Veganism: "Getting Attention" vs. the Mechanics of the Movement.
06 April 2017 [link youtube]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
I can recognize that a lot of their
protests a lot of their political movements have been just trying to get attention and there's a terrible hollowness to that even when you really sympathize with the cause and what does it draw attention to it simply draws attention the fact there is a problem and I think this is a classic case of the cart before the horse the chicken versus the egg people tend to engage in these protests in these attention-getting behaviors at a stage when all they want to do is scream from the rooftops scream in the face of public and difference there is a problem and I think implicitly they assume if more people knew simply by knowing simplify getting the attention the government would solve the problem or ordinary people would rise up out of the seasons of the problem and the reality is that's not when you should engage in protest that's not what you gauge in these these kinds of agitprop public education outreach they're in various forms of outreach and publication behavior I think the reality is you only take that step when you're not drawing attention to the problem but when you're drawing attention to the solution this video is about the contrast between getting attention and building a meaningful movement we're talking about the vegan movement the future the vegan movement this really builds on the video uploaded earlier today case you can guess the Sun is now set recording it's quite a few hours later put in the same day in that earlier video I discussed the fact that there is horrid social science research inquiring into the question of how effective or how ineffective it may be to simply hand out pamphlets to people if you're trying to promote an idea that says new and unfamiliar and challenging to people's values and received opinions as veganism right handing out pamphlets for veganism is not the same thing as handing out pamphlets for a new brand of shampoo you're not really asking people to sacrifice anything to try a new brand of shampoo they're already buying shampoo and you're just trying to get them interested constructing something slightly different that might be a little bit better or might be a little bit cheaper or might be better for their health whatever your sales pitch is for the shampoo you're promoting right veganism is very fundamentally different that you're asking people to read this pamphlet and then look at their own grandparents and say you were wrong everything you taught me was wrong everything you taught me about what being healthy means grandpa was wrong and for most of us that's true a tiny percentage of vegans alive today had vegan grandparents most of us grew up with our grandparents really trying to instill in us values about how we treat animals but how we treat human beings and indeed about our diet and health that we now have to recognize as wrong both in the sense of being incorrect misleading but ill informed bad girl and morally wrong immoral right that's that's a big turning point for my personal lives and this channel other many many videos talking about the agony of activism so to speak right but this is not the kind of turning point people often make in response to a pamphlet whereas trying a new brand of shampoo maybe if there's been a huge amount of social science research into how effective Pam floating is and promoting new products there are all kinds of industries are interested in answering that question and measuring that outcome because they're spending money trying to make money handing out pamphlets right so I've already provide an article inquiring into the hard science the hard factual basis for whether or not any okay amplitudes waste of time I'm going to kick off this video really is a segue into this topic but just appealing to your common sense for a minute here if I'm giving you a pamphlet for a live music event for a festival for a concert let's say a rapper is coming to town Lil B is coming to Halifax low B is coming to Vancouver okay Victoria let's a smaller town ok if you take that pamphlet what kind of person is going to respond positively to that pamphlet and make the decision which is a relatively trivial casual decision to spend some time and money coming up to hear a lot of music event who is going to pick up that pamphlet and say oh little B I've never heard of them I've never heard of this artist before what why should i come this comment that person is not going to even make the commitment although trivial to go and hear this live act right somebody gets the pamphlet and looks at it says rap music what's rap music or look at that one says Lil B sorry is that a country musician who what kind of music is you play this is this dance hall is this reggae a simple someone who is at that level of totally lacking familiarity with the concept of what you're presenting them with in a sense that pamphlet is a wasted pamphlet now somebody else might take the pamphlet and immediately they see the name and they think of a song they already have something associated with it in their mind that may be positive may be negative oh yeah I've heard this guy before I've heard of this guy I've heard his music I know what kind of genre he thinks I know what kind of crowd is going to be there I know socially what kind of seen this is going to be all right that person when you give them the pamphlet they may or may not get curious but at least it's an option than my future 20 on Saturday I might be interested in so maybe there's a little bit in the same way when we're talking about the effectiveness of pamphlet in education outreach in my former video earlier today I talked about the fact that an incredibly small percentage of the people who tuned to give Gant pamphlets are going to react positively but it's also true that all the people who react positively a very very small percentage of the decision is going to be made by that pamphlet right if you look at any major life decision religious groups hand out pamphlets they convert to this religion it's both the case that a very very small percentage of people they get pamphlet still make that decision but all the people who do do you really think the pamphlet was decisive is you really think the painful with ninety percent of the information that went into making that decision I think they took that pamphlet and then did a lot of soul searching God's what starts the information talked to some of their friends and relatives whatever the process is and again that's real social science research whether you do it under anthropology or political science you can talk to people to join cults or join new religions people who convert and D convert and what was the process that went into making the decision a pamphlet might be part of the process but I think in every single case it's a small part haha and III did I knew one guy who became vegetarian not vegan because he was handed a pamphlet and read it but still I do think there's there's a lot more to that and you sit downs are some of that all kinds of things come out their childhood experiences concerns they'd had long before they'd seen that pamphlet and things they looked into and read about after they got to pamphlet this is this is human reality okay getting attention is not a bad thing in itself I think the problem is that we're looking at so many social movements or aspiring social movements and veganism we're getting attention has become the entire focus and purpose of the group the group is designed for and spends all their time and energy just trying to get attention and in some cases because of that research this now right about