Activism: Don't Waste My Time.
22 June 2019 [link youtube]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
in the year 2019 it is fair to say that
vegan activism has settled into a few familiar grooves a few repetitious patterns that we see again and again there was a time maybe just five years ago when a lot of these ideas were fresh and new there was a time when the Earthlings experience they were the first people to put together this idea of sitting silently wearing a mask holding an open laptop computer or showing slaughterhouse footage that was a new and exciting idea I think people including myself first found out about on tumblr that was before veganism was was so big on YouTube tumblr with where it was at for people sharing that idea the Earthlings experience bread other groups knocked off and modified the idea etc there was a time when each of these techniques in terms of street theater or open protests and even digital slacktivism such as more engaged you know there was a time when these things were exciting or new and that time is now in the past so increasingly I have people sending me sympathetic email reflecting whether they were just looking at what they've done in the last few months or in the last decade that when they get involved in vegan activism they feel that their time is being wasted so the main idea I'm going to try to convey to you in this video is that to waste someone's time is actually immoral this may not occur to us because in our intimate lives relations between husband and wife boyfriend and girlfriend even grandparents and grandchildren there's a sense in which we're expected to behave as if wasting time is no waste at all that you know don't drive for 3 hours just so you can see your grandparents and sit around kind of doing nothing in particular for several hours and drive back this is some part of the poly tests of the bourgeois class that everyone ought to have time to waste and what not to behave as if it is nothing it is that it is merely gracious to waste ones time with someone else well this doesn't extend to things like politics education we're really it's fiction it's a fiction in our times maybe very roughly analogous to the way in which people used to engage in animal sacrifice to welcome a guest into their home's taking something tremendous precious and destroying it as if to prove that it's nothing as a symbolic way of receiving a guess well the sacrifices we make for one another in the 21st century are largely sacrifices of time and to a much lesser extent sacrifices of money several different people wrote in to me about their experience with recent protests just in the last couple days since my most recent critiques on this issue one of them was describing to me what it was like to drive five hours each way to attend a protest that he felt accomplished nothing and didn't even say anything interesting to the people attending the contrast so you're talking about driving five hours stay in a hotel this time as well as money being spent attend this event drive back I assume he's only got one night no talent or two this is a big sacrifice if you're talking about people who are raising kids and have a full-time job it's a big big sacrifice and what do you get in return for that sacrifice for the most part what's going on within these familiar grooves and patterns and veganism it's accomplishing nothing but providing one spectacle after another one occasion after another for vegans to pat themselves on the back for being is to affirm their own sense of identity I'm not going to say that a zero value somebody asked me this question on the internet a few days ago someone asked me do I really feel this kind of activism has zero value and I said no I would not say zero the value is greater than zero but most of the value is just in giving vegans a chance to meet one another there are lots of people who met their boyfriend and later got married at a vegan animal rights protest or an anti fur protest or whatever there's a sense in which meeting other people could be the basis for more meaningful forms of activism in the future but in most of these cases that is the only positive thing I can say about it the events themselves are meaningless for waste of time and the actual lectures there's a reason why most of them don't get uploaded to YouTube actually the actual content of the lectures is people standing there prompting the audience to cheer like property owners to applaud that the speaker in response to the speaker telling the audience how wonderful they are now I made fun of James asked me for this you know I don't only so many months ago James asked me stands there and gives a speech to vegans and it's like you have to realize you people are the future you people are saving the planet you people are saving the animals you're the best people the crowd goes wow it's they were applauding him applauding themselves it's like a it's a self it's a cycle of self praise that's going on here it's anyway I find it deeply embarrassing but again above all else it's a waste of time what does it mean to say that there's there's such a question of morality and wasting someone's time several years ago I had a chance I think a very remote chance to enter a master's degree in PhD program at a university in Montreal Canada now why did I why did I gesture like this because I was living in Saskatchewan Canada and my wife of the time my wife and I together devoted a considerable amount of time and money to fly in an airplane from Saskatchewan two months real just to have what was I think it's supposed to be a one-hour meeting with this professor and he only talked to us about 15 