You can't read this stuff in a book: "recommended reading" is hard to do.
03 March 2017 [link youtube]
Spoilers: Thucydides gets a shout-out. ;-)
Youtube Automatic Transcription
hey guys what up this is going to be the
most entertaining video about the most depressing topic in the world reading books and not reading books the culture of recommended reading want to point out I got my three beautiful bouquets on camera not going to happen there when my girlfriend shows up I guess I'm going to put one in the bedroom one in the kitchen something like that spreading out around the apartment but I put the put the bouquets on camera partly because they were mentioned in an earlier video that I was confessing to vegan gains that you know it makes your whole apartment look cleaner when you get some flowers in there so we got the new girlfriend coming over we're gonna we're going to spread the flowers around you hit a great discussion on chat about red roses versus white roses if you have white bed sheet I understand why you want to have red roses i have read bed sheet i have bright crimson red sheets and I I agreed red roses are somehow a bit tacky I don't know why they just are I'm not into the culture of red roses and white rose petals look better on right bed sheet it is what it is all right with that romantic footnote aside this is this is more or less Valentine's Day right now depending on what time zone you're in I know it's Valentine's Day in Hawaii i thought i'd say somewhere or retention within a few hours of Valentine's Day the way they we're doing this most most romantic of topic um look all the time people ask me for recommended reading and they're often surprised at how we're counselors I am how reluctant I am how very carefully and rarely I actually recommend reading for somebody now for one thing that's a good question who you are if I'm recommending reading it's for you and I just do not understand this culture we have today of recommending something as a good book for everyone how can it possibly be most of the books I really respect and I really value are going to be meaningless or useless in somebody else's life now this also comes in to the pretensions of the culture of reading itself I'm going to come back to that people think something is more educational just because it's in book format and it's not you can learn nothing from reading a book and you can learn a lot from watching a YouTube video maybe not this YouTube video don't get your don't get your expectations up but there's no reason why the book as a format would be somehow more salubrious a more valuable than any other format but in our culture it definitely is hallowed as such and this is a bit problematic I think there was a video put up by Sargon of Akkad i am not a fan of served on the back had to almost needle to stay but I saw this video and like hath lain to the video he name drops three famous books in the history of political science Leviathan by thomas hobbes treatise of government by john locke the two treatises of government I think but John Locke and jean-jacques Rousseau and again I think this is just straight-up cultural programming and you think you few minutes to praise these books to his audience and really recommend that he said oh you know if you read these three books you really gain such an insight into you know the apparatus of the state and government and democracy as it works today and so on l watching that listen up thinking god damn that is not true at all and i would never say that to anyone not even even if my job in future even if i became a professor of political science teaching University students i would not introduce those books that way because one day i think you're lying I think you're hyping these books to people as if they're really relevant to Paul these days if they're really relevant to your life here now in a way that they're not like you know okay thomas hobbes most people grossly misunderstand his work it's misinterpreted you an unbelievable sent why would you be loved ice them if you're interested in that period of history if your address from reading it in its cultural contacts the vast majority of that book Leviathan is really about religion it's at a time when the conflict between catholic and protestant was really you know red in tooth and fang the wars between Catholics and products for the control of the future of Europe and when hobbes himself had his own very eccentric view of Christianity which was quote he was closer to Judaism I've just mentioned his his reading of the Bible was really based on the Old Testament and not on the you know revelations of Christ or what have you and he was really arguing for his view of religion most of that book is it's a deeply religious view of politics in the state it's totally alien to the the type of discourse we have today why would you lie to your audience that way I mean have you even read the book I wonder I had professors in University and when they talked about that same book Hobbes Leviathan I was convinced they'd never read it I was convinced that back when they were a teenager they had just read a few pages to study for an exam and they spent the next 20 years there a lot in their lives lying to their students and you know representing this book is something it isn't to me as deeply and you most of all you're misrepresenting the books of the person in terms of what it will mean to them how it's going to be useful for you in your life right so I mean I do think the recommending a book is a big deal it's certainly a lot more of your time and effort than recommending a youtube video