Gary Yourofsky is Wrong: Vegans Kill Insects.
28 April 2016 [link youtube]
Here's the link to the Yourofsky interview quoted: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl-8Xl7qrhE
Here's my own video (from just a few days ago), with "Vegans Kill Cockroaches" in the title: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6-5kQJSZZE
Youtube Automatic Transcription
Guerry Yurovsky can sit down and make a
cute little speech about how all the insects are his friends about how he loves the ants and he loves the bees and he loves the butterflies he chooses not to mention the cockroaches of the bedbugs and the majority of the meat-eaters they're laughing at you as they know that the fruit and the vegetables and the grains that you eat every night are produced by killing insects and in the future they're still going to be produced by killing insects okay so let's get real the truth is vegans kill insects and in the future they're going to continue killing insects and even if he can take over the government's and create some kind of vegan dystopia they're still going to be killing insects and include insects in your circle of compassion there are animals - they're creatures so the question becomes not whether or not vegans kill insects but whether or not vegans are honest about it whether or not veganism as a practical political ideology is going to be based on lies deception and holier-than-thou [ __ ] or based on some kind of realism that's willing to recognize contradictions of limitations within the vegan program there are no contradictions here you guys are walking contradictions you guys are walking graveyards of murdered animals you claim that your holy and compassionate and then you commit atrocities and commit evil acts every single day so everybody who's not vegan needs to look in the mirror I'm here responding in part to statements made by Gary Yourofsky you know Gary Yourofsky um in an interview he gave to a bite size vegan she asked a good question and I feel he gave a very weak and vacillating answer well what about bacteria or ants or or you know other bugs are all beings equal to each other and all the insects not the bacteria but he is in the position of perceiving weakness as strength she asks about killing insects and he gives a meandering speech about how wonderful and beautiful insects are and how you should include them in your circle of compassion but at the very end of the speech there's another telling detail where he says somewhat incoherently that you should not admit of any inconsistency that meat eaters are trying to catch vegans and inconsistencies and veganism has no inconsistencies I you shouldn't admit that there are any inconsistencies there are no contradictions here why not admit that contradictions exist within veganism I'm gonna briefly digress to its use of parallelism I had a girlfriend who was a longtime feminist she had organized feminist clubs and study feminism University and what have you and you know I got together with her at the very beginning of my period of being a Buddhist intellectual being involved with scholarly historical study of tera vaada Buddhism if you've watched my channel for a while you know I was not a superstitious Buddhist I was a very down-to-earth Buddhist now I'm very down-to-earth vegan but I remember I made a conscious decision when I first got involved in Buddhism I am not gonna lie about contradictions inequalities and shortcomings in Buddhism I am NOT gonna be for Buddhism what you know Christian preachers are for Christianity I am going to keep it real I am gonna give it to you raw and this girlfriend of mine was right at the beginning of relationship she said to me basically but isn't it true that the status of women in Buddhist countries is terrible like you know that they're oppressed they're a bad situation compared to Western Europe presumably implicitly compared to some Western standard and you know the first thing I said to her was the most important thing so they looked her straight in the eye and I said to her honestly everywhere you go it's a struggle if we're talking about status of women everywhere you go it's a struggle and then she was listening and she respected what I was gonna say next because she knew I wasn't gonna [ __ ] her she knew I wasn't an apologist you know wasn't making excuses she knew I was gonna face up to the limitations shortcomings I said to her the status of women in Buddhism is bad however it's better in Buddhism than it is in Hinduism and it's better in Hinduism than it is in Islam this is true Cimino if you're looking at Sri Lanka India Pakistan Afghanistan basically the furthest south in the most Buddhist society is where women have the best status then as you go north the more Muslim it gets the more Hindu it gets the worse the status of of women is in those societies Southeast Asia there are also contrasts status of women in Thailand as opposed to Malaysia Indonesia Muslim villagers this is only a parallelism my point is my opinion would have been worth nothing if it didn't start with that fundamental commitment to deal ism all right and the same is true for us as vegans what credibility do you have if your approach is to claim that all insects are part of your circle of compassion gary yourofsky's term what food do you actually think you can produce with no use of pesticides and no killing of insects