Monomania: Jon Venus and the Ex-Vegan Chic.

veganism is for everyone it's not just
for elite athletes it's not just for intellectuals it's not just for people who get a PhD in nutritional science the barrier to entry is really really low and there are some incredibly stupid people who become vegans that's a good thing the movement would have no future if it were only for refined intellectuals it would have no future if it were only suitable for research scientists who are devoting themselves to keeping up with the latest academic literature or latest findings about protein and enzymes what have you and it would have no future if it were limited to elite athletes and bodybuilders okay veganism is for everyone and that means you and you and you and it means the stupidest people among us it means people who are struggling with mental health issues and this book and the philosophical insights that are required to really understand veganism ethically and ecologically each child is capable of coming to those conclusions a very stupid person can figure it out just in a few minutes or a few hours of talking back and forth all right there are some philosophical conclusions like there are some areas of philosophy that remain perpetually inconclusive that remain forever open to debate where there's more than one equally valid perspective or conclusion you can come to and veganism is not like that I would really compare veganism to something as simple and fundamental and inexorable and inevitable as making pedophilia illegal okay I have had debates with people in real life who disagree with me on that and I made a video recently on YouTube drawing attention to the fact that there really was this kind of fad on the left wing that there were left-wing philosophers and famous published authors people like Simone de Beauvoir people like John Paul Sartre there were famous left-wing people who were Pro pedophilia you can check out that video it's mind-blowing it's hard to believe that really happened but it did it's real part of the history of left-wing politics the negative lousy and the fact they were so wrong about that issue it really shows that you can't trust their judgment on any issue whatsoever because I genuinely think the correct conclusion ie the conclusion that pedophilia must be illegal even if you start off with some total lack of knowledge total lack of thought as to the real-world consequences of ramifications any two people can sit and talk that through and whether it's in a few minutes or a few hours or over a few days there is only one correct conclusion you can possibly come to there really isn't like a whole range of equally valid perspectives on that issue so the fact that many of these influential philosophers and political leaders in the far left the fact that they were like you know in this strange detached rational way pro pedophilia that utterly discredits them it calls into question their ability to reason through anything else now the fact that those people also supported Joseph Stalin the value those people made excuses for mass murder the fact that they said what they said about a whole range of issues and look what that also should call it the question to what extent they are they're sane or insane but when we're talking about the fundamental questions of veganism we are talking about something that simple and for that reason no matter how stupid you think John Venus is his stupidity is really irrelevant to the question we're asking here because you don't need any intelligence to come to the great conclusion we use this term cherry-picking a lot in 21st century English it's often frustrating and difficult to explain to a friend or a colleague who speaks English as their second language what it is we really mean about cherry-picking the term is somewhat overused and the problem with people like John Venus is not truly cherry-picking it's monomania cherry-picking properly speaking is when someone reads the whole Bible and then they just select certain passages from the Bible that favor their own philosophy fever their own perspective on life that reinforce their own worldview they're ignoring some passages of the Bible and selecting others like someone goes to a cherry tree and only chooses the cherries they want and they may even deny that those passages the hundreds so for example the debate on slavery there were people who were pro-slavery and there were people were anti-slavery and they read the same Bible and they were picking different that's that's cherry-picking monomania John Venus may point out that vitamin b12 is lacking in a vegan diet now I actually have my own perspective on that I actually very much disagree with that with that point he's making there was a study done in Israel where they looked at every ethnic group in Israel that includes people who are ethnically and culturally Iraqi people who are ethnically and culturally Egyptian like you might think all Israelis have a lot in common but in terms of their diet and nutrition people who were born and raised in Russia and then migrated Israel don't have a lot in common with people were born and raised in Iraq and migrated Israel there are people with very different diets they looked at all these segments the populations they were assuming they would find very different problems with b12 with B vitamin deficiencies and know everyone had p12 deficiencies and had nothing to do with veganism so like guess what there were really high light rates of b12 divisions among all these people who eat all kinds of different meat on all kinds of different it's actually a problem for everyone on planet Earth there was another study real well-funded government research study in Venezuela they had a certain hypothesis about who would and wouldn't have problems with b12 deficiency in Venezuela and guess what everyone had problems with b12 urgency it wasn't just the rich it wasn't just the poor it wasn't just the people who lived on the coast and ate more fish and the people who lived away from the coast and ate more chicken and pork um with her these none of these people were vegan they're eatin all kinds of different diets and they all are struggling with Beto so b12 deficiency is a problem for human beings on planet Earth is it especially a problem for vegans in mind in my opinion having looked at scientific research not really it's such an endemic widespread problem everyone needs to be supplementing their