Vegan Activism is Not Cool: "The Vegan View".

I'm not really interested in critique
for the sake of critique criticism for the sake of criticism if I were I think there'd be better targets for it than voices within the vegan movement I was joking around with Tcat lately I shouldn't even say I was joking it wasn't a joke I talked to him about wouldn't it be great to have a YouTube channel devoted to criticism of motivational speakers you know motivational speakers these career motivational speakers who publish books self-help books and you know these kind of pseudo spiritual motivational speakers in 2018 and you can imagine that being a really important area of study when you think about it that should be like an academic discipline at at least one university somewhere in the world but I don't think it is I don't think that's covered by anthropology you don't and it's covered by departments of religion but to have someone in a rigorous and consistent way develop a critique of what's going on with motivational speaking that would be pretty worthwhile that has knock-on effects throughout our society it really does I mean I remember the old days some of that stuff would get on The Oprah Winfrey Show and it impacted the way people spoke I mean it impacted the vocabulary of American culture when Oprah Winfrey you know featured in one of these so there are a lot of areas where I do think you know criticism for the sake of criticism is important but you might not guess this about me I really don't feel that way about voices in the vegan movement I actually do have a pretty high tolerance for people just coming on and talking about their feelings and their experiences especially if it's sincere especially if they're keeping it real and everyone's gonna do that in their own imperfect way reflecting their own biases and their own interests and that's good it's not just okay it's really a wonderful thing in this video I'm talking about a relatively new show called the vegan view I don't have any problem with the format I don't have any problem with the basic thesis of the show I do dislike the show in terms of its quality tone and just the level of substance it offers but I say this openly in the past I have really talked to other vegans about creating a TV show like that myself I'd love to have six vegans sitting around a table and not talking about veganism I'd love to talk about politics and ecology or doing a book review like every week the six of us all read the same book then come in talk about that book and then talk about politics and other things I love it if we did that and and veganism was never even the topic of the show veganism came up in passing were just happening to people with a vegan perspective on ecology politics history what I think I'd be fantastic and have never been able to get it together because I still don't have that core of five or six people who will cooperate with me building future of the vegan movement it's a big disappointment my life but at this point I'm gonna pack up and move on I put five years and try to build a foundation for vegan activism didn't work out moving on to we hope greener pastures movie go out to much much more difficult pastures most of you can't imagine just how difficult Chinese is languages and in hitching my future more than ever to Chinese as a language it's a huge difficulty but the vegan view got their act together to do exactly that format that I myself wanted to do in the past and the problem I want to draw attention to is not a shallow one from my perspective it's it's relatively team and I express it as follows most of us at some point in high school maybe for you this happened in junior high maybe it happened in middle school maybe it happened in university but stereotypically around the start of high school many of us figure out that sincerity equals vulnerability we figure out that earnestness is uncool and that we live in a culture especially in white Western english-speaking culture where the very definition of cool involves a kind of sneering detachment a kind of constant snarky insincerity it involves broadcasting to the people around you at all times that you don't care you don't care about the consequences of your actions maybe you don't care sincerely about whatever the cause is you're debating or discussing that you have a kind of withering contempt for all these things around you now today in American culture Canadian culture even I think Australian culture and so on I think in english-speaking cultures around the world this has become synonymous with being a teenager that you describe someone is having a teenaged attitude and a lot of this is packaged into that term teenager and this concept of cool cool being the opposite of warm then goes on through different permutations as people start to take on more of a mid-twenties culture a thirtysomething culture as they go from high school to university to the workplace or if he didn't go to university as you go from one professional mill year to the next and what I see on the vegan view consistently he is a middle-class middle-aged version of what it is to be cool attached to veganism as a movement the whole message that I've seen again and again on their Channel and I do fact check just now for making this video I went and made sure I found three different videos quickly that are that exhibit this so you know I'm nights not every video I'm not gonna say it's all there videos are on this theme but it comes up again and again they're making videos repeatedly explaining to you the viewer that what it means to be vegan in the 21st century what it means to be a good vegan what it means to be a cool vegan is to let people know all the time that you don't really care that you're not serious about it that it doesn't mean anything to you that you're not earnestly out here trying to save the planet or trying to save the lives of animals or even trying to improve other people's health those of you who are regular viewers of this channel will know that of the three big issues ecology ethics and health I care the least about health but I still care it can be very real and very raw and very meaningful to sit down with somebody and tell them yeah yeah I know your doctor told you that Alzheimer's disease arrives with no particular