FAKE VEGANS (Andy Warski & Tobias Leenaert)

the incident that spurred me to make
this video today was learning that Andy wore ski has ceased to be vegan who is Andy wore ski doesn't really matter he is a comedian and he presents himself as an idiot he identifies as an idiot if you like him as part of his act but also like most people entertainment I think he's sincerely aware that he's not too bright Andy wore skis conversion to veganism was very public and very closely documented because he chose to film himself when he was learning about veganism when he was watching documentaries the children animals were executed he filmed himself having a debate with a guy called the vegan revolution on his podcast where they did a sort of radio show format and through Q&A through Socratic method if you like questioned his reasons for eating meat and he was questioning the vegans reasons for not eating meat and by the end of the dialogue he said okay I'm convinced you know I decided before we had this discussion that if I if I if I didn't have good reasons and if you did have compelling reasons that I would make the switch that would become vegan so he did so I think a lot of people at least a few thousand people probably mostly people in England who follow that podcast filled some sort of emotional connection of this guy's conversion he's not one of the really high-profile famous people to convert to veganism but it's interesting example and then you know um I guess also we all get a sense of hope for the broader popularity of veganism in the future the idea that if any idiot can do it maybe my own uncle can do it maybe that guy at work who's such a jerk and makes my life miserable maybe he can become vegan one day too when I make these videos I try to frame the issues in terms that will still be meaningful and interesting if someone should stumble on this video five years from now ten years from now at some point in the future and I don't want the video to be bogged down too much in the sales of a short term controversy that won't matter to anyone maybe even five months from now any idiot can be vegan and that's fundamentally a very good thing if veganism was only something accessible to intellectuals it would be doomed and many of the famous people who become vegan who are famous for being models actors for being beautiful or talented in some way they're not intellectuals many of them are not too bright and while many of them become vegan for reasons that they manage to state intelligently sometimes for reasons of compassion sometimes for reasons of trying to lose weight of course very often their stupidity shows when they're then making excuses for why they ceased to be vegan but again you know veganism has to be open to an embracing of idiots if it's gonna be a mass movement or even it's gonna be a subculture with I don't know a whole 1% of the population to its name if someone who who both acts a fool and really is a fool becomes vegan it reminds us of this strength and any it can become vegan anyone can become vegan veganism is not just for an elite it's not just for certain kinds of intellectuals it's for everybody maybe there's some viability to it then the flip side is when someone like that ceases to be vegan you get to hear just how idiotic their reasons are now the other deep issue that this highlights this shine some light on is the fissure between vegans and so-called meat reducers to say a lot about this many vegans have drawn attention to the almost hypocritical intensity with which meat reducers are hated by vegans this basically means that vegans tend to show an intense antipathy towards people who are not vegan but who claim to kind of sort of do 90% of vegan as people who say well I'm reducing my meat consumption as much as I can I only meet once in a while this sort of thing and for a vegan perspective this is especially irritating what do you mean you're reducing your meat consumption as much as you can a hundred percent is as much as you can you know eliminate a hundred percent the optimal amount of cholesterol in your diet is zero therefore have a zero cholesterol diet the optimal amount of animal suffering to be caused by your diet is 0 therefore eat zero animal products come on get on get on side a small number of local people like Tobias Lee and art I may well be mispronouncing his name I've chatted several times to buy a side Tobias if you get out of seeing this a small number of vegans like Tobias have taken the devil's advocate course a saying look we as vegans need to be more encouraging towards people who are only meat reducers people who are bad vegans people who are semi vegan laughs vegan cheating vegan people who only kind of sort of reduced the amount of meat in their diet and don't go the whole way to becoming vegan and Tobias gives different reasons for this primarily he points out that the real viable future of veganism the the capacity for veganism to have a mass social effect to have a massive ecological effect is going to have to come about through a hard core of vegans influencing a larger number of soft core vegans then Tobias takes the analysis to the next step the next stage of a life cycle analysis and he points out that look the material basis for vegans living in the world is not going to be created by a very small percentage of people who are very intensely active vegans vegan activist or zealous vegans in reality when you go to the supermarket and they have soy milk the market that's produced for economically is mostly people who are lactose intolerant here in Europe that is definitely true by the way we have a range of soy yogurt soy pudding and so on and you know numbers behind that that industry does not exist for the tiny tiny minority of Germans who are vegan I just mentioned I am exhausted in case I look exhausted um I flew from Western Canada to Germany and I am very much struggling with jetlag right now I had one of those days where I went to the gym three times in three short sessions that's part of trying to force myself to be awake and adjust to extreme jet lag so in this way tobias argues it's really a very positive thing for shall we say the throughput of veganism as a social movement that learned your numbers of people be encouraged you merely become meat or do Saeng we really become semi vegan and quasi vegan and so on even though hardcore vegans may lay the groundwork for soft core vegans those soft core vegans in turn will lay the groundwork for yet