Vegans & the Very Concept of Capitalism. [+ Kunming Streets]
09 July 2016 [link youtube]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
hi guys I'm seriously ill now the
trouble with my voice did just begin with a physical injury but of course having your throat scraped up then creates an opportunity for a virus to enter your system so I'm burning up with a fever and you know this is a situation I've been in many times before suffering physically alone in a country where you can't speak the language I really again you guys know I'm very critical of this glamorization of the digital nomad lifestyle I think it's crummy if you're rich I think it's crummy if you're poor I think it's crummy halfway in between and you know I know what that's like I know what that's like with trivial illnesses and I know what that's like with serious illnesses but you know really living alone my current circumstances I'm much more alone than I would be as a Buddhist monk you're forced to socialize to some extent as a Buddhist monk you you might be surprised even if you live in a cave you'd be surprised so I've been you know writing down Chinese terms for different types of medicine and going in handled but in case I wanted to upload this video showing you the streets of Kunming so that you guys on patreon would have a sense of where I'm at and I'm now gonna try to just record some comments in response to this remarkable piece of fan mail I got a bit more time to answer one of the questions or the patreon viewers but as you guys know the Q&A is still coming up I've had family all around the world remarkable corners of the world I've had fan mail from North Africa of that fan mail from some of the Muslim majority countries obviously I've had fan mail from all parts of the Western world and you know this is my first piece of fan mail from one of the indigenous peoples of Argentina and it's very sincere I will post the screenshot if you guys want to read it and as I'm reading it I am going to just spontaneously improve the grammar a bit because he's obviously struggling to write to me in English and you know I imagine he has to work very hard to understand my videos when he watches them in English too so it's it's flattering in more ways than one but he writes hello I am from Argentina I saw your videos on YouTube I found some very interesting but you realize that most people who talk about veganism and you too our first world countries the same countries that plundered the third world ended with our resources who committed genocides in our land the base of the enslavement of my people I'm a descendant of the mapuche 's napoo che is I think how that's pronounced and of all people since 1492 was that we have no soul then we were animals and could enslave us so just pause obviously his grammar and so on is not is not so clear here but this is a very brief summary of something that's basically correct obviously the details are a bit more complicated and that happened considerably later than 1492 it didn't happen the moment Christopher Columbus discovered the land but there was actually sort of court of inquiry in Rome and you know the the Catholic Church had to decide whether or not these were human beings or animals and it was very convenient for them to determine that no the indigenous people of South America were not human beings so this justified various brutalities against them his next sentence though says the basis of the capitalist system is animal and human slavery period it is the colonization of the other period so I'll pause here this is the problem with sloppy left-wing thinking and obviously I sympathize that this guy I have no idea what kind of education he has all I mean my whole life I'm engaged with pratik of the left-wing not because I'm conservative or not because I'm right way but simply because I live in societies so dominated by left-wing political thought I basically never meet any conservatives all my professors at the University were kind of extreme left wingers and so I'll kill my my debates have generally been from a moderate position looking at left-wing misconceptions about history politics what-have-you now what I would draw attention to here because it's such an easy thing to to ignore it's just the use of the word capitalist system even from a Marxist perspective the power of the Catholic Church he's describing here is not capitalist that is simply not correct you know the rule of the Pope in Rome you can describe as futile you can describe it as many things but it's not capitalist and Marxist will often use the term fully formed capitalism or bourgeois capitalism to clarify that in their view capitalism as such capitalism clearly defined excludes both slavery and feudalism it's a separate system capitalism in principle even from a left-wing perspective must be based on wage labor on contracts on paying laborers and it also has to be based on private ownership of land buying and selling land so feudalism under the Catholic Church over 500 years ago was not based in any of these things and the power of the Pope in Rome to dictate who is an animal and who is a human being is very you know it's a very moving example from the history of Western civilization that also cannot be and should not be blamed on capitalism now again you could blame it on theocracy you could blame it on Christianity or you could blame it on Catholic the Catholic Church more specifically than Christianity in general but yes there are many deep questions to ask about this but simply blaming capitalism which is you know part of his uh you know thought process here is is deeply flawed and I know how problematic this is because I know what misconceptions it leads to it's a dangerous misconception itself and it leads to more misconceptions thereafter so he now asks why do Western subjects have no historical consciousness to see the Origin of Species ISM sorry but your channel took me to a channel freely and it is sad and angry to think that this is changing the world so obviously here I suppose them apparently he had never seen freelee's channel before but because of my critique he looked into it and he's horrified from his sort of left-wing revolutionary perspective that these people think lifestyle activism is changing the world so he goes on to say a video a diet which veganism is not a photo on Instagram a post on