Replies to my Patreon Supporters (Two Questions, Two Answers)

hey what up I'm just back from the gym I
realize eighty percent of my videos these days start with me saying I'm just back from the ship but that's because I don't have a lot of other things going on in my life aside from going to the gym and spending long hours studying Chinese mmm I remember not too long ago one of my detractors one of my haters here on the internet complained that he didn't think I was really going to university because i was uploading so many videos she was probably saying like if you see a 15-minute video on my channel you realize it took me 15 minutes and one second of record right like there's there's no there's no real preparation there's no scripting process my publicist Morty my agent you know the the executives at a ballast CL broadcasting corporation they don't get too involved with the creative process I have a lot of you know independent you know agency here to just come on camera and start talking so no it's it doesn't distract too much from my studies the problem of anything you know what does take time is if you make a video and you're not certain you want to upload it and then you watch it three or four times to make sure you're a hundred percent sure that cuts into your schedule but if you're comfortable with what you're saying if you're not pushing your limits 15 minutes make a 15-minute video and upload i'm making this video right now in response to two new subscribers on patreon it's always nice when I can take the time to say hi to people who've paid the one dollar to sign up so one of them is they named cam and one is named Stan so by default i just use people's first name so they're a little bit anonymous if they've signed up to support me thank you very much for your one dollar a month currently patreon is the only income i have on planet earth we'll see how that works out i don't even mean long-term so cam sent me a message saying I've been listening to your content over the last few weeks I definitely don't agree with everything you say but that is the damn point thank you cam not only you disagree with me and you appreciate the disagreement you're willing to pay one dollar to go on disagree with me so thank you it shows some depth show some character in your part so he he says further I appreciate an intellectual challenge to my beliefs and opinions on a regular basis great me too I make these kind of videos because the kind of videos I'd want to watch myself if if I was one of you if I was just a viewer and not a youtuber and of course i had that period of my life really right after my daughter was born you know during that period where i was taking care of the newborn baby where i would try to listen to podcasts about veganism while I was washing the dishes other things that you know or intelligent youtube videos really well it was cooking and washing the dishes and man they're just there just wasn't enough out there but that was before I started recording uploading my videos so I know what it's like and hate what I do is not for everybody but I know I myself if I were in the audience I'd appreciate it and there was a time when I was just no idea it's not make my own videos so he cam goes on to ask do you think that Hollywood can play an important role in spreading veganism throughout Western culture you know and he then he then talks about some of the things he mentioned some of my own past videos that have comments selling to this question and he he says that a certain Hollywood personality reflected that movies were part of the process of homosexuality being more and more accepted in the Western world of representation of gay characters in cinema etc well cam that is an interesting example but it may be a holotype Hollywood movies have they led to the greater acceptance of african-americans or the greater demonization of african-americans and you know although it's problematic within the United States how black people are portrayed in cinema and how that shapes people's expectations of them it's even more problematic if you think it would help like people are perceived in Japan or in China where a you know they're only impression of african-americans is via American movies American cinema and normally only the most successful only the blockbuster movies there going to see a small arthouse film about the black experience in America a few years back more than 10 years ago i remember in canada we had a lot of soul searching about the representation of italians in cinema and in television because the the italian canadian community they were politically organized they were actually complaining to the press to the to the government and to to newspapers and so on that they were really encountering different kinds of hostility and misconceptions with who they are because of the way Italians as an ethnic at that time she's probably around the year 2000 I forget how Italians are being represented saying look this is not who we are and now you can imagine part of the problem there even though Italians are not a visible minority in the same way as african-americans Italians sometimes or it's not even mentioned that a character is Italian but if it is mentioned they're Italian then they will very often be a bad stereotype so this is a shallow response to part of your question but I'm pointing out that although you can I think find positive examples of how movies have helped to advance just the you know sympathetic attitude toward homosexual people in not just Western culture the whole world's culture there are counter examples that are that are troubling and now if we want to ask about selling a little bit deeper a little more sophisticated a little bit more politically demanding do you think that Hollywood movies have advanced democracy it's actually very difficult question to answer how is democracy perceived because of its representation as a rakan squads of its reputation of movies in china in japan in india in indonesia i think sadly if you look at a more more um you know complex loaded demanding concept not just something like acceptance of homosexuals you're going to come to too much more troubling set of conclusions so can Hollywood play a role in spreading because their Western culture sadly my two-part answer this is one I think I think the first part it's going to be like the representation of african-americans or Italian Americans as bad stereotypes in Hollywood movies I think you're going to have the crazy vegan as a comedic character in the background we've already seen that so you're going to have vegan hipster or vegan may be vegan yoga instructor you know as something in comedies or what have you character falls in love with a woman who's a yoga instructor but she's vegan and he's he can't put up with her this kind of thing I think is going to be the main representation of vegans for many many years to come could be worse but I i know i think actually it's going to reinforce negative expectations negative stereotypes and the same way that italians got fed up with people thinking that they're gangsters or think that there are certain kind of comedic character certain kinds of over-the-top behaviors i think actually that is what we're in for in the next 10-15 years but you asked in the hypothetical can cinema needs to meet you feel positive they can will it another question they can though sure can be tremendously positive so Stan both of these guys I think within 24 hours signed up paint the one dollar sent me a question and I don't know within 48 hours or something I'm here recording response so Stan says heís alive been following your content for a while I appreciate your critical take on veganism I also admire your auto direct approach and I find many of your critiques of academia intriguing this is twice interesting or twice as interesting perhaps he means this is twice as interesting since you have an academic background I've done original research and interact with academic cultures Thank You Stan I just pointed out though that technically I have never been an academic in the sense that I have never been paid to be a university professor or an equivalent role