is fair a bit in some cases I do think that the groups are doing that because they they sincerely believe that all it takes is getting someone's attention all it takes is handing them a pathway to change their lives forever and that's a kind of missionary zeal that's i mean you know i'm not saying this to hate on them in some ways that's kind of sweet and touching that they really believe that if only these people knew what I know if only they found out about veganism from somebody handing them a pamphlet explaining these these basic facts then they would change their whole lives forever in an instant in a heartbeat you know that's that is one element of it I do think there's a more cynical element of people who are chasing Fame and chasing money and you know money is not evil but they're thinking if only we could get on the news then the whole bunch of donations would come in and definitely I mean even again you look at a group like direct action everywhere why is it that they so desperately wants to be on the TV news whether it's good or bad is it a desire for fame is it a desire for notoriety do they think that by getting arrested feel what what good is going to come out of that being on the TV news for 30 or is it getting donations some of the people some as I say really sincerely believe that all it takes is getting someone's attention like appearing on the news giving them a pamphlet to spark that radical ethical change lifestyle change and have someone converts veganism so there is something that going on it's not all famewhoring and I say also you know I'm not perfect we talking about how ineffective pamphlets are I'm now putting time and money into creating a storybook above these of storybooks for children a book that parents can sit down and read to kids now in the same way that I've just talked you through who can really respond positive that pamphlet only somebody who has some some prior positive Association they see the pamphlet they see the name of the artist they know the music or they know something about the music they've heard it they've heard of it in the same way I think you can really say my storybook I put a lot of effort I wrote it in Chinese translating to English other people translated in German and Russian could be a great project now got an artist unlock we're going to illustrate this and publish it okay even I it's going to be beautiful already the story is beautiful the illustrator does great work I've posted her Instagram before Scott drawings out okay but I think it's still is susceptible the same criticism if you show that storybook someone if you read it to someone a child or an adult or what have you it can only really have a positive outcome for someone who already has some kind of positive associations some kind of prior knowledge or just some prior reason to be curious where they think Oh veganism I want to know more about that you give someone the pamphlet for a rock concert for a hip-hop concert Oh little bee I want to hear more of his stuff I've heard some of the songs I wanted to or I want to know what one of us cause or whatever else is going to show up maybe if you're addressing the other people are going to be their doctors the music whatever the reason is there has to be already some sincere engagement that leads to curiosity here he leads to inquiry the inquiry leads ultimately to action to some kind of engagement one make the world a better place one to want to change your own life and I've mentioned this before so my father who's now deceased haven't yet made a video talking about that but you know one of the very few I think original ideas my father tried to impress on me was the difference between learning and attitude and an attitude can include just appreciation for something appreciation for some types as opposed to learning facts factual learning and my father pointed out you have huge government projects public education projects and museums costing millions of dollars where sometimes the only message they're trying to get across is like this period of history exists these people exist like the government wants to appreciate there used to be native people who lived here and now they're extinct and this is who they were and this is you know they didn't just live in a tent they lived in a they lived in these kinds of buildings there weren't just 10 or 20 of them this is the total population this is you know home this is the story of how they disappeared and face the earth most people i mean again the obviously i'm alluding to real examples here where governments are trying to kind of do right by people have been exterminated by european colonialism more or other colonialism missile he is not European colonialism as the case may be where they know people are going to come and see this or they're going to get this message through propaganda through public education through museum programs or what-have-you Museum outrage and the only thing they're really going to walk away with is a vague appreciation that these historical events happen at all that these people exist is 0 and a tiny minority their audience is going to have a curiosity the engagement of the interest to really dig into the facts oh what century did that happen Oh what period is that artifact from hope there's no point in designing your message or delivering your message in a way that presumes your audience is populated by specialists you can imagine this is a huge problem with some like a music project or a public education project because most the experts you're employing our career academics and they're used to going to an academic conference where they present their findings to a tiny tiny audience of people who are specialized interest saying no that's not what we're doing here we have to learn how to present this history to an audience that's completely ignorant and completely indifferent right so you see what I mentioned this this is like presenting a pamphlet to someone who's never even heard of veganism presenting a pamphlet of someone who's never even heard of will be they've never even heard of rap music but these are the kinds of questions we we get into okay um so getting attention in and of itself is not evil however I do see the extent to which it seems to warp the standards and practices of many of the aspiring leaders in the vegan movement put it that way direct action everywhere I see much of what they have done in the past as really being warped by a mad desire to get coverage on TV and they didn't care if the coverage was good or bad positive or negative and they proudly would post you know clips oh we got on channel 7 news and you know the fact that the news broadcaster is saying a bunch of idiots stood up in a whole foods market and you know weeping and screaming protest to the fact that whole foods is selling turkeys on Thanksgiving just like they did last Thanksgiving just if your next Thanksgiving you know it's kind of theatrical highly emotional you know disruptive protests the there's no interest in what the reception is by the channel what the perception the audience is they run out onto the field at a baseball game and there hold off the field in 30 seconds they just want the attention is so it's interesting I don't think seeking attention is is negative in and of itself but it is interesting to me how that can have a kind of corrosive effect and what your whole organization is doing and one of the corrosive effects is simply that it forces you into short-term thinking chasing headlines instead of building a meaningful movement worrying about meaningful engagement public education outreach and even your finances even building trust with your donors where they're giving you money and they really understand