Getting shot in the head and "The Lessons of History".

madness yen but I have a friend of mine
who subscribed to my YouTube channel after I had a discussion with vegan gains and oh my god this girl if if there was a day if there was a word passionate and you looked up the definition its her so I follow her on Instagram her name is Maria by the way so she'll probably watch this discussion if she's watching this she'll know I'm talking about her she's from Sweden and in Sweden they fight for a lot of different social causes so apparently there's like a huge presence of Nazis I was not aware of that until she brought it to my attention so she fights against Nazism she fights against a you know animal products industry all that all that fun stuff and one thing I noticed every single day I kid you not she's out and about on the streets at an animal farm at a at the at the factory farms she's out there and she's spreading the message and she's shown me videos she's shown me pictures where the police have gotten involved and had to be escorted she tells me how they tipped down deer hunting stands where they hunt deer she hates hunters and it's crazy like the one thing that she's super adamant about are these stickers that she makes so the way she travels to show you she'll use public transportation she'll take these stickers everywhere she goes like a stack a good stack of like a hundred two hundred stickers start pasting them everywhere go vegan go vegan go vegan she's basically like leaving her footprint you know and it's not just her like it's obviously it's a group and whatnot okay well look so I know you don't ask me a question I'm gonna I'm gonna respond as if this question um what ended the Vietnam War so this may seem like it's totally unrelated but it's not for me this really is the answer now there were a lot of specific incidents during the Vietnam War that excited similar passions and it's understandable to my knowledge only one man was ever actually fully prosecuted in a military court for misconduct in Vietnam one excuse or another was always found to derail delay or cancel basically trials for war crimes crimes against humanity missed misconduct by US soldiers in Vietnam but that case was of soldier having improper conduct with an underage girl in an interrogation room he was raping a female child and I think everybody who knew anything about that case knew this was not the only incident with this guy there was a lot of rape in in Vietnam US soldiers did rape a lot of women there was torture and some of the guys who committed the torture showed up at the house of Congress what are called the winter soldier hearings and complained so the guy is tearing up it's not even like speculative they themselves had done this torture and they wanted to give depositions to Congress and say hey this is kind of over the line what we're doing so that stuff you know makes people passionate you know to some extent you wonder why why are people why are people so resigned to crimes against humanity being committed by US soldiers however would would it solve the problem so what what is the problem okay first of all the problem here we're addressing is specifically accountability and discipline in the US Armed Forces that is the problem we're not talking about the broader question of whether or not you should invade Vietnam in the first place the point is given that you have an army in Vietnam that you're raping and torturing people okay so standards of Human Rights decency and then accountability when those standards are violated disappointed said that's a shame oh nobody could possibly believe nobody's even going to debate with me is the way to improve those standards in the US military by doing what your friend Murray is doing it can't it can't possibly be now what is the way to do it okay then we can make a flowchart say okay how are we gonna actually address the question of raising standards of conduct and accountability for US Armed Forces abroad I think that's a debate worth having and that would be a political movement worth leading and devoting years of your life to and people donating millions of dollars to ultimately all these things have a price tag but I sympathize with someone who just wants to frankly go crazy and there were there were people in the 1960s and I think probably still say no just put up stickers saying the US Army raped this person the US Army tortured this person this is unacceptable these are across these crimes against humanity but as soon as we take a step beyond that we ask you Sturgess start thinking about outcomes and impacts and we start thinking about how many hours and years of our life were putting into it we have to come to a to a better methodology so that that is my answer to the question and there's a there's a kind of necessary irony here because again direct action everywhere they were founded on the promise that they were learning the lessons of history and already with this one example you see that it's impossible to just point to the lessons of history that's one lesson I take from the history of the Vino more you know and you know it's been a part of my life in various ways other people can read the same history and not take that lesson at all and so on and so forth but yeah that's you know that that's that's my answer really agree with you on that like there's I don't think where we're gonna have to argue on that point of view it's just um some people they do they do so much but they don't realize that