Why We All Hate the Humane Society: Veganism and the Human Rights Paradigm.

hey guys if you watch this channel you
know that all my videos are spontaneous but this one is a little bit extra spontaneous that's why there's actually a plate of fruit just in the edge of the screen there I'm about to go to the gym and so I have the headphones in um you know I really want to speak on this issue if you've watched the channel for a while you know that I have very often raised tough questions about comparisons made between veganism and various struggles for Human Rights I've raised questions but whether or not these are useful comparisons how these guide us in our activism how they got us politically philosophically and pragmatically most comparisons I mean comparisons are odious as we say most comparisons are going to be useful and meaningful within certain limits and then they're going to become meaningless observed or counterproductive in others you know even the argument that you should be vegan to avoid getting cancer in some context it's meaningful so I'm get connor's birthday mode and some context it just becomes ridiculous you know why do you refuse to wear leather shoes the answer can't be because you don't want to get cancer it can't be at an hysterical fear of cancer you know cancer science is relevant to veganism it is interesting it is rewarding to know about that stuff but the ethical and political arguments can't be based on so in the same way the type of parallel that people try to construe between human rights and animal rights or registering human rights and veganism make it simple sometimes we're talking about sometimes it's meaningful and sometimes it becomes meaningless and if you watch my earlier videos that criticize direct action everywhere you'll see those issues coming up again and again those questions hard questions but the limits of that approach and how this connects to pragmatic questions of future vegans Paloma I have a quotation here from the Humane Society the United States in general all vegans love to hate the humane society because they're not vegan enough they're not humane enough what can I tell you um the Humane Society said the following when asked by a mainstream news source to comment on the contradictions within the free-range chicken movement so you know these are Anna well Ferris movements that slightly improve or somewhat improve the conditions of hens that you know are born to die that live their whole lives waiting to be executed with a date marked on the calendar for when their heads are going to be chopped up when they're going to lit daya you know a terrible violent death in order to provide food for human beings that is unnecessary and unhealthy these are hens however so there are various political movements that instead of trying to abolish and a black culture instead of encouraging people to become vegan instead of taking an echo ecological and ethical approach to these facts instead just tries to make their lives more comfortable for the short time that they live inside a world of concrete and steel fences and rooms said so you know is what it is this is a Fisher that most vegans feel very strongly about so when asked about this Humane Society nine states representative said the following he says quote with companies like Costco it is better to welcome them for taking the first steps rather than punish them for not taking the last step so he's saying when you're looking at the conditions of chickens that are raised on a factory farm to provide meat for a large corporation like Costco you should congratulate costco you should thank them for taking some of these steps towards free-range towards more humane conditions for the chickens rather than punishing them for failing to live up to some higher expectations that vegans might have or that even you know vegetarians an animal welfare people might have okay no he's wrong and he's not ten percent wrong he's one hundred percent wrong and this is one sense in which the comparison to human rights is meaningful in some contexts it's meaningless in some kind of counterproductive but in this case we have to say no when we're talking about slavery we're not talking about the working conditions of slaves we're not talking about matters of degree difference of degree we're talking about a matter of principle are you going to abolish slavery or not when we're talking about hard issues and human rights I'd say it but in some countries do women have the right to drive a car some of you will know right away which countries in talk about but there are some countries where really women do not have the same human rights as men women do not have the right to vote when we do not have the right to drive a car that you know though the same rights in a very practical sense as men we don't congratulate those countries for taking the first steps on the contrary we have a very negative and putative attitude towards them as long as they are violating any of the principles of human rights and I've been on the other side of that debate in the following sense when you're living in a country like Cambodia and Cambodia is not that big a country so you meet people who are part of the government you meet people who are representing all sides the political puzzle um there were Cambodians who support their own government there and they'll say to you look oh we can never satisfy you people Oh human rights in Cambodia lately aren't that bad human rights in Cambodia are better than they were 10 years ago they're better than they were 30 years ago or maybe they'll say something like human rights in Cambodia are better than they are in Myanmar they're better than they are in Indonesia or Malaysia why can't you just be happy with us why can't you just congratulate us for taking the steps that we've taken for the improvement why is it this continual criticism and dissatisfaction mostly from Westerners but whatever why is the human rights people are never satisfied it's never enough for you people you never throw us a party you never congratulate us for doing the positive things we've done so this is just totally thankless and you know this this is parallel to this question with the Humane Society United States but that is actually when you can criticize you complain but that is actually part of the logic of human rights is that it is an inflexible minimum standard it's an argument not for an ideal it's an argument for a minimum standard and as long as you're feeling to meet that minimum standard you don't get any praise you don't get a fresh election and I really understand really sympathize here he's asking us to sympathize with a corporation like Costco I can't really sympathize that I mean whatever costco is making money out of slaughtering animals I don't have a lot of sympathy but it's true when I was inside a country like Laos when I was inside a country like Cambodia where there are ongoing Human Rights problems it is very easy to sympathize the other side where the dot the me too saying