Evolutionary Scientist Gad Saad Says Western Civilization Is Committing Suicide Through Misplaced Compassion
Evolutionary behavioral scientist Gad Saad warns that compassion without reason is destroying the West, from open-border disasters to DEI cockpits, and says civilization's suicide is still a choice.
In a new PragerU video, the Concordia University professor argues that empathy without reason is driving policy failures across immigration, policing, and public safety.
Evolutionary behavioral scientist Gad Saad is arguing that the West is destroying itself through what he calls "suicidal empathy," a pattern of compassion-driven policy failures that he says prioritizes feelings over reason and is accelerating civilizational decline.
Saad, a professor at Concordia University and author of the new book Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind, made the case in a PragerU video that has drawn nearly 45,000 views in its first days online.
The Argument
Drawing on British historian Arnold Toynbee's observation that civilizations die not by murder but by suicide, Saad contends that empathy becomes dangerous when it replaces rational judgment entirely. He argues that well-intentioned compassion, applied without discernment or consideration of consequences, has produced a series of catastrophic policy outcomes across the Western world.
The Evidence He Cites
Germany's 2015 open-door immigration policy under Chancellor Angela Merkel admitted over one million migrants. German Federal Criminal Police data shows violent crime rose sharply in the years that followed.
Cities including Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Philadelphia cut police budgets following George Floyd's death in May 2020. FBI crime statistics recorded a 30 percent increase in murders nationally that same year.
The Canadian government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau paid Omar Khadr, a former Guantanamo detainee convicted of killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan, $10.5 million CAD and issued a formal apology in 2017.
The University of Minnesota Medical School required its class of 2026 to pledge support for DEI principles and honor "indigenous ways of healing historically marginalized by Western medicine," according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
The Federal Aviation Administration implemented a diversity hiring initiative that included candidates with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities, raising questions about safety standards in aviation recruitment.
Saad's Prescription
Saad attributes the trend to guilt over Western prosperity, which he terms "privilege guilt." He urges three responses: maintain rational thinking, consider downstream consequences of every policy, and reject the premise that all cultures and values are equally valid.
"Suicide is a choice," Saad says in the video. "The West still has time to save itself, but not much."
