Ecologists vs. Vegans & Why There Are No Comments on this Youtube channel

I'm gonna kick this off by reading a
comment from Haruki who's a longtime viewer I'll give a link to his YouTube channel below this video Haruki makes videos in Japanese but also German English I think Spanish is coming up on his channel so he's a man who studies many different languages Haruki wrote to me saying a couple of years ago I attended a conference in Europe a conference where scientists and policy makers came together to address climate change and resource use so this is an ecological conference he attended back then I was so not even optimistic to expect that people there would talk about veganism at some point as we all know love tremendous benefits for the environment however as you can imagine the topic of diet never came up in fact they did not talk about any practical solutions to tackle climate change whatsoever the only things that discussed were paradigm shift and D growth and as you might guess none of the catering options were vegan there were some vegetarian options but it was mostly meat so had to speak up with benefits of changing her diet and the problem of offering non vegan meals at a conference of this kind that was trying to address climate change at the end of the conference one of the organizers came up to me and said that I was being disrespectful note that word disrespectful as he had tried hard to offer only organic food and meals I came to the conclusion that there is no hope in them to lead society to adopt climate change mitigation practices I understand that some scientists and politicians do really practice veganism or seriously address another practical solution but the majority seem not to be so several different things they want to respond to here in this this message from Haruki first and for I'll just say that issue of disrespect it's worth taking the time to really try to imagine the other side's perspective there for you and me for most people watching this channel it seems so obvious that veganism is linked to questions of ecology and that it's observed in counterproductive for someone to be advocate on these ecological issues while buying and serving meat or while engaging in the green washing of meat the ecological glorification of certain kinds of fancy meats such as organic meat you know this is counterproductive and immoral etc sir that's obvious from our perspective but there's another perspective here from whom those ideas are so new so shocking so unthinkable that they think it is disrespectful for Haruki to mention veganism at this conference this organizer thought it was disrespectful for him to raise it that's very interesting right now I mean this is an issue for me it speaks to many different ways obviously I'm involved with veganism for a long time interested engage with issues of ecology but these are not the only political issues in my life the battered me also cared about endangered languages and did Eunice people's all kinds of issues in history and politics of Southeast Asia many many political issues in my life I think that when people at a conference like this stand up and speak about a really irrelevant issue people do not treat it as disrespectful all right like let's say Haruki had stood up and said yeah well what about police brutality against African Americans can black people in the United States that would be irrelevant I mean Oh climate change and police brutality towards black people it's really irrelevant and at conferences people do that kind of thing all the time I've spoken at conferences you know I give my speech and then someone wants to stand up and make a statement about their faith in Jesus Christ like really when you do conferences whether it's academic conferences or ecologic conferences but all kinds of intellectual forms people will stand up and mention something that is so irrelevant that it's embarrassing and you got to deal with it I mean that's one of the reasons we have a moderator they have to they have to moderate the discussion and that includes telling people I'm sorry this is irrelevant we can't talk about this I do not think that someone who raised an issue like that about you know ethnicity or something like that something totally irrelevant I do not think they would have been addressed as being disrespectful and Haruki was right he's mentioning if he isn't was treated as well why is that I think this reflects the extent to which the is perceived as a threat by these people and maybe it really is a threat you know what I mean this is a threat to you know their whole paradigm I hate the overused word paradigm it's a threat to the way they see themselves as consumer activists as consumer advocates as ecological activists it's a threat to how they live their lives on a day to day basis it's a threat to their whole message and it's a threat to their conception of themselves as being part of the solution instead of being part of the problem veganism draws a very clear line as to who is part of the problem and who is part of the solution and all the people at this conference suddenly see themselves as being on the wrong side of the line now I can relate to this partly is really one conference in particular I'm thinking of what was disgusted that the whole conference everyone was eating meat and it was basically supposed to be a conference on Buddhist philosophy so there were you know academics there there were university professors who taught Buddhist philosophy there also huge number of Buddhist monks in their full robes in uniform and I was the only person there who even asked for a vegetarian option nobody else even asked that I know because I walked up to the staff and I was speaking to the staff in lotion I've probably mentioned this anecdote before somewhere on YouTube somewhere in the last couple of years so nobody else asked nobody else cared and I could see on their plates everyone else there was was eating the meat like it wasn't like they were avoiding it at the buffet or something and you know again now I did not discuss it with the other people attending the conference I discussed it with the kitchen staff and they tried to get me somebody said to the kitchen staff there's supposed to be a conference about Buddhist philosophy you have nothing vegetarian everything you know this is unforgiveable it's ridiculous and they you know they agreed they think they cook something new for me they they created a fresh option again this has this sort of terrible sense of an ethical undertow no matter how polite you are about it there's an element of accusation because we're making a very clear call to say this is the minimum standard I expect you to live up to now their question is why can't people respond to that positively why can't someone at a conference like this say oh this is a new and alien idea I haven't