Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind

by Gad Saad

AN INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

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

255 pages, Kindle Edition

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.

[༺ 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.

[Monique Prins]

DNF.

I actually agree with much of the book's central thesis. The idea that empathy can become detached from reason and consequences is a serious and worthwhile topic. In fact, it is one that liberals and progressives should engage with more honestly.

My frustration was that the book seemed less interested in exploring a universal human tendency than in prosecuting a case against one side of the political spectrum. The argument increasingly felt predetermined: progressive excesses were presented as evidence of civilizational decline, while the shortcomings of the political right received comparatively little scrutiny.

That is a shame, because there is a genuinely important conversation to be had here. Empathy can mislead us. Good intentions do not guarantee good outcomes. But tribalism, nationalism, authoritarianism, and ideological loyalty can be just as distorting.

For readers interested in the underlying question, I found myself wishing I was reading a broader and more psychologically grounded exploration of the topic rather than a culture-war polemic. The core idea is compelling; the framing ultimately wasn't for me.

[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.

[Ravi Warrier · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't really like the book, as it felt more like a political polemic than the clear academic argument I expected from a scholar. While the author makes a few interesting points about how a noble virtue like empathy can be "maladaptively hyperactive" and lead to self-destructive outcomes, these insights are often buried under a series of visceral rants.

My main issue with the book is the imprecise and overly broad and convenient definition of empathy. The author explicitly chooses to use terms like **empathy, compassion, and sympathy interchangeably**, which leads to a confusing argument. He treats general human optimism, fairness, and the desire to "turn the other cheek" as forms of "suicidal empathy," which I simply don't agree with.

Furthermore, as an academician, I found the tone disappointing. Instead of a rigorous inquiry, the book often serves as a channel for the author to air personal grievances and political biases.

The narrative is heavily saturated with right-leaning political bashing and a specifically anti-Islamic narrative. While the author uses his personal history as a Lebanese Jew to frame his worldview, the constant focus on atrocities against Jews and "left-bashing" makes the book feel like an ideological manifesto.

I believe a much stronger case could have been made against the dangers of hyper-empathy without bringing this heavy mix of politics and religion into the argument. Ultimately, the book's lack of focus and aggressive tone overshadowed its potentially interesting core concept.

It's a 1-star book because of the bitterness it leaves in my mind.

[Becky · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nope. A tract against understanding, empathy, and decency. This attempts to justify genocide among other things in the name of 'saving' the West specifically. Feels like a piece of IDF propaganda for the most part. Rather foul to be honest. I genuinely feel that Rawls' theory of a veil of ignorance should be most studied and better understood for the good of humanity.

[E Q · Rating 1 out of 5]

Should instead be titled "Why Woke Is Bad For Jews: A Disorganized Collection Of My Angry Rants". Would recommend reading Toxic Empathy instead as it gives examples and stays on topic.

[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.

[Olga · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is a version of this book that could have been genuinely interesting.

You can see it flickering underneath the surface occasionally. The central question is not absurd: can empathy, untethered from prudence, become destructive? Of course it can. History is full of good intentions calcifying into systems that harm the very people they claim to protect. Excessive bureaucracy. Performative institutional morality. Governments mistaking management for wisdom.

I do not even disagree with Saad on some of this. His criticisms of over-governance, punitive taxation, ideological conformity within academia, and certain forms of moral grandstanding are not inherently unreasonable.

But the problem with Suicidal Empathy is that it mistakes volume for argument.

What I expected from Gad Saad, given his academic background, was something rigorous. Data-driven. Careful. Perhaps provocative, yes, but still disciplined by evidence and nuance. Instead, the book reads strangely reactive. Angry in a way that gradually narrows its own intelligence. Anecdotes pile onto anecdotes until the argument begins to feel less like analysis and more like grievance accumulation. Everything becomes evidence for the thesis because the thesis has already been emotionally decided in advance.

That was my largest frustration. Not disagreement. Reduction.