what kind of outcomes that money is having because ultimately none of these foundations can operate within money none of them live on air and water alone lifestyle activism of many many videos now most of more than a year ago I don't think it's evil to put on a bikini if you look beautiful and there's anything wrong with capitalizing on your beauty but again across the board we've seen mixed messages within veganism that mixed you know lifestyle beauty weight loss etc and really came up that well they basically their program got warped to use the same term it was using before there they went into a sort of dead ended and fruitless pursuit of vanity and you know instagram followers and what have you and I think I mean this is almost a universal rule at this point I noticed dr. mcdougall a condom guys first name the starch the starch based solution guy you know put the starch solution that MacDougall john mcdougall he he tried to get a he tried to get a beauty and lifestyle magazine going I mean obvious he was only one of the people in the board directors it wasn't it wasn't you know editor and chief or anything we could see some funny funny outliers with that you can see some funny examples where you know legit vegan activists or medical professionals decide they're going to try to do something with bikinis and beaches and and people living the good life and then you look at at the end and say and what did this magazine accomplish she took donors money and print of this magazine and one other what are the real outcomes there may be worse maybe less than anything healthy the path looks right and appointed for several times in in skype conversations or the vegans I've mentioned them how enormous Pettis budget is for the magazine people difficult reitman animals and when you look at their justification their budget publishing that magazine is a huge part of it they have a multi-million dollar magazine feta and Assam have you ever seen the magazine look have you seen it around have you seen it in a dentist's office have you seen it at a friends apartments because like most of their vegan our other friends how are you getting on I mean like have you ever seen this magazine sitting around and their answer is no and then I asked them well look if I gave you just three million dollars a year what do you think you could put to get there so again i mean i'm using example some are headline-grabbing and some i mean i guess these magazines whether it's McDougal's magazine or pet is magazine i guess the point is to sit there on a grocery store shelf but the real outcomes are dubious to get lifestyle activism the reason why people get trapped in it i do think is this issue of getting attention as soon as your organization whether that's five people making a social media presence after lifestyle activism or 50 people making a magazine review i think as soon as you're chasing that short-term thrill of we got 10,000 thumbs up on this whatever whether it's instagram post or a video what have you i think that becomes profoundly distorted and maybe you did start off with the mixed message where you say okay we're going to we're going to promote ethical veganism and a certain kind of diet and you're going to put together this total package but the question of what actually gets rewarded what actually gets attention if with your purpose is to get mentioned whether you're conscious of it or not you may be measuring short-term success in terms of attention I think again almost universally I can't think of any example of a hybrid you know lifestyle activism approach that has been successful or that is even stayed on topic they've all really quickly kind of straight away from their original purpose and disintegrated and may I guess you know the ultimate example of this is Petitte so people with ethical treatment of animals in the last I did an hour long video with mod vegan and we talked a lot about Petta but the main purposes it's a review of the the final book from Gary Franchione a it refused to pronounce his name Francie owned by the way it's a terrible as resolution I'm half this rounded front coa but don't come on come on bro I'm a member of the club of people who have names that are hard to pronounce but come on Francie ohne it's not Francie own but I digress anyway in that hour long video with mod vegan will you talk a lot about fed up and you know their actions we have to give the pet accredit for but we forget and we forget partly because they had this mix lifestyle I could have approached a lot of their stuff has been women in bikinis it's been you know these sexy photos and so on and they'll got they got attention I think they also destroyed Pettis credibility in the movement to a large extent to instead to which most of us just don't think about it I don't I mean I just say I don't hate pornography I don't hate a bikini models I really don't but when you're talking about in your mind some oh yeah but you know pedda did this other project that was really significant they did this other thing feel like oh yeah right but you really gotta dig you really forget you forget about things you can give them credit for they have this enormous budget and what you see maybe what you see is not what you get but what you see is the attention-seeking short-term thinking headline-grabbing activities it does indeed include you know bikinis and half-naked women saying they'd rather be naked than wear fur you guys probably remember those campaigns and that's become what we think of when we think of petta i don't know if they'll ever dig themselves out of a hole in that all that women it naked women in the streets covered with fake blood it is what it is I'm saying this load the humility I'm not going to tell you petta has nothing to offer the future of veganism they have such a huge budget in many ways they still have a lot to offer it's still a lot we're thinking about but again I can't think of any exception of the rule we can look at that mixture of lifestyle activism and real advocacy and call it a success and I think this is the reason why is the short term attention-getting behavior okay so look I'm challenging myself here by now using a couple of examples where I really do sympathize with the cause of all I simple there's a lot with the struggles of First Nations people in Canada First Nations AKA american indians AKA aboriginal or indigenous people in canada decree the egyptian Mohawks etc etc um I don't you sympathize that a lot I decided at one point to devote the rest of my life to working on language education and language extinction issues and I enrolled at First Nations University and started learning Korean a jib way native languages you can ok since I assume this is a lot however I can recognize that a lot of their protests a lot of their political movements have been just trying to get attention and there's a terrible hollowness to that even when you really sympathize with the cause because you see people are sticking the next out and then be doing great as agitprop agitation and propaganda I've been to protest that were beautiful and I had native musicians playing the drums and chanting and you know they do get on TV news whatever the particular cause maybe at the time of attendance and protest like that and it can be beautiful and moving and it seems meaningful but once they've got the attention what can you do with it very often the only message that gets across is first nations are still unhappy there so Clark Davis so far testing something and to give another so that that's an issue that has tremendous longevity built into it most people are committed to First Nations politics can't quit some of them if they do it as a job that can never get any other job they're