Meat: The Justifications Are Harder to Quit Than the Real Thing.

ah ba nous en I got an interesting email
from a patreon supporter named a meal shout out to a meal um it may be interesting to me for different reasons than it's interesting for you in the audience or maybe not for the same reasons she had for writing into me so Emil writes I was thinking about my personal struggles with veganism dealing with my sister and her children who are still eating animals and why it's so hard for her and especially the kids and her husband to go vegan I've thought about this many times before and already came to the conclusion as you've talked about new other videos I believe that for some people who have horrid lives she has hard in quotation marks hard lives like working mothers and fathers it can be difficult to go vegan simply because they have very little time and energy to educate and teach themselves about how to live vegan how to transition to a fully vegan lifestyle here's a pause now maybe in this case she's correct maybe that really is the problem is that it's hard but really to say that presumes that they already have the intention that they truly have the intention that they truly the aspiration become vegan but can't do it because it's hard and that's very very rarely the case it could be the case here it could be you know someone who's in that predicament but for me it is much less often that I encounter someone who's really dealing with hardship hardship that prevents them from coming vegan it's much more common that I meet someone who has a justification of their hardship that prevents them from being so in their own minds that have a justification and that justification has become part of their identity part of how they perceive themselves part of their own moral system other perceive the world and it's often more difficult to let go of the justification than it is to let go of the thing being justified right now yet in this analysis this reflects my own personality that I am the type of person who never misses the taste of bacon right to me that's not compelling or meaningful I never missed the taste of you know ice cream made out of cow's milk that's that's not me but the kind of justification that made these foods and for instance made something like leather a meaningful part of your life maybe a meaningful part of your family your tradition your culture those justifications I can see them being much much more powerful because again reflecting our personality then the actual you know experience and I'm going to use an example here that is much less sensual has nothing to do with food or fancy leather shoes or what-have-you but you know I meet a lot of people who one way or another are attached to let's say a justification for why they never went to college within everyone's university or in other cases a justification for what they dropped out of university or a justification for why their whole life would have been better if only they could have gone to university and then on the flip side I met all kinds of people maybe people have PhDs who absolutely have to insist on a justification of how wonderful their university experience was and will attack and criticize anyone who doesn't see it that way someone who's a threat to their sense of the esteem the establishment should be hauled in or what that educational process and the degree is supposed to mean to them and of course there are all kinds of other combinations meet people who did completely you know you did graduate from university but where they're attached to a justification that nobody learns anything in university and this they don't see it as just their own experience they see it as kind of universal explanation again you may not have had those experiences or met those kinds of people wherever you're watching this to me that's a real example of how that that sense of clinging to justification for something in your own life not necessarily a matter of good and evil not necessarily a matter of self-indulgence versus self-discipline obviously not a matter of Health versus unhealthy um I've seen so many cases with that's really part of the bedrock of someone's personality and they can't part with it you know maybe it has to do with the jobs you got or the jobs you didn't get there may be all sorts of experiences that have embittered you since you went to university or since you dropped out of university as the case may be where your evaluation of what it means what's good and bad about University just becomes this fetish within your life and you may not realize how attached you're so in that same way I don't know maybe Emile you're writing into me and really the problem is hardship but maybe instead it's the justification of hardship because you know look I remember what it was like to take a chicken and cut the meat off the chicken you know what I mean just deal with the skeleton of the chicken that's so much time I remember what was like to cook a turkey you know before I was vegan and you could you come up with justification for these things right I never took the feathers off a chicken I never did at that level and never gutted a you know whole animal but you put in so much work to make a turkey even if it's just for yourself let alone to make a turkey for your kids of course your kids don't appreciate it kids are never refined palate or anything them it's just more food putting in 12 hours or something to to prepare these these different meat dishes and yes maybe there's the justification in terms of the violence you know the animal being killed and the ecology and the other headings but I've got to say just the filth just the labor just the use of your time and money and dealing with the filthy bloody bones that are left over I mean you forget that as a vegan it's like we're at the end of cooking a meal in your kitchen you have a filthy putrid mess that you have to worry about spreading contagious disease you know having to spray disinfectant and wipe that down just how awful it is deal with that I mean I knew I knew First Nations people so your First Nations American India and what do you want to say you know Korean the Ghibli people when they were taking that time to go out and hunt a beaver or hunt a moose and kill this wild animal and then take the fur off it and