The world presented here is flattened into moral binaries I simply do not believe survive serious scrutiny. Compassion versus civilisation. Empathy versus reason. The “sane” versus the ideologically infected. Real societies are messier than that. Human beings are messier than that.

Any serious discussion of immigration, governance, identity politics, institutional failure, or social cohesion requires a tolerance for contradiction and ambiguity. Saad seems profoundly impatient with ambiguity. The result is a book that often feels rhetorically certain long before it has earned that certainty intellectually.

I also found the tone exhausting. The constant abrasiveness eventually dulls rather than sharpens the argument. Sarcasm can illuminate hypocrisy in small doses. Sustained over an entire book, it starts to feel defensive. There is a difference between intellectual fearlessness and perpetual outrage. I kept wishing the writing would slow down enough to interrogate itself.

And then there is the question of Israel and Zionism, which I found particularly difficult here because nuance almost entirely disappears. Whatever one’s position on the conflict, it is impossible to discuss it honestly without acknowledging tragedy, history, extremism, suffering, and moral complexity on multiple sides. Saad writes as though complexity itself is evidence of weakness. I cannot follow him there.

What unsettled me most, though, is that the book occasionally gestures toward something real before immediately collapsing into ideological overreach. There is a conversation worth having about the way modern institutions weaponise emotional language. About how empathy can become performative rather than humane. About whether Western societies have lost confidence in their own cultural foundations. Those are legitimate questions. Important questions, even.

But legitimate questions do not automatically produce good books.

I finished this feeling disappointed more than angry. I expected more intellectual seriousness than this. More restraint. More curiosity. More willingness to examine counterexamples with genuine openness rather than rhetorical impatience.

And yet I did read the whole thing. That matters. There was enough here to keep me engaged, even while resisting it. Enough moments where I thought: yes, there is something worth exploring underneath all this noise.

I just do not think this book explored it particularly well.

2 out of 5.

[Andy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Rhetoric over evidence that reads like a compilation of threads written by a bot on 'x'.

As Musk endorsed it I should've gone with my gut and not bothered at all. It was humorous and entertaining, in that it was so incredibly predictable.

A book for the subservient seeking validation from their masters. No-one plays the victim like those who hold all the money, influence and power. Scared that the playing field may become a bit more equal and are seeking deflections and parlour tricks to hide what's really going on.

[Casey · Rating 1 out of 5]

I picked up Suicidal Empathy hoping it was an evidence-based exploration of a fascinating concept. Instead, I found a political polemic wrapped in the language of psychology.

The central problem is that Gad Saad presents an extreme position (suicidal empathy) as though it represents the median view of left-leaning liberals. It feels like an attempt to shift the Overton window in the opposite direction rather than seriously engage with the complexity of human behavior.

What disappointed me most was how quickly the book abandoned behavioral science in favor of political commentary. I later learned that Saad is a marketing professor, and it shows. This topic cries out for rigorous behavioral economics, psychology, and cognitive science, yet much of the argument relies on anecdotes, culture-war examples, and motivated reasoning instead of careful analysis.

The rhetoric also gets in the way. Ad hominem attacks (calling people “serial plagiarists,” mocking others as “shrill” or “cackling,” and similar insults) don’t strengthen an argument. They make it feel more like a grievance-filled editorial than a serious attempt to persuade skeptical readers.

There are repeated false equivalences as well. For example, Saad suggests that supporting Twitter’s decision to ban Donald Trump is incompatible with supporting the First Amendment. That’s simply not how free speech principles work. Throughout the book, complex issues are flattened into binary choices that happen to support his conclusions.

Ironically, one passage near the end revealed what I think is the author’s own worldview. While discussing why he doesn’t allow his children to attend sleepovers, he essentially says that because he cannot know which men pose a risk of sexual assault, he assumes all men are a risk. Whether you agree with that parenting decision or not, it’s the exact reasoning he applies throughout the book: if you cannot be certain that empathy won’t produce harmful outcomes, then empathy itself becomes suspect. That struck me as a revealing example of the same motivated reasoning he criticizes in others.