more hardcore vegans and so on so there's a positive reciprocating loop going on here so that's an interesting analysis and suggestion that it's an interesting approach to the puzzle that Tobias has and his his fundamental suggestion coming out of it is for vegans to stop regarding people who are merely me reducers as their enemies I haven't foreshadowed this but when I spoke to Tobias about it I actually disagree with him strongly for a very different reason Tobias is approached I feel is biased by his own position as a professional full time vegan advocate he does this for a living so he's surrounded by vegans all the time he's going to events conferences related to veganism and that's nothing like my life and that's nothing like the lives of 99.9% of vegans well so if we're asked question why do ordinary vegans feel such intense hatred antipathy and disgust for people who are fake vegans people were merely me producing well even in the city I come from I currently live in Victoria Canada west coast of Canada if I take the time out of my life out of my busy schedule to go to a vegan event maybe I can do that once a month in reality it's much less off than the last month because I worked very hard and I'm a full-time University student I'm trying to learn Japanese trying to find a whole new career path I have all kinds of challenges about life if I take the time to go and show up at a vegan event I am there to meet other vegans and we all have to deal with a mix of social instincts and anti-social instincts but I can vividly remember going to one event of that kind and you know I sat down and eat some food and you chitchat with people and the guys sitting on one side of me he actually organized the event and I could see that he was wearing leather and he identified as vegan he said if him and his girlfriend oh well we we were leather I guess you know we sort of said I guess we're not really feet she organized the event he's somebody I don't have a lot in common with naturally and in terms of chitchat Tremec friends I'm making a big effort to try to socialize with him but now I feel like why are you here are you really here for the same reasons I mean are you for the right reasons do I want to make the sacrifice of my time and money and effort to come to this event and get to know you when the one thing I thought we had in common the one element of common ground ethically politically turns out to be false has it happened the guy sitting on the other side of me he was really the type of human being I try to avoid spending time with it's not worth describing what type of guy he was I think he was over 60 years 65 and he seemed to me like a complete scumbag and you know he told me a bit about himself in his life he was wealthy but he was in every way the type of person I would normally never sit down and have a meal with and never talk to you or if I happen to have a casual conversation with just say okay nice to meet you goodbye and long but I'm at this event to meet other vegans and he's I presume he's vegan because he's there sitting next to me so I'm really making an effort to ignore the things about him that offend me and that I dislike and put those aside and put on a happy face and socialize and get to know this guy and you know then he mentions that he's not singing at all he was actually talking about traveling around the world you know I've also traveled a lot around the world and he just starts mentioning eating a snake meat and bear meat eating exotic me was trying say well what why are you telling me this was this before you were vegan like to you now we'll look back on this regretted like what cuz he was boasting about these wonderful travels you know the guy was still 100% a bear eating snake eating meat eating [ __ ] and time is short I'm not trying to hear it I pretty much got up and left the event then weren't that many people that meet I did say hi to some other people but you know I feel my time has been wasted I feel I've been deceived and you know I feel like I've compromised cuz this guy already he was pretty morally repugnant to me and I'm trying to find the common ground to be nice to him and build something pretty to them and he's a fake vegan they took two different examples of fake vegans in one event and I'm not I mean I'm not like Tobias I don't go to a lot of these advances is not the way I can afford to spend my time so with no ill will vegans who are trying to lead a meaningful life are gonna have these kinds of hostile encounters with people who are not really vegan people who are fake vegan and so on and even though from a kind of detached outside perspective from a global perspective the type of analysis device presents looking at a flowchart of okay this percentage the population is meat reducing this percentage population is vegan and here are the economic and social effects of that over time that is not the perspective from which we live our day-to-day lives the struggle to lead a meaningful life the struggle to make friends as a grown adult basically once you're out of high school to try to form a social network with people who really have something meaningful in common with you and we're really willing to work with you to get something done whether that's political activism or starting a business you know really have guanxi is that the Chinese say it's a struggle and you do not want to devote your time to doing that with people who don't accept the fundamental premise the ethical premise of veganism if it's not a matter of principle for you then you're not a vegan even though objectively I can recognize somebody who eats ninety percent less meat of course they're doing something good for the planet of course they're doing something good for the animals that it was like good for themselves for their own health but they're not vegan and yeah the mutual hatred the mutual want sympathy is real and it's inevitable partly just due to the scarcity of time I might have a lot of other stories actually I remember a very good-looking Chinese woman started hitting on me on the internet once and like I'm not offended but I could tell right away she was somebody who would never be a friend of my normally someone I wouldn't have anything you come with she was Chinese from mainland China but you know she had a lot of photographs of herself with designer purses and photographs of herself flying to Paris to buy designer purses so given that you know per online identity I can tell right away