I DO NOT believe Durianrider is "A Narcissist" (N.P.D.)

yo what up we are broadcasting live in a
suspicious salmon-colored shirt from the edge of my kitchen sink or if just been washing dishes on livestream keeping it all the way real and this video is gonna continue to keep it real talking about an issue that's current within the digital vegan demi-monde but i'm talking about in a reasonably deep way so this video will still be meaningful if I come back and watch it myself maybe 5 or 10 years now when I've forgotten hopefully forgotten the controversy at the moment that Spurs me to make this video look good it's gonna kick this off with two anecdotes one from my personal life and one from my my professional life I guess back when I was a scholar of Buddhism I walked into a room in a reasonably ostentatious Buddhist temple in Sri Lanka and there was a younger monk attending on an older monk who was more or less on his deathbed so this was an August respected and revered senior Buddhist monk expected to die I don't know within days or weeks but obviously his physical health was deteriorating and they assumed his mental health was deteriorating as well and there was the monk I walked in the door with who was more or less like my interpreter I wouldn't have been able to walk into that room and that Buddhist temple without him saying next to me he vouched for me as a as a Buddhist scholar if you like anyway so the monk was hoping I would talk to this elder monk about scholarship and translation and research and handwritten Pali manuscripts the type of thing I was doing and you know I was also doing history in politics and slavery and revolution and all kinds other stuff but that's outside the scope of this video and this monk is overwhelmed with emotion and he's talking about a specific situation from World War two in very passionate tones and everybody else in the room except me thinks that he's insane it was a really memorable moment in a really strange scenario he was talking about an impossible to summarize complex political situation that involves Sri Lanka and Japan and of course the broader conflict between the British Empire and the Nazis to simplify slightly and you know he was kind of half weeping as he was talking about it and evidently he was there and he was involved and I didn't get the whole story and I sat down with his but it's not gonna held his hand and I looked in his eyes and because of the cultural context of Buddhism everyone else in the room just assumes I'm doing the compassionate thing and like pretending to understand what this guy was talking about but I knew the history I knew that what he was saying was coherent and meaningful and was about a specific historical situation and everybody else in the room thought that this guy was lying there on his deathbed and was losing his marbles that he was yeah I remember one of the monks used exactly that phrase to me he said oh it's such a shame you know this formally respected and revered buddhist monk he's he's losing his marbles everyone else thought this guy was ranting incoherently just because they didn't know the context nulls more the political content of what this guy said but that was rushed out of the room went away they all thought it was very you know pious of me to sit down and hold this guy's hand he'll do his eyes but I really knew what he was talking about I knew that he wasn't crazy and I ever quite learned what his role was in that history he was old enough he was alive during World War two and you know he was involved in that situation which is why he was so overwhelmed with emotion about it he was wanting to pass on you know before he died some details I think not just about the events themselves but also vote the religious ceremonies where they got together kind of the Japanese and Sri Lankan sides at the end of the war I think to reflect on what happened and why so anyway the perception of this man as insane haunted me everybody in the room is being reasonable and well-intentioned and even ostentatiously compassionate but in fact they're judging this guy is insane quite wrongly and dismissing what he had to say and what he had to say I had some real importance now just within the last few days I've been taking care of my daughter who is 4 years old around the clock I only have custody for 15 days but for these 15 days I'm spending as much time as possible and a couple of times my daughter has said things to me where in context I I I just didn't know what she was talking about and then a few hours later or a few days later she puts on some TV show she watches regularly and suddenly it clicks that what she's saying wasn't crazy she was discussing a situation in some TV show she watch watches you know a TV show for kids but when she was telling it to me in the kind of slightly garbled way that four-year-olds talk I had no idea what she was talking about and it seemed like nonsense or it seemed crazy to give one example you would assume you guys probably - I remember she was talking to me about imagination and she asked me these are is almost a direct quote when I use my imagination do I use a trolley what and you know like trying to be nice to my daughter and I said well you know where I live in Canada we don't have a trolley and where I live in China we don't have a trolley evening and she said no no this wasn't what you meant so later I sat with her and we watched this TV show of Mister Rogers neighborhood it's a classic TV show for kids and I realized oh okay this is what she met I had watched that show when I was a child decades ago and I've forgotten right when you use your imagination do you use throw okay it's disturbing to me to see people on the internet with absolutely no humor and no detachment and no compassion judging one another as sane and insane and even someone as despicable as durianrider I have stood up in the past this is the origin of my conflicts with vegan cheetah was the back when vegan cheetah was making reckless accusations against durianrider I stood up and said no that's wrong that's inappropriate I'm not just standing up against defamation because I don't want to be defamed myself I don't want anyone to face this kind of defamation and slander not even during Ryder he doesn't deserve that and I'm not comfortable with people saying that during Ryder was a narcissist so that during Ryder is insane in the in the reckless way that they do and you know there's a famous line from Chris Rock it's famous to me Chris Rock is a comedian Chris Rock stood up on stage one time and said you know people go around saying life is short life is short no it's not life is long especially when you make the wrong choices and you know a lot of people it's really easy to perceive them as insane when the truth is they're just somebody who's made some bad choices and maybe they're still making bad choices now maybe they're making