or other animals in the farming process none I'm not going to go off your into examples of how agricultural actually works in the real world either interested or you're not in general where you've got large plots producing organic agriculture fourthly they're still killing insects just using other methods still killing animals you know you think you can have an orchard full of mangoes and animals won't come to to eat it you or any other fruit crop what-have-you all of those things are sustained by a form of constant ongoing low-level violence against nature so that the orchard doesn't revert into a jungle so that it doesn't revert into a forest and you do that by killing other plants and by killing other animals and by killing insects and that is the process of farming and even when you mix up the plots and say okay these three mountaintops we're gonna try to keep organic you keep them organic until there's an outbreak of insects then you spray it with pesticides and then for the next few years well the infestation goes away those mountaintops that at the outbreak they become your non-organic crops you try to cycle it you try to have some of the other land go from conventional organic that's also where the certification is all based on a number of years something certified organic it means they haven't used pesticides and a few other types of chemicals on that land only for a certain number of years and that's even if the certification process is not crooked I myself of the humanitarian work linked to agriculture and indeed involved with this issue of pesticides video would be too long if I talked about stories where I really know I did I did do research on how these things work obviously not in every crop on earth some of you may send me mail with exceptions if so fabulous I'm so happy if you've come up with an exception to the rule but the rule is yes vegans kill insects now and in order to produce fruit cereals grains any of the crops human beings need to survive we're gonna keep on killing insects in the future even if the future actually were a vegan utopia a vegan dystopia a vegan government fill in the blank a vegan majority would still be killing insects spiders and I for those that know me well they terrify me more than anything I think there's only two things in hell fire and spiders but that doesn't mean that I kill them I do not kill spiders the hard limit and that my heart goes out to you a lot of people watching this video will have already experienced this others of you will experience in the future the hard limit if you think you're not with me if you think you're against me is bedbugs if you have an experience the horror that is urban bedbugs man I hope you never do I hope in your whole life you never experience that but I mean if you are a vegan in gary yourofsky's mold if you think that insects are in your circle of compassion if you think you never have to kill a fly a bedbug infestation will make a hypocrite out of you and me I'm a vegan but I'm not a hypocrite because I'm willing to admit the limitations I'm willing to admit the contradictions and when you do that it's not a weakness it's a strength people will respect you more people will take you more seriously people will regard your advice in your perspective as balanced as down-to-earth as reflecting reality and man I'm not saying killing bed bugs is good I'm not even saying it's normal or it's okay it may be tragic it may be sad but it is inevitable as for insects I dig most insects umm I don't kill any why lie about it and why tell the truth well I don't know what what credibility do you think we have so go saying before about Buddhism do you want to be regarded as a cult flunky or do you want to be regarded as a respected scholar when I was involved in Buddhism I I didn't for a time I didn't want to even be regarded as secular you know now identify as an ayah a historical nihilism is what I lend my name to if I feel that lend my name to anything but at the time at a long period where I wouldn't even say I was a secular scholar where I would say I was a Buddhist scholar but what is your credibility rest on a certain type of detachment a certain type of honesty that you're willing to talk about slave every in the history of Buddhism when there's slavery Buddhism does have a say history of slavery a lot of people lie to you about it that you're going to talk about poverty or the oppression of women or any of those other things in a real way that you're not a preacher that you're not a religious maniac that you're not distorting the history of the world in order to flatter your case as an ideologue that's what's crucial um and look man it's no joke before I use the example of cockroaches I'm gonna give a link below this video to my earlier discussion of the fact that vegans do kill cockroaches in the future we're still gonna kill cockroaches so the only question is for a guy like Gary Yourofsky why do you want to lie about it and what credibility do you have afterwards after you've gone around the world lying in people's faces about it and pretending we have a circle of compassion and we don't need to kill cockroaches and we don't need to kill insects to grow crops either veganism is something actionable something implementable something practicable or you're dumbing it down lying to yourself lying to others and spreading these vague hippie