really thought about it before this is the first time I'm encountering this why can't they react to that in a more positive or constructive way there are many bad things I can say about ecology as an intellectual habit of mind or as an academic discipline in many ways it's a kind of terribly lazy and fatuous field that has made shockingly little progress of any kind in the last thirty years I mean it hasn't even made progress philosophically in my opinion and it's been pathetic as a series of political movements whether you look at the Green Party or other attempts to articulate the mandate of ecology and politics I think it's it's really lamentable how terrible things been in last 30 years however that being said the sort of habit of mind you practice in ecology and I think haruki himself will have will have experienced this are really a whole bunch of tiny little paradigm shifts we find out about a factor that you just weren't aware of previously so I'll give you an example carpeting and REITs nois is not a dirty joke I mean that literally I remember with one of my girlfriends she was complaining about the ecological significance of the difference between fancy plastic bags when you buy sling at a shop and they give you a thicker more beautiful plastic bag and thinner or cheaper plastic bags she thought that this was a big ecological problem that more and more shops were using this slightly fancier and more reusable style plastic bag that's what I'm sorry you know this is just not true when you look at the waste stream so the waste stream is an attempt to mathematically analyze how much garbage ends up in the landfills of the world how much gets recycled how much gets put into landfills when you do waste stream analysis all plastic bags of this kind they're just not a considerable source of pollution or waste whether you're handed in percentages or ranked categories of what's important and I said you are going to be shocked to find they are much much lower as an ecological priority as a problem they are much less of a problem than looking at car opening and drapes and grows my girlfriend was shocked she's never thought about carpeting her drapes before as as a major source of pollution in landfills now the only government I've seen addressed that because again can look this up pretty much anywhere different countries and some specific cities very often the city level of government will do waste stream analysis because they're having to plan the city dump for the future of the city local municipal government as the city of hong kong i remember that an official government program for that because when the city of hong kong did the analysis of their waste stream they were shocked they had tons and tons of garbage being generated out of carpeting and why well this is true of many cities around the world but in hong kong especially there were just so many apartments where every year people were tearing out the carpeting and replacing it i can imagine a lot of reasons for that in alcohol including just how expensive rent is the climate etc etc but the enormous bulk of carpeting every year was getting pulled out of the ground and sent to the dump and replaced and again this adds up to tons and tons is vegetable weight and volume that's difficult to imagine in the waste stream now why I mentioned this the point is if you really care about ecology all the time you're learning about these things we just think wow I never thought of that I never thought to come up with an estimate for just how much carpeting the city of Hong Kong puts into dump every year and then to compare that in relative scale and say okay is carpeting more of a problem or less of a problem than plastic bags is carpeting more of a problem or less of a problem than certain types of industrial waste is carpeting more of a problem or less of a problem than plastic furniture being thrown in the garbage or wooden furniture being thrown in the garbage that stuff adds up also in the waste stream right where where are our priorities and how are we thinking about these things so in that sense anyone who's serious about ecology they should be really prepared to hear guess what here's a new priority here's a new factor you haven't thought about the vegan issue the knot of issues related to meat production and you have to reevaluate again it's not so much looking at in isolation how important is veganism compared to the difference between people driving gas cars and driving electric cars you know it's very it's very depressing for us to face up to but you know the type of savings you get ecologically because people are still driving cars between an electric car and a gas car is not that radical you can measure it in percentages you can measure it in megatons of pollute the pollution it is an improvement don't get me wrong the type of change you can achieve by having you know a coal power plant as opposed to a gas power plant right now the United States is making that transition in a huge way partly because they have new cheap sources of gas from fracking so they have new new sources of shale oil within the United States and more and more coal power plants are shutting down and they're having gasoline burning plants to simplify this I think and it is an ecological improvement is a difference and you can measure it in percentages you can measure it in megatons of you know carbon being put in the atmosphere and there are a number of other really interesting ecological factors that are unique to coal different types of pollution that that are especially a problem with coal that you're limiting there is some improvement but you're getting down into percentages you're getting down to these fine points of comparison and what's interesting is when you look at the whole life cycle production and consumption of meat this is not a difference of a few percentage points it's actually a shocking paradigm shift difference if you have millions of people eating meat as opposed to millions of people refusing to eat meat the change in the impact is just unbelievable you know there's there's no way to compare again whole life cycle you don't just look at the slaughterhouse you don't just look at the final product look at the whole process of the industry the water consumed the water pollution the air pollution the use of resources in producing pork as opposed to producing tofu beef as opposed to producing chickpeas this is something radically exponentially different as well as being fundamentally ethically different as well as being better for your health etc etc but this is this is something that some of the nanka logical backgrounds should be able to here should be able to analyze should be able to appropriate or assimilate click and they can't so Hiroki goes to this this festival and the reality is he's talking to people who are his enemies but who