bad choices again and again but for an outsider looking in it's really easy to perceive bad choices as insanity and there are two very different things I see people judging durianrider as a narcissist as having NPD narcissistic personality disorder while ignoring all the evidence about what kind of sanity and what kind of insanity he displays we have videotape evidence showing us and while ignoring you know the very real record of his own experience of the psychiatric establishment now during Ryder lies about many things but to give you an example writer said that when he was still very young doctors told his parents that they believed he was a compulsive liar or a pathological liar has ever call I heard during writers say that in his interview with Rich roll which roll has a podcast unaware deputy miner during writer has talked about the psychiatric and psychological examinations he underwent as part of a court case which I believe had to deal with liability and disability following a car accident or an accident with a truck he's described that at length so if anyone making these videos if you sincerely believe during Ryder had MPD it nurses for now and there's the nurses divorce now a disorder as a specific condition why was he not diagnosed with it and any of these times and in the other hand why do we have so many plausible suggestions for what's wrong with him from real allegedly real reportedly according to him real psychiatric evaluations he's undergone which did diagnosed him with having very serious psychological problems very serious psychiatric disorders but not this one not MPD right so there's a lot of wishful thinking going on here and it's disturbing to me to see again I don't want anyone to be slandered I didn't defend myself so that people will turn around and slander during write it this way I really you know it's really not cool to me um and I've seen videotape of durianrider doing things if you really understand NPD if you really understand our system personality disorder if you really known people diagnosed the condition who really have that condition then for example when you see durianrider sitting in front of a live audience which i've seen and taking questions and taking criticisms unexpected and first prizm in the manner that he does it's impossible for a new belief watching that videotape there is real counter evidence that he does not have NPD let me tell you something guys you can meet someone who is a bulimic and never know they're a bulimic you know see no signs of it in their behavior because the nature bulimia is a disorder that can be private it can be personal it can be one person alone in the bathroom after they de miel etc there are many many psychological and psychiatric conditions that are not evident in face to face shallow interactions people of this kind NPD is not one of them MPD is a behavioral disorder it's a personality disorder of face to face behavior between people that's exactly what people with MPD have the most problem with right MPD is a very very serious disorder and if you don't know what it is and how it operates but you meet someone and interact with them face to face who has a disorder you would at the very least get the sense that there's something very seriously wrong with them and meanwhile people with the condition often not always but often can have successful careers as computer programmers or lawyers doing all kinds of work provided that the core of the work they can do alone alone in a cubicle alone at their cottage they're people with MPD very often alternate between seeking the company of others the adulation of others the approval of others the ego validation of others and running away to be isolated and that is partly because they feel and with great sorrow people with MPD really do feel the indifference and even boredom and disapproval of those around them when people fail to give them the kind of validation and gratification that you see I don't see progress for the vegan movement in switching from the kind of slander the durianrider used to direct against others to the kind of slander I now see directed against the writer that's not progress that's not why I had my fundraiser and had my legal case progress is if we progress beyond this kind of slander entirely it's impossible for me to verify the honesty of anything during writer says because he's lied about many many things but so far as I know what he has said about his own psychiatric diagnosis for this what I take it seriously he's talked about his own experiences with psychiatrists and psychotherapists and so on and I've always said it's strange to me that his followers don't just take that more seriously and whether you react with compassion or contempt is up to you but there's no point constructing new fables or new slander or new anyone no against these people it's not good for me it's not good for you it's not good for veganism etc um I have brothers my father had a lot of kids I have brothers and half-brothers would have you who just made terrible choices with their lives a lot of those choices are invisible in our culture in our society I have several brothers who from my perspective I would consider to be alcoholics I think within Canada or within England they're not considered alcoholics because a very high level of drinking is considered acceptable or invisible you know people make bad choices life is long especially when you make the wrong choices it's really really easy to perceive someone else's choices from the outside without understanding the context or that understand the politics with understanding the other options they had it's really easy to perceive that as insanity I do think insanity is a problem in the movement I've made myself very unpopular by talking about how important it is that we work with people in politics who are really reliable who are really sane that we're honest with ourselves we don't dismiss the significance of psychiatric problems when we're choosing who are our allies who are our colleagues in the movements etc but in the same way that I once sat down in that room with that Buddhist monk and everyone else perceived this guy's insane you've got a tree people with enough detachment compassion insight just patience just hearing their side of the story you know it's it's skepticism of another kind to say well am i yet at the point where I can judge whether this person is sane or insane am i yet at the point where I can judge why did they make the bad choices that they've made sometimes people make bad choices for good reasons sometimes they make bad choices for reasons that make sense to themselves and themselves alone and sometimes they make bad choices for no good reason at all but none of those things makes you insane insanity is something very different and a specific diagnosis like narcissistic personality disorder it's something very different again