Gad Saad On Good Sense

In his three most recent books, Saad takes aim at the fashionable ideas undermining reason, merit, happiness, and the West’s instinct for survival.

John Dale Dunn | July 26, 2026

I have watched and read Dr. Gad Saad, a recognized intellectual who possesses common sense and analytical skill and understands human behavior and the human psyche. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary psychology and is a competent and eloquent moral philosopher and epistemologist—a student of knowledge who searches for the truth.

I chose to review his three recent books, although his earlier research and writing also concerned psychology, economic activity, and behavioral psychology. One example is his 2011 book, The Consuming Instinct: What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift Giving Reveal About Human Nature.

Saad released three important books in 2020, 2023, and 2026, all pertinent to today’s social and political dynamics.

In 2020, The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense argued that the promotion of socialist ideas in Western societies must be opposed or Western civilization will succumb to totalitarianism. It is as simple as that.

Saad goes down the list of lies, pathological ideas, and attitudes that will destroy Western civilization through death by a thousand cuts: radical feminism, postmodernism, social constructivism, political correctness, cultural and moral relativism, nihilism, racialism, echo chambers devoid of intellectual diversity, a culture of perpetual offense and victimhood, identity politics, and progressive self-flagellation.

He devotes the middle of the book to these irrational and harmful attitudes. Emotional capture is the enemy of rationality.

Self-censorship is an impediment to defending rationality because the proponents of socialist ideas have created an aggressive, harsh, censorious environment for their opponents. Examples of this intolerance and cancel culture are easy for Dr. Saad to........

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