locked in as activists for life at other people they're simply born with that racial identity in Canada and they're attached to those politics like they have they have no choice even if they might like to move on and that's a big difference from veganism it's a big different in the movements so the second example is want to kick out here why I sympathize i've seen many many different protest movements in canada and europe and elsewhere on the question of tuition fees rising tuition fees and whether or not the government should intervene and how you should actually regulate the amount that university students have to pay for tuition so I sympathize tremendously and that's the opposite in this respect one of the problems that movement is that most people are only interested for a couple of years and then they lose interest she have a constantly shifting and unsteady group of supporters right people are interested for a little while and they lose interest in move on ah I've seen some brilliant attempts at protests and simply organizing a movement under both headings First Nations and lower tuition fees or fighting against increasing tuition fees there have been some brilliant and inspiring examples is one example from England where I remember this guy giving the interview and thought wow he's a really rare example of a guy's got his head screwed on straight he's got some great ideas but I can only say that those movements succeeded in getting attention and what does it draw attention to it simply draws attention the fact there is a problem and I think this is a classic case of the cart before the horse the chicken versus the egg people tend to engage in these protests in these attention-getting behaviors at a stage when all they want to do is scream from the rooftops scream in the face of public indifference there is a problem and implicitly they assume if more people knew simply by knowing simplify getting the attention the government would solve the problem or ordinary people would rise up out of their seats and solve the problem and the reality is that's not when you should engage in protest that's not what you gauge in these these kinds of agitprop public education outreach they're in various forms of outreach and publication behavior I think the reality is you only take that step when you're not drawing attention to the problem but when you're drawing attention to the solution all right and when you have a solution it disciplines the whole group they completely fundamentally different way all right if you just have a bunch of students who want to complain the tuition is too high that's an amorphous and undefined group if you have a group of students whose okay this is our solution here's our solution we want to switch tuition to be a percentage of your income after you graduate so after you scituate you're going to pay five percent of your income to the University every year until you've paid back the amount of tuition so if you graduate from university and you become a poet maybe a very low salary but five percent of that is going back and maybe it takes you 50 years to pay back your tuition fee but that's fine if you finish University and you become a lawyer even a lot of money five percent very rapidly maybe you pay back situation the vast majority of lawyers in Canada earned shockingly little money spent away it's a bad example lawyers and a lot less money in Canada than you might think they do especially for the first 10 years of the career by the way that's another story okay so that's the plan now i'm not talking about protesting the problem I'm talking about protesting for a solution not against the problem before solution and now how much things are going to happen now instead of having a totally undefined group of students some of them are left-wing some of them are right-wing they're just they're just the only thing they have in common is that they're discontent about tuition be too high now you're actually putting together group of students who have to ask themselves those challenging questions is this the solution is this the plan we're going to propose and now you have a plan that you can take to Parliament's to Senate the Congress wherever you live you can take the political system you can take to the political parties you can take to the university chancellor and say look we're not trying to take away money from you we're not trying to bankrupt the university what we want is for the government to enable a different style of payment plan and the university is still going to make money and it's still going to flourish and it's still going to be academic freedom but this is going to enable students to make more diverse career choices after they finish University because they're not facing crushing student debt the minute they stopped attending class which in Canada is our system by the way the minute you stop attending class you have to pay back your student loans and it is not as a percentage of your income it's an absolute amount of money I assume in America it's even worse I don't really know I'm not American um and again with First Nations it's easy you could have a totally amorphous broad-based group when you're protesting just for the problem against the probably just try to get attention for the problem when you have a particular solution Sookie this is our plan this is our plan for how we want to solve whether it's a land ownership issue or a water quality issue there are ton of those of the first nations just getting access to drain water or how the education system first nations or doesn't funded or you want to reform corruption within First Nations government this is the plan we're going to propose and we're going to protest for now who's with me and this is the last thing I want to say in this video the greatest irony is that veganism really is a solution not a problem and yet I think we haven't taken advantage of this what I see across the board are protests against fur milk meat you name it protesting again I can sympathize emotionally protest that want to scream from the rooftops scream in the face of public and difference about our terrible a given situation in but the reality is we need to move forward into organizing a meaningful movement that is not designed to get attention I think that works everything you're doing in the movement as with all these examples I've given you need to move forward to being a movement that is argued that is arguing for and working for the solution and is not defined in terms of the problem and it's not defined in terms of mere of merely attracting public attention to the problem again I'm not hitting on people for doing it I think that for many of us the turning point is when we realize that drawing someone's attention to this for the vast majority of people is just as meaningless as giving them a pamphlet for type of music they've never heard of before they're not going to turn that corner even for something as trivial as going to hear a concert for type of music in a musician that they it just means nothing ok and the type of personal sacrifice commitment engagement and again even cultural change looking back at your own grandparents looking back at the traditions at your own family in your own religion your own culture and suddenly seeing that as 10,000 years of error that's a that's a huge hurdle and what all of us need to do I think first and foremost is make better use of the human resources we've got of the people who have already gone over that hurdle and again start promoting the system as a solution stop designing movements and outreach campaigns and protests that are merely about drawing attention to the problem if you're vegan it's easy to lose sight of how completely meaningless that is to ninety-five percent of the population when you put that pamphlet in their face
