples into a clear and understandable narrative. Rather than simply presenting theories, he carefully walks the reader through examples that illustrate how excessive empathy when detached from logic, self-preservation, and truth can become destructive both personally and societally.

The author discusses modern cultural events and controversies in ways that challenge readers to think critically. He references incidents such as the aftermath of George Floyd and the tragic case of Laken Riley to demonstrate how ideology, language manipulation, and emotional reasoning can sometimes overshadow rational discussion and accountability. Whether one agrees with every conclusion or not, the book succeeds in encouraging readers to examine difficult issues honestly rather than emotionally.

One particularly memorable section involved the manipulation of language itself. Saad explains how changing terminology can soften or normalize behaviors that society once clearly condemned. His examples were shocking at times, but they made an important point about how language shapes perception. The discussion about attempts to normalize even extreme behaviors, including cannibalism in certain academic circles, was especially disturbing yet eye-opening because it demonstrated how far ideological movements can go when boundaries are removed in the name of empathy or tolerance.

Another powerful analogy in the book is the classic story of the scorpion and the frog. The frog, acting out of compassion, carries the scorpion across the river only to be stung in the end. That immediately reminded me of the story often referenced by Donald Trump during his speeches about the kind woman who rescues a snake from the cold, only to be bitten after showing it mercy. Both stories perfectly illustrate the core message behind “suicidal empathy”; when compassion ignores human nature, danger, or self-preservation, the consequences can be devastating.


At the same time, what I appreciated most was that Gad Saad does not argue against kindness or helping others. In fact, the book indirectly reinforces the importance of altruism helping others without selfish intent, but with wisdom, discernment, and personal responsibility. There is a major difference between healthy compassion and self-destructive empathy, and this book explains that distinction brilliantly.

What truly elevates this book is its readability. Despite dealing with complex psychological and societal issues, the writing remains entertaining, engaging, and often humorous. Saad’s storytelling ability keeps the reader interested while gradually connecting all the individual examples into a larger picture. By the end of the book, the reader begins to understand how many modern problems originate, how emotional manipulation can distort truth, and how awareness and rational thinking may help society course-correct.

This is not just a political or cultural commentary, it is a deep psychological exploration of human behavior, ideology, and survival. Whether you agree with every argument or not, Suicidal Empathy forces you to think, question assumptions, and examine the consequences of valuing feelings over reality.

[Trudy Nye · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you've struggled to explain to very woke friends and family that empathy is not always a positive or productive choice, this book is a great place to start such a conversation. The news is filled with countless examples of empathy gone wrong. Just recently, a young woman declined to press charges against a man who had attacked her and a friend, saying she "didn't want to put another black man in jail." A short time later, the recipient of her "kindness" pushed a 76-year-old man down some subway stairs to his death. Her misplaced empathy essentially resulted in a death sentence for an innocent man.

[Courtney Conover · Rating 5 out of 5]

Saad is a master of reading, analyzing, and obtaining an in depth understanding of complicated human behavior few can match. His analysis here is no different. Our current society is very literally "dying to be kind", and if we don't turn this around, we're inevitably doomed as a species.

I have been witnessing this societal decline just like Saad has, and worry about what it means for our future.

I'm one of the many who stand against our collective suicidal instinct as Westerners.
The popularity of this book gives me hope we can recover.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5/5

Not nearly as good as his first book, felt a bit repetitive and possibly more like it could have been an essay than a full book.

Saad's signature brand of sarcasm and over the top satire is on full display here and frankly can get a little old, but at the same time it does its job in illustrating how beyond parody some of these situations have become.

I would have appreciated (and was looking for) more discussion of WHY this is so pervasive, what are the root causes and what might the fixes be? Instead this feels more like example after example after example.

[Cody Lamont · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun piece of confirmation bias but lacking, somewhat, in the meat.

I loved the Parasitic Mind but I liked Suicidal Empathy less. A few too many references to social media keyboard warrioring on X and elsewise for my taste.

That said, there are some novel (to me) ideas (e.g. the Left not thinking criminals have agency) and news to me (e.g. Hamas massacre on Oct 7 - yes I live under a rock) and many interesting stories, allegories and connections.

[༺ Jason ༻ · Rating 1 out of 5]

As an independent thinker and voter I’m proud to live in a country of free speech. That noted this book should be called When it’s ok to Hate because it’s full of rubbish.

[Ken Chaar · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very boring and terribly written book, everyone wants to be an author these days. Cannot recommend more to stay away.

[Brent · Rating 1 out of 5]

Standard right wing fan fic drivel, more than likely written by AI. Pointless.

[Sandra]

https://x.com/hebro_steele/status/205...

[Carl Straight · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pretty much a must read as far as I’m concerned. Very enlightening, but also very eye opening.