Jon Venus eats meat because it's natural and has been normal, "for millions of years".

John Venus is someone who's been a
leader in the vegan movement an advocate for veganism here on YouTube for many years we find out today that he's given up on eating a vegan diet he's given up on the vegan movement because of misconceptions he still struggles with about what's natural necessary and normal to put it in different words I would say that he's still really burdened with misconceptions about what the ethical implications of evolution are for how we're living here and now today it's a deep issue it's a real issue it may be something you personally struggled with in the past whoever you are watching the video maybe something you're struggling with now but if not I can really guarantee there were people in your life whether they're X vegans non vegans your grandparents aunts uncles there will be people who struggle with this issue it's deep it's difficult to live with the implications of the simple truth of this issue and it's not something that I think we should dismiss in a kind of shallow catty way as just being an appeal to nature fallacy a logical fallacy is an error in logic or reasoning that makes an argument unreasonable an appeal to nature fallacy is used when somebody argues that their site is correct or good because something is natural or something is bad or incorrect because it is unnatural just because something is natural or found in nature does not mean it is justified or good an example of something natural that is bad is a hurricane a hurricane is a natural phenomenon however that does not mean that they are a good thing discussions about logical fallacies can sometimes be useful but very often there are thought terminating cliche there are cliche people throw into the conversation that then stops either party from really thinking deeply or seriously about what the topic is at hand this is not something that I as a parent as a father uncomfortable with doing I'm not comfortable of this missing you know hundreds of thousands of years or even millions of years of a certain you know eating pattern and I am very familiar with the last 5,000 years of human history I'm not really all that familiar with the last say 5 million years I've never been interested in archeology and physical anthropology on that scale but just in the last 5,000 years you can become profoundly acquainted with how capricious arbitrary and really tragic the implications of evolution are for our species to give one very simple but really moving example iodine deficiency it-it-it it causes Gorder of course but it also causes cretinism in extreme cases and also it shaves off between 10 to 15 IQ points from people who when in the first trimester of pregnancy when they don't get enough iodine from their mother's bodies today in the year 2020 we think about iodine deficiency assume that happens in exotic and far-off parts of the world you may think of Mongolia you may think of landlocked parts of Africa you may think of Pakistan all right people are born mentally [ __ ] and live their whole lives with a cognitive deficiency because of iodine deficiency how is it possible for our species to be so poorly evolved how is it possible for it to be natural and normal for this species of bipedal ape running around in the forests of North Africa to be reliant on seaweed to be reliant on pregnant mothers eating seaweed to bring pregnancy just to prevent their children from being born mentally inadequate in some extreme cases people are left with cretinism more commonly they have these 10 to 15 points shaved off their IQ and that is Eirik coverable for the rest of their lives that will be lost about a third of people in the developing world don't get enough iodine and you know 50 years from now 60 years from now those people as adults will have their capability impaired because we are not iodized in their salt today or providing iodine in other forms we have an evolved dependency on iodine that's irrational and arbitrary and unfair and tragic and with in recorded history it was a problem on a vast scale within Europe to white wealthy people in Europe were born and raised iodine deficient on a massive scale and medical scientists kind of even in the medieval and renaissance era were struggling with this they didn't understand why it was why was it in these landlocked area there were seemingly whole villages of people born mentally incapacitated where the level of intelligence was so much lower than people living on the coast and nobody knew why and nobody knew what to do about it and in fact the earliest time that this was actually noticed was in Switzerland inland where there were these villages of Cretans where there were these villages where nobody got in FIO dine and everybody was running around you know with substantially [ __ ] and these days in some parts of the world you do still come across these same kinds of villages in China a couple of times inland in Gansu Province and Ningxia I came across what they call shag watzmann which is precisely a village of dunces and it is eerie to come across a village where everybody is substantially [ __ ] because they don't get iodine how is it possible it's possible because on a really deep level nature is not some benevolent god or goddess that is set down for us an ideal for how we ought to live our lives nature did not create this world to be our playground and did not create us to be a perfect plaything in that garden if you like alright Nature has been cruel