well come on we have more democracy than we used to have we have more freedom of speech than we used to have human rights you know it's not perfect but come on it's not perfect in America why can't you guys just throw us a party why can't you guys just celebrate the progress we've made it why can't you be or conversely they say we're never going to satisfy you people anyway so just why should we even look at listen your criticism right admittedly that is a strategic disadvantage of the human rights approach but when we're talking about human rights again and this may be a reason in many contacts not to address veganism in parallel humans but when we are talking about human rights or not talking about the Arts we're not talking about a beautiful painting when I was done with the upper limits of human achievement matter we're not talking about something where genius and creativity and something beautiful is rewarded we are talking about a minimum standard we're not talking with Sun like sports we're human excellence and strength and vitality and you know maybe some kind of improvised acumen you know all kinds of talents get rewarded sports it's not like the Olympics we're celebrating who gets the gold medal and who gets the silver medal I've never even heard of that who gets the bronze who gets this gold medal human rights who gets the gold medal and animals our attention is never focused at the upper levels of achievement and our attention is not even focused on doing the best you can I know people ridicule this in the sports and in the arts and in music giving people an award or congratulating them because you know they gave their best effort you know maybe you didn't get the gold medal maybe didn't even get the bronze medal but you gave it your best you get you came up somewhere on that ladder of achievement we all look at any of that right when we're talking about human rights we're talking about minimum standards and anyone who fails those minimum standards is facing relentless unending criticism with in a sense no positive motivation no positive reward and that is implicitly the Fisher at the basis here that separates the Humane Society United States being willing to collaborate with and congratulate costco for the slightly better conditions they've given their their chickens before they cut their heads off and the hard no vegan political position of no it's still wrong it's still bad it's still evil and in a sense your version of evil is worse it's more dangerous it's more despicable because you're pretending it's humane you've taken something evil and you've added onto the surface of it a myth of humanitarian sympathy you've you've made it worse because you can decode it it I wanted this video to be relatively brief so I'm not going to get into that in any great depth but I think that's also even what I've just said there's this bizarre irony within veganism because the abolitionist position doesn't want to admit that there are differences there are degrees of different shades of grey there's better and worse morally that it you know a chicken is better off if it's free range as opposed to living in a cage is that I person I don't feel that's a problem for veganism I think you can take an absolute moral position that eating meat is wrong and you can also recognize that a bird that's able to walk around is less oppressed is less miserable is in less physical agony than a bird that's literally has to live its whole life in a cage the size of a shoebox and can't actually spread its wings I don't feel there's a conflict there some vegans do but i think the other sense that's interesting have just mentioned in which there's a moral distinction maybe makes people uncomfortable it's talking about the fact that it is actually ethically worse to be murdering these animals to be forcing them to live their whole lives in confinement and then die so they can decorate your dinner plate and to do so with this humanitarian myth on top that I should makes it morally worse but you know I was reminded talked about this with one of my teachers here in Chinese recently but I said you know on some level we all relate to the the moral issue there because you know if two boxers get into a ring they don't hate each other that I name it's just a boxing match just competition two boxes getting the ring one of them might die it happens every so often you know boxers get brain injuries so they get their face caved in look at their nose caved in somehow they get concussion and actually died after the boxing match in hospital it does happen if that happens mean in a sense it's murder in a sense it's you know it's just an accident but everyone acknowledges you know what these were two adult men possibly adult women they stepped into a boxing ring they can send it to this there are equals there roughly the same height the roughly the same weight it's a fair fight it's a boxing match there's a sense of fair play there we can accept the consequences of life and death but nobody would accept it if a grown man got into the boxing ring with a child with a defenseless child and that same sense of justice and injustice that's so fundamental to the human spirit frankly it's there also with these animals you know what if this was going on with a human being fighting for survival against a bear that's different from the way we're treating chickens because chickens are exactly in that position like the child in the boxing ring there's no sense of fair play so to put a humanitarian veneer on top of that really does make it worse you know um violence can be justified in so many ways and simply the logic of the boxing match the logic of the Equality of the competitors of the logic of self-defense when you're attacked by a bear we're dealing with something that is so fundamentally evil in taking a chicken out of its natural habitat in breeding it in modifying its body in depriving it of anything like an experience of its natural habitat in domesticating it in breaking its spirit and forcing it to live and die indoors they'll see in the sky and again to produce food that is unnecessary and unhealthy etc many ironies to it and meanwhile nobody even tries to argue that a boxing match is humane nobody's looking to make these excuses nobody's looking to candy-coat it right because we don't need to make the excuse there isn't that fundamental injustice there so yes there are strange degrees of difference there are shades of gray there are questions of better and worse yes in the treatment of chickens and in the excuses we make for it and on an unspoken level that I think even meat eaters are aware of there is this difference between a bird that's managed to live its whole life in the forest spreading its wing as exercising its nature and a bird that's been not only killed but deprived of the opportunity to have anything like a life before it dies through this you know depraved industry that we have invented and that we now you know try to flatter with these meaningless catch phrases like free range