The book also veers into arguments that resemble “great replacement” narratives, only framed around Muslim immigration. At several points it seems more interested in stoking fear than examining evidence.

Some of the literary analysis is equally frustrating. His discussion of Kafka’s Metamorphosis, using Gregor Samsa’s transformation as a metaphor for Jews who support Palestinians having somehow lost their capacity for reason, completely misses what makes Kafka’s work enduring and powerful.

There were opportunities to explore genuinely interesting ideas. A game theory framework, for example, could have provided a nuanced discussion of when empathy succeeds, when it fails, and the tradeoffs involved. Instead, those possibilities are largely ignored in favor of partisan commentary.

The double standards become hard to ignore. Saad dismisses Pete Buttigieg as being unqualified “other than being gay,” yet never subjects Donald Trump to remotely comparable scrutiny. That asymmetry runs throughout the book.

Perhaps most jarring is the treatment of migrant crime. Saad spends pages criticizing victims of sexual assault by migrants for their political views or policy preferences, effectively blaming victims. Yet when he discusses receiving threats himself and being advised to tone down his rhetoric, he indignantly rejects that advice as “blaming the victim.” The inconsistency is hard to overlook.

This could have been a thoughtful examination of the limits of empathy and the unintended consequences of moral intuitions. Instead, it reads like a culture-war manifesto that selectively borrows from science when convenient. This was such a disappointment.

[Matthías · 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.

[Rohit Kumar · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a new genre of book created by social media successfully putting people in their bubbles.
It's just a really long thread from a racist. It's exactly that. And it's not even trying to be something other than that.

If you don't already agree vehemently with each and every word, not a single point even makes sense.

2 examples-

He mentioned some politician talking about car-pooling to reduce pollution. is it stupid? Yes. Should there be better ways? Yes. But that's not his criticism, not at all. He tries to display the absurdity of it by an illuminating example, talking about how we should also start sharing wives. To reduce what exactly? To solve what? Don't worry about it. Because the way he sees it, sharing a car has nothing to do with pollution, it's only about people who have no cars coming after his property. And then ofc why just stop with the car why not share wife too since that's also his property.

He mentioned how a community can't survive when a rape victim lies to hide the identity of her rapists. This is Germany btw, which had no danger of survival after holocaust, which came out alongside brilliant music and science. But somehow this is a threat.
Same kind of argument for britain, which survived committing astronomical amount of rapes and murders. So they can survive being a community of rapists and murderers but won't survive if 15 Afghani rapists march in.

And ofc their genius retort for all this is never changing, oh then why so many people want to come to our country...? Because you have hoarded all the wealth. People are coming for that. Being a rapist and murderer doesn't mean you lack food, you have too much, people are coming for that, they are not coming for your company.

[Nate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Western society has become a victim of its own success. Like previous societies through history it is crumbling from within, not only because of overconfident, under qualified leadership but also because we’ve been safe for so long that we no longer believe danger exists.
Desperate to atone for past transgressions some care more about their being perceived as welcoming, (read not racist) than the safety of the people in their own country.

I don’t disagree with the points he makes in the book, my only qualm is that his attempts at humour come off bitter and snarky rather than funny and sometimes pulled me out of the rather serious subject matter. I’d rather have him leave the jokes to someone else, otherwise well done.

[Jeanette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very much like a treatise/ dissertation, this is NOT written flippantly. It's about real emotive and cognitive conditions that are observable. But far more than that, because it is topic after topic specific. In politics, in personal relationships, in community- what is registered presently as empathetic is in reality homicide AND in some cases suicide. Not just with crime either, but within abusing and abusers.

That some posters declare this is cored in onus upon hatred? Well, I bet they have never seen a mob or what real hatred encompasses. I have. It was more than 50 years ago but it has never left me. But what is truly 5 star in Saad's discourse here is the analysis of the psychological and real cognitive dissonance that is wholly in empathetic stroking and arguments.

