Conversation w a New York Vegan: Languages, Life & Activism.

what up man sir I didn't see nobody
mentioned you were in the hope you've been waiting too long cool man I mean as you know I'm now in France so this is way easier than it would be if it was back on the let me tell you something the more languages you learn there's just one little part of your brain where you store all those so I had a guy walk up to me on the street yesterday he was he was ethnically he looked lotion he was wearing a t-shirt that identified him as lost he was an old guy with his granddaughter and I walked up to him and spoke a few words and lotion and then he started speaking to me in both lotion and French and I'm answering in Chinese you know so it's tough I mean obviously both both German and French you know concurrently yeah and so I'll do like I don't know whatever they they measure your progress and experience points what it's like the first to some minor hours if you were converted to a university kind of thing right but I'll do like 30 minutes of women switch over to the other like there's a good gear in my head that like literally kind of quick so like like the words are just a different sort of canvas and it's just interesting hey maybe it's it maybe it's a talent some people haven't some people don't but you know when I first started studying Chinese I just been in Thailand for about two weeks whatever it was that was when I was in Thailand and durianrider started the whole controversy with me so I've been speaking Thai every day for just whatever it was seven days ten days I don't even know and then when I arrived in China I was lapsing into both Thai and Japanese while trying to learn Chinese and just once in a long while I accidentally say something in Cambodian you know I'm a victim of language education is basically so many layers to it now for you yeah and I mean it's it's funny too because in the past like when I when I learned lotion and thus I had fewer languages relatively speaking I had a feeling of how good I was in lotion once it got up to higher levels and now I don't have any feeling with Chinese at all I so like my mom was in a restaurant when we went and met my mom Beijing me and my so I introduced my girlfriend that my mom basically and you know I on my mother's behalf I said some things to the waitress that seemed completely fluent then after I was like oh okay I can do that now so that's where - the feeling of of what your level is I think I've lost that because of how many languages are studying so obviously you have objective ways to check your level especially when you're living in China everyday but yeah yeah yeah you've uh you've only done European languages though right so English French German yeah well in university I did two years of Arabic you mentioned that in the email right right yeah I actually did one semester of Mandarin my very first semester I did a bunch of languages like my first year first two years the Arabic was a unfortunately very poorly taught I hope they've been true that was like a 13 14 15 years ago by now it was just after I grandpa I had I had a plan to go and study in Yemen but that kind of didn't fell apart exciting times in Yemen let me tell you back then it was little bit more people but obviously now in the Civil War yeah but even before the Civil War was pretty pretty dicey yeah we don't have been addressed in Yemen just because I'm a political science major it's it's the kind of place of it just because I like disasters to be honest disasters weren't gonna compose difference yeah or I guess the three places that were considered to have the purest Arabic were Syria Yemen and Iraq and so I had considered and there I think there was there were articles written I guess back in the mid-2000s about how oh there's so many foreign students going to Syria and so maybe I think by then by then I hadn't I lost some interest in that anyway I graduated from college at the time but uh I considered cereal but now like it's business it's been destroyed pretty much so war still ongoing yeah yeah anyway I mean obviously very very emotional Church so today back when September 11th 2001 happened I had already locate when September 11 2001 happened I was still really choosing between Asia and First Nations languages but which I mean crea Jib way Mohawk Inuit etc you know languages native to Canada but I really had to closed the door on Arabic and politics of the Muslim world but not that long before like had a year or maybe a year earlier or less because I had taking courses and I did study politics of the the Muslim world which is fascinating and even then before September 11th you know it was very obvious that the fate of the world hinged on some of these conflicts and questions some of them philosophical some them pragmatic and what-have-you I mean at that time look I did used to this is really really shallow level but I was looking at you know the use of torture and Saudi Arabia and you know interesting questions but yeah once September look doesn't want to happen I had to sit there and go wow if I had chosen to go into Arabic or if I chose now my whole life would be different right I've been going down that you know that path and that would those would be the issues and you know and instead of course when I went to a place like Cambodia Cambodia was just knitting itself together you know after the end of the war and Laos was a few steps ahead but that was truly post-war rather than pre-war during the war so yeah very different vibe very different opportunities and dangerous yeah I grew up like it happened like one week into my university life and so that kind of shaped how I wound up assembling in Middle Eastern Studies major when I was an undergrad so I actually like prior to that like mid high school through the end of high school I was really into Buddhism and so when I was applying the universities I was like oh let me mention about you know considering becoming it a scholar of things like you study like Pali and Sanskrit I was meeting a Zen Buddhism and Daoism but um Mahayana strands but generally but that didn't that didn't happen I want to I mean didn't kind of I mean as you get imagine how G begun to I've known a couple of black guys mostly