diet with b12 and it may well be that in the future processed foods have more and more b12 added to them the same way we add iodine to salt to ensure that people are getting exposed there have been serious proposals in Europe to add b12 to toothpaste so that you're getting small amounts of b12 every time you brush your teeth because it can enter regardless someone like John Venus will develop monomania for a single issue you'll fixate on a single factor like the vegan diet lacks b12 even if that were true even if this were some crucial unique problem with the vegan diet is that there's no b12 minute does that mean that eating beef and pork doesn't cause heart attacks does that make all of the other health concerns about a diet that includes beef and pork and chicken and cheese and milk does that mean that none of the matter anymore you see it's not cherry-picking it's not that he's picking out a few facts here and there that favor his view of the world and we're all reading the same studies and picking no it's that he fixates on one point one fact one fact or one issue and then utterly ignores everything else and it is a mania now I've had a number of positive discussions with another youtuber savvy Menka she now use the name savanah Stanhope but if you're vegan you might remember her as 17 she and I were friends way back in the day like four or five years ago and then we didn't talk for a while and now we're talking now and I really give credit to where she's responded very warmly and appreciatively to the criticism of sure with her because I'm vegan and she's ex vegan alright are there benefits to eating meat the problem is not the benefit or the lack of benefit the problem is this attitude of monomania in relation to the benefits the problem is looking at that benefit and then ignoring all of the other facts and factors to the contrary what do you get when you eat meat you get a ton of protein you get a ton of salt you get a ton of fat with zero fiber now for most people zero fiber is a bad thing you've probably heard this most doctors are saying you should be eating tons of fiber all the time okay fiber isn't easy to digest there are people with really serious digestive problems serious ailments whether that's Crohn's disease or whether that's you know something else a V I'm not sure exactly what condition she is she has serious digestive issues including celiac disease there are people for whom it feels good subjectively for whom it feels like a relief to be able to get a ton of protein a ton of fat out of the salt that helps but anyway and to get that with no fiber in this firm that is in in terms of how it feels easy to digest your body doesn't struggle with breaking down the fiber or and that disperses your belly and look I got I'm cursed with a very accurate memory I remember what it was like to eat beef I remember what it's like to digest it and so and so forth right so there is a kind of perceived benefit there and if you have certain digestive problems you may perceive it more and if you're used to eating a vegan diet that has an incredibly high level of 5 suddenly reducing that fibrin intake can definitely feel like a relief in your digester all right I can I can recognize this or I can also recognize that there are sources of b12 that meat-eaters have that vegans don't have b12 deficiency is still endemic to Planet Earth still what's working the problem is the monomania of fixing on these advantages you may derive whether they be objectively real or not like it may just be subjective it may just be a feeling may just make you feel good when you eat this meat and you get a ton of fat and a ton of protein in this zero fibers or okay do you think that one fact or that one factor even if we accept it as a fact do you think that that means that the mountain of evidence about heart attacks about strokes about the effects of cholesterol not just on the circulation of blood in your body but the effects of cholesterol on the circulation of blood in your brain do you think that all of that means nothing now do you think that nothing else matters now that you've found this one factoid whether that's about b12 or whether that's about how your condition that may be Crohn's colitis or maybe just missile miscellaneous digestive problems the fact that your digestive problem was feel better when you switch to eating meat when you switch to eating eggs do you think that means that there's a mountain of evidence about nutrition and health science suddenly doesn't matter that it suddenly means nothing that is monomania that's an obsession with this one thing that's leading you to disregard all else and the other side of that coin obviously has to do with ethics the fact that you may feel you have this benefit this benefit whether it's perceived or real from eating meat does that mean that you have no responsibility for the pollution of lakes rivers and oceans it's that mean you have no responsibility for the suffering you're on animals and if so what does that tell us about you the choice of eating a vegan diet something a child can understand it's not terribly deep it's not terribly profound as I said at the beginning this video but the real choice is what kind of person do you want to be I'm asking you I'm inviting you to be the kind of person who takes responsibility for the consequences of your actions who takes responsibility for things that happen far away from what you can see and feel and smell yourself because I know how easy it is to go to the grocery store and buy a blob of red meat and it's it's not it's not even bloody there's no skin on it there's no fur on it you don't hear screams you don't smell what goes on at the spot Epis right I know I know how easy our society makes it it's very different from when I was living in Laos and Cambodia and you saw the pig bleeding to death and you heard it screams and you you literally could see the blood flowing down to the river and polluting the river and and you saw the animals with cows and so on pooing in the river how raising herds of cattle was directly polluting the source of water that you had to drink and bathe in okay all that is out of sight and out of mind but if there are two types of people in this world they're the people who care about the consequences of their actions and there are the people who don't I'm not just asking you to choose a vegan diet I'm asking you to choose what kind of person you want to be