the magnitude that they're doing it at is very small if not minimal so okay so sorry I've won with okay great that's a good one but look okay so my comparison there was to ultimately do a question of discipline you're asking the army to to be disciplined or to have self this fun and and and in some ways I think that is like the culture of meat-eating where you're looking for most of us you're looking at your own mother or your own father and saying why can't you have some accountability why can't you have some self this is one so I don't think it's totally irrelevant to speak in those kinds of loaded ethical terms of personal responsibility and accountability and then there's a larger cultural skill to it also there's the culture of the military sure um look I I am an atheist I see a lot wrong with Islam how really are you gonna change a Muslim majority country culturally how are we gonna change Saudi Arabia or Indonesia or Malaysia it's not it's not gonna be through Maria's tactics again I'm not picking on Maria but if you asked her what if you were living in a country where 99% of the population is Muslim like Indonesia is this what you do would you go around putting up stickers saying circumcision destroys 50% of the nerve endings in your penis circumcision is child abuse there a good example sticker that says circumcision is child abuse of course on a scientific factual level I agree with this statement circumcision is terrible however on a political level and even on an artistic level artistically this is an artistic and creative challenge how are we going to change the culture and this is why I'm using this is much different from the military question I don't think there's so much of an artist a question and creative talent you know that that's more of a purely political question it's not gonna be these tactics and on the contrary you know you may get killed I'm using her tactics in Saudi Arabia or Indonesia I'm not even necessarily about the government just local you know sincerely religious people may take the svenska and again to be fair Orthodox Jews in Israel may kill you if you you know piss off you know Orthodox and Hasidic Jews so em you know there are ever so often religious conflicts of that even within Judaism so that is the magnitude of the of the challenge we're up against so again I sympathize with people who are perhaps overcome with passion and want to do these things but I do think we can say it's strategically tactically and even artistically or aesthetically kind of kind of wrong I I think it's a I think it's a 300 year thing I do I miss be honest I think veganism is the 300 year struggle and if you look at I mean I think it is fair to say what is the future of Saudi Arabia for 300 years I think that is I think that is yeah sure I think that is the time to timeline um you know which for me is not an excuse for for indifference but you know cultural and human rights progress mmm even China it's incredibly depressing what's really possible in the next 50 years in communist China you know you you you worry so yeah I mean I do I do I do see these things as very deep very long-term struggles now okay quick devil's advocate what's the best thing about Maria's approach to one she she's gonna meet other people who also care about it want to make a difference that is very positive I said all the time one of the main reasons I came in the internet was to make friends meet colleagues get organized save the world you can't do it alone so she's probably gonna be less isolated because she's doing this form of activist than she otherwise would be um and point two there is an educational and learning process involved now okay if some people are so stupid they're not going to learn from anything I remember I got a story eat so you know I used to humanitarian work and I got a story from someone else doing humanitarian work we were in Southeast Asia but this woman that previous had been in in Africa in an area in Africa where there was a civil war going on and she met a white tourist who signed up to fight in a with the communist rebels in this orbit Africa as tourists you know and I asked her I said so at what point did he stop and reconsider the ethics of the morality of what she was doing so you know what it was one day the guy standing right next to him got shot in the head that's in his case that's what it took was standing next to someone who gets shot sorry to laugh dies but I mean it's assumed she didn t assume he would have you know cradled this guy as he was dying and stuff I sue me I don't think he just ran away I assume he you know tried to help this guy or something - I don't know but and then he started to ask himself two tough questions so even if it is shall we say negative learning learning from seeing things go wrong it's probably true that she's gonna look around again even someone most people have spoken to who were involved with direct action everywhere they got involved they saw what the organization was doing wrong and then they said ooh this is really messed up you know financially organizationally ethically and running onto a baseball field for thirty seconds and then go spend a week in prison you know because it's not that serious of charge don't get me wrong but still you know the legal stuff is a big deal it is not effective this is not worth it so Pete there is a learning process that goes on also so that I would say those are the two two most positive things about about Maria's approach yeah [Music] evolution