False Hope: Vegan Gains, Bonny Rebecca & the Moral Bankruptcy of the Movement.

go on from microcosm to macrocosm we're
talking about intellectual and moral bankruptcy of particular people in the vegan movement and you know we telescope out look at it at a bit of a bigger scale and we talk about the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of veganism as a movement on the whole responding here to impart some of the stupidest things vegan gains has said to me this week I'm gonna talk a little bit about some thoughts I had when watching a video from Kristen leo and when watching some commentary from the indefatigable Madi limb burner and her boyfriend who was known as Mattie Lynn burners boyfriend let's be real does he even have a name I think it's Kyle or some [ __ ] whatever nobody's nobody has ever referred to me as Melissa's boyfriend I'm not gonna okay you know that guy uh Melissa's boyfriend No so hey feather feather in my hypothetical cap they're both Kristen Leo and Maddie or responding to the I don't know controversy of the day which is the fall from grace of bonny Rebecca partly this is being discussed because people actually have originally meaningful things to say about it and let's keep it although in real people people are partly just talking about it because it's an opportunity to sharpen your knives it's an opportunity to dust off that old sense of moral superiority oh yes oh yes hey who wants to sit down and talk about somebody who's accomplished way more in their lives than us and who sets a really high standard for moral conduct and accomplishments and who wants to make a video about someone they have so much respect and admiration for for their intellectual accomplishments of the moral stand they took on an issue or what they've accomplished doing humanitarian work nope who wants who was the heap scorn on bonny Rebecca let the whole world know how a moral superior how morally superior they are for what trite and trivial reasons people are lining up for that and obviously the audience is lining up to hear it too so there's money to be made and telling people things they already want to hear and that's what about eight-tenths of youtube is all about by the way guys just just real briefly on that you I've always said this I'm proud when my videos have an equal number of thumbs up to thumbs down I think that's normally when you're writing the edge of challenging your audience just enough a trait about 80% thumbs down you know maybe stop and reevaluate but I think I think getting a lot of thumbs down is actually really good thing because you're not just telling people something they already want to hear alright so I'll give the link below if you want to see on screen exactly what it was vegan gainsaid and exactly what I said in reply to him and what I assume or even what I hope is the last conversation I ever have of this guy but um you guys already know I was pushing him on the issue of having a meaningful life and he really did not want to reply to that he really didn't want to deal with the question I was talking about having a morally upstanding life I was started with having an intellectually rewarding life moving forward positively and kind of the last dodge or deflection he engaged in was instead Geor an answer about how much money he makes how he makes more money than I deal which is just it's just misdirection it's just not the type of conversation you know do you want to go into real estate you can make a lot more money in real estate than on YouTube but that's now we're talking about you know we were talking about the difference leading a meaningful life in a meaningless one and how to grow older how to grow wiser welcoming older instead of just playing video games and living a kind of self-indulgent life in this kind of thing anyway so he finally did answer the question of what kind of person does he want to be in five to ten years and I was gonna get there by just bragging about how much money he makes and by claiming that playing video games is justified because you can make so much money doing it and this was my reply quote does anyone here think that vegan gains would make less money if he actually followed the advice set out in this video would he receive less in donations if he directly imitated the two examples that in the video of people engaged in humanitarian work with Syrian refugees do you think he'd become a worse person if he started caring both real-world in terms of reading and learning not just humanitarian engagement as opposed to playing video games anyone so there are a lot of funny little ironies built into this I know vegan gains has wanted to talk tough about Islam in the past he's wanted to offer a very harsh criticism of Islam well um you know he could especially from his position of privilege frankly in terms of his level of fame and income from you know sharing his pens in the jet he could have raised money and gone over and got involved and done humanitarian work in you know really anywhere in the Muslim world he could have gone to Afghanistan would have you and he could have started producing much more well-informed deep and profound reflections on you know the cultural effects of Islam and what's wrong with it and the knock-on effects as in people's lives whether it's some people's psychology education gender roles or what-have-you I know he made videos in the past in a really shallow way just heaping scorn on his long go out there live with it see what it does to people and you know try to make a positive difference he could have gotten involved with I mean but you're saying you know he's also heaped scorn on feminism you know you know really shallow way well he could put those two together what about getting involved with women's education in Afghanistan you know ie trying to oppose the tendency of the Taliban and other Muslim extremists their tendency to exclude women from having access to education to actually getting out and fighting for women's equality through education whether in Afghanistan or whatever anywhere in them in the Muslim world what about again if he came onto that I don't think anyone could say that vegan gains would have less public support and less interest if he actually did take on a sincerely humanitarian engagement with the Muslim world Syria happened to be the example we talked about now this takes me to the main topic I want to discuss in this video which is hope and when vegan gains first came on the scene I remember him being interviewed by should buy a huge range of people I remember being interviewed by the amazing atheist on his show that was then called the drunken peasants I remember him being interviewed by happy healthy