Facebook not to make change in the world why do you think that the change so obvious he's not asking me he's asking why do these people think it makes change why do the supporters are freely of lifestyle activism why do they think that's gonna change the world so his next sentence is I'm not attacking I'm just asking I do not understand so obviously more than a year ago I think I had a lot of videos on my channel asking this question this is the hard question that I think just this week a lot of people have been waking up to waking up to the gravity of and the seriousness of this this problem your channel has videos that are good very good and would be great to have subtitles in Spanish a suggestion because they have a good view have a concept an idea to show sorry my English is not very good and I do not know if you understand what I'm saying I see so obviously even though I do not share the the left-wing extreme view that he does that basically we can just blame the capitalist system for these problems you know obviously this is a very sympathetic and well-intentioned letter now I mean the other thing is when you blame the capitalist system you have to contrast it to something else so if we are talking about carnism if we're talking about animal exploitation if you are going to blame capitalism for those problems why is it that the problems are not better when we contrast capitalism to feudalism why is it that the problems are not better when we contrast capitalism to communism now there are other systems non capitalist systems you can treasure why are these problems not better when we compare it to the the pure slave system of say ancient Athens you know so I say pure because this is slavery without some other economic elements in case you can have a slave society a feudal society a communist society you could have completely non-capital sized and currently you know Isis Isis is a non capitalist society that's the the Islamic state you know in a constitutive war in all of those societies I mean animal exploitation I would say is approximately as terrible as it is at a capitalist system if you're going to compare them maybe you can find a few percentage points difference between them the difference is in capitalism were allowed to talk about it under a capitalist democracy we're actually allowed to make the social change through you know from of all public forums which we ought to celebrate we ought to care about we ought to be working very hard take advantage of but even if you have capitalism without democracy you can still have consumer activism of a tremendously effective kind in a situation of capitals in the democracy as I've mentioned you can lead a boycott you can refuse to buy things you can lead public consciousness and you can change things in society in many ways just through capitalism to pursue vegan goals even in the absence of democracy but as you guys know I've been trying to motivate everyone to take seriously the advantages we have in living in a Western capitalist democratic society not to overlook them not to take them for granted ok guys thank you very much your time I'm going to get on to answering all 100 of your questions in the Q&A recording very soon hope you've enjoyed this glimpse of the streets of conveying
trouble with my voice did just begin with a physical injury but of course having your throat scraped up then creates an opportunity for a virus to enter your system so I'm burning up with a fever and you know this is a situation I've been in many times before suffering physically alone in a country where you can't speak the language I really again you guys know I'm very critical of this glamorization of the digital nomad lifestyle I think it's crummy if you're rich I think it's crummy if you're poor I think it's crummy halfway in between and you know I know what that's like I know what that's like with trivial illnesses and I know what that's like with serious illnesses but you know really living alone my current circumstances I'm much more alone than I would be as a Buddhist monk you're forced to socialize to some extent as a Buddhist monk you you might be surprised even if you live in a cave you'd be surprised so I've been you know writing down Chinese terms for different types of medicine and going in handled but in case I wanted to upload this video showing you the streets of Kunming so that you guys on patreon would have a sense of where I'm at and I'm now gonna try to just record some comments in response to this remarkable piece of fan mail I got a bit more time to answer one of the questions or the patreon viewers but as you guys know the Q&A is still coming up I've had family all around the world remarkable corners of the world I've had fan mail from North Africa of that fan mail from some of the Muslim majority countries obviously I've had fan mail from all parts of the Western world and you know this is my first piece of fan mail from one of the indigenous peoples of Argentina and it's very sincere I will post the screenshot if you guys want to read it and as I'm reading it I am going to just spontaneously improve the grammar a bit because he's obviously struggling to write to me in English and you know I imagine he has to work very hard to understand my videos when he watches them in English too so it's it's flattering in more ways than one but he writes hello I am from Argentina I saw your videos on YouTube I found some very interesting but you realize that most people who talk about veganism and you too our first world countries the same countries that plundered the third world ended with our resources who committed genocides in our land the base of the enslavement of my people I'm a descendant of the mapuche 's napoo che is I think how that's pronounced and of all people since 1492 was that we have no soul then we were animals and could enslave us so just pause obviously his grammar and so on is not is not so clear here but this is a very brief summary of something that's basically correct obviously the details are a bit more complicated and that happened considerably later than 1492 it didn't happen the moment Christopher Columbus discovered the land but there was actually sort of court of inquiry in Rome and you know the the Catholic Church had to decide whether or not these were human beings or animals and it was very convenient for them to