protests a lot of their political movements have been just trying to get attention and there's a terrible hollowness to that even when you really sympathize with the cause and what does it draw attention to it simply draws attention the fact there is a problem and I think this is a classic case of the cart before the horse the chicken versus the egg people tend to engage in these protests in these attention-getting behaviors at a stage when all they want to do is scream from the rooftops scream in the face of public and difference there is a problem and I think implicitly they assume if more people knew simply by knowing simplify getting the attention the government would solve the problem or ordinary people would rise up out of the seasons of the problem and the reality is that's not when you should engage in protest that's not what you gauge in these these kinds of agitprop public education outreach they're in various forms of outreach and publication behavior I think the reality is you only take that step when you're not drawing attention to the problem but when you're drawing attention to the solution this video is about the contrast between getting attention and building a meaningful movement we're talking about the vegan movement the future the vegan movement this really builds on the video uploaded earlier today case you can guess the Sun is now set recording it's quite a few hours later put in the same day in that earlier video I discussed the fact that there is horrid social science research inquiring into the question of how effective or how ineffective it may be to simply hand out pamphlets to people if you're trying to promote an idea that says new and unfamiliar and challenging to people's values and received opinions as veganism right handing out pamphlets for veganism is not the same thing as handing out pamphlets for a new brand of shampoo you're not really asking people to sacrifice anything to try a new brand of shampoo they're already buying shampoo and you're just trying to get them interested constructing something slightly different that might be a little bit better or might be a little bit cheaper or might be better for their health whatever your sales pitch is for the shampoo you're promoting right veganism is very fundamentally different that you're asking people to read this pamphlet and then look at their own grandparents and say you were wrong everything you taught me was wrong everything you taught me about what being healthy means grandpa was wrong and for most of us that's true a tiny percentage of vegans alive today had vegan grandparents most of us grew up with our grandparents really trying to instill in us values about how we treat animals but how we treat human beings and indeed about our diet and health that we now have to recognize as wrong both in the sense of being incorrect misleading but ill informed bad girl and morally wrong immoral right that's that's a big turning point for my personal lives and this channel other many many videos talking about the agony of activism so to speak right but this is not the kind of turning point people often make in response to a pamphlet whereas trying a new brand of shampoo maybe if there's been a huge amount of social science research into how effective Pam floating is and promoting new products there are all kinds of industries are interested in answering that question and measuring that outcome because they're spending money trying to make money handing out pamphlets right so I've already provide an article inquiring into the hard science the hard factual basis for whether or not any okay amplitudes waste of time I'm going to kick off this video really is a segue into this topic but just appealing to your common sense for a minute here if I'm giving you a pamphlet for a live music event for a festival for a concert let's say a rapper is coming to town Lil B is coming to Halifax low B is coming to Vancouver okay Victoria let's a smaller town ok if you take that pamphlet what kind of person is going to respond positively to that pamphlet and make the decision which is a relatively trivial casual decision to spend some time and money coming up to hear a lot of music event who is going to pick up that pamphlet and say oh little B I've never heard of them I've never heard of this artist before what why should i come this comment that person is not going to even make the commitment although trivial to go and hear this live act right somebody gets the pamphlet and looks at it says rap music what's rap music or look at that one says Lil B sorry is that a country musician who what kind of music is you play this is this dance hall is this reggae a simple someone who is at that level of totally lacking familiarity with the concept of what you're presenting them with in a sense that pamphlet is a wasted pamphlet now somebody else might take the pamphlet and immediately they see the name and they think of a song they already have something associated with it in their mind that may be positive may be negative oh yeah I've heard this guy before I've heard of this guy I've heard his music I know what kind of genre he thinks I know what kind of crowd is going to be there I know socially what kind of seen this is going to be all right that person when you give them the pamphlet they may or may not get curious but at least it's an option than my future 20 on Saturday I might be interested in so maybe there's a little bit in the same way when we're talking about the effectiveness of pamphlet in education outreach in my former video earlier today I talked about the fact that an incredibly small percentage of the people who tuned to give Gant pamphlets are going to react positively but it's also true that all the people who react positively a very very small percentage of the decision is going to be made by that pamphlet right if you look at any major life decision religious groups hand out pamphlets they convert to this religion it's both the case that a very very small percentage of people they get pamphlet still make that decision but all the people who do do you really think the pamphlet was decisive is you really think the painful with ninety percent of the information that went into making that decision I think they took that pamphlet and then did a lot of soul searching God's what starts the information talked to some of their friends and relatives whatever the process is and again that's real social science research whether you do it under anthropology or political science you can talk to people to join cults or join new religions people who convert and D convert and what was the process that went into making the decision a pamphlet might be part of the process but I think in every single case it's a small part haha and III did I knew one guy who became vegetarian not vegan because he was handed a pamphlet and read it but still I do think there's there's a lot more to that and you sit downs are some of that all kinds of things come out their childhood experiences concerns they'd had long before they'd seen that pamphlet and things they looked into and read about after they got to pamphlet this is this is human reality okay getting attention is not a bad thing in itself I think the problem is that we're looking at so many social movements or aspiring social movements and veganism we're getting attention has become the entire focus and purpose of the group the group is designed for and spends all their time and energy just trying to get attention and in some cases because of that research this now right about is fair a bit in some cases I do think that the groups are doing that because they they