myths that make it into a laughingstock precisely because it's not actionable it's not a minimal fact our backyard right now is full of grasshoppers and crickets in fact this morning when I left Detroit there was a grasshopper I swear this big on the garage and Eric and I were out there and we would just face-to-face and all for about 15 minutes looking at this beautiful creature I was together with my wife who is now my ex-wife we were in an apartment she was pregnant and the apartment building had a bedbug infestation not my fault not anybody's fault the whole apartment building had a bedbug infestation it was terrible and I did my homework I looked into what the chemical being used was to spray the building guess what it could cause birth defects it could cause harm to the baby we had to go out and check into a hotel for three nights at a time have all the windows open in the apartment have the cold wind coming off the Saskatchewan Prairie blowing through that apartment and we as a call our belonging and put them into a bag and we had absolutely no choice all right there is no nonviolent way to get rid of bedbugs there is no nonviolent way to live with bedbugs gary Yurovsky can sit down and make a cute little speech about how all the insects are his friends about how he loves the ants and he loves the bees and he loves the butterflies he chooses not to mention the cockroaches of the bedbugs he chooses to pretend that contradiction and paradox only exists in the meteor side and the majority of the meat-eaters they're laughing at you because they know that the fruit and the vegetables and the grains that you eat every night are produced by killing insects and in the future they're still going to be produced by killing insects okay so let's get real for me fundamentally veganism is so positive because it's about the changes that you can make politics is the art of the possible the first thing you need to communicate to people is I'm here to do something positive and I'm here to work with what we've got and I'm here to do what's possible religion is about the impossible it's about promising people paradise heaven the afterlife Nirvana impossible things for a low low price and in that sense I do not want veganism to ever become a religion I want veganism to be a program of action that motivates us to get out and make a real change right now untold millions of cows sheep pigs living their whole lives in a concrete floor in a metal cage primates in laboratories being tortured to death so that scientists can invent a slightly redder shade of lipstick right the weight and the agony of all of that is on my shoulders okay but we're not going to make progress by pretending to be morally pure we're gonna make progress of rolling up our sleeves making the necessary compromises and meeting the limitations and contradictions within the principles that we are sincerely committed to
cute little speech about how all the insects are his friends about how he loves the ants and he loves the bees and he loves the butterflies he chooses not to mention the cockroaches of the bedbugs and the majority of the meat-eaters they're laughing at you as they know that the fruit and the vegetables and the grains that you eat every night are produced by killing insects and in the future they're still going to be produced by killing insects okay so let's get real the truth is vegans kill insects and in the future they're going to continue killing insects and even if he can take over the government's and create some kind of vegan dystopia they're still going to be killing insects and include insects in your circle of compassion there are animals - they're creatures so the question becomes not whether or not vegans kill insects but whether or not vegans are honest about it whether or not veganism as a practical political ideology is going to be based on lies deception and holier-than-thou [ __ ] or based on some kind of realism that's willing to recognize contradictions of limitations within the vegan program there are no contradictions here you guys are walking contradictions you guys are walking graveyards of murdered animals you claim that your holy and compassionate and then you commit atrocities and commit evil acts every single day so everybody who's not vegan needs to look in the mirror I'm here responding in part to statements made by Gary Yourofsky you know Gary Yourofsky um in an interview he gave to a bite size vegan she asked a good question and I feel he gave a very weak and vacillating answer well what about bacteria or ants or or you know other bugs are all beings equal to each other and all the insects not the bacteria but he is in the position of perceiving weakness as strength she asks about killing insects and he gives a meandering speech about how wonderful and beautiful insects are and how you should include them in your circle of compassion but at the very end of the speech there's another telling detail where he says somewhat incoherently that you should not admit of any inconsistency that meat eaters are trying to catch vegans and inconsistencies and veganism has no inconsistencies I you shouldn't admit that there are any inconsistencies there are no contradictions here why not admit that contradictions exist within veganism I'm gonna briefly digress to its use of parallelism I had a girlfriend who was a longtime feminist she had