Manichaeism and Suicidal Empathy

Manichaeism is dividing a system, idea, or polarity into all good and all bad. Manichaeism maintains it is wrong—even sinful in a conformist system—to compromise because compromise is surrendering to evil. Looking for what’s positive/healthy/beautiful/good/true in an opposing viewpoint is considered weak and a betrayal of the circle of concern you identify with. To imply your opponent has virtuous motivation is allowing yourself to be blinded by evil, which makes you suspect to your group.

Manichaeism is a powerful tool to create mass formation psychoses, to accumulate power, and to rationalize objectifying and exploiting others for release, gratification, or profit. It normalizes violence or neglect against the evil other. People who are convinced that the other is evil and that their own side is categorically good are easily deluded and manipulated by fear, anger, and suppressed shame. Psychologically, Manichaeism is almost entirely pathological, since any point of view has some BGT validity, and almost any human (who’s not a psychopath) has some virtuous motivation.

Suicidal Empathy, by Gad Saad, is a signature example of conservative Manichaeism in U.S. culture. Conservative movements throughout history, opposing change, have consistently used Manichean worldviews to pathologize and resist progress and change. Suicidal Empathy provides rationalizations and justifications for many of the excesses of the current U.S. power structures. 

Strangely, progressives who pride themselves on inclusivity also fall under Manichaeism spells. The excesses of academic DEI, anti-racism, and blind wokeism are current examples of seemingly progressive worldviews creating unexamined black/white, good/evil rationales for control and oppression of faculty, students, and speakers.

Given that this Manichean worldview is the primary message of Suicidal Empathy, addressing the substantive aspects of Saad’s work is ignoring the elephant in the room—the underlying hostility and blind spots that permeate the book. Trying to be fair, I have to resist my own Manichean impulses to identify Saad’s positions as all bad because states always pull complementary states—attack me and I want to attack you. That being said:

Saad’s basic premise is accurate and defensible. We are programmed to be empathic with others. Some people make moral and societal decisions without considering the ramifications to the collective—called deontological reasoning. He is accurate in assessing cultures as hierarchical requiring different levels of rights and resources to different members. He is consistent with granting rights and resources to his circle of care and assigning fewer rights and resources to those outside his circle of care, and this is a necessary practice for nation states. His examples of progressive excesses, irrationalities, and aggressive rhetoric and actions in service of ideology are mostly consistent with my own conclusions about those specific examples.

Saad reflects typical 1^st tier blindspots in comparing the healthy parts of his vMEME with the unhealthy parts of other vMEMEs. His immigration examples are the most revealing on a policy level. Illegal immigration was targeted by both Obama and Biden, but neither they nor the democrats acknowledged that the wicked problem of illegal immigration required publicly accepting that immigrants don’t have the same rights in the U.S. as citizens, and that somehow the U.S. needed to evoke fear in those wanting to enter the country illegally to slow the flood.

In the U.S. there are multiple levels of power, rights, and privilege in the larger social systems:

• Wealthy connected.
• Wealthy, not connected.
• Middle class, connected.
• Middle class, not connected.
• Lower class.
• Woman/man.
• Anglo/person of color.
• Person of color/black.
• Citizen/non-citizen

Within subcultures there are further hierarchies:

• Conforming to cultural standards/not conforming.
• Rejecting what the culture pressures you to reject/not rejecting what the culture pressures you to reject.

Saad seems aware and supportive of some of these hierarchies and in denial or defensive about others. He is clearly not interested in having insights into his own personal biases or those of people he supports. 

The Manichean subtext of his arguments is that there is nothing beneficial about progressive understandings and solutions and nothing destructive or unwise about his conservative understandings and solutions. According the him, the problems of U.S. culture stem mostly from progressives not embracing conservative positions and leaders and instead deluding themselves on the accuracy and quality of their positions and leaders. 

On a personal level, Saad’s defends his moral contempt and ad hominem attacks on progressives as justifiable and feels victimized and outraged by any moral disapproval or ad hominem attacks directed at him.   

Saad consistently engages in projection and projective identification with those he disagrees with. In example after example, Saad insultingly accuses others of being insulting, and promotes empirically demonstratable unsound and destructive policies while ignoring or deriding scientifically validated disconfirming data. He essentially is projecting his ideologically biased, destructive, violent, and self-righteous self onto progressives and categorically attacking their polices, motives, and personal lives as ideologically biased, destructive, violent, and self-righteous while demonstrating little or no self-awareness of his own defensive structures.

Saad’s cultural blind spots—he appears unaware of his own limitations and violence as he indulges in impulses to objectify and attack/exploit others for gratification, release, or profit.
Saad demonstrates the unhealthy combination of high cognitive intelligence plus lack of psychological awareness plus lots of repressed fear and hostility projected onto classes of people with active-aggressive and passive-aggressive agendas to get even, get his, and eliminate them.

Mattias Desmet in The Psychology of Authoritarianism describes mass formation psychosis.

• Mass formation psychosis needs a moral rational—Suicidal Empathy is a moral rational for not assigning human rights to certain classes of people.
• Mass formation psychosis involves an entitled leader arising from an anxious, angry, and disaffected collective ideology that pathologizes and blames a group/class/race for isolation, anxiety and resentment—Trump and other populist leaders are current examples pathologizing progressives and immigrants. 
• Individuals and corporations will always look for advantages to accumulate wealth and power. Authoritarianism resists regulation and expands corruption to whatever extent wealth can buy influence through deregulation, special treatment, and blatant corruption. 
• Deregulation allows exploitation and extractive capitalism which generates oligarchy as capital is concentrated in the hands of fewer people. Oligarchy needs rationalizations for extractive capitalism that justifies the continuing accumulation of wealth and power—Elon Musk, banks, insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry, the health care industry, big food, and energy companies are all examples in the U.S.
• Authoritarianism justifies aggressive ends by manipulating and despising the collective. It requires external constraints because it can’t self-regulate.
• If the U.S. middle gains power through the democratic process, the boundaries (external constraints) they set for the rigid right, the oligarchy, and pathological green left will be labeled oppressive and violent by the oligarchy, the right, and pathological green left. All three groups will vigorously engage in projection and projective identification and self-righteously declare and promote their victimization.

Evolution—disintegration before reintegration

• If progress is to be embraced in a democracy, the three bonding foundations of loyalty, authority, and sanctity will have to be harnessed to effect systemic change—difficult for green. 
• Obama spoke to all six moral foundations to gain power but failed to recognize the necessity for external constraint of the existing power structures (he believed he could collaborate with the right and the oligarchy to set boundaries for the right and the oligarchy). I believe his personal blind spot of believing his charisma and reasonable solution-based approach was enough to negotiate change made him manipulable by his opponents to diminish his impact. They delayed and negotiated in bad faith until they captured the house and then stonewall his agendas for the next six years. 

What’s next? In my opinion, the U.S. will eventually evolve into more social democracy:

• We probably won’t become Russia or N. Korea. 
• We might become more like Finland, Portugal, and Indonesia. Social democracy embracing a solution-focused government supporting generative capitalism and a healthy/happy electorate.
• Finland organizes social and capitalist forces to optimize well-being first and then (still important to hierarchical human beings) success and wealth.
• Portugal takes pride in universal healthcare and respect for individual health and growth.
• Indonesia has largely maintained community structures on the local levels that translate into subjective happiness.

I’m sure my opinions and analyses have biases and blind spots. I look forward to discovering them in the years to come!