take the skin off it and chop up the skull maybe you know they would eat the meat out of the cheeks of the animal and all this then the tongue and you know all this labor and again they're partly doing themselves but it's always this thing about passing the next generation right and then smoking it what you want to say barbecuing yet nothing that'd smoke a lot of the meat then I was smoking and barbecuing this meat and giving it to the children and the children camp again the children can't really appreciate it and you know children can appreciate a chocolate bar but you know um people get into a really deep kind of justification honestly I think eat off and again I have observed this observe this and many parents and in many people because you know if you were if you were single if you didn't have a husband or a wife or kids you wouldn't put in 12 hours to preparing a turkey for Thanksgiving table - eat a moose go through the unbelievable again the filth the blood the bones you know and at the end you fill up a whole garbage bag with the bones ever even with a turkey or a big chicken you know just awful so people I think that people are more attached to the justifications than they are to the thing itself that this is part of being a good parent this I mean for First Nations for American Indians you can really imagine that that for many of them they think that's integral to passing on their identity it's integral to proving that they're not assimilated that they can still go out and kill and eat a moose you know that they can still go in and trap beaver and they know how to roast beaver I can sympathize I understand the powerful symbolic value of that and I don't know I didn't grow up Christian but dealt lists for Christians something an American Christian the Thanksgiving feast or the Christmas feast these religious occasions and all the hours put into the the meat there's a justification there right it has to mean something it has to have some kind of meaning because if it's not if we get detached if we can just release our grip on that delusion then so many things in our own life or reveal the meaningless and such a waste of our own time and energy and money and work trying to prove to ourselves in our own lives as meaningful and trying to prove to the next generation trying to pass it on that all disappears in a vapor right so yeah it's hard but I don't know if it's hard for the reasons you're suggesting here for Genevieve you should have showed it Genevieve Genevieve the sport on patreon show diginity for Genevieve I remember she talked about the fact that when she was younger she puts so much time into preparing gourmet food for her husband and for her kids and again of course the kids don't know the difference especially when they're younger right and involve things like turkeys forms of meat that that have a lot of work put into them and then in have in committing the veganism she did relatively recently forget a couple years ago you're not just recognizing something but ecology or the suffering of the animals you're recognizing something with the symbolic value of labour and culture within your own family and within your own life over so many years right so letting go of those justifications and in her case I don't think she's religious at all it's nothing like Christianity or those other issues but still you can just be attached you can be justification just in terms of the cultural snobbery involved which is very real which is you know that sense of a lot of us feel it I don't know though some of you were born vegan most of us can remember like most of us before we were vegan you know oh I would never give my child this crappy hot dog out of a plastic packet no no no I'm going to take the time and give my child some high-quality meat or high-quality steak you know there's all there all these levels of snobbery and kind of false health information about trying to give your child the best or something good enough or something sophisticated enough and taking the time whether you're cooking that yourself or buying it in a boutique you know whether through your child your husband or your wife or whatever you know and yeah there's a there's a kind of cracking realization that all of that was not just morally wrong but profoundly pointless so yeah but anyway I agree with you in principle for many working mothers and fathers it's hard but that's what I think is hard is parting ways with those justifications be they cultural religious matters of personal identity tradition or just sheer snobbery that you feel you're the kind of parent who would never feed your child you know bacon bits but who would feed them you know cordon bleu you know would Rivero you know yeah it's a lot to let go of same thing with leather obviously the snobbery surrounding luxury goods in leather anyway so I continue this is not again I've mentioned the opening in what I find interesting about this is maybe not what she finds interesting about this so Amelia's message continues that made me think about how it would be so helpful for these kind of people to have a community which they could reach out to and an organization which offers volunteers to maybe help her on the house and make it easier for them to transition to the vegan lifestyle answering questions helping to cook vegan food etc okay now what you're both here explains why Emile connects this way to the issue and I assume why she connects to my own past video my vegan manifesto the the video on community right so next paragraph she says quote my mother was Jehovah's Witness and I have experienced myself how great the support is from those people to other people in the community so that made me think of how great it'd be for people surely with going vegan if there were an organization that could help non vegans the transition to being in lifestyle period my question you is how could such an organization be established so I have actually seen that and if possible do you think such an organization for vegans could ever become a somewhat close community like for instance the Jehovah's Witnesses right so obviously these are issues I care about they're talked about in on community a video I've now have translated into twelve languages I think um so that videos message still matters to me in a fashion about it but