now just comes through a funny situation I just got some positive messages from this guy called plant heat so that's his name the name he uses on the Internet is plant eat but plant eats ridiculed me earlier before saying in a video he quoted this out of context and then put it into a loop and tried to make me look foolish i said earlier that i do not think reading books is very important for knowing what's going on today in the vegan movement and the book reviews have done in the last three months really prove that fact i've done a lot of book reviews just lately some of them are currently patreon only i read and reviewed a bunch of books on politics including politics within veganism academic literature on on veganism as a philosophy movement etc okay and let me tell you most of those book reviews warn you don't read the book it's a waste year um even though this is right on topic for us note the other side of that is I could get why we'd be in books that we're seeing the the debates that really matter in veganism as a movement today during the last five years one of the biggest debates to explore was the the ideologies of Gary Yourofsky Gary iraqis theme was 100% on youtube via the internet he went on to give interviews on TV news stations this kind of thing he did other kinds of activism but the whole story both Gary Yourofsky initial philosophy and you know the people who criticized it and its response to critics that all unfolded on YouTube now I am also a critic of Gary Yourofsky he is pro violence and I'm anti-violence there are many differences between us ethically and politically but those differences are worth understanding those debates are worth having Gary Yourofsky also i did a great video specifically he has this surreal position although never killing insects he says you should never even kill an insect if you're vegan and he goes oh and I have a position i say look this is the reality of life on planet earth vegans do kill insects we're going to continue killing insects and we also kill things like rats let's really let's let's be honest about it you know so that's another debate I think that debate is worth having I'm in my own video on the topic and I have some quotes from curiosity okay all of that discourse which is very honest and very productive and very useful only happen on the internet if I could quote beacon cheat on this right it's you can't get this stuff in a book the world would be a different place if these discussions were happening in academic peer-reviewed literature let me tell you I feel up to date right now in the last few months I spent a lot of time looking at the academic peer-reviewed literature the journals and animal rights the journals the academic journals on animal rights and veganism are really not worth reading it's not there the action is it's not there these debates are happening it's here it's right here on YouTube and it's also probably on blogs and other websites that use a written format that happens Emil there was a real debate when I was involved footed studies to what extent were the you know the formal publications lagging behind you know what was happening on the internet because the Internet was racing ahead really with original research and very conservative publications and had a bunch of Buddhist monks sitting on a council doing peer review they were lagging about a hundred years behind more than a hundred occasion so it happens in some disciplines that's the case the action just isn't in a book format so it is very rare that i recommend a book on veganism and there was a much younger activist she's 21 and I saw her posting on Twitter a stack of books she meant to read about vegan activism and like at least two of them were by that utilitarianism forgetting his name am so happy so yeah I'm so happy to forgetting his name Peter Singer yo she had like two books there by peter singer and I'm looking at these books thinking man all this is really a waste of her time so that's you know it's fine plant eats he wrote a message back to me saying it's good he's happy to have a debate with me in the future he doesn't hate me or anything but I thought I was really weird because he had this really insulting reaction to me using this clip using this snippet of me you know saying that reading books is really not it's really not the medium that's carrying the message of what's going on in veganism animal rights today it's not that important more broadly and more generally i do think we need to move past a paradigm that Hallows reading as inherently sacred or inherently meaningful reading is only as meaningful as the book your meat reading let us look there reading is never going to be more meaningful than the particular book you happen to be reading okay and there's a question of in what way that book is meaningful to your life it's just not the case that a book is going to be useful because it's a book as opposed to being a movie or a video game you guys know that I'm very very critical of people wasting their time playing video games or watching movies ultimately I'm just as critical of reading books so it's kind of sad that we have these pretensions that lead us to you know glorify reading books and recommend reading books we're really it's not going to be meaningful or useful to you or your life so that is why I am ultra reticent about I'm ultra reluctant to recommend that people read books i've got a video coming up i'm going to eventually finally do a video but the philosophy of Max Turner I can tell you why the philosophy of Max Turner he's not that famous a philosopher that's wise we're talking