african-american I think one was black from Africa who did go into Buddhism heavily and the racism everyday you know sure you know and it's funny too because I've spoken to some white and Asian scholars of Buddhism and at first when I mentioned racism in the Buddhism they're just shocked they think it doesn't exist you throw out just two or three examples like oh yeah right right right right but yeah it would have been it would have been a huge huge issue in your life on the other hand there always has been the potential I mean you see how much ground Islam gained within the United States within black American embarrassment wasn't even with you know very dubious leadership you see oh groups like the five percenter movements Rastafarians ISM there were a lot of new religious movements that gained ground and have always felt like look I mean oh no an ex Buddhist but I'm also next scholar of Buddhism Buddhism really had a lot of positive stuff to offer African Americans in contrast to those other movements like God rest of rest of fairness um you know you can just say some shallow stuff Buddhism has kung fu I mean kung fu is appealing a lot but I just say I mean I think like definitely African Americans would be interested in going to a Buddhist community center that teachers come foo and then also has this philosophy that there is no soul and all this suffering you know I can I can see that catching on it's as I say you know raster fairness a missus competition so some people are gonna offer for each should you look back on on Buddhism as the the road you didn't travel a chapter as well as an echo into a lot of the ways I see things I'm not a blue so I'm just a nice basically main thing I probably got out of it especially coming into it as in my teenage years is uh just some of the meditation techniques to have a calm mind have a doctrine my opponents basically yeah just wondering I mean you know for me you know how politically I approach veganism but in the same way like within Buddhism I felt like if this isn't linked to humanitarian work or trying to make the world better this is some positive goal we're working towards all we're doing is raising money so that this class of Buddhist monks almost none of whom have any legitimacy 99% of two of them can live in you know kind of privilege not less so that was a lot of what I saw happening in Buddhism and you really develop Lotus if you talk to them privately that'll agree with you and get different kind of reactions to that but yeah obviously I'm not saying that old religion or everything in life has to be linked to humanitarian work or is it well if it's not legit in terms of humanitarian work and it's not legit in terms of scholarship or something else you know scholarship research real Buddhist philosophy in that strict sense then what are we doing here guys cuz anybody can eat rice noodles anybody can put on a robe and eat rice noodles and this religion starts to look more and more like Catholicism you know I mean so yeah and we're cool um have you ever she'd been to China okay well I mean you know it's it's an open door to you even certainly in contrast to both you know Europe and Africa I mean so give an exam but girlfriends here sitting next to me which is off-camera you know there are things I find inspiring about Chinese culture just the way people work together you know white people I've talked about this with Asians white people we can take Scotland as an example Scot Scottish people tend to be very tenacious tend to hate their own parents if they work hard to please their parents it tends to be with a sense of resentment and competition like a Scottish family or most white families I knew in in Canada you had you know different brothers within the family hated each other and competed with each other and that's really absent in Chinese society and instead just the way people work together of course they can work together new terrible things and they can work together to commit murderer you know atrocities their crimes against you may but you know seeing the way people cooperate in Chinese culture is a kind of long-term low-level inspiration to me and you know it's a contrast to what goes on even in veganism as a movement so when I was traveling in both Cuba and and Donna West Africa right in terms of like it's kind of not on Cuba there is the ideology of socialism that pervades everything but beyond that it's like a kind of a communitarian spirit that goes on it was like the whole country's a family and because I'm black like they everyone thought I was Cuban whereas like they assumed like the European all the white people have look another tourist they will speak to me Spanish person like oh this is Newton but um but in any case yeah it's like um there's a kind of unspoken and very easy sense in which people can just kind of cooperate on something simple when I was in Ghana there was an armed robbery experienced and when in the place I was staying with I was staying at when we my mother and my sister had come to visit me when I was studying there the middle of my that my time there and I guess they'd be you know they'd follow people from the airport to wherever the armed robbers at the time and there a crowd well as thing was a very safe city safer than New York it's just that there would be people probably with unloaded pistols and shotguns and chase people from their cell phones at the time I was a big group but when that happened like like nearly there after like the whole community like kind of like almost Anna you upped it into a march like and you know that during that evening and the other way we're looking for people looking for who did it and everyone was coming out and everyone was offering support from just all over people I hadn't known even just all of that neighborhood so you know there's a there's a easy sense of solidarity that you find there too that she is absent in the place like New York something my father said my father is now deceased which is interesting he didn't say that many wise things but he said that he felt that Japanese culture was always really well-suited to socialism and communism whereas Chinese culture was inherently very you know an interesting comment and my father knew Chinese culture better