capricious arbitrary indifferent in many ways nature put us into a situation where we couldn't win that's even just looking at the last 5,000 years not going back millions of years of unbelievable suffering so a guy like John Venus who has many advantages in life he's a very good-looking man he has his whole career basically he has just gotten by on his looks he doesn't have that kind of historical knowledge he doesn't have that depth of understanding of human history let alone the way evolution and nature in every sense of the world has interface with human history in those five thousand years a guy like John Venus looks at the world with a really deep assumption that whatever is natural must be necessary and fair and intended for our best intended for our benefit and that's the exact opposite of the truth if you could really just think through and deal with just this one example of course there are hundreds of examples of how unfair it is that human beings should be born needing iodine and needing their pregnant mothers to eat enough iodine during the pregnancy just that we cannot be mentally handicapped for wholly just really let that sink in and think about how unfair that is for a species that evolved in land Locke North Africa yes eating you know of animals that resemble deer 4-legged Carter but we did have a meat-eating diet so it's over just how just what a ridiculous struggle we were put into that way without even thinking through how unfair it is that you know there's this parasite called malaria that all the terrible things we had to endure over a time scale of millions of years then you have to accept also that you're not going to find in that evolutionary record you're not gonna find in the examination of nature and ideal for what we ought to do how we ought to live our lives all right so John Venus has given up on ethical veganism because he resigned himself to this notion that meat-eating is something natural and normal and necessary because of this evolutionary record because of what Heath what what he thinks of nature what nature means to him here and now in our lives I am old enough at 41 that I met and knew people who lived through the Nazi period and those people are not cartoon characters to me you know they're not like caricatures of good or evil most of the people who actually lives through that period had all kinds of mixed and contradictory feelings about the Nazis as they rose and fell and they worked with propaganda and very imperfect sources information I had one friend and his grandparents laughed they did Ulf Hitler they thought Hitler was a complete joke kind of right up to the 11th hour right up to when the news was coming out about how many millions of people were dying and I can understand why still today if you actually read what Hitler wrote it's laughable it's ridiculous and these grandparents of his would stay up at night I'd have to calculate the timezone difference I believe it was on shortwave radio maybe I miss remember but on radio one way or another in Canada they would get broadcasts of the lectures Hitler was giving at that time to these big crowds in German and they would laugh and laugh it was just so ridiculous one crazy crackpot conspiracy theory after another you know blaming the freemasons and saying this is a conspiracy and that it was just so ridiculous that a leader in mainstream politics was speaking you know in this way that from their perspective would not even be respectable if it were some crackpot at the local pub they laughed and laughed and then of course you can imagine after a certain point they had to look back and regret their laughter all right a lot of other people made the wrong call one way or another the Prime Minister of Canada it's on the record as an historical fact that he was a supporter of Adolf Hitler I know he was the democratically elected Prime Minister of Canada and then ended up fighting against Hitler and so on it's ridiculous there were all kinds of people who wanted to think the best or misinterpreted what the signs were and later had to look back with regret that they were wrong you know what you don't hear much about you don't hear from people who initially supported Hitler and then found out the terrible truth and opposed Hitler and then decided later to go back to supporting Hitler anyway that you don't hear about that would take a remarkably evil character not just to initially support Hitler out of ignorance but then to learn the terrible truth oppose it say morally this is bad and wrong and evil and then to change your mind and decide that it's natural normal and necessary or even good the moral gap between vegans and ax vegans is much deeper much wider and much more invidious than the gap between vegans and people have simply eaten meat all their lives that's not that big a deal like the gap between me as a vegan and someone who's just never thought about it that's like the gap between someone who knows how terrible Hitler is during World War two and someone is just living in ignorance somebody doesn't know any of the facts they only vaguely hear something on the news once in a while they don't really know what's up right but when you encounter someone who has consciously and intentionally made the moral compromise that John Venus has made not at if ignorant knowing full well the ethical and ecological car Mises you are dealing with someone Ithaca Lee worse than a Nazi worse than a neo-nazi someone who became a committed and ethical opponent of the Nazis but who later change their mind you