He gets snarky a few times but in this 2025 + environment it was justified. Thus the 4 star because it should not be personality identified so readily, IMHO. Yet notes and examples in real record are multi, multi pages copious. Why I read this and why it was so good and A REAL OBJECTIVE TRUTH- is because I have seen and heard for decades now the elite consdescending "do gooders" who aren't but measure their worth through the lens of being the most "empathetic". NOPE! The most narcassistic in observation and in actions is what they are. They are NOT the ones who suffer from their so called benevolence.

[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.
.
Gad Saad
Suicidal Empathy
Translated By #Maher_Razouk

[shion · Rating 1 out of 5]

what i expected: interesting idea explored with research over time
what i got: strange libertarian misogynist reading his "argument" against DE&I (spoiler: mostly just his opinions and justifying his stance by saying he is an immigrant & Jewish)

[Cecilia Cicone · Rating 1 out of 5]

I picked up this book because it was recommended by a Catholic bishop who makes a lot of media appearances. Unfortunately, what I found was something that's entirely incompatible with Christianity. The author seems to think that because he hasn't received enough empathy, therefore empathy is just a waste, no one can benefit from it, and it is actually going to be the downfall of our society.

Things that Saad thinks he should have received empathy for that he didn't include:
- his Jewish family needing to flee Lebanon
- the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel
- the fact that he had to go through sexual harassment training for his job
- the taxes he pays on the royalties for his work
-needing to increase his personal security after making comments on Joe Rogan

It seems like, because the author hasn't received sufficient empathy, he's concluded that it's all harmful to us not only as individuals but as a society.

I was hoping this work would give some framework for what is authentic empathy. I certainly agree that there can be false empathy, which is not rooted in love but in virtue signaling or mimesis in order to remain a part of an in-group, and that distinction is important yet difficult to navigate. There's a little bit of an asterisk at the very end of the book where he tries to make the distinction, but mostly the work is just made up of anecdotes and one-offs that he then makes hasty generalizations to show, or in an attempt to show, that empathy is opposed to survival from a Darwinian perspective.

It falls into the same error it is claiming to reject: arguments made from emotions, which are internally inconsistent. One such inconsistency is Gaad complaining that predators are shown more empathy than those whom they abuse, yet then complaining that his work has tried to be proactive in creating a harassment-free workplace by doing annual awareness training— something which costs him nothing but an hour a year, yet seems to bother him to no end. Gaad points to the fact that he fights back tears during SPCA commercials to Sarah McLachlan as evidence that he is able to be empathetic when it is warranted because for him, empathy should only be shown when it is deserved and personally beneficial.

Unfortunately, for those of us Christians, as nice as it would be to only have to sacrifice for people who can do something for us in return, that's just not the basis of our religion. Our belief is based upon someone who Gaad would say was suicidally empathetic. Jesus Christ felt for people who could never pay him in return. He gave up his life on the cross so that other people might have life, at great cost to himself. Saint Paul says that the folly of the cross is foolishness to those who don't believe, but to those who believe, it is the power of God.

Gad Saad certainly seems to think that the cross is foolishness.

I don't know what that Catholic bishop saw in this book, but it's certainly not the root of the Gospel, and it's not what's going to build the kingdom of heaven on earth.

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

**An Orgiastic Collection of Tweets**

**Gad Saad’s *Suicidal Empathy* (2026) is a conclusion in search of a theory—and a book that never quite finds one.**

The central claim is straightforward and, at least in outline, interesting: that large parts of Western progressive culture have stretched empathy so far that it becomes actively self-destructive. Saad points to personal cases (women reluctant to fully blame rapists from “marginalized” groups), institutional ones (universities and corporations adopting counterproductive policies for social credit), governmental ones (cities soft-pedaling enforcement under the banner of restorative justice), and civilizational ones (elites treating mass unassimilated immigration as a moral duty even when it threatens cultural continuity). That framing has real potential.