there are two problems here one is love and the other is money I do know of an organization that allegedly did just that in Victoria where it is Canada the city I was living in Canada and it fell apart because it's the usual thing small number of people organize it and they started fighting with each other and there was a split between this guy who was the leader and this other guy wanted to be a leader and they didn't like each other and then one of the guys left he moved to Vancouver and then the whole thing fell apart when I got there their website was still up but it was no longer responding to emails and I asked people about and they said hello don't ask these to different factions hated each other and tore it apart but there was a vegan foundation allegedly doing exactly what you're describing watchdog about look I got experience in Buddhism I got experience in ecology I got experience in different kind of walks of life to have the level of love to open your door and let a stranger come into your home and do a cooking demo for you and the other hand for the person doing the cooking demo someone come into your kitchen come go into another person's kitchen and show them how to cook some vegan dishes it's so much easier to make that happen as a for-profit business than as a charity that's a fascinating example of a function where everyone would be more comfortable if it's a service that's bought and paid for then if it's a relationship like church to flock right there are relationships of authority there if it's a client paying someone to come and do a cooking demo right then the person in the home the person learning they're in charge they've paid their money even they maybe they just paid $50 to have this vegan cook come and do a demo fine I think in Western culture people would handle that but if it's a charity the other way if the person doing doing the teacher is in a position of authority they're not being paid it's not a client's not a client holistic relationship it's very very different now in a religious context those are exactly the issues that are taken care of in a religion like Jehovah's Witness or in some forms of Buddhism well-organized forms of Buddhism the relationship of authority is overt so it's already taken care of so psychologically people you know people wouldn't be in the church if they didn't accept that religion of authority and the relationships of love the commitments I mean whether it's a completely abstract religious sense of love or commitments to the community on the basis of some shared Creed shared identity there are types of love there that bind people together also and in veganism we ain't got that and it's quite likely we never will we never will have them somebody wrote to me on Twitter recently asking about having a central organization for veganism instead of having fragments and my reply which is a you know spur of the moment why I said no the future of veganism is not going to be centralization what we need are more fragments of higher quality we need to 320p CRMs with two three or twenty lawsuits we can't just have one piece erm we need others doing other things it's just in the past regret of a piece erm an organization like PCRM just specialised in leather we'd have another one just specialised in dairy whatever you know we could have different different issues being taken on by different organizations but we're never going to have a Catholic Church of veganism and if we did have formal organizations like the Catholic Church I think they would be even more fragmentary they've even more narrow because they'd be trying to narrow it down to the point where you meet that threshold it's a very good test where you meet that threshold where you would be loving and trusting and respectful enough and have enough of a relationship thority to open the door to your home and have someone come in and do a cooking demo for you for free so there are some aspects of the cause that are well addressed by nonprofits by charities but political organizations or even by religious organizations but there are other aspects of the cause that are handled much better by a for-profit company and honestly what you're talking about here having someone come into your house and talk you through this the same way you can pay someone to do a you know you can pay someone to come and you a consultation about redecorating your home all right if you pay someone to do that if I I'm the client I'm going to pay you $100 to come in and do an evaluation and make a checklist make suggestions how to redecorate my apartment okay I'm completely comfortable because I'm the paying customer if I'm not if you're doing it for free if I'm beholden to you if you're coming in because you know you're coming to tell me how to redecorate my house because we're members of the same Buddhist temple or something see already how that's a little bit weird what if it's somebody who's not invited at all what if it's someone who invites themselves over to tell you how to redecorate your apartment to tell you how to change your lifestyle who tells you how you should eat what's healthy and what's not interesting huh but yeah sure it would be wonderful if in future there were ever an organization or community within veganism remotely as as tight-knit as what the Jehovah's Witnesses have but if that happens it's not going to be a broad Church for all vegans it'll be some group of vegans who have much more in common much higher levels of mutual respect mutual trust and a sense of a common mission and objective otherwise as I've been saying for years veganism is fractious and fragmentary and what we need are more high-quality fragments and I hope we can have some level of mutual respect between those fragments where people can look across the divide at one another and recognize hey maybe we don't have so much in common politically maybe we don't have so much in common I don't know morally ethically in other ways but we're all vegan and we will fundamentally share the vision of a world without industrialized animal agriculture we all fundamentally share the motivation of doing our small part to try to abolish you know factory farming and to cease to be a society where human beings feed on the corpses of millions of animals ah ba Liu Yin [Music] you [Music] ah ba Lu Ciel