Our parents: why they didn't become vegan, and we did.
16 April 2018 [link youtube]
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baddest yen all of us walk past the same
spectacle of you know dismembered and animal corpses at the grocery store everyday or at the market we all see the the animals going off the slaughterhouse in the same trucks we're all really presented with the same stimuli you know the question is there to be asked is well-known most children ask these questions whether it's about going fishing or hunting or just seeing seeing a lobster being chopped up on a plate I mean sooner or later it becomes self evident to all of us in childhood or adulthood this is a living animal being chopped up it's that whole process economically ecologically and culturally there's something that will stop you from looking at all that as evil as error as something that for hundreds of years has gone unchallenged and even celebrated and now we have to jettison as you know unwanted baggage I think it's really important to discard the sense of our own specialness to not regard ourselves as as the exception but to question why it is that the people we've known you know deeply and over the long term what is it about them that's exceptional that lets them not see this that lets them never acknowledge it or never respond to it either with this inevitable inexorable set of questions or this one simple answer that this is an evil you can extricate your yourself from that this is an evil you don't have to compromise with about us yen it popped into my head now while I was in the shower to make a video examining not so much why I did become vegan but why my own parents didn't and the more I thought about it I thought this is really a deep and interesting subject for myself and other vegans on YouTube to examine of course inevitably if you give an honest answer it's gonna reflect the idiosyncrasy of Cinque receives keep all like no edits no take to the idiosyncrasies of who your own parents happen to be but it's also going to reveal some general if not quite universal trends questions and tendencies in the culture of our time I mean we're partly talking about a generation gap yes but I think we're partly also talking about political cultural even personal factors as to why it is that for some of us it seems almost inevitable and inexorable that we become vegan and can't quit and for others it's either unthinkable or inconceivable or something they can just barely imagine on the edges of what's possible but that they could never really commit to and I think I speak for the majority of us the vast majority of vegans have to deal with an unbridgeable gulf between themselves and their parents sometimes if you married unwisely you may have to deal with a similar gulf between you and your partner also for my own parents I genuinely think the single most important factor here is what we would call in political science statism a very deep and unquestioned assumption that if this were important the government would have already done something about it now I just recently talked to my mom about this and I pushed her a little bit on the fact that that my parents even though they were kind of dissidents within Canadian politics they had this really deep unshakable faith that whatever the Canadian school board was doing whatever the Canadian school system was teaching me was completely adequate and there's nothing that they as parents could possibly have to add to it I think my parents are an extreme example of this appointed in separate conversations will might my mother my father never once did they help me write an essay never once did they even check or proofread as they never once did they go to the library with me never once did they teach me how to research an essay never once did they help me prepare for or study for a test they had absolutely zero scrutiny of what I was learning absolutely zero positive engagement of course you could just interpret that as neglect and yes there's an objective sense in which it's true they were just neglectful parents that just didn't give a damn but on a deeper level it really was built on this foundation of faith in the government that they just absolutely believed that whatever the government was teaching me was adequate and that there were no questions to be asked there were no problems for the parents to solve and there was no positive role for the parents that's all and in all my years to talk to them about say ecological issues you had to deal with that same faith you really kind of precluded these questions even being asked like if there were a polluted river they believed the government would have done something about if there were something unsafe of the slaughterhouse conditions you know in terms of meat poisoning if there were a problem with drinking water if there were a problem with air pollution you know the government would have done something but if I now now in a country like Canada you know Canada is a wealthy but medium-sized country deeply in debt we're constantly closing down social services and schools in hospitals you get reminders about just how creaky and imperfect the infrastructure of Governor is gonna you might ask well how is it possible for him to think that the the government is is so omnipotent well I really have to reinforce here this isn't something they really consciously and clearly you know what would enunciate as their own theory it wasn't a theoretical view of the world they committed to I think it really was a deep and unexamined assumption or belief that they that live with and again some of you reflecting on your own parents may be able to see some parallels here and of course for some of you instead you know look I can imagine maybe you have Catholic parents and their faith was specifically in the Catholic school board not the government school board you know there's a mixture of religion or what-have-you but of course in my parents case it was the mixture of the belief in the state in the government in statism as such and of course the family religion really was communism and that belief in the omnipotence of government and just ultimately the goodwill of government is of course very compatible with the totalitarian aspect of communism and socialism and what they entail and the same excuses that they were making for the Soviet Union and for China