than Javanese culture but it is definitely an interesting time in China that way because they have those ideals of communism and you still meet people who believe in them and a lot of them are tempted by Christianity the temperature can convert or change for the same reasons like they find the same ideals within the Christian you know grab-bag that they find within socialism or communism and you know in a lot of ways I mean Chinese culture is all about wealth status money my money cut anyone's throat to make money etc etc and I'm sorry I'm sorry I mean I'm not I'm really not stereotyping I live my life in the minority of people who reject those values by and large you know people become university professors and scholars and historians and care about the stuff they're not the people who live that way but nevertheless I mean I've lived in Hong Kong as well as Taiwan and you name these various presidential ah but that is really strong kind of like more capitalist than capitalism you know what I mean and money over everything so yeah but at the same time there's this kind of ghost of communism haunting everything and you know I defy you anyone can do this you can even search think within YouTube to find these videos but look for videos with the current leadership of the Communist Party actually defines communism like what is communism is supposed to mean the answers are very strange you know so it's question for the future everyone who watched my channel knows I'm not pro communist but nevertheless I can sympathize with the people who want to believe for me a large part of my you know adolescence my teenagers was overcoming the impulse to want to believe cool yeah you want it there speaking of like political veganism I've gotten more involved I guess in the past past half year in some of the movements in New York there was a lot that the City Council just passed is called central 1233 to just basically banned animals in circuses in the five boroughs interesting that was a so I got involved some phone banking for that before it passed so there's there's some motion and that wasn't had to keep me society of the us near chapter that was until the meeting whatever doing that the next thing I think next big thing is probably guessed carriage horses out of Central Park which the the current mayor had been trying eat yeah here campaigned upon doing that when he before he was inaugurated in 2014 but they couldn't figure out something they the carriage industry sort of fought back and they have in Central Park there are cat horse carriages mostly in the lower part of the park posted in Midtown and then they're also the pedal woody crawling petal trolleys are right Mitchell traditional human drawn carriages right yeah and so there was back then there was some kind of I sort of field that they wanted to make that the rickshaw and riders didn't accept about big they could have northern half of the part but they could have like the northern quarter of the park and in the horse carriages about the Senate but it didn't make any sense and that didn't it fell apart so that's probably the next big thing that's gonna be happening without liability on contain a campaign around yeah just say about New York I think that the main stroke will be visibility really really really short anecdote because I do want to hear what your experience has been lately in your activism I once put a question on the internet and I got a ton of responses I was when I was still with my ex-wife and we were looking at where we should move we're considering moving to various cities in the u.s. I said well what really is the best city to be vegan and at first there were a whole bunch of responses but the one that really won as people kind of thought about it the conversation went on and response to this question was New York City and they said look places like Portland Oregon the veganism may be more visible because the total population is small but really New York City is where the action is whether it's in terms of activism or you know the potential but I don't think anyone has ever tried to even come with an estimate how many vegans are in New York City it could be five thousand it could be ten thousand but when you think about it I mean you know I'm not gonna on the basis of zero information you're not gonna guess that it's way more than that but any city if you've got ten thousand people within a subway ride of each other there's got to be some some real potential there right all right that's all I'd say sorry so continue I mean New York City is eight and a half million people the the largest meetup groups of vegans north of Madrid EMC in the past I've been doing it for 18 years now but in the past one year I'd say that the amount of vegan type of events has multiplied like fivefold this is like I think there's been sort of a plateau for a while then I'll sort of awesome that's kind of exploded in terms of sort of the interest in it there's like there's a vegan block party in the Upper West Side like about a month and a half ago there's this veg fest year that there's the green fest which largely affects past basically there's gonna be the first ever vegetarian food and drink festival in Randall's Island which is like all that like there's number brands - like this island in the East River where all the big festivals will apparent like the big music festivals Governors Ball things like what do you call it so much SummerSlam things like that so that's a big deal to have an event like that vegan speed-dating they brought that to New York just in this inside of this year in 2017 there's a lot of interesting developments you know kind of suggesting a rising interest of it's interesting too I mean I also get email from long-term vegans even it for 18 years I just got some messages today from Aaron Janice Aaron Janice has a few videos with over a million views so she's as big as vegan vegan propaganda on YouTube guess I'm not using propaganda negative sense but I do think her videos are Pro vegan probably that's what they're or you call them infotainment or whatever but you know it's interesting because I mean some people get lazy some people get complacent but most of the people I hear from you know is that imp there's that insatiable