Phil Sanderson

award winning tattoo artist. sponsored by BarberDTS Tattoo Supply's

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

You've probably seen the video. A young Frenchwoman in Paris, in tears, begging looters to stop. "Why are you doing this? That's not what we stand for."

Some accounts are mocking her. "She voted for it."

I won't. Because what you see on her face is not stupidity. It's a disease that has infected the entire West, and it has a name: suicidal empathy.

The term comes from Gad Saad, an evolutionary behavioral scientist at Concordia University in Montreal. A man who fled the Lebanese civil war as a child, and who knows what it looks like when a society falls apart. His new book, Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind, is the follow-up to The Parasitic Mind. Here is the thesis, and why it concerns every one of us.

Empathy is one of the best things about us. It evolved for a reason: to care for our children, our kin, our tribe. It was calibrated for a world where the people you felt for were the people around you, and where empathy always came paired with its counterweight: the instinct to protect your own and to recognize a threat.

Suicidal empathy is what happens when that mechanism misfires. When it fires at the wrong targets, in the wrong amounts, with no brake. When we feel more for the criminal than for his victim. More for the stranger who breaks the rules than for the citizen who follows them. More for how compassionate we look than for what our compassion actually produces.

Where does it come from? Four layers.

First, biology. Empathy is a spotlight, as the psychologist Paul Bloom put it. It lights up the one face in front of you and leaves everything else in the dark. The crying migrant on the boat is visible. The thousands of future victims of a broken system are statistics. A spotlight is a terrible tool for running a country.

Second, our own civilization. The West is the civilization that put the victim at the center of its morality. Christianity taught us to care for the stranger, the poor, the weak. It was one of the greatest moral revolutions in history. But cut off from its other half, justice, responsibility, the duty to protect your own, it turns into something else.

Third, ideology. In The Parasitic Mind, Saad described idea pathogens, ideas that hijack our reasoning. Suicidal empathy is the emotional counterpart: an ideology that hijacks our compassion. It sorts the world into oppressors and victims, then demands unlimited empathy for whoever ranks as the victim, whatever they do.

Fourth, status. In the age of social media, empathy has become a display. Posting "refugees welcome" costs nothing and earns applause. The bill goes to someone else: the working class, the suburbs, the women walking home at night.

The results are everywhere. Criminals treated as victims of society. Sexual assaults by migrants met with lenient sentences. Self-defense branded as aggression. Borders treated as cruelty. Saad's conclusion is simple: a society dies when it would rather display infinite tolerance than use its survival instinct.

Now the part I'll add myself, and that few people dare to say.

On average, women score higher than men on measures of empathy. It's one of the most consistent findings in psychology, across cultures, and it makes perfect evolutionary sense: for most of human history, the survival of children depended on it. It's a strength.

But it means an ideology that weaponizes empathy will hit women harder. And the data shows it: in country after country, young women have moved sharply to the left of young men, especially on immigration.

This is where men have a responsibility.

Not to mock. Not to lecture. Not to say "she deserved it." Empathy has always needed a counterweight, and that counterweight was the protective instinct: the one that draws lines, says no, and stands between the threat and the people it loves.

Men abandoned that role. They were told it was toxic, and many believed it. So they stayed silent at the dinner table, at work, with their partners, sisters, daughters and friends.

That has to end. Men have to have this conversation, honestly and with respect: compassion that cannot say no is not compassion. It's surrender. And the first to pay for it are women.

Many women already understand this better than anyone. Some of the bravest voices in this fight are women, precisely because they are the first to feel the danger in the street.

A civilization rests on a balance: compassion and strength, openness and borders, mercy and justice. When one side swallows the other, the foundations crack. What we are watching in Europe is what happens when empathy has no counterweight left.

Look at that young woman again. She isn't the enemy. She's what this ideology made of a generation that was told kindness would be enough.

Our job is to make sure she's the last generation that has to learn it this way.

[Phil Sanderson @Phil_Bones85]

@ZFitz13 Miss you too pal. Hope the family all well 🙏🙏

[Phil Sanderson @Phil_Bones85]

Great seeming and having dowd in again.
Always a pleasure

[Robert Dowd @dowdy75]

Back to seeing my mate @Phil_Bones85 to get some new work done 💉

[Phil Sanderson @Phil_Bones85]

@gcntweet @gcntweet @AdamBlythe89 isn’t this only one rocking a gold bike. Been doing since 2018. #rimbrakemafia

[Phil Sanderson @Phil_Bones85]

@CoachsCornerDC Nope. No contact To the head.
It’s play off hockey 👊🏻👊🏻👊🏻

[Phil Sanderson @Phil_Bones85]

@BrianBu33774375 Yep pal

[Football Heaven @footballheaven]

🗣 “They’re the biggest club in the country”

🏒 @steelershockey & @TeamGBicehockey legend Jonathan Phillips on retiring at the end of the season, the support of the fans & how it all began at the Steelers.

Full interview 👉 https://t.co/8GNTokf3mv

#BleedOrange | @BBCSheffield

[Ride.Run @RideRun1]

Spain eh.
Come to Sheffield on 23rd April for SHEFFIELD-BUXTON-SHEFFIELD (snow possible but unlikely) Three route options:
130km/2298m climb (80 miles/7562')
90km/1482m climb (55 miles/4862')
56km/940m climb (35 miles/3080')

Full details: https://t.co/xKu72jGh9v

[Phil Sanderson @Phil_Bones85]

How do I move to Ghent 😍😍

[Isabella Maria DeLuca @IsabellaMDeLuca]

Andrew Tate isn’t a human trafficker.

They’re using him as a target.

If they cared about human trafficking they would release Ghislaine Maxwell’s client list.

[Robert Dowd @dowdy75]

#TestimonialTalk Very Excited to get my testimonial year underway with events starting early 2023 I look forward to seeing everyone there 🥳 for more information please follow my page https://t.co/RDOMhkHvX7. Like & Share

[Phil Sanderson @Phil_Bones85]

@irishpeloton Should have gone rim brake lad 💪🏻💪🏻

[Thomas Skinner ⚒ @iamtomskinner]

I’m not saying Rishi Sunak is a bad bloke, but how can someone who comes from extreme wealth, relate to the working class? Hows he gonna be able to help the public when he’s had a silver spoon? This country needs to be run by people who understand the struggles of everyday life!

[Matt Le Tissier ✝️ @mattletiss7]

Take a watch or bury your head choice is yours

[Matt Le Tissier ✝️ @mattletiss7]

How much of the taxpayers money was spent on the advertising campaign encouraging you to save granny! You should be fuming at your government, they knew it was bs 😡

[Phil Sanderson @Phil_Bones85]

@karlwoof @100Climbs Yep mate need these in my life. #rimbrakemafia

[Greg Price @greg_price11]

This is Italy’s new Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

I’ve never heard any politician so perfectly explain what we’re up against and why we fight.

When you watch this video, you’ll quickly realize why the establishment is afraid of her.
https://t.co/CswR8o3mjg

[Leeds Knights @Leedsknights]

WHAT A GOAL! 😱

The Michigan has landed in Leeds! Last night @kieranbrownie12 lit the lamp in an UNBELIEVABLE way🔥🚨

Just check out how awesome it looks in slow motion 👀

[Phil Sanderson @Phil_Bones85]

Fucking scum ✊✊✊

[Michelle Dewberry @MichelleDewbs]

Imagine going to work, grafting to provide for yourself / family in an honest, decent way and then being subjected to this in your place of work…

I honestly don’t know who these people think they are. Their sense of entitlement is staggering.

https://t.co/LzNGIbb9SR