Fund welcome to worlds apart be my guest today likes to say that he takes intellectuals to come up with really stupid ideas ideas that down spread across society its like parasites draining the host organism and making him behave in strange and sometimes even south in danger in ways from identity politics to Council Culture to now emerging call that 19 age old how do seemingly noble propositions toxic well to discuss that im now in joined by god saad a professor in marketing of Concordia University and author of the newly released book the parasitic mind how infectious ideas killing commonsense chris aside its a great pleasure for me to talk to thank you very much for making the time you so much about me cheers now i mentioned some examples of what you call idea pathogens thoughts that seem to be well intentioned at least initially until you. Recognize that they pave the way to how what is some other case so also modernism is probably the granddaddy of all idea i have that just because
You so much for having me cheers now ive mentioned some examples of what you call idea pathogens thoughts that seem to be well intentioned at least initially until you recognise that they pave the way to how what are some others so also modernism is probably the ground daddy of all idea just because it reports that there are no absolute truths we are completely shackled by subjectivity we are shackled by our personal biases and as you might imagine there is a kernel of truth to that idea but when taken to the extreme it becomes very antiscientific because scientists do wake up every day under the working presumption that there are truths to be discovered so was modernism would be one feminism would be another it starts off as a great idea equity feminism is a good idea men and women should be equal under the law. The more for sizes and so a dreadful idea when it becomes men and women are biologically. English well everything is of the social construction so you start with a noble idea
Spreading all this nonsense but i think its take the perfect cocktail of all of these ideas pathogens coming together and this is why in the 1st chapter of the book i talk about death of the west by a 1000 cuts right one idea pathogen may not bring down the edifice is a reason to may not but put 101215 of them together and you lose your sense of what constitutes up or down left or right and i get a lot of these emails on a daily basis from people who say i no longer know what to say because i they dont they all have confidence in their folk psychology and i allowed to say that only women menstruate or will i be considered transformed by well if in the 21st century this is something that causes you confusion were not doing a very good job would reason now the subtitle to your book is how infectious ideas like killing common sense and common sense that is also very culturally specific what is sensical to canadian may be a total be asked here. Russian and the vice versa i mean for people
A good idea men and women should be equal under the law but then it metamorphosis into a dreadful idea when it becomes men and women are biologically indistinguishable everything is a social construction so you start with a noble idea and that metamorphosis and so the history of american is much mutation here with the taking an idea out of proportion and i say lets mention the making absurd right nation to serve in the service of pursuing a originally noble goal. Now be here my mind has never been immunized against of d. D. T. I personally believe that long grass is prone to narcissism but is there something about these time in history that. Creates particular refer tell ground for this kind of process well i think so about 4050 years ago the idea of pathogens that i discussed in the book began to be spawn on University Campuses and as you so rightly mention in the introduction it truly takes intellectuals to come up with really dumb ideas especially here like i was quoting you by the
How have you been. We call ourselves partners in crime. That we are not going to talk about the crime part of it, just to the partner part. What has been interesting since ive been in the position of library of congress is the fact that people ask me what does the National Archives do. What does the archivist do a and then theres a confusion around the history and the role of each of the institutions, and ive learned a lot about that even in coming up to reclaim the declaration of independence, the bill of rights. We call it the constitution. And that was held by the library of congress and the type of thing. It wasnt until the 1930s the United States got serious about its records. Iwas Franklin Roosevelt was passionate about records and that we actually created and he signed the legislation that created the archives. The charters had been in the custody of the state department independent of library of congress when the archives building was built, a beautiful tabernacle was created f