about why that was meaningful in my life I can talk about why it might be meaningful in some other people's lives and certain specialized interest but I'm not going to sit here and tell you to read Max Turner it's not this is this is you know 19th century European philosophy it's not senators know many people I spent years and years studying ancient Buddhist philosophy I can recommend specific books linked to specific philosophies that are important for certain people I'm not going to figure it say hey this is a good book everyone should read it and to me that's fake and it's disregarding the extent to which the wrong book for the wrong person is just a waste of their time and even within those two examples the same book that might be meaningful to me will be meaningless to you I think that reading through Siddha tease the ancient Greek author is tremendously meaningful I think it's still today is tremendously meaningful for many people facilities okay but I can't even say and it's a book that was tremendously meaningful to me in my life um right now my daughter is still three years old am I going to say to you I hope one day my daughter breathes through siddha tease this book that I think this ancient book of philosophy and history and politics that I think its own evil I don't know depends on what kind of person she turns out to be depends on what kind of kid she is depends on what kind of teenager she is right for all I know you know my daughter is going to grow up to be a jock and play basketball in the women's basketball team but the woman's boxing team maybe her interests are not going to go in that direction at all and it would be really miserable for her if she had a father who forced her who SAT there said no this book of ancient Greek philosophy this meant a lot to me so it's going to mean a lot to you even within your own family you know I think that's [ __ ] but hey what can I tell you that's how it is in Western civilization we tend to package up books with certain kinds of pretensions certain types of ethical values of what it means to be a well-educated person what it means to be a refined person what it means to have a sophisticated outlook on life so one generation after the next we force our children to read Shakespeare we force our children to read a pretentious philosophy from 19th century Germany hagel Hegel's philosophy of slavery in this kind of [ __ ] yeah and do we even know why do we know why we're forcing to read it do we even really question in a rigorous way how this is going to be meaningful of their lives or how it's going to be useful to them within veganism I think it is a sign of how much the movement is changing right now that books written ten years ago when 20 years ago are now meaningless and useless to us and I hope it keeps changing because what we were doing 20 years ago was a complete failure hopefully this will fit as a real future it me up
most entertaining video about the most depressing topic in the world reading books and not reading books the culture of recommended reading want to point out I got my three beautiful bouquets on camera not going to happen there when my girlfriend shows up I guess I'm going to put one in the bedroom one in the kitchen something like that spreading out around the apartment but I put the put the bouquets on camera partly because they were mentioned in an earlier video that I was confessing to vegan gains that you know it makes your whole apartment look cleaner when you get some flowers in there so we got the new girlfriend coming over we're gonna we're going to spread the flowers around you hit a great discussion on chat about red roses versus white roses if you have white bed sheet I understand why you want to have red roses i have read bed sheet i have bright crimson red sheets and I I agreed red roses are somehow a bit tacky I don't know why they just are I'm not into the culture of red roses and white rose petals look better on right bed sheet it is what it is all right with that romantic footnote aside this is this is more or less Valentine's Day right now depending on what time zone you're in I know it's Valentine's Day in Hawaii i thought i'd say somewhere or retention within a few hours of Valentine's Day the way they we're doing this most most romantic of topic um look all the time people ask me for recommended reading and they're often surprised at how we're counselors I am how reluctant I am how very carefully and rarely I actually recommend reading for somebody now for one thing that's a good question who you are if I'm recommending reading it's for you and I just do not understand this culture we have today of recommending something as a good book for everyone how can it possibly be most of the books I really respect and I really value are going to be meaningless or useless in somebody else's life now this also comes in to the pretensions of the culture of reading itself I'm going to come back to that people think something is more educational just because it's in book format and it's not you can learn nothing from reading a book and you can learn a lot from watching a YouTube video maybe not this YouTube video don't get your don't get your expectations up but there's no reason why the book as a format would be somehow more salubrious a more valuable than any other format but in our culture it definitely is hallowed as such and this is a bit problematic I think there was a video put up by Sargon of Akkad i am not a fan of served on the back had to almost needle to stay but I saw this video and like hath lain to the video he name drops three famous books in the