minutes I could get into the details of that but it was truly hurtful in that circumstance so this guy was a professor of Buddhism and I had prepared for the meeting I'd read his PhD thesis I got his PhD theses of the line he had not published a lot of research on buddhism since then so I went and got a copy of his PhD thesis and I read it and I was prepared to really talk about my own research and Buddhist philosophy and his research in Buddhist philosophy and I show up as someone was years and years of background the discipline and I get fobbed off with a kind of aimless 15-minute pep talk and I'm told look you can study here if you want to um I didn't feel so upset about it at that moment it took a little while for it to sink in but I was really being robbed of one of the very few opportunities to get higher education I would ever have before or since and you know this was a person who had who had no respect for the fact no respect for our time for the extent to which he was wasting our time also again hotels in Montreal are not cheap that flights are not flights within Canada or not you better off flying to Thailand or flying to Las Vegas than flying between any two cities and Canada it's miserable it's a huge waste of money and you think this person has no respect for my time and in a sense they have no respect from his human being so this is a minor and yet crushing disappointment that had really serious the long-term long-term effects in my life and you know I've got to say as detached as I may be about this experience as low as my expectations may have been going into this meeting with this professor it left me with a deep and lasting sense of resentment it's possible I'll meet that guy at some point that has happened sometimes where I meet professors of Buddhism years later after my interactions at the body mode so hey you know do you want to know what impact that had on my life for the next 10 20 years like for you this may have been a casual and flippant decision but like you know what you make you especially with graduate students undergraduate students to your casual and making decisions that have huge impacts on your students life so you know the question of respect in that case we had an appointment I mean I wrote to him in advance I made the appointment and then we booked the trip so to disrespect somebody to that extent to to to waste their time there are real real questions of morality and evolved morality and immorality and you know especially with left-wing politics the extent to which everybody left-of-center not everybody on the left they get used to such hyperbolic over-the-top exaggerated ideological language extreme language of praise and also extreme language of criticism you know the fulmination against the status quo extreme language claiming that the government is totally immoral that the economic system is totally without everything everything has to be resolved in some kind of crescendo some kind of terrible uprising revolutions on this is antithetical to a more down-to-earth pragmatic planning process where you make it clear what it is you're offering people what it is they should expect what use it is you're gonna make at their time and where people feel respected people feel that what they were offered what they were promised is what they were really given so whether that's that you have a conference where you tell people look if you come to this conference I'm gonna give you you know one hour on stage and you guys maybe 20 minutes we took Cal State you get to speak I'm gonna introduce you to these and these people you're gonna get to eat at a dinner and you're gonna get introduced like what is it that you're offering as a vegan movement at a vegan event is there a certain workshop is there something really of practical value is there some educational values there's some training you're gonna get out of attending this thing because people are making serious sacrifices in terms of time money I know one female vegan activist and she has two kids and a job not a full-time job part-time job and she's raising two kids and you know time is precious to her and she was kicked out of a vegan group they exiled her because she did not meet their quota for attending a certain number of hours of street protests per month so they wanted a commitment through if you wanted to be inside the organization you had to be spending whatever was eight hours a month minimum which they had it's pennies certain where I was standing on the street at these protests all right so I have an email here sorry this was a public comment on Facebook from a woman named Gina I'm just gonna use your first name but I assume this is someone whose first language is English you'll see why I mentioned that here gene writes in high eyes'll I hope you give me some advice on how to move forward I have been an activist for a few years with a few local vegan organizations and Anonymous for the voiceless so Anonymous of the voiceless are one of the groups who stand around in a mask silently unfortunately none of that ever worked to an extent that was justifying the amount of time I put in it so upon moving to another state in Europe I eventually quit so those are the so words here none of that ever worked to an extent that was justifying the amount of time I put into it preach so she goes on to say more about her situation she's 20 or 22 years old a good illustrator or painter speaks several languages lives below the poverty line it's trying to study philosophy in her spare time okay so you got you got no money you barely got home I don't actually there's no mention here of a job well you know let me tell you something