Ethics. Knowing and Feeling.

for me the prospect of ethics relies on
there being some sort of a connection between knowing and feeling I know that leather harms animals destroys the environment and so on and this changes how I feel about it now I had a conversation with a Chinese woman here a few days ago last week and she really had never thought about before what leather is made of or where it comes from she had never thought that buying leather entails killing animals and you know at first her reaction like you sort of don't know if the person is joking and then you realize no sincerely this person is is waking up to this fundamental fact of their life for the first time and they're recognizing that something they've in the past only looked at as a finished product as an item presented to consumers has this history behind it has these difficult ethical questions about you know how its produced and what it means about us is people if we're going to pay for it but leather with you look at it if you smell it if you touch it in a store as a finished product there's nothing disgusting about it there's nothing revolting about it but what I know about leather can change how I feel about leather I can feel revolted to discover you know if I try something on in a store and I don't realize it's made of leather and then I check the label some of you have had that that experience that happens me more often son like wool we need to try something on you're looking at it and then you only figure out that it has some hidden non-speaking ingredients you may really feel revolted you may feel disgusted putting on leather yourself or when you meet a friend and your friend is wearing leather and so on but what I know changes how I feel and that shapes my conduct in my daily life in many many different ways for me you know my engagement with moral and ethical problems it's not purely rational it's not just a academic debating Club or something it's part of how I feel and how I feel really does shape what I do I sat down once in a cafe with a young woman who had just finished law school she just started her career as a lawyer and from the very first time she and I met each other we only met twice from the very first time we met each other there was just a tremendous history between us tremendous physical attraction she talked to me a lot about humanitarian work but at that time I was really more involved in than I am now I'm just a student learning Chinese blah blah blah most you guys know talk about humanitarian work some ethical issues in history and politics about a lot of things that are meaningful and important to me in my life you know what what she was choosing to talk about and we talked a little bit about her experience in law school and her starting you know to be to be a lawyer now at the end of the conversation what she said to me directly and it's the only second time I met up with her she directly propositioned me she asked me if I was going to come back to her hotel room with her Oh oh whatever she she invited me to come back to her hotel room with her for about three hours she specified amount of time and you know the attraction was very real and also in terms of raw intelligence you know my respect for was very real but I did not do that I did not go with her and the reason for me was very simple but it's it's part of this element of how ethics and feeling and so on really connects to the core of my character late in the conversation I then turned to her and asked we had just been talking about something about humanitarian work and helping the poor and the downtrodden under you know conversation that we covered many different endings and turned to her and I just said oh so you know in your legal practice are you planning to address you know some of these issues are you engaged with some of the things we've just been talking about and I respect her honesty but what she said to me was no she had chosen to just go into corporate law and she was just gonna do whatever paid the most money when she said that to me when she explained what her her current and future career was to use a phrase that I got from a from very memorable context and in Buddhism you know I felt cold in my bones it really chilled me to the core and up to that point you know I felt so attracted to her and so interested in her and what have you you know probably if she hadn't said that to me or she had lied if she had just told me that yeah she really cares about helping the poor and downtrodden she was engaged in some kind of humanitarian work or at some some pretensions or aspirations to make the world a better place any kind probably I would have gone to that hotel room with her and who knows theoretically we could still be in contact today theoretically we could be married today I doubt it but you know that that really chilled me in the same sense that I was saying before you know something like wool or leather it doesn't look bad doesn't feel bad doesn't smell bad as a finished product but what you know about it changes how you feel for me that was one of the most stark turning points were just suddenly what I know about someone changes how I feel about them and as they say it doesn't make me a nice guy it doesn't make me a morally good person quite the contrary I really kind of identify openly as someone who cares a great deal about morality and ethics but I'm willing to reflect in the fact that I don't conform to a lot of the social expectations that are placed on me neither here in China nor in Cambodia nor in Canada but on the other hand both on the level of feeling and the level of rational thought about the future I really care about ethics I really you know I've been in the position many times having to quit a job or refuse a job before I was hired when I was offered a job you know refused job to start for ethical reasons and one component of that is just thinking through ethically what's right and what's wrong but another component that also is that chill is the cold in my bones that I felt the fact that I'm actually turned off by in this case you know literally turned off by a lot of these you know to me immoral things when they're when they're offered to me there have been a lot of games played lately in pursuit of Fame notoriety money a lot of drama mongering going on within the vegan scene and I mean you know to some extent I just tolerate it and to some extent also I think you know at least in the beginning people felt that this was a positive thing because the drama and the scandal-mongering was supposed to be indirectly and eventually in pursuit of a larger goal whether you call that saving the planet or helping animals are just promoting veganism itself but the problem is why I'm making this video right now on a practical level I've got to tell you the type of backstabbing the negative aspects of this scandal-mongering behavior they actually are having a negative impact on my ability to organize real world activism right now and they'll be having a negative impact on numerous other people who are not gonna make youtube videos talking about it they're creating an atmosphere of hostility and distrust that's counterproductive not long-term very visibly already I proposed being really me and Jason Posey know together started discussing an event that we wanted to organize in Thailand in December now is this activism in the strictest sense no but it's the first steps towards having real meaningful activism emerge from this mess of you know discordant and dissonant personalities that are brought together by vegan YouTube and a lot of people were really excited about the idea so the idea was in its final form was to have an event in Thailand this December probably going up to and including New Year's Eve because many of the people in volts it that was really when they wanted to go be after Christmas in the days leading up to New Year's Eve and then celebrate New Year's Eve in Thailand and you know it was not gonna be based on lectures it was not going to based on an academic conference it was going to give people the opportunity to see some elephants see some monkeys possibly visit you know Conservation Park for indeed turtles we're going to try to put together a couple of hands-on meaningful experiences like that but otherwise the only events would be to meet other vegans the type of the type of scandal-mongering and backstab me just mean-spirited crude damage that's being done within veganism right now it results in something that could be open and happy and positive and inviting in strangers instead becomes closed it's too bad I still think we've got a lot of potential I still think we've got a lot of talented people we're trying to make something positive happen short term and long term and the ultimate tragedy of this is that short-term thinking tends to resemble evil if you're only thinking short term about your next video but your next 5,000 viewers about your next 5,000 subscribers that's going to prevent you from even thinking as long-term as this December let's organize an event in Thailand let's meet each other and it's definitely going to prevent you from thinking about in the next five years the next 10 years who can I cooperate with who can be my colleague who can really contribute in a meaningful way to this whole saving the planet thing that on some level all of us are committed to people like to disrespect my truth but the fact is that you know my name is I don't know