cause and there's no treatment and there's no cure but here's what I have to tell you Alzheimer's disease is cholesterol when cholesterol forms plaques in your arteries or around your heart when it causes you heart problems we have one set of names for it when cholesterol forms plaques and causes problems within your brain impacting the circulation of the brain and ultimately the transmission of single signals between neurons and axons in the brain when cholesterol disrupts brain function we call it Alzheimer's disease it's not that it's even the cause of Alzheimer's disease it's a very meaningful simplification or explanation to say cholesterol in the brain is Alzheimer's disease okay to have that kind of conversation with someone in a caring way to say yeah I care enough about you to tell you that the explanation your doctor gave you for why your father or grandfather had this condition is [ __ ] and that it impacts you and your diet and the decisions you make today alright it's not cool it's caring its earnest and in your struggle to be sincere and communicate this to someone you can make a fool of yourself you can upset them you can become upset yourself to use the terms that the vegan voice uses you can be an [ __ ] it's true but a crucial part of the vegan message is care be willing to be an [ __ ] be willing to be wrong and make mistakes and learn from your mistakes all under the heading of doing the best you can so I've mentioned this before probably more than a year ago there was a moment in a vice column in the newspapers that stayed with me someone wrote in to the advice columnist saying their situation was they had a crush on someone at work a co-worker I think it was a man he had a crush on a woman he said this this woman at work she's gonna be reassigned to another office she's being promoted or something she's not gonna be working in the same place anymore and I really want to talk to her I really want to ask her out for coffee but I'm afraid of being an [ __ ] and the advice columnist replied and said guess what true romance and true love involves taking risks it involves you right now committing to be an [ __ ] now I'm the last person to give you carp launch on this and last person to say just go there and scream in people's faces don't you realize that by eating pork you're causing Alzheimer's disease something it's not the point you can make your best possible life remember there's love involved here right there's love actually in both examples do you love someone enough to tell them that in a sense their father got Alzheimer's disease it was his own fault I'm not saying to do that out of a sense of hatred a sense of Khattab those are hard conversation to have and we're talking about the easiest category here we're just talking about health you get into the ethics and ecology it's harder and it demands love and engagement and this kind of risk to me okay you feel some kind of love towards your coworker I'm good at this stuff I could easily go over to a co-worker and say some stone cold detached down-to-earth hey you know I've always felt like you and I had a lot in common but you know we've never really had the chance to sit down and talk and now I know you're gonna move to another office so I may never see you again you know what I really like is for us to go out to lunch grab a cup of coffee together and find out if I'm right or if I'm wrong and you know if we don't have anything in common that's cool but you know if you want to make the time like here's my email here's my phone number okay and it's possible you do that and you get charged with harassment you could you could be called an [ __ ] and you could have this person say on Twitter you're a piece of [ __ ] and guess what talking about your feelings talking about wanting to take someone up for lunch telling someone you have a crush on them that can be construed as even criminal you know and you've got to do it you've got to take that that risk and telling someone that they're responsible for something deeply unethical deeply environmentally reckless something that's harmful to their health under those three headings all those things those regard a really high level of commitment I do not think veganism is cool I think veganism is never going to be cool I think veganism is warm that's where I really differ from this whole approach represented by the vegan view and it's also represented by my usual nemesis unnatural vegan where all they want to broadcast again and again and again is I don't really care this doesn't really matter to me there are no real consequences I don't you know it's fine it's cool I'm cool you're cool if someone you really respected as a colleague in the vegan movement then comes out of the closet and admits that they've been eating salmon and chicken eggs to treat sometimes some type of material some type of mysterious made-up illness they think they have or even if it's a real illness I'm alluding to a current situation with Tim shieff I'm not even questioning here whether or not that should matter to you like in an objective sense like that you that you should objectively feel offended can't we be real can't we be honest enough to say well man I'm I'm devastated I'm so disappointed in you like this you're someone I looked up to you're someone I worked with and your status your position in this movement ethically ecologically etc is is predicated on you being able to maintain this discipline and you've let me down like that's real like maybe there's going to be agony or whatever and you know what if you express that maybe it's gonna come across as an unreasonable reproach maybe people are gonna see you as an [ __ ] even if you're trying not to be an [ __ ] and maybe it's gonna be perceived as harassment right but I mean my position and all this is you know keep it real or get the [ __ ] out veganism is not cool veganism is warm I hope as you engage in whatever kind of activism it is you're capable of on whatever scale however miniscule or ever enormous you never lose that warmth to reach out to people and let them know their ethical decisions matter their sense of ecologic aspossible 'ti matters and yes ultimately what they're doing and either promoting or destroying their health matters too and these are all issues of right and wrong