Debating Frank Tufano: Vegan Mind Tricks.

okay so the health aspect of a vegan
diet is important if you consider that there have been vegans that have killed their babies that have named their children I'm not going to talk about each and every moment in this debate but I'm here gonna present you with how I would respond differently to this particular little conflict as Paul Bashir the head of anonymous for the voiceless faces off with Frank Tufano that I'm gonna move on to speaking a little bit more philosophically generally and tactically okay so the health aspect of a vegan diet is important if you consider that there have been vegans that have killed their babies that have made their children and many young children have suffered at the hands of vegan parents so do you think these parents need to be informed better about how to properly and adequately nourish a child on a plant-based diet no because I think for every person that you just said which was probably just made up and I don't even know what you're talking well I don't know what you're talking about for every person that you say is vegan who's harming themselves or their children I can name at least a thousand non vegans that are harming dead themselves and their babies with their diets and lifestyles so you think it's okay for someone to miscarry their child to kill their baby to monitors their child to have their child taken away from them under the condition of their moral aspect of being on a vegan diet the reason those children were maimed killed or disfigured was because the parents believed in feeding them a vegan diet this belief system that animals are more important than humans Frank for every person that you say who's vegan is harmless substances results of their diet or harm their children as a result of a plant-based diet because veganism is not about diets I can name at least a thousand non vegans who have harmed themselves with their beliefs and their diets and their children so this point doesn't need to be discussed any more you said the point of a vegan diet is - oh is it to eliminate or minimize animal cruelty the exploitation of animals but you're saying that it's okay for vegans to harm people because other people are harming people essentially that's not what I said at all well what you said was there for every few vegans UI name you can name many other people that have harmed and maimed their children and I agree with that but that doesn't justify the harming or maiming of children regardless of your beliefs my advice is it's always a mistake to fight for the moral high ground stop it at the very beginning of this I think Paul didn't even notice but he was presented with a great way out the initial question presented with was do you think there should be more and better education to help vegans properly raise and nourish their children instead of fighting for the moral high ground be warm and magnanimous and accepting of the other side and agree that there's a problem affirm that there's a real concern at work there and then move forward together even a situation of implacable hostility from the other side that is my advice so in this case I'd say you know you're right there are a lot of terrible parents out there there are parents who are addicted to crack their parents were addicted to heroin their parents were just old-fashioned alcoholics and they do terrible things when they raise their children they make terrible mistakes and those mistakes have consequences not just for the lives of their children before a whole society and you know you ask great question what can we do in terms of Education and the tragic truth is we're really limited it seems like no matter how much education we have they're always going to be some people who are cocaine addicts and some people who are heroin addicts some people who are alcoholics who've become absolutely terrible parents and you know what some of those people are vegan they're always going to be some bad parents who make terrible choices that terrible consequences were vegan and some of them are going to get into the newspapers year after year so I feel you I understand your concern stepping away from drug addiction and alcoholism you also know there are some people who have all the same problems while being clean and sober because they are just straight-up crazy any problem caused by drug addiction include hallucination some people can have with no drugs at all just just through being plain old crazy and you know we live in a society where we respect the civil rights of the parents and there's this huge question of when and how we can step in and act in the interest of the child you're right it's a tragedy and we as vegans are wrapped up in the same tragedy as meat-eaters and you know the most important thing to understand here is when there are bad parents they're not bad parents because they're vegan and I think you'd admit the same thing when there were parents you neglect their children or will make terrible decisions that ruin their children's lives we're not going to say that that's because they were eating meat at the time and ultimately there's no excuse for it this challenge room this is warm and folksy and agreeing with the guy and affirming and saying you're right and in a sense it's also saying look I don't want to be on the high moral ground I don't want to be smarter than you I don't want to be better than you and I don't want to be right I can be wrong I can be wrong too and saying we can be wrong together and then we can move forward in this conversation