history of political science Leviathan by thomas hobbes treatise of government by john locke the two treatises of government I think but John Locke and jean-jacques Rousseau and again I think this is just straight-up cultural programming and you think you few minutes to praise these books to his audience and really recommend that he said oh you know if you read these three books you really gain such an insight into you know the apparatus of the state and government and democracy as it works today and so on l watching that listen up thinking god damn that is not true at all and i would never say that to anyone not even even if my job in future even if i became a professor of political science teaching University students i would not introduce those books that way because one day i think you're lying I think you're hyping these books to people as if they're really relevant to Paul these days if they're really relevant to your life here now in a way that they're not like you know okay thomas hobbes most people grossly misunderstand his work it's misinterpreted you an unbelievable sent why would you be loved ice them if you're interested in that period of history if your address from reading it in its cultural contacts the vast majority of that book Leviathan is really about religion it's at a time when the conflict between catholic and protestant was really you know red in tooth and fang the wars between Catholics and products for the control of the future of Europe and when hobbes himself had his own very eccentric view of Christianity which was quote he was closer to Judaism I've just mentioned his his reading of the Bible was really based on the Old Testament and not on the you know revelations of Christ or what have you and he was really arguing for his view of religion most of that book is it's a deeply religious view of politics in the state it's totally alien to the the type of discourse we have today why would you lie to your audience that way I mean have you even read the book I wonder I had professors in University and when they talked about that same book Hobbes Leviathan I was convinced they'd never read it I was convinced that back when they were a teenager they had just read a few pages to study for an exam and they spent the next 20 years there a lot in their lives lying to their students and you know representing this book is something it isn't to me as deeply and you most of all you're misrepresenting the books of the person in terms of what it will mean to them how it's going to be useful for you in your life right so I mean I do think the recommending a book is a big deal it's certainly a lot more of your time and effort than recommending a youtube video now just comes through a funny situation I just got some positive messages from this guy called plant heat so that's his name the name he uses on the Internet is plant eat but plant eats ridiculed me earlier before saying in a video he quoted this out of context and then put it into a loop and tried to make me look foolish i said earlier that i do not think reading books is very important for knowing what's going on today in the vegan movement and the book reviews have done in the last three months really prove that fact i've done a lot of book reviews just lately some of them are currently patreon only i read and reviewed a bunch of books on politics including politics within veganism academic literature on on veganism as a philosophy movement etc okay and let me tell you most of those book reviews warn you don't read the book it's a waste year um even though this is right on topic for us note the other side of that is I could get why we'd be in books that we're seeing the the debates that really matter in veganism as a movement today during the last five years one of the biggest debates to explore was the the ideologies of Gary Yourofsky Gary iraqis theme was 100% on youtube via the internet he went on to give interviews on TV news stations this kind of thing he did other kinds of activism but the whole story both Gary Yourofsky initial philosophy and you know the people who criticized it and its response to critics that all unfolded on YouTube now I am also a critic of Gary Yourofsky he is pro violence and I'm anti-violence there are many differences between us ethically and politically but those differences are worth understanding those debates are worth having Gary Yourofsky also i did a great video specifically he has this surreal position although never killing insects he says you should never even kill an insect if you're vegan and he goes oh and I have a position i say look this is the reality of life on planet earth vegans do kill insects we're going to continue killing insects and we also kill things like rats let's really let's let's be honest about it you know so that's another debate I think that debate is worth having I'm in my own video on the topic and I have some quotes from curiosity okay all of that discourse which is very honest and very productive and very useful only happen on the internet if I could quote beacon cheat on this right it's you can't get this stuff in a book the world would be a different place if these discussions were happening in academic peer-reviewed literature let me tell you I feel up to date right now in the last few months I spent a lot of time looking at the academic peer-reviewed literature the journals and animal rights the journals the academic journals on animal rights and veganism are really not worth reading it's not there the action is it's not there these debates are happening it's here it's right here on YouTube and it's also