the word you know no matter how many people got massacred or how many people were starving to death or how many disasters were reversed the newspaper from month of months that they had to believe they had to believe it was all for the best or if there was a real problem you know the government in question would have done something about it so you can see there's a sense in which that even has to seep through into how they perceive the government of canada even if on some level they also criticize and vilify the Government of Canada as capitalist bourgeois etc so the second heading here which definitely came up my whole life I even remember talking with as my grandmother who was not a communist is nationalism and in Canada's case especially for left-wingers in Canada nationalism in large part coincides with anti Americanism right but I have talked to Europeans about this never really talked about much with people in Asia many many many Canadians would believe this must be going on a style just now finally they would they would immediately react any news about food poisoning from meat or about inhumane conditions on factory farms they would immediately react by saying well that happens in America but that would never happen here I remember talking to Swedes about this people in Sweden who would believe that terrible things happened in the fur industry in Russia but that somehow when you cross the border from Russia into Sweden that nothing like this happened each of those going to Sweden Norway Finland they all have their own struggles with the fur industry and of course meat industry of various kinds but I've heard that people in that part of Europe that this really unexamined nationalist knee-jerk delusion it really does in a significant way preclude the possibility of of becoming vegan that as long as you you have the sense I mean for me I encounter it even when I talk to people who say that they only eat locally grown meat or locally raised meat you know locally locally produced dairy and my response to that face to face of them is to ask them well do you assume that a local hospital is superior to a hospital in the in the capital city you know you think it has higher standards of Hygiene so that they have better doctors or better procedures and say no see isn't it possible that a local slaughterhouse is just as bad as or worse than a slaughterhouse in the capital city and you know already you can imagine where that conversation cuts it's pretty easy to start chipping away at the surgery but again these aren't theories that these people subscribe to you know sort of conscious an exam away they're really unexamined assumptions and beliefs again the first being statism a generalized belief of the government and the second being nationalism even if that nationalism is primarily in a kind of negative form of people in you know northern Europe assuming that whatever's happening across the border in Russia is worse and definitely I remember there was this scandal some of you will remember at some won't in Europe the the horse meat lasagna scandal and the response to this scandal definitely in both France and Germany was this kind of universal chorus of people claiming oh well that sort of thing might happen in Hungary or Romania but it would never happen here that somehow you know even though in the European Union now all those industries are integrated to an unbelievable extent there really is kind of one national market for meat and for you know various forms of agricultural products that it was unthinkable that this could happen in France it was unthinkable this could happen in Germany but somehow when you cross the dotted line into these more exotic Eastern European countries that that was conceivable to them that there would be these lower standards whether it's of health hygiene or of animal suffering so again it's funny but I think one time when here's the difference between people for whom approaching veganism either happens spontaneously or maybe it seemed natural or inevitable and people for whom it seemed inconceivable I think this is actually a major difference in my case between myself and my parents but definites the difference within the current of the current generation to now in third and finally of this video I think one of the most profound shaping influences in our lives be our assumptions about high culture about what you know what is refined culture but you know ultimately is getting down to a concept of what is good even though both of my parents you know worshiped a form of totalitarian communism found in Russia and China their concept of high culture really was you know of French culture and Italian culture both I would say and now okay my father grew up in a steel mill town Hamilton Ontario working-class with a single mother who literally worked in a steel factory you know you can look at that in a sort of sympathetic light and say okay this guy grew up after World War two you don't a very unsophisticated part of Canada it's very unsophisticated person and from an early age he started visiting Europe and really looking up to this culture you know again as high and refined culture without questioning why in a very real sense I mean for my father it's amazing because he did so much research so many things that could have raised questions about this he did research about you know indigenous people in Canada First Nations of Canada the history of colonialism and imperialism mechanic whatever want to say there are really many many junctions life which he could have stopped and questioned this value but I think it's fair to say he never did and of course you know his involvement with say Chinese communism and his travels throughout Asia and Africa at any point I mean this is a piece of baggage he could have put down but he absolutely never did and if that is your idea of high culture whether you're living in Italy now or Italy as a far-off distant and exotic place to you I think that really is a very effective mental block against you even thinking through the possibility of looking at what's on your plate what's in your fridge what's at the grocery store and then what's coming down the highway from the farm and the slaughterhouse that whole process economically ecologically and culturally there's something that will stop you from looking at all that as evil as error as something that for