organized feminist clubs and study feminism University and what have you and you know I got together with her at the very beginning of my period of being a Buddhist intellectual being involved with scholarly historical study of tera vaada Buddhism if you've watched my channel for a while you know I was not a superstitious Buddhist I was a very down-to-earth Buddhist now I'm very down-to-earth vegan but I remember I made a conscious decision when I first got involved in Buddhism I am not gonna lie about contradictions inequalities and shortcomings in Buddhism I am NOT gonna be for Buddhism what you know Christian preachers are for Christianity I am going to keep it real I am gonna give it to you raw and this girlfriend of mine was right at the beginning of relationship she said to me basically but isn't it true that the status of women in Buddhist countries is terrible like you know that they're oppressed they're a bad situation compared to Western Europe presumably implicitly compared to some Western standard and you know the first thing I said to her was the most important thing so they looked her straight in the eye and I said to her honestly everywhere you go it's a struggle if we're talking about status of women everywhere you go it's a struggle and then she was listening and she respected what I was gonna say next because she knew I wasn't gonna [ __ ] her she knew I wasn't an apologist you know wasn't making excuses she knew I was gonna face up to the limitations shortcomings I said to her the status of women in Buddhism is bad however it's better in Buddhism than it is in Hinduism and it's better in Hinduism than it is in Islam this is true Cimino if you're looking at Sri Lanka India Pakistan Afghanistan basically the furthest south in the most Buddhist society is where women have the best status then as you go north the more Muslim it gets the more Hindu it gets the worse the status of of women is in those societies Southeast Asia there are also contrasts status of women in Thailand as opposed to Malaysia Indonesia Muslim villagers this is only a parallelism my point is my opinion would have been worth nothing if it didn't start with that fundamental commitment to deal ism all right and the same is true for us as vegans what credibility do you have if your approach is to claim that all insects are part of your circle of compassion gary yourofsky's term what food do you actually think you can produce with no use of pesticides and no killing of insects or other animals in the farming process none I'm not going to go off your into examples of how agricultural actually works in the real world either interested or you're not in general where you've got large plots producing organic agriculture fourthly they're still killing insects just using other methods still killing animals you know you think you can have an orchard full of mangoes and animals won't come to to eat it you or any other fruit crop what-have-you all of those things are sustained by a form of constant ongoing low-level violence against nature so that the orchard doesn't revert into a jungle so that it doesn't revert into a forest and you do that by killing other plants and by killing other animals and by killing insects and that is the process of farming and even when you mix up the plots and say okay these three mountaintops we're gonna try to keep organic you keep them organic until there's an outbreak of insects then you spray it with pesticides and then for the next few years well the infestation goes away those mountaintops that at the outbreak they become your non-organic crops you try to cycle it you try to have some of the other land go from conventional organic that's also where the certification is all based on a number of years something certified organic it means they haven't used pesticides and a few other types of chemicals on that land only for a certain number of years and that's even if the certification process is not crooked I myself of the humanitarian work linked to agriculture and indeed involved with this issue of pesticides video would be too long if I talked about stories where I really know I did I did do research on how these things work obviously not in every crop on earth some of you may send me mail with exceptions if so fabulous I'm so happy if you've come up with an exception to the rule but the rule is yes vegans kill insects now and in order to produce fruit cereals grains any of the crops human beings need to survive we're gonna keep on killing insects in the future even if the future actually were a vegan utopia a vegan dystopia a vegan government fill in the blank a vegan majority would still be killing insects spiders and I for those that know me well they terrify me more than anything I think there's only two things in hell fire and spiders but that doesn't mean that I kill them I do not kill spiders the hard limit and that my heart goes out to you a lot of people watching this video will have already experienced this others of you will experience in the future the hard limit if you think you're not with me if you think you're against me is bedbugs if you have an experience the horror that is urban bedbugs man I hope you never do I hope in your whole life you never experience that but I mean if you are a vegan in gary yourofsky's mold if you think that insects are in your circle of compassion if you think you never