Vegans Can Never Win: The Struggle Never Ends.

yo what's up I've just been talking to
some vegans and regular human beings here on you know who've actually been asking me some really interesting and meaningful questions spontaneously and decided to turn on the camera to record this one one question just got is realistically you won't live forever and things won't change in your lifetime so that's why I asked where your motivation comes from okay if I answer this is in some ways simple in some ways childishly simple but you know it's deep and it matters I'm someone who has a robust background in philosophy European philosophy Buddhist philosophy but philosophy working from books I've read Aristotle and I've read through cities I've read the ancient Greeks I've read the 19th century Germans I do have a very robust background in philosophy and one of the problems with people who have that kind of academic background and you maybe think about politics and philosophy in a sophisticated way is that you can lose sight of some of the simplest and most fundamental factors exactly and answering this kind of question you know what doing good does not have an end goal trying to be a good person trying to do the best you can it actually doesn't rest on outcomes doing the right thing for the right reasons like being vegan as an individual making the decision I'm gonna carry this weight I'm going to deal with this burden day after day after day even though I probably can't save the life of a single animal even though within my lifetime I'm not going to see the slaughterhouses close down even though I'm probably never going to see the kind of cultural change I might fantasize about about other people gaining this sensitivity the sense of responsibility and resolving to do the right thing for the right reasons um doing the best you can it's something we teach children and that we tend to forget as adults and you may forget it in a miasma of politically and philosophically sophisticated concepts or you may forget it amidst the cynicism and stress of your work life and your responsibilities as an adult but that really is what it comes down to what is it that motivates me to try my best to try to be a good person to try to make a positive change in the world when in a sense you can't in terms of the the outcomes the victims is hoping for in a sense when the the end goal you know that there is no utopian project here for me why you know why do the best you can you get into a cycle doing the best I can is part of who I am and who I am is doing the best I can my morality isn't separate from who I am as a person on the contrary you make those decisions and the decisions become you and you become the product of your decisions and over time I'm not going to front there are negative aspects as that as well as positive aspects i had an anecdote i've told before but when i was in germany and i had to buy medicine I was sick I was seriously ill and the medicine I should have taken had honey as an ingredient as a minor ingredient there was honey added for flavoring and spontaneously in the moment without thinking about it I just reacted as if this person asked me to slit the throat of a cow you know what I mean it butch what do you what do you think I am I can't take I can't possibly take this medicine now as everyone knows in terms of the definition of veganism you're supposed to do what's reasonable and practicable and medicine is it's a standard exception if the only medicine you can take if there's no alternative at the pharmacy has honey in it you should take that medicine you should wasn't rational it wasn't a decision I made it was part of who I was it was a instinctive reaction at that point right and 10 minutes later I walked out of the shop I was reflecting on a thinking man I got to get this under control just you know who you are and what you're trying to do is a cycle there and it can be an upward cycle and it can be a downward cycle and I think it's kind of both you know um I I think this is one of things I liked about Buddhism I'm not a Buddhist now but I'm an expert as they used to be a member of the Buddhist religion one of the things I liked about Buddhism was that it fundamentally was built on a tragical view of morality right like if you ask the question in Buddhism does Buddhism support the death penalty or not it's not a question of support in Buddhism the death penalty is seen as completely inevitable in the pali canon and the real buddhist philosophy the real Buddhist canon they say as long as there were kings there are people are going to be tortured to death tortured and executed that was completely normal in ancient India and medieval India and that was how they regarded the cycle of suffering in this world if you have Kings you have tortured you have execution period there was no sense that in the future people could build a utopia or a better society without slavery slavery was bad what's what is this position on slavery it's bad but they regarded as totally inevitable and their response to that I mean Buddhism this is a kind of dangerous distraction was to say okay the world is bad the world is always going to be bad withdraw from it transcend it be something better be a Buddhist monk and that is the exact opposite of the conclusion I came to I think the world can improve the world can change in the world can get worse to don't withdraw don't avoid it don't transcend it confront it engage with it plunge deeper into it and I'd say that whether we're talking about Cambodia or talking about Laos orthogonal Canada you know whether we're talking about issues as hopeless and depressing as drug addicts or the meat and dairy industry or you know some of the civil wars and international wars that have gone up for decades and decades and seem to have no horizon have no hope in sight um I'm a nihilist I'm a pragmatist I'm a realist for me as one powerless individual it's true as Kim a stand her question you know there's only so much you can do and maybe in a sense in terms of outcomes maybe there's nothing you can do but you can still do the best that you can you can still become the best person that you can outcomes matter of said that on this channel many times how many cows get their throat slit it matters the ecological impacts matter the animals getting killed matters outcomes matter but at the end of the day the product were debating and disputing here on YouTube right now as Marcus Aurelius said the question is whether we are to be sane or insane the product is not a box on the shelf the product is you the reason why I get on here every day and ask you to make different choices as a consumer different choices as an activist is because I want you to change who you are who you become the product may be in some abstract sense eventually a better society a society in which people take more responsibility for the outcomes of their actions a society cares more about ecology ethics animal rights etc maybe maybe 50 years to now maybe a hundred years from now maybe in that sense we can win but here are now today and tomorrow and tomorrow for all the tomorrow's to come product is you