hundreds of years has gone unchallenged and even celebrated and now we have to jettison as you know unwanted baggage to recycle it's a regrettable and even awful part of our culture and civilization I think that's a corner he never could turn that's something that that remained unthinkable for him and we can't make excuses here my father enrolled to do a PhD and he started doing PT he got a full scholarship to do a PhD on Hinduism as a religion and I remember asking about this this is when I was a child well okay I I guess I wasn't a child I guess I would have been in university sorry a long long time ago I remember asking him directly well look if you were involved with Hinduism to this extent you know why didn't you consider becoming vegetarian at that juncture and he answered simply he sort of had a pause and he looked at me he said well you can't be very serious about Hinduism without becoming vegetarian he seemed to be kind of conceding the point but again someone who studied history and culture of India he started learning Sanskrit and flunked out of it you know China all these other influences for him to choose between he could have let go of this appraisal of French in Italian culture he could have at least start to take on a more critical comparative awareness that the different cultures had had different advantages and disadvantages but it's fair to say he absolutely never did hey guys so this is an unusual video because I'm really gonna encourage you guys to make videos of your own I really think this is something you know productive to reflect on I maybe in your case it won't be comparing yourself to your own parents maybe you'll be you're comparing yourself to your your boyfriend or your husband or what have you but many of my viewers do have you know their own YouTube channels and I think it's worth pressing past a sort of shallow immediate answer of you know like well I'm somehow special I'm somehow exceptional therefore I put the pieces together and became vegan all of us walk past the same spectacle of you know dismembered and animal corpses at the grocery store every day or at the market we all see the the animals going off the slaughterhouse in the same trucks we're all really presented with the same stimuli you know the question is there to be asked that is well-known most children ask these questions whether it's about going fishing or hunting or just seeing seeing a lobster being chopped up on a plate I mean sooner or later it becomes self evident to all of us in childhood or adulthood this is a living animal being chopped up and sooner or later the other facts about ecology economics etc you know also also have to be raised not to mention of course health questions blah blah blah I think it's really important to discard the sense of our own [Music] specialness to not regard ourselves as as the exception but to question why it is that the people we've known you know deeply and over the long term what is it about them that's exceptional that lets them not see this that lets them never acknowledge it or never respond to it either with this inevitable inexorable set of questions or this one simple answer that this is an evil you can extricate your yourself from that this is an evil you don't have to compromise with a bonus yell
spectacle of you know dismembered and animal corpses at the grocery store everyday or at the market we all see the the animals going off the slaughterhouse in the same trucks we're all really presented with the same stimuli you know the question is there to be asked is well-known most children ask these questions whether it's about going fishing or hunting or just seeing seeing a lobster being chopped up on a plate I mean sooner or later it becomes self evident to all of us in childhood or adulthood this is a living animal being chopped up it's that whole process economically ecologically and culturally there's something that will stop you from looking at all that as evil as error as something that for hundreds of years has gone unchallenged and even celebrated and now we have to jettison as you know unwanted baggage I think it's really important to discard the sense of our own specialness to not regard ourselves as as the exception but to question why it is that the people we've known you know deeply and over the long term what is it about them that's exceptional that lets them not see this that lets them never acknowledge it or never respond to it either with this inevitable inexorable set of questions or this one simple answer that this is an evil you can extricate your yourself from that this is an evil you don't have to compromise with about us yen it popped into my head now while I was in the shower to make a video examining not so much why I did become vegan but why my own parents didn't and the more I thought about it I thought this is really a deep and interesting subject for myself and other vegans on YouTube to examine of course inevitably if you give an honest answer it's gonna reflect the idiosyncrasy of Cinque receives keep all like no edits no take to the idiosyncrasies of who your own parents happen to be but it's also going to reveal some general if not quite universal trends questions and tendencies in the culture of our time I mean we're partly talking about a generation gap yes but I think we're partly also talking about political cultural even personal factors as to why it is that for some of us it seems almost inevitable and inexorable that we become vegan and can't quit and for others it's either unthinkable or inconceivable or something they can just barely imagine on the edges of what's possible but that they could never really commit to and I think I speak for the majority of us the vast majority of vegans have to deal with an unbridgeable gulf between themselves and their parents sometimes if you married unwisely you may have to deal with a similar gulf between you and your partner also for my own parents I genuinely think the single most important factor here is what we would call in political science statism a very deep and unquestioned assumption that if this were important the government would have already done something about it now I just recently talked to my mom about this and I pushed her a little bit on the fact that that my parents even though they were kind of dissidents within Canadian politics they had this really deep unshakable