The problem is that *Suicidal Empathy* never develops it into a coherent argument. Instead of a structured examination of the concept across domains, the book is a loose, disorganized pile of anecdotes, news-story citations, and “remember this?” moments. There is a brief early gesture toward psychological principles, but it quickly gives way to what feels like a greatest-hits reel of the last several years of online culture-war grievances.

Saad also spends a surprising amount of time relitigating his own Twitter/X battles. He quotes his own tweets, recounts replies, and at one point even notes that Elon Musk responded favorably to one of them. It is hard to see how this advances the thesis. The same self-indulgence shows up in his repeated use of the word “orgiastic”—nearly two dozen times by my count—until it starts to feel like a verbal tic rather than a meaningful descriptor.

The book ends with an extended complaint about the taxes Saad pays in Canada as both a professor and an online personality. One can dislike high taxes without treating their existence as proof of suicidal empathy. It is an odd note on which to close.

What could have been a sharper diagnosis of a real cultural tendency instead remains a catchy phrase propped up by slipshod evidence and too much personal score-settling. It largely preaches to those who already agree. For everyone else, it offers little more than a disorganized scrapbook of grievances.

[Castles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Similarly to his previous book, the parasitic mind, Saad is again exploring themes which engine today’s sicknesses in the west: woke culture, gender, terror (a lot of examples from October 7th here), and even tax. Overall he quite correctly pin it in a term now in use - suicidal empathy.

If you know his podcasts and interviews there’s nothing too surprising here other than reading his points more coherently. As for solutions he advice, they are few and only in the last quite short chapter. so Where are we heading? Who knows.

Extra bonus points for spending a few pages trashing the self hating charlatan Gabor Mate. Not so bonus points for quoting that Megyn Kelly weirdo. Saad also have this tendency to refer to old tweets he wrote on twitter and arguments on social media, and while I get his point, I find it always a little odd in a book, it just makes things less 'literature' to me and establish a book in a very specific time and place, avoiding it from ever being a classic and damaging a bit its seriousness.

[Patrick Duran · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

I recently went to a concert where the opening act bemoaned the fact that Elon Musk said at some point, "The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy." The singer actually looked like he was going to cry, that is how deep into his empathy he was leaning. Obviously, Musk meant in a broad sense. Of course, empathy is a natural feeling with family and loved ones, but portions of the populace empathizing with rapists and murderers are becoming a little alarming. There are documented police reports in Europe in which the rape victims have expressed empathy for their rapists! Gad Saad delivers a discerning book on the subject with humorous perception.

[Charlie Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 - I like Gad Saad, but this felt a little bit too polemical and culture war obsessed.

[Josh McQueen · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I purchased this book, I was hoping for something more academic. Gad Saad has ideas that merit further consideration, however, it always feels as though there is something more that should be said. I am not advocating for the book to solely become statistics, as Saad’s personal stories were interesting, but the use of statistics and an quantitative examination of the aftermath of the so called “suicidal empathy” would have greatly benefitted the different sections. Oftentimes, the ideas felt overshadowed by political comments that felt unnecessary. This also caused the book to feel less academic in nature. Overall, this book was fine, but felt more like a pop-political book rather than an academic investigation into society’s actions and their effects.

[Piper · Rating 1 out of 5]

oops accidentally read some right wing propaganda :( the title seemed thought provoking and conceptually it is! Like where is the line between looking after your best interests vs being selfish at another's expense. I thought it was gonna be super insightful and kinda animal farm vibes with an animal allegory but now I know not to judge a book by its cover.

[Gregory Ryman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this read, which offered us a look at some of the specific elements that seem to be unravelling our society, and making a huge number of people extremely (and probably unnecessarily) unhappy.

Now I know GS is a professional, but I kind of feel like it was a missed opportunity for him to not include his views on some of the contributing sources for this phenomenon. I have a hard time believing that this woke virus is some sort of airborne contagion that you can avoid with an N95 mask. Hmmm. Actually... nah, never mind. Anyway, something or someone had to be pushing this, and blaming social and mainstream media is a little too general.