you may feel you and the audience may feel right now that watching this YouTube video was all waste your time if so I apologize but the level of effort both for the creator and for the audience that goes into washing this YouTube video it's exponentially more efficient than showing up at a street protest or even showing up at a conference at like an academic conference that are going to see a lecture vegan has been hoping to hear something interesting or be able to speak to some it's a whole thing to make that connection so gene for your situation given what you've told me given what you've told me I know just one form of vegan activism that won't waste your time that'll bring some positive people into your life where you can use your artistic talent if you're good at illustrating if you're good at making images I only know what option I can recommend to you that you can do in poverty from your tiny apartment where you're living below the poverty line doesn't require that you own a car or doesn't require that you drive five hours nature's I only know one option and it's it's right here on YouTube so look guys there was a book years ago called weapons of the weak terrible book written by a communist [ __ ] and he want to toggle it was a hit book weapons of the week and we have this we have this phrase still in Irish language complete garbage in terms of political science and anthropology punch right but let me tell you something in the 21st century right now standing on the street chanting slogans these these are not the weapons of the weak handing out pamphlets no no no options like you - options like you - these really are effective weapons the week and hey I have a lot to complain about YouTube I'm really actively considering quitting forever right now because my life has come to such a bad closure to be frank it's been one tragedy after another for me personally professionally education otherwise I'll make more videos talking about that but the good news is if you take the time to make something beautiful something interesting something thought-provoking you're on YouTube it lasts forever it stays up whether you think of it as a work of art or or as something closer to having a conversation with someone in a cafe if you want to have conversations with a whole bunch of strangers just spread the message of veganism keep in mind I've had more than 3.5 million conversations now more than 3.5 million total views or total viewings on this channel there's no way I could have accomplished that standing on a street corner holding a placard chanting slow there's no way I could have accomplished that wearing a mask or participating these other forms of protest and for you maybe just maybe you'll be luckier than I was because I come out of this veganism thing burns and broken but you know maybe you'll be maybe you'll born the lucky ones so my advice to you is the virtuous but be lucky
vegan activism has settled into a few familiar grooves a few repetitious patterns that we see again and again there was a time maybe just five years ago when a lot of these ideas were fresh and new there was a time when the Earthlings experience they were the first people to put together this idea of sitting silently wearing a mask holding an open laptop computer or showing slaughterhouse footage that was a new and exciting idea I think people including myself first found out about on tumblr that was before veganism was was so big on YouTube tumblr with where it was at for people sharing that idea the Earthlings experience bread other groups knocked off and modified the idea etc there was a time when each of these techniques in terms of street theater or open protests and even digital slacktivism such as more engaged you know there was a time when these things were exciting or new and that time is now in the past so increasingly I have people sending me sympathetic email reflecting whether they were just looking at what they've done in the last few months or in the last decade that when they get involved in vegan activism they feel that their time is being wasted so the main idea I'm going to try to convey to you in this video is that to waste someone's time is actually immoral this may not occur to us because in our intimate lives relations between husband and wife boyfriend and girlfriend even grandparents and grandchildren there's a sense in which we're expected to behave as if wasting time is no waste at all that you know don't drive for 3 hours just so you can see your grandparents and sit around kind of doing nothing in particular for several hours and drive back this is some part of the poly tests of the bourgeois class that everyone ought to have time to waste and what not to behave as if it is nothing it is that it is merely gracious to waste ones time with someone else well this doesn't extend to things like politics education we're really it's fiction it's a fiction in our times maybe very roughly analogous to the way in which people used to engage in animal sacrifice to welcome a guest into their home's taking something tremendous precious and destroying it as if to prove that it's nothing as a symbolic way of receiving a guess well the sacrifices we make for one another in the 21st century are largely sacrifices of time and to a much lesser extent sacrifices of money several different people wrote in to me about their experience with recent protests just in the last couple days since my most recent critiques on this issue one of them was describing to me what it was like to drive five hours each way to attend a protest that he felt accomplished nothing and didn't even say anything interesting to the people attending