vegan when vegan gains first achieved a certain level of Fame there was real excitement attached to hope right and the hope was that he was gonna play some kind of positive role in leading the vegan movement and instead what we've all learned with the passage of time and repetition is that there is there is there is no hope he is never gonna do anything positive for anyone as I just discussed with him you know face to face it was just in written form at going back and forth he is never gonna do anything but sit in his ass and live a life devoted to short-term self-indulgence playing video games whatever makes him feel happy in the moment he doesn't even have the level of self-discipline and vision to take filmmaking seriously to become seriously interested in comedy or filmmaking or script writing I started talking to me years and years and years ago he and I first talked when his channel was really small so I already knew not to have that hope I knew he wasn't getting it serious about activism or political leadership but an earlier stage I did wonder if he was gonna get more dressed to me and creative artists probably cuz he has a background in photography I thought once he had some more money and once he could devote all of his time to being creative on YouTube I thought he might get more serious about filmmaking you know actually having proper actors and lighting and scripts and everything but no there's absolutely no reason to hope for anything positive from this guy and just now on this debate with me he's dug himself in and said that he has absolutely no interest in doing anything for anyone of themself and he has no interest even in developing himself into a better person doing anything other than being self-indulgent so I walked this latest video from Kristen leo Kristen leo who has jumped on the bad way of people condemning Bonnie we're back up for leaving veganism according the diet leaving the movement and going back to eating meat Kristen Leo's analysis really focuses on the concept of stress and then you know what's the opposite of stress or what's the alternative relaxation take it easy maybe even not caring indifference and Kristen leo says correctly in a sense but I'm here disagree she says well you know most of these mysterious health problems people are talking about they actually can be attributed to stress so indigestion acne or what-have-you and they can be alleviated by alleviating the the underlying stress this is I think going down a false rabbit hole does anyone believe that eating chicken eggs is the cure for acne and if you did believe that what would be the scientific basis for it but unless you actually believe that acne is caused by a lack of cholesterol on the getting cholesterol from eggs cures acne it's completely surreal does anyone believe that eating fish cures acne or if we get anything else I mean it's it's a little bit ridiculous I think to to cross swords with these X vegans on that level to presume that you can actually treat any of these illnesses or sometimes they're not even illnesses but whatever perceived sources of distress through eating chicken fish or any other kind of animal product however what I thought was interesting was just thinking about the problem in terms of stress and the alleviation of stress and for me on the contrary I think the real issue is hope that's why I linked this to this discussion of a vegan gains um people evaluated the good and the bad if even vegan gains in a framework ultimately of hope hope for something better in the future you know back in the day it was like well yeah he's waving knives around on camera he's waving guns around on camera he's making violent threats he sometimes saying extremely disturbing things politically but there's hope then at some point when the hope goes away you regard all those things quite quite differently you know when there's no hope oh okay so this guy is just a parasite on the vegan movement he's just a plate in the vegan boom he's really just making I hate to say it he is just making doesn't look bad it's not going anywhere not even on a creative level there was a filmmaking not on a level of his personal development or him getting an education moving forward now we start to evaluate all those things differently you look back at it you think well you think what was I thinking to be to be blunt right people endure all kinds of suffering and sorrow and stress in relation to some particular objective to some hope when I moved to Cambodia I think this is true also in level of romantic relationships like you put up with your boyfriend but you're supporting him while he finishes his degree in university or is like things are linked to particular ideas of a career or maybe that you're gonna get pardon have a baby whatever it is you're thinking about some kind of future and then you evaluate what's going on in your relationship differently relative to that hope and then if that hope disappears you look back at all the time spend that relationship very very differently right seeing the reaction of my girlfriend's face here just off camera he knows she knows what I'm talking about maybe a little too well um when I moved to Cambodia I was going to andyour all kinds of stress and danger Cambodians a hell of a hard language to learn I had three white boards so if you don't whiteboard is the opposite of a black board it's with big markers you're and I had three big white boards and they were actually on wheels so you could wheel them around the apartment so wanted to have it in the kitchen or the living room the bedroom those were all the rooms I had in that apartment three rooms I had three big whiteboards set up so I would practice and study Cambodian writing things on the board and then I could see the board rooms eating breakfast the number of hours you put into that I personally put into the level of stress just in dealing with the language in Cambodia I mean I knew one person personally who was robbed at gunpoint on the street the same street I walked down every day and the gun went off the gun was fired guns with gun shots are fired in the air and stuff so a strong armed gunpoint robbery you heard gunshots going off when I was up on the rooftop of my building doing my email that was there was Wi-Fi on the rooftop not in the room so you'd go up to the rooftop you'd hear gunshots going off in the city so I mean some of the danger was not imagined and I didn't earn enough money to take taxis I'd walk everywhere I walked to work with my umbrella in the torrential rain that was real torrential rain where some streets could be under a metre of water if stayed in the main highway it was on an embankment so you'd be