sincerely believe that all it takes is getting someone's attention all it takes is handing them a pathway to change their lives forever and that's a kind of missionary zeal that's i mean you know i'm not saying this to hate on them in some ways that's kind of sweet and touching that they really believe that if only these people knew what I know if only they found out about veganism from somebody handing them a pamphlet explaining these these basic facts then they would change their whole lives forever in an instant in a heartbeat you know that's that is one element of it I do think there's a more cynical element of people who are chasing Fame and chasing money and you know money is not evil but they're thinking if only we could get on the news then the whole bunch of donations would come in and definitely I mean even again you look at a group like direct action everywhere why is it that they so desperately wants to be on the TV news whether it's good or bad is it a desire for fame is it a desire for notoriety do they think that by getting arrested feel what what good is going to come out of that being on the TV news for 30 or is it getting donations some of the people some as I say really sincerely believe that all it takes is getting someone's attention like appearing on the news giving them a pamphlet to spark that radical ethical change lifestyle change and have someone converts veganism so there is something that going on it's not all famewhoring and I say also you know I'm not perfect we talking about how ineffective pamphlets are I'm now putting time and money into creating a storybook above these of storybooks for children a book that parents can sit down and read to kids now in the same way that I've just talked you through who can really respond positive that pamphlet only somebody who has some some prior positive Association they see the pamphlet they see the name of the artist they know the music or they know something about the music they've heard it they've heard of it in the same way I think you can really say my storybook I put a lot of effort I wrote it in Chinese translating to English other people translated in German and Russian could be a great project now got an artist unlock we're going to illustrate this and publish it okay even I it's going to be beautiful already the story is beautiful the illustrator does great work I've posted her Instagram before Scott drawings out okay but I think it's still is susceptible the same criticism if you show that storybook someone if you read it to someone a child or an adult or what have you it can only really have a positive outcome for someone who already has some kind of positive associations some kind of prior knowledge or just some prior reason to be curious where they think Oh veganism I want to know more about that you give someone the pamphlet for a rock concert for a hip-hop concert Oh little bee I want to hear more of his stuff I've heard some of the songs I wanted to or I want to know what one of us cause or whatever else is going to show up maybe if you're addressing the other people are going to be their doctors the music whatever the reason is there has to be already some sincere engagement that leads to curiosity here he leads to inquiry the inquiry leads ultimately to action to some kind of engagement one make the world a better place one to want to change your own life and I've mentioned this before so my father who's now deceased haven't yet made a video talking about that but you know one of the very few I think original ideas my father tried to impress on me was the difference between learning and attitude and an attitude can include just appreciation for something appreciation for some types as opposed to learning facts factual learning and my father pointed out you have huge government projects public education projects and museums costing millions of dollars where sometimes the only message they're trying to get across is like this period of history exists these people exist like the government wants to appreciate there used to be native people who lived here and now they're extinct and this is who they were and this is you know they didn't just live in a tent they lived in a they lived in these kinds of buildings there weren't just 10 or 20 of them this is the total population this is you know home this is the story of how they disappeared and face the earth most people i mean again the obviously i'm alluding to real examples here where governments are trying to kind of do right by people have been exterminated by european colonialism more or other colonialism missile he is not European colonialism as the case may be where they know people are going to come and see this or they're going to get this message through propaganda through public education through museum programs or what-have-you Museum outrage and the only thing they're really going to walk away with is a vague appreciation that these historical events happen at all that these people exist is 0 and a tiny minority their audience is going to have a curiosity the engagement of the interest to really dig into the facts oh what century did that happen Oh what period is that artifact from hope there's no point in designing your message or delivering your message in a way that presumes your audience is populated by specialists you can imagine this is a huge problem with some like a music project or a public education project because most the experts you're employing our career academics and they're used to going to an academic conference where they present their findings to a tiny tiny audience of people who are specialized interest saying no that's not what we're doing here we have to learn how to present this history to an audience that's completely ignorant and completely indifferent right so you see what I mentioned this this is like presenting a pamphlet to someone who's never even heard of veganism presenting a pamphlet of someone who's never even heard of will be they've never even heard of rap music but these are the kinds of questions we we get into okay um so getting attention in and of itself is not evil however I do see the extent to which it seems to warp the standards and practices of many of the aspiring leaders in the vegan movement put it that way direct action everywhere I see much of what they have done in the past as really being warped by a mad desire to get coverage on TV and they didn't care if the coverage was good or bad positive or negative and they proudly would post you know clips oh we got on channel 7 news and you know the fact that the news broadcaster is saying a bunch of idiots stood up in a whole foods market and you know weeping and screaming protest to the fact that whole foods is selling turkeys on Thanksgiving just like they did last Thanksgiving just if your next Thanksgiving you know it's kind of theatrical highly emotional you know disruptive protests the there's no interest in what the reception is by the channel what the perception the audience is they run out onto the field at a baseball game and there hold off the field in 30 seconds they just want the attention is so it's interesting I don't think seeking attention is is negative in and of itself but it is interesting to me how that can have a kind of corrosive effect and what your whole organization is doing and one of the corrosive effects is simply that it forces you into short-term thinking chasing headlines instead of building a meaningful movement worrying about meaningful engagement public education outreach and even your finances even building trust with your donors where they're giving you money and they really understand what kind of outcomes that money is having because ultimately none of these foundations can