desire to do more it's not enough you know and whether it's the sense of the change they were looking for in the world is not happening or the friends they wanted to have where they thought you know where they thought the movement would take them in terms of their social circle or whatever it is yeah it's interesting I mean I guess what I'm trying to say is inertia you know it becomes an inspiration for people I think who are who are vegan long term and then they're looking around for you know new hammers and new nails new tools and new methods have you been involved with any organizations the capital o have you been involved with you're right action everywhere we're just talking about recently or any other any other you know vegan or peda for that matter any other vegan organization that has uh has an acronym no well not well I think the most I've done for an organization well like right now the answer's no basically but I've worked with B main society I've worked with the I volunteered for the both weekends of the New York City vegetarian food festival so I worked with old full organizers and everything that they were doing that was just this past May so I mean like I'm looking for more things that been aligned with sort of how I what do I think is practical you think about do you think about starting your own your own group or your own movement I mean it's a time commitment like like a Harlem uptown because I had to like draft that yeah I thought about that you know something like in this in this part of Manhattan that might that might be in the works you know I had people writing to me that they were so disappointed me after I made a video that I think it's a really positive video it's my manifesto video so I have a playlist for it I have a video what does it call my vegan manifesto do you know the title the video okay I even forgot to tell the video now but that video I had translated into nine languages but it's interesting one of the responses I got to that video from many people was well it was in a sense both positive and negative people wrote in to me and they were disappointed because they thought after I made that video like the next day I was gonna incorporate a foundation and start a vegan community like in the most literal sense of like bricks and mortar like buildings with people living in the minute you know I mean because that video I'm stating my kind of long term aspirations and I mean that's it's touching in a sense right like they saw that video one thought like within weeks or something there be something rolling it's like I I don't even know who is I mean maybe it's worth reflecting I mean there probably are some famous high-profile vegans who could make that happen whether Hollywood stars or millionaires or whatever yeah that's for sure yeah so this the title the video is actually on community the playlist says on community of being a manifesto and it's been traveling a bush Ramanujan but yeah that still is my manifesto that still is saying you know what I want to say we've been here looking at we were talking about daycare we're talking what retirement homes a lot because we're here meeting family my daughter's here max wife is here my ex-wife is in a situation here in France where the government forces my child to eat meat at school legally so every single vegan in France has a conflict with the school board and then one more but legally it's required for your children to eat meat at lunch in front so what you know what you gonna do in that scenario um so you know the park when you think about okay vegan schools vegan day care cuz daycares a huge problem right if you could kids being handed you know non vegan food they don't know the difference to the two young or whatever or even if they do know the difference but you expect a three-year-old or something to stand up on point of principle and refuse to eat ice cream it's asking a lot from a three-year-old or a toddler or something right and yeah also you know talking about retirement homes in old age because we're talking about relatives who are in that category and so on so all that stuff I said in that video it still haunts me it's not my objective you know what what do you think I'm gonna do you know I'm you know and when I made that video was unemployed now I earn what like three hundred dollars a month yeah forget us that's what it is you know to me living in living in China so I have a beautiful wonderful life in so many ways but it's touching people really thought that just because I expressed the initiative and the vision that I could make this happen they were disappointed that hadn't already made it happen but I mean in your case you're 18 years in I sorry I don't know your age but you look pretty young and well preserved you've probably got another 30 years minimum looking at mean you know that's that's we all go to thank I was I was talking to a vegan activist here vegan activist who supports me on patreon and she was so she's a couple years younger than I think she said she was 32 and she was talking about her plans for when she's 55 life is long well right and that's just the suffocating reality of you know having responsibilities with responsibilities to your kids or your grandparents or to your discipline your job whatever it is man it will a great great mu on it's past 11:00 p.m. now so I gotta I gotta hit the sack hearing your voice for the first time I know you've been a long time you know supporter and and view or what have you and I say this to a lot of people but I do mean it I hope I still know you five years from now future of the movement is long I don't know what you're gonna be doing I mean you know obviously everyone ends up in New York sooner or later you know it's um at some point I'm gonna set foot in New York City but one way or another I hope I hope we still know each other even if there's no possibility of really cooperating does not maybe in Canada or China or what have you you know there are talent is scarce never forget and within veganism you know it's fractious and fragmentary and so many people are eccentrics are verging on you insane anyone I meet is basically talented educated self discipline I view you as a precious resource okay great talk you have a good night