a little bit you'd be a few inches off the water will rain pouring down on you and then other day so it'd be the burning heat pouring down you'd have the umbrella up for that too um I injured a lot of stress right stress justified by and linked to hope hope to make the world a better place hope to do you know well I was in a sense doing humanitarian work I was in a sense making a little place I was also doing research I was learning in some ways I was becoming a better person there were positive elements you know in the present tense but there's also the hope and aspiration for the future I never wanted to go back to Canada I didn't want to build a life in Canada I want to build a life in Cambodia in Southeast Asia you know develop that develop that position and then when that hope was crushed when you give up on Cambodia when it's gone you look back on those years your life and think wow what was I doing everything I poured into that and it's all lost so my point is here I do actually think Kristen leo is in a sense wrong in a sense just incorrect looking at these problems and people quitting the vegan movement in terms of stress people quit the vegan movement because they lose the hope that justifies that stress and they lose the hope partly because they're disillusioned with people like vegan gains believe me I saw it happened on a huge scale before with people being disillusioned with during Ryder freely I've seen people dissolution with Kerry Francie oh they have seen people disillusion with Gary Yourofsky you know it really can be disillusionment with leaders it can be also disillusionment with the diet that they believe the diet would cure cancer or the diet would make them thin beautiful would give them perfect skin perfect digestion whether it's shallow or deep people get this solution with the health claims people get a solution with the political program veganism is movement people do get the solution with particularly ders and then when you lose that hope then the stress you engage in ceases to be justified right so and now just as a kind of comedic ending to this video what was the deal with Mattie limb burner and her boyfriend well they came on camera and to Maddie's surprise they did a spontaneous video her boyfriend said that he agreed with bonny Rebecca that he's he if he it would make him feel better this is really a direct quote he said if it would make him feel better he would eat animal products he would eat meat or fish or or eggs so that's I think the ultimate absurdity but that is I mean he's correctly identifying what's going on here nobody even debates or disputes the question would you take a pill of legitimate medicine if it happened to contain animal products and you needed it to live you need to treat a disease I've been in that position repeatedly the most memorable maybe was having to get vitamins for my infant daughter when my daughter was a newborn baby we worked really hard to try to get the vitamins because there were certain vitamins like I think even you're legally required okay you're supposed to provide them to a baby it's required when they're there a newborn and we worked really really hard to try to get a vitamin A this is zero animal products but what we ended up giving her had a treat a tiny tiny amount of vitamin D extracted from sheep's wool it's a byproduct of sheep's wool so it's actually like the duck it's like the sweat that's on the sheep's wool at the time the sheep's wool will shave and they take that off and extract vitamin T we really tried we really went around and asked and a bunch of alternative medicine shops and just normal pharmacists to saying look do you have any of this type of special vitamin primarily it's sold for babies but some adults use this type of vitamin also that doesn't and we couldn't bottom line was okay we need this so the baby is going to eat a trace amount of sheeple extract because we couldn't do any better I've mentioned before also it's it's never been that the animal product was in to saving my life or something but you can have prescription medicine you really need and the capsule has gelatin or even has honey as a sensitive this kind of thing it's not that the honey cures you but it's in the pill and you can't get the honey you can't get the pill without the honey and this kind of thing nobody is debating that right the reality is the were debating are not real cures for real diseases that contain animal products it's people chasing a feeling it's that you think it would make you feel better if you eat fish you think it would make you feel better feed an egg or maybe it's meat or milk whatever is in your case and the very fundamental question is are you living for feeling for feeling good is that what your life is is about or is your life about what doing what's right and doing what's wrong and for me this brings me back to the slave motif that vegan gains is an idiot that vegan gains is morally and intellectually bankrupt because that is the philosophy of vegan gains right is doing whatever you want to do whenever you want to do it and if that's playing video games for three hours a day whatever it is living a life of total self-indulgence that is living a life for feeling well sure sure sure sure well no okay but look this is the other thing it's a figure of speech there is no complete self-indulgence right your self-indulgence can never be complete it's always gonna be err SATs it's all you all okay but you okay so you chose to use eggs and fish but you're not using cocaine but I'm a better event example than cocaine ashes adderall all of these problems be solved by a dural weight-loss focus attention feeling happy adderall solves it all adderall is modern medical sciences perfection of cocaine it's cocaine without the side effects it's a long sustained cocaine like high and it's incredibly addictive and what most people tell you is though you want to write a novel in six months get on adderall you want to get better scores on the IQ test the SAT the L SAT the O the GRE exam get on adderall does adderall make you superhuman or it doesn't make you subhuman okay what is a life of complete indulgence there's no answer there is no complete self-indulgence right but the opposite there is complete devotion to doing the right thing because the right thing to do there is complete devotion to doing the best you can being devoted to make the world a better place to being a better person yourself and part of that is indeed making the commitment hey my life is not just about feeling good it's not just about chasing a feeling it's not about how I feel it's not even just about what I know it's about fundamental questions I've already done wrong