probably on blogs and other websites that use a written format that happens Emil there was a real debate when I was involved footed studies to what extent were the you know the formal publications lagging behind you know what was happening on the internet because the Internet was racing ahead really with original research and very conservative publications and had a bunch of Buddhist monks sitting on a council doing peer review they were lagging about a hundred years behind more than a hundred occasion so it happens in some disciplines that's the case the action just isn't in a book format so it is very rare that i recommend a book on veganism and there was a much younger activist she's 21 and I saw her posting on Twitter a stack of books she meant to read about vegan activism and like at least two of them were by that utilitarianism forgetting his name am so happy so yeah I'm so happy to forgetting his name Peter Singer yo she had like two books there by peter singer and I'm looking at these books thinking man all this is really a waste of her time so that's you know it's fine plant eats he wrote a message back to me saying it's good he's happy to have a debate with me in the future he doesn't hate me or anything but I thought I was really weird because he had this really insulting reaction to me using this clip using this snippet of me you know saying that reading books is really not it's really not the medium that's carrying the message of what's going on in veganism animal rights today it's not that important more broadly and more generally i do think we need to move past a paradigm that Hallows reading as inherently sacred or inherently meaningful reading is only as meaningful as the book your meat reading let us look there reading is never going to be more meaningful than the particular book you happen to be reading okay and there's a question of in what way that book is meaningful to your life it's just not the case that a book is going to be useful because it's a book as opposed to being a movie or a video game you guys know that I'm very very critical of people wasting their time playing video games or watching movies ultimately I'm just as critical of reading books so it's kind of sad that we have these pretensions that lead us to you know glorify reading books and recommend reading books we're really it's not going to be meaningful or useful to you or your life so that is why I am ultra reticent about I'm ultra reluctant to recommend that people read books i've got a video coming up i'm going to eventually finally do a video but the philosophy of Max Turner I can tell you why the philosophy of Max Turner he's not that famous a philosopher that's wise we're talking about why that was meaningful in my life I can talk about why it might be meaningful in some other people's lives and certain specialized interest but I'm not going to sit here and tell you to read Max Turner it's not this is this is you know 19th century European philosophy it's not senators know many people I spent years and years studying ancient Buddhist philosophy I can recommend specific books linked to specific philosophies that are important for certain people I'm not going to figure it say hey this is a good book everyone should read it and to me that's fake and it's disregarding the extent to which the wrong book for the wrong person is just a waste of their time and even within those two examples the same book that might be meaningful to me will be meaningless to you I think that reading through Siddha tease the ancient Greek author is tremendously meaningful I think it's still today is tremendously meaningful for many people facilities okay but I can't even say and it's a book that was tremendously meaningful to me in my life um right now my daughter is still three years old am I going to say to you I hope one day my daughter breathes through siddha tease this book that I think this ancient book of philosophy and history and politics that I think its own evil I don't know depends on what kind of person she turns out to be depends on what kind of kid she is depends on what kind of teenager she is right for all I know you know my daughter is going to grow up to be a jock and play basketball in the women's basketball team but the woman's boxing team maybe her interests are not going to go in that direction at all and it would be really miserable for her if she had a father who forced her who SAT there said no this book of ancient Greek philosophy this meant a lot to me so it's going to mean a lot to you even within your own family you know I think that's [ __ ] but hey what can I tell you that's how it is in Western civilization we tend to package up books with certain kinds of pretensions certain types of ethical values of what it means to be a well-educated person what it means to be a refined person what it means to have a sophisticated outlook on life so one generation after the next we force our children to read Shakespeare we force our children to read a pretentious philosophy from 19th century Germany hagel Hegel's philosophy of slavery in this kind of [ __ ] yeah and do we even know why do we know why we're forcing to read it do we even really question in a rigorous way how this is going to be meaningful of their lives or how it's going to be useful to them within veganism I think it is a sign of how much the movement is changing right now that books written ten years ago when 20 years ago are now meaningless and useless to us and I hope it keeps changing because what we were doing 20 years ago was a complete failure hopefully this will fit as a real future it me up