faith that whatever the Canadian school board was doing whatever the Canadian school system was teaching me was completely adequate and there's nothing that they as parents could possibly have to add to it I think my parents are an extreme example of this appointed in separate conversations will might my mother my father never once did they help me write an essay never once did they even check or proofread as they never once did they go to the library with me never once did they teach me how to research an essay never once did they help me prepare for or study for a test they had absolutely zero scrutiny of what I was learning absolutely zero positive engagement of course you could just interpret that as neglect and yes there's an objective sense in which it's true they were just neglectful parents that just didn't give a damn but on a deeper level it really was built on this foundation of faith in the government that they just absolutely believed that whatever the government was teaching me was adequate and that there were no questions to be asked there were no problems for the parents to solve and there was no positive role for the parents that's all and in all my years to talk to them about say ecological issues you had to deal with that same faith you really kind of precluded these questions even being asked like if there were a polluted river they believed the government would have done something about if there were something unsafe of the slaughterhouse conditions you know in terms of meat poisoning if there were a problem with drinking water if there were a problem with air pollution you know the government would have done something but if I now now in a country like Canada you know Canada is a wealthy but medium-sized country deeply in debt we're constantly closing down social services and schools in hospitals you get reminders about just how creaky and imperfect the infrastructure of Governor is gonna you might ask well how is it possible for him to think that the the government is is so omnipotent well I really have to reinforce here this isn't something they really consciously and clearly you know what would enunciate as their own theory it wasn't a theoretical view of the world they committed to I think it really was a deep and unexamined assumption or belief that they that live with and again some of you reflecting on your own parents may be able to see some parallels here and of course for some of you instead you know look I can imagine maybe you have Catholic parents and their faith was specifically in the Catholic school board not the government school board you know there's a mixture of religion or what-have-you but of course in my parents case it was the mixture of the belief in the state in the government in statism as such and of course the family religion really was communism and that belief in the omnipotence of government and just ultimately the goodwill of government is of course very compatible with the totalitarian aspect of communism and socialism and what they entail and the same excuses that they were making for the Soviet Union and for China the word you know no matter how many people got massacred or how many people were starving to death or how many disasters were reversed the newspaper from month of months that they had to believe they had to believe it was all for the best or if there was a real problem you know the government in question would have done something about it so you can see there's a sense in which that even has to seep through into how they perceive the government of canada even if on some level they also criticize and vilify the Government of Canada as capitalist bourgeois etc so the second heading here which definitely came up my whole life I even remember talking with as my grandmother who was not a communist is nationalism and in Canada's case especially for left-wingers in Canada nationalism in large part coincides with anti Americanism right but I have talked to Europeans about this never really talked about much with people in Asia many many many Canadians would believe this must be going on a style just now finally they would they would immediately react any news about food poisoning from meat or about inhumane conditions on factory farms they would immediately react by saying well that happens in America but that would never happen here I remember talking to Swedes about this people in Sweden who would believe that terrible things happened in the fur industry in Russia but that somehow when you cross the border from Russia into Sweden that nothing like this happened each of those going to Sweden Norway Finland they all have their own struggles with the fur industry and of course meat industry of various kinds but I've heard that people in that part of Europe that this really unexamined nationalist knee-jerk delusion it really does in a significant way preclude the possibility of of becoming vegan that as long as you you have the sense I mean for me I encounter it even when I talk to people who say that they only eat locally grown meat or locally raised meat you know locally locally produced dairy and my response to that face to face of them is to ask them well do you assume that a local hospital is superior to a hospital in the in the capital city you know you think it has higher standards of Hygiene so that they have better doctors or better procedures and say no see isn't it possible that a local slaughterhouse is just as bad as or worse than a slaughterhouse in the capital city and you know already you can imagine where that conversation cuts it's pretty easy to start chipping away at the surgery but again these aren't theories that these people subscribe to you know sort of conscious an exam away they're really unexamined assumptions and beliefs again the first being statism a generalized belief of the government and the second being nationalism even if that nationalism is primarily in a kind of negative form of people in you know northern Europe assuming that whatever's happening across the border in Russia is worse and definitely I remember there was this scandal some of you will remember at some won't in Europe the the horse meat lasagna scandal and the response to this scandal definitely in both France and Germany was this kind of universal chorus of people claiming oh well that sort of thing might happen in Hungary or Romania but it would never