the contrast so you're talking about driving five hours stay in a hotel this time as well as money being spent attend this event drive back I assume he's only got one night no talent or two this is a big sacrifice if you're talking about people who are raising kids and have a full-time job it's a big big sacrifice and what do you get in return for that sacrifice for the most part what's going on within these familiar grooves and patterns and veganism it's accomplishing nothing but providing one spectacle after another one occasion after another for vegans to pat themselves on the back for being is to affirm their own sense of identity I'm not going to say that a zero value somebody asked me this question on the internet a few days ago someone asked me do I really feel this kind of activism has zero value and I said no I would not say zero the value is greater than zero but most of the value is just in giving vegans a chance to meet one another there are lots of people who met their boyfriend and later got married at a vegan animal rights protest or an anti fur protest or whatever there's a sense in which meeting other people could be the basis for more meaningful forms of activism in the future but in most of these cases that is the only positive thing I can say about it the events themselves are meaningless for waste of time and the actual lectures there's a reason why most of them don't get uploaded to YouTube actually the actual content of the lectures is people standing there prompting the audience to cheer like property owners to applaud that the speaker in response to the speaker telling the audience how wonderful they are now I made fun of James asked me for this you know I don't only so many months ago James asked me stands there and gives a speech to vegans and it's like you have to realize you people are the future you people are saving the planet you people are saving the animals you're the best people the crowd goes wow it's they were applauding him applauding themselves it's like a it's a self it's a cycle of self praise that's going on here it's anyway I find it deeply embarrassing but again above all else it's a waste of time what does it mean to say that there's there's such a question of morality and wasting someone's time several years ago I had a chance I think a very remote chance to enter a master's degree in PhD program at a university in Montreal Canada now why did I why did I gesture like this because I was living in Saskatchewan Canada and my wife of the time my wife and I together devoted a considerable amount of time and money to fly in an airplane from Saskatchewan two months real just to have what was I think it's supposed to be a one-hour meeting with this professor and he only talked to us about 15 minutes I could get into the details of that but it was truly hurtful in that circumstance so this guy was a professor of Buddhism and I had prepared for the meeting I'd read his PhD thesis I got his PhD theses of the line he had not published a lot of research on buddhism since then so I went and got a copy of his PhD thesis and I read it and I was prepared to really talk about my own research and Buddhist philosophy and his research in Buddhist philosophy and I show up as someone was years and years of background the discipline and I get fobbed off with a kind of aimless 15-minute pep talk and I'm told look you can study here if you want to um I didn't feel so upset about it at that moment it took a little while for it to sink in but I was really being robbed of one of the very few opportunities to get higher education I would ever have before or since and you know this was a person who had who had no respect for the fact no respect for our time for the extent to which he was wasting our time also again hotels in Montreal are not cheap that flights are not flights within Canada or not you better off flying to Thailand or flying to Las Vegas than flying between any two cities and Canada it's miserable it's a huge waste of money and you think this person has no respect for my time and in a sense they have no respect from his human being so this is a minor and yet crushing disappointment that had really serious the long-term long-term effects in my life and you know I've got to say as detached as I may be about this experience as low as my expectations may have been going into this meeting with this professor it left me with a deep and lasting sense of resentment it's possible I'll meet that guy at some point that has happened sometimes where I meet professors of Buddhism years later after my interactions at the body mode so hey you know do you want to know what impact that had on my life for the next 10 20 years like for you this may have been a casual and flippant decision but like you know what you make you especially with graduate students undergraduate students to your casual and making decisions that have huge impacts on your students life so you know the question of respect in that case we had an appointment I mean I wrote to him in advance I made the appointment and then we booked the trip so to disrespect somebody to that extent to to to waste their time there are real real questions of morality and evolved morality and immorality and you know especially with left-wing politics the extent to which everybody left-of-center not everybody on the left they get used to such hyperbolic over-the-top exaggerated ideological language extreme language of praise and also extreme language of criticism you know the fulmination against the status quo extreme language claiming that the government is totally immoral that the economic system is totally without everything everything has