Even if he might not want to point a finger at anyone specific, I just thought he might suggested some 'required reading' to point us to some specific evidence that would help us draw our own conclusions on what not to consume.

Anyway, always interesting to see how the human mind functions and malfunctions. And it's always nice to have a fellow Canadian doing the right thing. Well done GS.

[Sebastian Gebski · Rating 5 out of 5]

I struggled with the star rating, but I've decided for 5 (even with all its flaws), just because the topic is so important and impactful. Saad's book doesn't solve the issue (ofc), but it does a lot to put in in the highlight (while sparking some controversy). The topic itself ("suicical empathy") is not new - that's for sure, but it's definitely one of the cardinal sins behind the so-called wokism / extreme critica theories that were ravaging the globe recently.

OK, so let's start with the book's flaws - as those are numerous:

1. many people won't like it - Saad's narration is smart and well-crafted, but also ironic if not sarcastic, sometimes even combative; it's not aimed to convince, not even to state the object truth - the intention is to draw emotion (so don't expect an analytical feast)

2. one of the most referred examples related to suicidal empathy are related to Jews/Israel - Saad is clearly playing his personal vendetta here and frankly - that's OK, but the truth is that he plays it extremely one-sided, especially in terms of Zionism and Gaza: aren't there any suicidal empathy examples "in the other direction"? I think I can found many. Did he have to be symmetrical here? Of course not, it's up to him to bring any examples he finds fancy, but one can't help the slight impression that the book was at least partially serving a purpose of justifying Israel's actions

3. while I accept the vast majority of statement and claims in this book (regarding the suicidal empathy and how harmful it is), it felt grotesque when the author started quoting ... Megyn Kelly. It's not really about her political viewpoints, but cynicism, intellectual shallowness, manipulating facts for her own advantage, etc.

4. the whole tax rant is ... damn, out of space. I mean - yes, to some degree he's right, but it has very little in common with the actual topic of the book and TBH felt slightly like a disrespect to reader's intelligence ("yo, let's feed them rage, let's have them rant - taxes always work").

All those flaws (and some minor ones I've skipped) don't change the fact, that this book is needed. We need a good, open discussion on the borderlines of empathy and Gad Saad's voice is a good conversation trigger. He's ridiculing style is obviously non-conciliatory, but for this kind of ("wicked") problem that doesn't change much. My suggestion is to read the book and make your own opinion on the topic.

P.S. I once worked for a company where the value no 1 was "be kind". Working there was a nightmare, noone was getting any shit done. Such a wasted opportunity.

[Juraj · Rating 4 out of 5]

In my review of Parasitic Mind I said that it's covering the symptoms and not the cause. That's the case here as well. Parasited mind is surely a mandatory prerequisite to suicidal empathy but it's not the only one.

This whole book is direct sequel to Parasitic Mind and maps what other nonsense happened since first book was published and also a lot of stuff from before 2020's. All the woke madness.

When I saw the page count I was a bit dissapointed (167 pages, the rest are notes) but upon finishing it I don't feel like it was rushed or half assed. Quite the opposite. There is no fluff.

[Kenneth Miranda · Rating 2 out of 5]

A worthwhile topic— how good, empathetic intentions can lead to poor outcomes. Politicians tend to not consider second or third order consequences of policy, which can lead to ruin. Saad rightly points out some of these examples of the last decade.

However, the approach is divisive and clearly biased. I’m not quite sure for whom this book is intended.

The writing is inflammatory (perhaps intentional from a professor of marketing). The attempted humor is grotesque with sarcastic jokes about murder. Saad meanders off topic to hit on personal vendettas.

If you can look past the writing style, what remains is a one-sided take. For someone who seemingly considers himself objective, Saad is clearly biased, prosecuting solely the left. For example, no mention of the right’s suicidal empathy for insurrectionists.

The whole book is a false dichotomy, ignoring the potential for a pragmatic middle. Perhaps one could lead with empathy, but still be strategic with implementation and objective about outcomes? Alas, no room for such nuance in today’s political environment.

Interesting topic, seriously disappointing execution.