operate within money none of them live on air and water alone lifestyle activism of many many videos now most of more than a year ago I don't think it's evil to put on a bikini if you look beautiful and there's anything wrong with capitalizing on your beauty but again across the board we've seen mixed messages within veganism that mixed you know lifestyle beauty weight loss etc and really came up that well they basically their program got warped to use the same term it was using before there they went into a sort of dead ended and fruitless pursuit of vanity and you know instagram followers and what have you and I think I mean this is almost a universal rule at this point I noticed dr. mcdougall a condom guys first name the starch the starch based solution guy you know put the starch solution that MacDougall john mcdougall he he tried to get a he tried to get a beauty and lifestyle magazine going I mean obvious he was only one of the people in the board directors it wasn't it wasn't you know editor and chief or anything we could see some funny funny outliers with that you can see some funny examples where you know legit vegan activists or medical professionals decide they're going to try to do something with bikinis and beaches and and people living the good life and then you look at at the end and say and what did this magazine accomplish she took donors money and print of this magazine and one other what are the real outcomes there may be worse maybe less than anything healthy the path looks right and appointed for several times in in skype conversations or the vegans I've mentioned them how enormous Pettis budget is for the magazine people difficult reitman animals and when you look at their justification their budget publishing that magazine is a huge part of it they have a multi-million dollar magazine feta and Assam have you ever seen the magazine look have you seen it around have you seen it in a dentist's office have you seen it at a friends apartments because like most of their vegan our other friends how are you getting on I mean like have you ever seen this magazine sitting around and their answer is no and then I asked them well look if I gave you just three million dollars a year what do you think you could put to get there so again i mean i'm using example some are headline-grabbing and some i mean i guess these magazines whether it's McDougal's magazine or pet is magazine i guess the point is to sit there on a grocery store shelf but the real outcomes are dubious to get lifestyle activism the reason why people get trapped in it i do think is this issue of getting attention as soon as your organization whether that's five people making a social media presence after lifestyle activism or 50 people making a magazine review i think as soon as you're chasing that short-term thrill of we got 10,000 thumbs up on this whatever whether it's instagram post or a video what have you i think that becomes profoundly distorted and maybe you did start off with the mixed message where you say okay we're going to we're going to promote ethical veganism and a certain kind of diet and you're going to put together this total package but the question of what actually gets rewarded what actually gets attention if with your purpose is to get mentioned whether you're conscious of it or not you may be measuring short-term success in terms of attention I think again almost universally I can't think of any example of a hybrid you know lifestyle activism approach that has been successful or that is even stayed on topic they've all really quickly kind of straight away from their original purpose and disintegrated and may I guess you know the ultimate example of this is Petitte so people with ethical treatment of animals in the last I did an hour long video with mod vegan and we talked a lot about Petta but the main purposes it's a review of the the final book from Gary Franchione a it refused to pronounce his name Francie owned by the way it's a terrible as resolution I'm half this rounded front coa but don't come on come on bro I'm a member of the club of people who have names that are hard to pronounce but come on Francie ohne it's not Francie own but I digress anyway in that hour long video with mod vegan will you talk a lot about fed up and you know their actions we have to give the pet accredit for but we forget and we forget partly because they had this mix lifestyle I could have approached a lot of their stuff has been women in bikinis it's been you know these sexy photos and so on and they'll got they got attention I think they also destroyed Pettis credibility in the movement to a large extent to instead to which most of us just don't think about it I don't I mean I just say I don't hate pornography I don't hate a bikini models I really don't but when you're talking about in your mind some oh yeah but you know pedda did this other project that was really significant they did this other thing feel like oh yeah right but you really gotta dig you really forget you forget about things you can give them credit for they have this enormous budget and what you see maybe what you see is not what you get but what you see is the attention-seeking short-term thinking headline-grabbing activities it does indeed include you know bikinis and half-naked women saying they'd rather be naked than wear fur you guys probably remember those campaigns and that's become what we think of when we think of petta i don't know if they'll ever dig themselves out of a hole in that all that women it naked women in the streets covered with fake blood it is what it is I'm saying this load the humility I'm not going to tell you petta has nothing to offer the future of veganism they have such a huge budget in many ways they still have a lot to offer it's still a lot we're thinking about but again I can't think of any exception of the rule we can look at that mixture of lifestyle activism and real advocacy and call it a success and I think this is the reason why is the short term attention-getting behavior okay so look I'm challenging myself here by now using a couple of examples where I really do sympathize with the cause of all I simple there's a lot with the struggles of First Nations people in Canada First Nations AKA american indians AKA aboriginal or indigenous people in canada decree the egyptian Mohawks etc etc um I don't you sympathize that a lot I decided at one point to devote the rest of my life to working on language education and language extinction issues and I enrolled at First Nations University and started learning Korean a jib way native languages you can ok since I assume this is a lot however I can recognize that a lot of their protests a lot of their political movements have been just trying to get attention and there's a terrible hollowness to that even when you really sympathize with the cause because you see people are sticking the next out and then be doing great as agitprop agitation and propaganda I've been to protest that were beautiful and I had native musicians playing the drums and chanting and you know they do get on TV news whatever the particular cause maybe at the time of attendance and protest like that and it can be beautiful and moving and it seems meaningful but once they've got the attention what can you do with it very often the only message that gets across is first nations are still unhappy there so Clark Davis so far testing something and to give another so that that's an issue that has tremendous longevity built into it most people are committed to First Nations politics can't quit some of them if they do it as a job that can never get any other job they're locked in as activists for life at other people they're simply born with that racial identity