to be resolved in some kind of crescendo some kind of terrible uprising revolutions on this is antithetical to a more down-to-earth pragmatic planning process where you make it clear what it is you're offering people what it is they should expect what use it is you're gonna make at their time and where people feel respected people feel that what they were offered what they were promised is what they were really given so whether that's that you have a conference where you tell people look if you come to this conference I'm gonna give you you know one hour on stage and you guys maybe 20 minutes we took Cal State you get to speak I'm gonna introduce you to these and these people you're gonna get to eat at a dinner and you're gonna get introduced like what is it that you're offering as a vegan movement at a vegan event is there a certain workshop is there something really of practical value is there some educational values there's some training you're gonna get out of attending this thing because people are making serious sacrifices in terms of time money I know one female vegan activist and she has two kids and a job not a full-time job part-time job and she's raising two kids and you know time is precious to her and she was kicked out of a vegan group they exiled her because she did not meet their quota for attending a certain number of hours of street protests per month so they wanted a commitment through if you wanted to be inside the organization you had to be spending whatever was eight hours a month minimum which they had it's pennies certain where I was standing on the street at these protests all right so I have an email here sorry this was a public comment on Facebook from a woman named Gina I'm just gonna use your first name but I assume this is someone whose first language is English you'll see why I mentioned that here gene writes in high eyes'll I hope you give me some advice on how to move forward I have been an activist for a few years with a few local vegan organizations and Anonymous for the voiceless so Anonymous of the voiceless are one of the groups who stand around in a mask silently unfortunately none of that ever worked to an extent that was justifying the amount of time I put in it so upon moving to another state in Europe I eventually quit so those are the so words here none of that ever worked to an extent that was justifying the amount of time I put into it preach so she goes on to say more about her situation she's 20 or 22 years old a good illustrator or painter speaks several languages lives below the poverty line it's trying to study philosophy in her spare time okay so you got you got no money you barely got home I don't actually there's no mention here of a job well you know let me tell you something you may feel you and the audience may feel right now that watching this YouTube video was all waste your time if so I apologize but the level of effort both for the creator and for the audience that goes into washing this YouTube video it's exponentially more efficient than showing up at a street protest or even showing up at a conference at like an academic conference that are going to see a lecture vegan has been hoping to hear something interesting or be able to speak to some it's a whole thing to make that connection so gene for your situation given what you've told me given what you've told me I know just one form of vegan activism that won't waste your time that'll bring some positive people into your life where you can use your artistic talent if you're good at illustrating if you're good at making images I only know what option I can recommend to you that you can do in poverty from your tiny apartment where you're living below the poverty line doesn't require that you own a car or doesn't require that you drive five hours nature's I only know one option and it's it's right here on YouTube so look guys there was a book years ago called weapons of the weak terrible book written by a communist [ __ ] and he want to toggle it was a hit book weapons of the week and we have this we have this phrase still in Irish language complete garbage in terms of political science and anthropology punch right but let me tell you something in the 21st century right now standing on the street chanting slogans these these are not the weapons of the weak handing out pamphlets no no no options like you - options like you - these really are effective weapons the week and hey I have a lot to complain about YouTube I'm really actively considering quitting forever right now because my life has come to such a bad closure to be frank it's been one tragedy after another for me personally professionally education otherwise I'll make more videos talking about that but the good news is if you take the time to make something beautiful something interesting something thought-provoking you're on YouTube it lasts forever it stays up whether you think of it as a work of art or or as something closer to having a conversation with someone in a cafe if you want to have conversations with a whole bunch of strangers just spread the message of veganism keep in mind I've had more than 3.5 million conversations now more than 3.5 million total views or total viewings on this channel there's no way I could have accomplished that standing on a street corner holding a placard chanting slow there's no way I could have accomplished that wearing a mask or participating these other forms of protest and for you maybe just maybe you'll be luckier than I was because I come out of this veganism thing burns and broken but you know maybe you'll be maybe you'll born the lucky ones so my advice to you is the virtuous but be lucky