determine that no the indigenous people of South America were not human beings so this justified various brutalities against them his next sentence though says the basis of the capitalist system is animal and human slavery period it is the colonization of the other period so I'll pause here this is the problem with sloppy left-wing thinking and obviously I sympathize that this guy I have no idea what kind of education he has all I mean my whole life I'm engaged with pratik of the left-wing not because I'm conservative or not because I'm right way but simply because I live in societies so dominated by left-wing political thought I basically never meet any conservatives all my professors at the University were kind of extreme left wingers and so I'll kill my my debates have generally been from a moderate position looking at left-wing misconceptions about history politics what-have-you now what I would draw attention to here because it's such an easy thing to to ignore it's just the use of the word capitalist system even from a Marxist perspective the power of the Catholic Church he's describing here is not capitalist that is simply not correct you know the rule of the Pope in Rome you can describe as futile you can describe it as many things but it's not capitalist and Marxist will often use the term fully formed capitalism or bourgeois capitalism to clarify that in their view capitalism as such capitalism clearly defined excludes both slavery and feudalism it's a separate system capitalism in principle even from a left-wing perspective must be based on wage labor on contracts on paying laborers and it also has to be based on private ownership of land buying and selling land so feudalism under the Catholic Church over 500 years ago was not based in any of these things and the power of the Pope in Rome to dictate who is an animal and who is a human being is very you know it's a very moving example from the history of Western civilization that also cannot be and should not be blamed on capitalism now again you could blame it on theocracy you could blame it on Christianity or you could blame it on Catholic the Catholic Church more specifically than Christianity in general but yes there are many deep questions to ask about this but simply blaming capitalism which is you know part of his uh you know thought process here is is deeply flawed and I know how problematic this is because I know what misconceptions it leads to it's a dangerous misconception itself and it leads to more misconceptions thereafter so he now asks why do Western subjects have no historical consciousness to see the Origin of Species ISM sorry but your channel took me to a channel freely and it is sad and angry to think that this is changing the world so obviously here I suppose them apparently he had never seen freelee's channel before but because of my critique he looked into it and he's horrified from his sort of left-wing revolutionary perspective that these people think lifestyle activism is changing the world so he goes on to say a video a diet which veganism is not a photo on Instagram a post on Facebook not to make change in the world why do you think that the change so obvious he's not asking me he's asking why do these people think it makes change why do the supporters are freely of lifestyle activism why do they think that's gonna change the world so his next sentence is I'm not attacking I'm just asking I do not understand so obviously more than a year ago I think I had a lot of videos on my channel asking this question this is the hard question that I think just this week a lot of people have been waking up to waking up to the gravity of and the seriousness of this this problem your channel has videos that are good very good and would be great to have subtitles in Spanish a suggestion because they have a good view have a concept an idea to show sorry my English is not very good and I do not know if you understand what I'm saying I see so obviously even though I do not share the the left-wing extreme view that he does that basically we can just blame the capitalist system for these problems you know obviously this is a very sympathetic and well-intentioned letter now I mean the other thing is when you blame the capitalist system you have to contrast it to something else so if we are talking about carnism if we're talking about animal exploitation if you are going to blame capitalism for those problems why is it that the problems are not better when we contrast capitalism to feudalism why is it that the problems are not better when we contrast capitalism to communism now there are other systems non capitalist systems you can treasure why are these problems not better when we compare it to the the pure slave system of say ancient Athens you know so I say pure because this is slavery without some other economic elements in case you can have a slave society a feudal society a communist society you could have completely non-capital sized and currently you know Isis Isis is a non capitalist society that's the the Islamic state you know in a constitutive war in all of those societies I mean animal exploitation I would say is approximately as terrible as it is at a capitalist system if you're going to compare them maybe you can find a few percentage points difference between them the difference is in capitalism were allowed to talk about it under a capitalist democracy we're actually allowed to make the social change through you know from of all public forums which we ought to celebrate we ought to care about we ought to be working very hard take advantage of but even if you have capitalism without democracy you can still have consumer activism of a tremendously effective kind in a situation of capitals in the democracy as I've mentioned you can lead a boycott you can refuse to buy things you can lead public consciousness and you can change things in society in many ways just through capitalism to pursue vegan goals even in the absence of democracy but as you guys know I've been trying to motivate everyone to take seriously the advantages we have in living in a Western capitalist democratic society not to overlook them not to take them for granted ok guys thank you very much your time I'm going to get on to answering all 100 of your questions in the Q&A recording very soon hope you've enjoyed this glimpse of the streets of conveying