in Canada and they're attached to those politics like they have they have no choice even if they might like to move on and that's a big difference from veganism it's a big different in the movements so the second example is want to kick out here why I sympathize i've seen many many different protest movements in canada and europe and elsewhere on the question of tuition fees rising tuition fees and whether or not the government should intervene and how you should actually regulate the amount that university students have to pay for tuition so I sympathize tremendously and that's the opposite in this respect one of the problems that movement is that most people are only interested for a couple of years and then they lose interest she have a constantly shifting and unsteady group of supporters right people are interested for a little while and they lose interest in move on ah I've seen some brilliant attempts at protests and simply organizing a movement under both headings First Nations and lower tuition fees or fighting against increasing tuition fees there have been some brilliant and inspiring examples is one example from England where I remember this guy giving the interview and thought wow he's a really rare example of a guy's got his head screwed on straight he's got some great ideas but I can only say that those movements succeeded in getting attention and what does it draw attention to it simply draws attention the fact there is a problem and I think this is a classic case of the cart before the horse the chicken versus the egg people tend to engage in these protests in these attention-getting behaviors at a stage when all they want to do is scream from the rooftops scream in the face of public indifference there is a problem and implicitly they assume if more people knew simply by knowing simplify getting the attention the government would solve the problem or ordinary people would rise up out of their seats and solve the problem and the reality is that's not when you should engage in protest that's not what you gauge in these these kinds of agitprop public education outreach they're in various forms of outreach and publication behavior I think the reality is you only take that step when you're not drawing attention to the problem but when you're drawing attention to the solution all right and when you have a solution it disciplines the whole group they completely fundamentally different way all right if you just have a bunch of students who want to complain the tuition is too high that's an amorphous and undefined group if you have a group of students whose okay this is our solution here's our solution we want to switch tuition to be a percentage of your income after you graduate so after you scituate you're going to pay five percent of your income to the University every year until you've paid back the amount of tuition so if you graduate from university and you become a poet maybe a very low salary but five percent of that is going back and maybe it takes you 50 years to pay back your tuition fee but that's fine if you finish University and you become a lawyer even a lot of money five percent very rapidly maybe you pay back situation the vast majority of lawyers in Canada earned shockingly little money spent away it's a bad example lawyers and a lot less money in Canada than you might think they do especially for the first 10 years of the career by the way that's another story okay so that's the plan now i'm not talking about protesting the problem I'm talking about protesting for a solution not against the problem before solution and now how much things are going to happen now instead of having a totally undefined group of students some of them are left-wing some of them are right-wing they're just they're just the only thing they have in common is that they're discontent about tuition be too high now you're actually putting together group of students who have to ask themselves those challenging questions is this the solution is this the plan we're going to propose and now you have a plan that you can take to Parliament's to Senate the Congress wherever you live you can take the political system you can take to the political parties you can take to the university chancellor and say look we're not trying to take away money from you we're not trying to bankrupt the university what we want is for the government to enable a different style of payment plan and the university is still going to make money and it's still going to flourish and it's still going to be academic freedom but this is going to enable students to make more diverse career choices after they finish University because they're not facing crushing student debt the minute they stopped attending class which in Canada is our system by the way the minute you stop attending class you have to pay back your student loans and it is not as a percentage of your income it's an absolute amount of money I assume in America it's even worse I don't really know I'm not American um and again with First Nations it's easy you could have a totally amorphous broad-based group when you're protesting just for the problem against the probably just try to get attention for the problem when you have a particular solution Sookie this is our plan this is our plan for how we want to solve whether it's a land ownership issue or a water quality issue there are ton of those of the first nations just getting access to drain water or how the education system first nations or doesn't funded or you want to reform corruption within First Nations government this is the plan we're going to propose and we're going to protest for now who's with me and this is the last thing I want to say in this video the greatest irony is that veganism really is a solution not a problem and yet I think we haven't taken advantage of this what I see across the board are protests against fur milk meat you name it protesting again I can sympathize emotionally protest that want to scream from the rooftops scream in the face of public and difference about our terrible a given situation in but the reality is we need to move forward into organizing a meaningful movement that is not designed to get attention I think that works everything you're doing in the movement as with all these examples I've given you need to move forward to being a movement that is argued that is arguing for and working for the solution and is not defined in terms of the problem and it's not defined in terms of mere of merely attracting public attention to the problem again I'm not hitting on people for doing it I think that for many of us the turning point is when we realize that drawing someone's attention to this for the vast majority of people is just as meaningless as giving them a pamphlet for type of music they've never heard of before they're not going to turn that corner even for something as trivial as going to hear a concert for type of music in a musician that they it just means nothing ok and the type of personal sacrifice commitment engagement and again even cultural change looking back at your own grandparents looking back at the traditions at your own family in your own religion your own culture and suddenly seeing that as 10,000 years of error that's a that's a huge hurdle and what all of us need to do I think first and foremost is make better use of the human resources we've got of the people who have already gone over that hurdle and again start promoting the system as a solution stop designing movements and outreach campaigns and protests that are merely about drawing attention to the problem if you're vegan it's easy to lose sight of how completely meaningless that is to ninety-five percent of the population when you put that pamphlet in their face