it's very unlikely this person is going to be my friend or even that this person is going to have a single conversation with me but she seemed really interested she kept writing to me and again she was objectively very good-looking I wasn't interested I wasn't trying to to get a new girlfriend and the one thing that made me take the time to reply to her and say okay I'm gonna make the effort is that her profile listed her as vegan somewhere it said you know of about me vegans something like this anyway only after a little while you know talked over a few days did I directly ask her about being vegan and at that point she said oh no um I need meat oh I must have added that to my profile during the summer when I was vegan for a few months you know I just went to block user that was if it's not always the case there are plenty of people eat meat who are my friends in real life who you know I know and I try to find common ground with try to quad with but in many of these social contexts without even getting into real political activism as an example the only thing we have in common the only thing that's gonna start building that bridge is that you identify as vegan and I identify as being it and now we're gonna try to take it from there the other thing that's highlights for me that at ox bar on this channel and I've talked about in writing before is that you know compassion doesn't work and II wore ski became vegan out of compassion you know he saw these videos and he had a short-term reaction of compassion just as a word and a concept in the English language compassion is really quite glorified it is in Buddhism too but his philosophy in the Buddhist religion people like to think that compassion soles problems and it really doesn't you know compassion is a feeling and all feelings are fleeting and in watching these various celebrities you know become vegan often become passionately if he can become advocates for veganism and then sort of lose their train of thought and stagger back to eating meat or milk or eggs or whatever it is you can see all right they were overwhelmed with compassion at some point that had this feeling and then it dissipates I've commented before on this channel I'm aware the cure for traits I have that make me vegan are not positive character traits of a very demanding you know man of principle being a man of principle does not make you a nice guy it really doesn't does it definitely does not make it easy to get along with quite quite the contrary the type of character people consider nice and good in our society is exactly a sort of flexible adaptable somebody who's willing to to go whichever way the wind blows that's what people want in a co-worker in general that's what people want in a boyfriend or girlfriend people want a sort of carefree adaptability in the people in their social circles certainly what they want in a boss the character trait of being driven by hard ethical commitments of being fastidious even that word fastidious we don't think of it as a good thing anymore 300 years ago it was a good thing being someone who adheres to a code of ethics even when it's destructive to their own interests and so on I don't think those characters even appear in in novels anymore it's of no interest in 21st century yeah and the novels that used to be full of those characters and think they didn't end well back in the 18th and 19th centuries tobias Leonar criticizes this this whole frame of mind understandably in terms of an urge for purity and he says look vegans as a group in pursuing this this urge for purity they're separating themselves from the mainstream and they're doing something counterproductive counter to their own interests that the urge for purity is in effect going to block the urge for community but again the reality is all of us I mean if you have a job then you probably have a workplace where probably nobody else is vegan you know where every day of course you're socializing with meat eaters you probably have a job where you have co-workers who ridicule you and insult you and make your life difficult because you're vegan so of course it's not in that sense it's really not genuine it's not honest to talk about an urge for purity or trying to being puritanical or excluding yourself no but on the other hand given that vegans are people who suffer so much exclusion that so many so many people and festivals and things exclude us if you grew up as a conventional Catholic and you became vegan suddenly you're cut off from most of the feasts and festivals you grew up with suddenly in many ways you're estranged from the family you grew up with even if you still hang out with them even though it's subtle you know we're all having to negotiate that so in the little bit of free time that we have left that's left over by you know work and school and these other commitments I think vegans are trying to find a new community trying to sort of create a new tradition a new sense of identity in a world that they feel excludes them and naturally when you're starting that process I don't assume that you personally are first becoming vegan when you're meeting someone else for the first time finding that common ground yeah it's really natural and inevitable that you have as a hard-and-fast criteria either you're really vegan or you're not either it's a hundred percent or it's zero when the question is not about what is going to impact Nestle corporation in planning its next quarter and how many products they make for lactose intolerant people and vegetarians and vegans the question is how can I lead a meaningful life now how can my values my political engagements my commitments you know do something positive for me here and now you want to find something positive in it even if that's just having a circle of friends or you know if you're a business person maybe you're sitting there thinking every day I'm only gonna put up with this situation at the office for as long as they have to but boy if I knew just a couple of other hard-working smart vegans I would start my own company or I would you know taking a different measure so I could work with them very natural to want to do that you know and of course for little things like activism and you know if you want to start a vegan magazine or website isn't as pal simian says every vegan is out looking for a crew you know first thing they're looking for and you know again it's probably because you feel alienated from her cut off from the crew you had before