happen here that somehow you know even though in the European Union now all those industries are integrated to an unbelievable extent there really is kind of one national market for meat and for you know various forms of agricultural products that it was unthinkable that this could happen in France it was unthinkable this could happen in Germany but somehow when you cross the dotted line into these more exotic Eastern European countries that that was conceivable to them that there would be these lower standards whether it's of health hygiene or of animal suffering so again it's funny but I think one time when here's the difference between people for whom approaching veganism either happens spontaneously or maybe it seemed natural or inevitable and people for whom it seemed inconceivable I think this is actually a major difference in my case between myself and my parents but definites the difference within the current of the current generation to now in third and finally of this video I think one of the most profound shaping influences in our lives be our assumptions about high culture about what you know what is refined culture but you know ultimately is getting down to a concept of what is good even though both of my parents you know worshiped a form of totalitarian communism found in Russia and China their concept of high culture really was you know of French culture and Italian culture both I would say and now okay my father grew up in a steel mill town Hamilton Ontario working-class with a single mother who literally worked in a steel factory you know you can look at that in a sort of sympathetic light and say okay this guy grew up after World War two you don't a very unsophisticated part of Canada it's very unsophisticated person and from an early age he started visiting Europe and really looking up to this culture you know again as high and refined culture without questioning why in a very real sense I mean for my father it's amazing because he did so much research so many things that could have raised questions about this he did research about you know indigenous people in Canada First Nations of Canada the history of colonialism and imperialism mechanic whatever want to say there are really many many junctions life which he could have stopped and questioned this value but I think it's fair to say he never did and of course you know his involvement with say Chinese communism and his travels throughout Asia and Africa at any point I mean this is a piece of baggage he could have put down but he absolutely never did and if that is your idea of high culture whether you're living in Italy now or Italy as a far-off distant and exotic place to you I think that really is a very effective mental block against you even thinking through the possibility of looking at what's on your plate what's in your fridge what's at the grocery store and then what's coming down the highway from the farm and the slaughterhouse that whole process economically ecologically and culturally there's something that will stop you from looking at all that as evil as error as something that for hundreds of years has gone unchallenged and even celebrated and now we have to jettison as you know unwanted baggage to recycle it's a regrettable and even awful part of our culture and civilization I think that's a corner he never could turn that's something that that remained unthinkable for him and we can't make excuses here my father enrolled to do a PhD and he started doing PT he got a full scholarship to do a PhD on Hinduism as a religion and I remember asking about this this is when I was a child well okay I I guess I wasn't a child I guess I would have been in university sorry a long long time ago I remember asking him directly well look if you were involved with Hinduism to this extent you know why didn't you consider becoming vegetarian at that juncture and he answered simply he sort of had a pause and he looked at me he said well you can't be very serious about Hinduism without becoming vegetarian he seemed to be kind of conceding the point but again someone who studied history and culture of India he started learning Sanskrit and flunked out of it you know China all these other influences for him to choose between he could have let go of this appraisal of French in Italian culture he could have at least start to take on a more critical comparative awareness that the different cultures had had different advantages and disadvantages but it's fair to say he absolutely never did hey guys so this is an unusual video because I'm really gonna encourage you guys to make videos of your own I really think this is something you know productive to reflect on I maybe in your case it won't be comparing yourself to your own parents maybe you'll be you're comparing yourself to your your boyfriend or your husband or what have you but many of my viewers do have you know their own YouTube channels and I think it's worth pressing past a sort of shallow immediate answer of you know like well I'm somehow special I'm somehow exceptional therefore I put the pieces together and became vegan all of us walk past the same spectacle of you know dismembered and animal corpses at the grocery store every day or at the market we all see the the animals going off the slaughterhouse in the same trucks we're all really presented with the same stimuli you know the question is there to be asked that is well-known most children ask these questions whether it's about going fishing or hunting or just seeing seeing a lobster being chopped up on a plate I mean sooner or later it becomes self evident to all of us in childhood or adulthood this is a living animal being chopped up and sooner or later the other facts about ecology economics etc you know also also have to be raised not to mention of course health questions blah blah blah I think it's really important to discard the sense of our own [Music] specialness to not regard ourselves as as the exception but to question why it is that the people we've known you know deeply and over the long term what is it about them that's exceptional that lets them not see this that lets them never acknowledge it or never respond to it either with this inevitable inexorable set of questions or this one simple answer that this is an evil you can extricate your yourself from that this is an evil you don't have to compromise with a bonus yell