should be his allies how do you bridge that gap how do you if ever reach someone who shares with you a belief in this objective apparently but who regards veganism as so alien that they think you mentioning it is disrespectful to them that he is being disrespectful to their conference on climate change ecology and resort Natural Resources that's really alien I mean in some ways me like what Haruki is describing here the other people at this conference are more alien from Haruki that I am a lien from someone else who's vegan but this other part someone else who believes in say Christianity I'm an atheist I don't believe in Christianity at all and in this very when I talk to people who are real believing Christians they're very alien for me but if we have veganism in common obviously there are a whole lot of beliefs whole lot of issues in terms about look in the world where there's something to build on and Haruki is going to this conference and instead seeing this this fissure where do we go from here well look one of the themes I talk about again and again on the Internet is the issue of generosity of spirit you know do I have the generosity of spirit to sit down and try to cooperate with someone who's Christian when I'm not just an atheist I have a lot of reasons to dislike Christianity to be biased against a Christian you know to resent the whole history of Christianity and even what Christians are doing today Christian missionaries their impact on indigenous people you know within Canada the terrible things Christian has done with in Southeast Asia the terrible things Krishna unbelievable it actually does take some generosity of spirit on my part to bridge that gap to sit down the same table to try to try to cooperate work together and at this conference I mean apparently Haruki came away from it with no nobody who's gonna cooperate with him working which is which is very sad I think one of the saddest things about middle age is that many people lose their generosity of spirit some people never had it some people didn't have any generosity of spirit teenager so don't get me wrong it's not a universal or innate characteristic that people have but or when you meet people are you going to judge them by their potential to do good in the future or are you going to judge the by who they are right now who they already are what they're already doing the most generous thing you can do with people it's to set aside the bad things they've done in the past is set aside the harm they're doing now and to look at them and relate to them in terms of their potential to do good in the future and on a case by case basis I think you need to meet people and look into their eyes and you need to make that decision for yourself there's no way you can make a blanket decision like this is how I'm gonna talk to Christians or this is a home gonna talk to white people who are into yoga and rock crystals and pseudoscience but who are also vegan you know it's again a huge gap they're very difficult for me to cooperate lesbians out of those people there's no way you can have a blanket decision this is how I'm gonna talk to people who are part of the scientific community or professional politicians engage with these ecological issues but who eat meat who are non vegan or this is how I'm gonna relate to people who are hunters but who really care about ecology and forest conservation people who hunt and eat meat but you care about some other things there is no way you can you can have a decision that applies to all them uniformly I think on a case-by-case basis you need to talk to people you need to listen to people look into their eyes if possible and you have to decide if you have it in you whether or not you have the generosity of spirit to treat them not as they are to treat them not as they deserve to be treated not to judge them based on their past conduct or their current conduct but to judge them based on their potential to do good in the future to make the world a better place because the people of this conference I think some of them have that potential even if there's scumbags even if they're engaged in every ridiculous excuse for organic meat happy meat for living a lifestyle that I find ethically unforgivable for living a life of self-selected obscurity of voluntary ignorant and excuse making for evil and cruelty self-indulgence and harm of the worst kind am I gonna put that aside and am I gonna try to do something positive with you yes or no it's a face to face human to human decision and for that reason I mean one of the questions I get asked obviously is why our comments disabled on this channel if you compare the amount of time you spend if you spend one hour making comments on the internet reading in a public forum whether it's reddit or on YouTube and it may be fifteen minutes here and there that adds up you may think oh I never spend an hour doing comments in the Internet use a stopwatch actually time yourself how much time you're spending talking to strangers do that kind of anonymous typewritten format whether it's on Facebook or YouTube or Twitter many of you watching this video you are wasting many hours a week but it's very likely you're spending more than one hour a week with that kind of typing communication with strangers I would challenge you to stop doing that take that one hour and instead deal with one person who has some potential by telephone by Skype or by face-to-face and as you do that again and again many times it'll lead nowhere you'll spend one to one hour talking to somebody and you'll decide either they don't have it in them to make some pus happen or that you don't have it in you to make slim positive in cooperation that's fine but I promise you taking that one hour to talk to one person on skype by telephone in person it's a much more meaningful way to seek out the basis for real activism then engaging in a hundred hours of anonymous faceless witty banter and comment sessions because that can lead nowhere and when you're doing it I urge you to keep to keep this concept of generosity of spirit in mind because you're not out here to prove that you're smarter than other people and the internet traps people that people lose sight of that they think they're out here to be the smartest or the prettiest or the most popular and you're not all of that is meaningless the only test that matters is whether or not you have the generosity of spirit to cooperate with other people and whether or not you can find the other people who really can cooperate with you and I hate to say it but there's a meaningful sense in which the lives of millions of animals hang on this the quality of life for millions of human beings hangs on this and yes in some abstract sense climate change the future of planet Earth hangs on this so if you've got that one hour to spend I'm asking you to spend it better