from there okay so it's okay for vegans to harm people because other people are harming people are now if you want to be cute like that how about I hold the mic is that way it's easier for you to understand what I actually said what how would you knowingly till the land spray herbicides insecticides kill hundreds depending on what metric we're using it's trillions worldwide trillions of insects rodents deer animals when you tilled the soil and you spray insects you spray insecticides and herbicides kill all the insect all the the plant life that you don't want you're killing and displacing millions of beings without question when that crop grows back they multiply rapidly whatever animals survived whatever insects survived there's a new food source so they start multiplying and growing again and then what happens you harvest the field you destroy their food source they either starve to death or are picked off by predators and the cycle repeats itself and if you need to cover yourself up and wear sunscreen and you can't even be in the Sun for a couple hours in New York City why do I shave why did you shave your face it's not natural dude because I don't want to look like a dirty piece of in the middle of New York City got a tattoo on your neck face and saying don't use sunscreen what dude your your argument is nature though and then you shave your face I don't want to talk about this in terms of the philosophy of education I don't want to talk about this in terms of the philosophy of activism I want to talk about this as a type of flirtation the advice I'm about to give you in terms of dealing with people and a down to earth folksy way focuses the festival relative over there I think it really is a lot more like an idealized flirtation for me a flirtation is not about deceiving the other person it's not about seducing the other person it's about letting them know who you are and creating a space creating a silence in the conversation where they feel comfortable and they can come forward and let you know who they are for me by definition flirtation takes place in a situation where neither party is in love with the other in fact the two people flirting you may not even know if the other person is single or if they're married you may not know if you're interested or if their interests or if they could be interested there are a lot of unknowns but there's some sense of possibility there's an attempt to get to know one another that for me in principle is flirtation in a flirtation you never want to take the moral high ground you never want to be proving I'm smarter than you if anything you want to in your conversation create a platform or the other person feels more intelligent than they really are where the flirtation itself is flattering or makes them feel empowered and intelligent makes them feel if their opinion matters to you I think that's a crucial element of flirtation um you don't want to prove that you're morally superior to the other person if anything you want to present yourself as having common ground if anything it's a Fantasia's to present yourself as the villain so for me Teeter says to you and you know it could be in this kind of curve aside context it could be that you're giving a lecture at University and a symposium to an audience but you know it could be that you're a heterosexual male and you're talking to a female you're a vegan male talking to a female who's still making excuses for eating me this person you're talking to the mediator says to you that it's inevitable that in the production of wheat in the production of corn in the farming of broccoli that those forms of Agriculture are going to kill some animals maybe they're gonna kill some mice they're gonna kill some insects I do not respond to that by saying no you're wrong I do not respond to that by trying to take the moral high ground I do not respond to that by trying to prove that I'm smarter than they are or that I know more than they do I start by saying you're right you're right I agree and I can even go further in attacking my own position you're right you know what goes way further than just farming it goes way further than agriculture you want to run a hospital you got to kill rats you got to kill cockroaches you got to kill all kinds of little critters to maintain a standard of excellence and hygiene in that hospital and if you're committed to running the hospital to benefit human beings benefit society whatever however you want to think of it if you're committed to running the hospital a standard of excellence what are you gonna say are you gonna say one day no no no we've hit our limit we killed a hundred mice to keep this hospital going we should just stop we should give up no whether it's going to be 100 mice or 500 mice or a thousand mice it's tragic but if you're committed to the pursuit of this objective to running this hospital you're gonna kill mice and cockroaches however many it takes it's tragic but what you're saying is true we as vegans we still commit to and we take responsibility for killing animals in all kinds of contexts if you want to run an airport running an airport requires that you killed birds maybe they're seagulls maybe they're Ravens and it's tragic but birds can interfere with the radar birds can fly into the engines and propellers of the airplanes they just straight-up crash into the aircraft during takeoff and landing if you're committed to running this Airport to safety reliability and excellence if you're gonna run this Airport you are committed to killing animals to make