Gad Saad’s “Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind ”— Why He Is Right

In his 2026 bestseller Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind, evolutionary behavioural scientist Gad Saad delivers a powerful follow-up to The Parasitic Mind. He diagnoses one of the most destructive forces undermining Western civilisation today: empathy without boundaries, reason, or self-preservation.

Empathy is a natural, evolutionarily adaptive human trait. It helped us form tribes, raise children, and build cooperative societies. But when it becomes maladaptive, hijacked by ideology, detached from cost-benefit analysis, and directed at the wrong targets, it turns suicidal.

Saad calls this "suicidal empathy": the pathological inversion of moral priorities where compassion for outsiders, criminals, or ideological victim classes overrides the well-being, safety, and long-term survival of one's own society. It is kindness that destroys.

This is not a rejection of empathy. Saad is clear: well-calibrated empathy is virtuous. The problem arises when empathy is weaponised into irrational altruism, a "mind parasite" that scrambles our ability to make optimal decisions.

Immigration and Border Policy: Prioritising aid, housing, and benefits for illegal migrants over veterans, the homeless citizens, or victims of crime in your own country.

Crime and Justice: Treating punishment as inherently cruel while showing endless compassion for offenders, leading to soft-on-crime policies, revolving-door justice, and rising disorder.

Gender and Biology: Allowing biological males to compete in women's sports or enter female prisons out of "compassion" for gender identity, at the direct expense of women's rights and safety.

Cultural Tolerance: Welcoming groups with fundamentally incompatible values (e.g., certain migrant elements hostile to liberal democracy) under the banner of diversity, while ignoring integration failures and security risks.

Victimhood Hierarchy: Elevating the feelings of select minority groups above objective truth, public safety, or the rights of the majority.

Saad argues this creates a horrifying moral inversion: the strong and successful are demonised, the destructive are excused or celebrated, and societies actively import or protect the very forces that erode them.

1.Evolutionary Reality. Human empathy evolved with kin selection and reciprocal altruism in mind: not infinite, undifferentiated compassion for the entire planet. Parents instinctively protect their own children more fiercely than a stranger's for good Darwinian reasons. Saad reminds us that ignoring these hardwired cost-benefit mechanisms doesn't make us morally superior; it makes us maladapted.

2.Real-World Evidence. The data backs him. Many European cities have seen spikes in crime, no-go zones, and social tension after large-scale, poorly vetted migration. In the US and Australia, lenient policies toward repeat offenders have led to visible declines in public safety. Women's sports records and safety are being rewritten by biological males. These are not Right-wing talking points, they are observable outcomes of empathy detached from reality.

3.The Asymmetry Problem. Suicidal empathy is rarely reciprocated. Societies that open their arms unconditionally often face groups or ideologies that exploit that openness without adopting liberal values in return. Compassion without reciprocity or discernment is not kindness: it's unilateral disarmament.

4.Civilisational Suicide. History shows civilisations fall not just from external conquest but from internal decay: loss of confidence, inability to prioritise their own people, and elite moral confusion. Saad's framework explains why so many Western institutions seem intent on self-flagellation while ignoring basic self-

Saad doesn't leave readers in despair. He calls for an "inoculation" against suicidal empathy: grounded reason, clear boundaries, prioritising citizens first, and reclaiming the ability to say "no" when compassion would be self-destructive.

This book lands at the perfect time. Across Australia and the West, we see the same patterns, from energy and cost-of-living crises worsened by virtue-signalling policies, to debates over immigration, crime, and cultural cohesion. The rise of common-sense populism (including One Nation support) is, in part, a backlash against exactly this form of elite-driven, empathy-distorted governance.

Gad Saad is right because he dares to state what common sense already knows: a society that cannot distinguish between self-preservation and self-harm will not survive. Empathy without wisdom is not moral — it's suicidal.

Suicidal Empathy is essential reading for anyone tired of watching civilisation dismantle itself in the name of being kind. The West doesn't need less heart. It needs a spine.