have to kill a fly a bedbug infestation will make a hypocrite out of you and me I'm a vegan but I'm not a hypocrite because I'm willing to admit the limitations I'm willing to admit the contradictions and when you do that it's not a weakness it's a strength people will respect you more people will take you more seriously people will regard your advice in your perspective as balanced as down-to-earth as reflecting reality and man I'm not saying killing bed bugs is good I'm not even saying it's normal or it's okay it may be tragic it may be sad but it is inevitable as for insects I dig most insects umm I don't kill any why lie about it and why tell the truth well I don't know what what credibility do you think we have so go saying before about Buddhism do you want to be regarded as a cult flunky or do you want to be regarded as a respected scholar when I was involved in Buddhism I I didn't for a time I didn't want to even be regarded as secular you know now identify as an ayah a historical nihilism is what I lend my name to if I feel that lend my name to anything but at the time at a long period where I wouldn't even say I was a secular scholar where I would say I was a Buddhist scholar but what is your credibility rest on a certain type of detachment a certain type of honesty that you're willing to talk about slave every in the history of Buddhism when there's slavery Buddhism does have a say history of slavery a lot of people lie to you about it that you're going to talk about poverty or the oppression of women or any of those other things in a real way that you're not a preacher that you're not a religious maniac that you're not distorting the history of the world in order to flatter your case as an ideologue that's what's crucial um and look man it's no joke before I use the example of cockroaches I'm gonna give a link below this video to my earlier discussion of the fact that vegans do kill cockroaches in the future we're still gonna kill cockroaches so the only question is for a guy like Gary Yourofsky why do you want to lie about it and what credibility do you have afterwards after you've gone around the world lying in people's faces about it and pretending we have a circle of compassion and we don't need to kill cockroaches and we don't need to kill insects to grow crops either veganism is something actionable something implementable something practicable or you're dumbing it down lying to yourself lying to others and spreading these vague hippie myths that make it into a laughingstock precisely because it's not actionable it's not a minimal fact our backyard right now is full of grasshoppers and crickets in fact this morning when I left Detroit there was a grasshopper I swear this big on the garage and Eric and I were out there and we would just face-to-face and all for about 15 minutes looking at this beautiful creature I was together with my wife who is now my ex-wife we were in an apartment she was pregnant and the apartment building had a bedbug infestation not my fault not anybody's fault the whole apartment building had a bedbug infestation it was terrible and I did my homework I looked into what the chemical being used was to spray the building guess what it could cause birth defects it could cause harm to the baby we had to go out and check into a hotel for three nights at a time have all the windows open in the apartment have the cold wind coming off the Saskatchewan Prairie blowing through that apartment and we as a call our belonging and put them into a bag and we had absolutely no choice all right there is no nonviolent way to get rid of bedbugs there is no nonviolent way to live with bedbugs gary Yurovsky can sit down and make a cute little speech about how all the insects are his friends about how he loves the ants and he loves the bees and he loves the butterflies he chooses not to mention the cockroaches of the bedbugs he chooses to pretend that contradiction and paradox only exists in the meteor side and the majority of the meat-eaters they're laughing at you because they know that the fruit and the vegetables and the grains that you eat every night are produced by killing insects and in the future they're still going to be produced by killing insects okay so let's get real for me fundamentally veganism is so positive because it's about the changes that you can make politics is the art of the possible the first thing you need to communicate to people is I'm here to do something positive and I'm here to work with what we've got and I'm here to do what's possible religion is about the impossible it's about promising people paradise heaven the afterlife Nirvana impossible things for a low low price and in that sense I do not want veganism to ever become a religion I want veganism to be a program of action that motivates us to get out and make a real change right now untold millions of cows sheep pigs living their whole lives in a concrete floor in a metal cage primates in laboratories being tortured to death so that scientists can invent a slightly redder shade of lipstick right the weight and the agony of all of that is on my shoulders okay but we're not going to make progress by pretending to be morally pure we're gonna make progress of rolling up our sleeves making the necessary compromises and meeting the limitations and contradictions within the principles that we are sincerely committed to