that happen and as a vegan you may not be the one to kill the animals yourself but you shouldn't lie to yourself as you do that so you know what you're right now can go way further than that I can be magnanimous in agreeing with your opinion step1 step2 but you know what we live in a world we're forced to make these terrible compromises we live in a world that is tragic in just the way you've pointed out but that does not make me want to get down on my hands and knees and crawl through the mud to drink the milk out of a cow's udder sorry I just don't see any relationship between these things what you say is true it's tragic and it's inevitable that human beings are gonna have to kill some animals in some situations but I don't see a that an excuse for me to eat cheese for me to drink milk for me to make those compromise I don't see in that a reason for me to give up on the efforts I can make to make the world a better place you know just just to do the best I can any opportunity you get in these situations whether it's public outreach and education or whether it's a flirtation as such I think you got to emphasize look nothing you're saying is freaking me out nothing you're saying is making me angry my own parents eat meat my father ate meat until the day he died my co-workers all of my teachers that I respected and had admiration for ate meat and all the teachers that I despised hated in school they all ate me too I've grown up surrounded by meat eaters just like you the purpose of a flirtation is not to trick someone into thinking they want to be in a relationship with you for just one night or for just one not sure it's not seduction it's not deception when I say flirtation I do not mean deception the purpose of the flirtation is to let you know who I am and for you to let me know who you are and for us to figure out do we have enough in common where we would want to be in a relationship together where we should be in a relationship together or no is that not the case maybe we should just be friends or maybe we should just part ways as strangers and never talk again maybe there's something else but the stage of flirtation is precisely that process of going from somebody known pardon me going from somebody who is completely unknown to somebody who is known I'm not trying to trick people into becoming vegan against their interests against their in strength instincts I'm not trying it's not like a seduction or a deception where for one night or for a short time they're going to be gauged as I'm interested in getting to know people who have the intelligence and the self-discipline and the talent to be a positive part of the vegan movement and yeah it is kind of flirtation where you meet people and try to figure out is it you doesn't know if I give a lecture to 1,000 people how many of them really possibly have the talent to be vegan let alone to be a vegan activist or organizer or artist or somehow work for the Advancement of the vegan is there one person in the crowd and again if you're trying to fall in love if you're trying to find a girlfriend or a boyfriend or getting married um you're not trying to you're not trying to recruit a thousand people you may be talking to a thousand people to find that one person the person with whom you have that common ground person you appreciate and who appreciates you so these interactions ultimately you know if they're not about that kind of discovery that kind of really honest down-to-earth revelation of who you are and discovered for the other person is I think there is no point in having the conversation at all what we're doing here is not convincing each other of facts it's not sharing data or raw information it's figuring out who are you and what are you motivated to do what are your assumptions and what are your motivations and you know what maybe maybe you're going to leave this conversation with a motivation to become a better person to begin someone other than who and what you already are maybe and maybe you're just going to learn something else that's going to adjust your attitude a little bit by meeting me and hearing a perspective from someone who is very fundamentally a different kind of person with different assumptions and different motivations so let me just agree with Frank who found out and take it a step further an airport that's an easy example hospital that's an easy example I used to work in a museum Museum at a garden on one side and a forest on the other kind of had forests surrounding it half the building in the tropics right here in Taiwan how many animals are you gonna kill just to keep a wooden chair going people have decided this chair made out of wood it should be preserved for future generations in a museum there are so many animals that want to come in and chew on this chair wooden chairs manuscripts you know paintings calligraphy on Scrolls so many little insects and mice want to come in and eat these things have snakes coming to the museum too and that museum had a team of exterminators at all times working to wipe out all these animals what's the value of cultural heritage what's the value of a nonliving inanimate work of art how many thousands of rats have to die so this chair so this painting so this piece of calligraphy on a scroll can be preserved can endure for the next generation maybe in the end we have to make the decision to relocate this museum to okay so it's not being constantly infested with wildlife that also could be an option it's tragic and it's true an order for veganism to win I don't have to convince you