so I know there's a different sense in which you're using academic here and it's true I've been an observer of academic culture and I've if it's reacted with everything else but I am NOT now may never will be a university professor which is a kind of strict definition of what it means to be an active I think that being said San continues I'm thinking about how I can be effective in ecological and vegan activism your videos on different political issues and also on seemingly simple yet practical actions such as writing a children's book or opening a vegan restaurant resonate with me pause I'll just say there I still talk about that stuff face to face of the vegans by a skype and through other through other methods just the other day I was talking to a guy I won't say who who's really seriously arrested opening a vegan gym and that Jim would have a juice bar and you know the great thing about a GM has opposed a restaurant of course you'd have non vegans coming and using the gym and learning about veganism under there whereas I think many vegan restaurants 100% your clientele is already vegan are almost on a percentage clientele um so Stan continues I am however more academically inclined ie I don't see myself becoming a business person uh so he mentions his bachelor's degree was in sociology anthropology and he's now considering getting a masters and a PhD he has a very broad question he asks what do you need to know to be a good learner boy not the question i thought was coming i thought it was gonna ask me something about the institutional reality of learning who what tools in massachusetts you so man you're asking me to give it to our mom's luck here i can talk about this for ages uh more specifically then how does this relate to academia we'll look Stan last things first if you are going to get a masters degree and a PhD in anthropology or anything like anthropology you are putting yourself into a situation where on the one hand you you may be expected to be a complete autodidact because nobody teaches you anything nobody helps you with anything or on the other hand you may be put in a situation where you're really treated like the servant of a professor we're really in a survival capacity and in either case making a wise choice has everything to do with just one or two career academics you're going to rely on you know you're really putting your your trust in not an academic system in general not even one university in general you're putting your trust in one person who's going to be your supervisor or possibly two people if you know the two professors really cooperate as your as your supervisors and that will make or break your entire experience so it's a fateful terrible decision to make I when spoke to one professor who said he'd have me as a student as a graduate student when I spoke to him I forget the exam he said something like he had 26 or 28 graduate students simultaneously he was supervising like 26 to 28 graduate students at the same time at point of oh so it's not possible that you even see each of your graduate students for one hour a month you know in terms of your supervision through the education you're supposedly receiving he said no no no you know he talks to it less often than one hour every three monsters when you get absolutely no education whatsoever but his university what they did was they compensated for this by putting the graduate students into little groups into a discussion circle and forcing them to meet a couple times a week and discuss their work in a circle of equally ignorant stir this was in a department of religion so I would have been there as a scholar of Buddhism and I would have been sitting down and presenting my views my you know my sophisticated views on put his philosophy to a circle of people or the other people one would be a scholar of Islam won't be a scholar of medieval Catholicism will might be a scholar of modern Protestantism yeah the idea that this is a jury of my peers especially in a department of religion of worldly just ridiculous even if there's a Hindu at the table a Hindu specialist would never be able to even you know the worst thing is about Buddhism even if there was a specialist in my Anna Buddhism or you know Japanese Buddhism they would have any clue what I was presenting you know if you're doing advanced tera vaada buddhist studies this is really specialized you really need to be working with people who appreciate exactly that field and it's not a small field I'm sorry but the space in between India and China is enormous it includes Thailand Cambodia Laos etc etc etc so we shouldn't regard it as something smaller marginalized but that that was a terrible program so now look it's just one example I guess I can talk for hours about this sadly after that conversation with that Professor there were many other reasons why I was not interesting that program but that fact alone say I'm not interested if I would been stupid enough to get that degree I would be unemployed and unemployable PhD in religion you want to perform you want to perform funeral services I'd love to I'd love to have a vegan funeral parlor man that's it that's a great business but I name it ain't academia uh so you know looking at the actual education is being offered to you is tremendously important hilariously here actually in my school in China there is one woman who's a professor at a university where where I'd spoken to another verse she's in the same department to a you know an Asian Studies department basically it doesn't doesn't have that name and I'm Commodore so it's interesting you're from that University was for me I spoke to one of the profs there about you know getting in MA and PhD with you guys but you know uh he actually got nervous and couldn't answer some of my really simple questions so I you know I wasn't interested when that became clear to me that he couldn't answer some very simple questions and I remember said oh so look what what kind of questions couldn't answer about the program I said well for example his program is supposed to be in the Thai language so tie you know not poly not Chinese not I've studied something I was supposed to be tie as the primary language would be I'd be learning and he couldn't answer the question of what was the name of the instructor who actually taught the Thai language at that University because it wasn't listed on the website there was nobody listed in the faculty you know there was nobody officially with a PhD was teaching the language woman said to me oh that's that's funny cuz you know um his wife teaches those class and I said to her the missa paid that's probably why he didn't want to answer the question oh these setups it's so many of these universities well the person who actually teaches the language who actually teaches that course doesn't have a PhD so they're not listed on the web I ate so there's something going on in the table they only got that job because of who they're married to or who they're sleeping with or because there's a favor owed to them I know some people said within Buddhist studies there some people just never got the PhD and they kind of sort of became professors anyway and you know sort of code of silence around it nobody asks nobody tells well glad that only took five minutes huh I thought the longest five minutes of my life the point is sadly you have got to dig before you commit to any program read the person's book read their thesis get their PhD thesis of the library on interlibrary loan get the thesis that got that earned them their PhD get out every significant book they published look at it decide for yourself it's nonsense or not you know really try to figure out how legit the program is in terms of the education you're receiving in terms of the whole process in terms of who that person is and what kind of personal integrity they have if they're going to be your supervisor and an anthropology it's a dangerous game um and in terms of employment if you get your PhD anthropology I don't have to tell you your your you've got a you've got a bright future bright future as a security guard at the mall and I have to get that PhD anthropology and all over Asia have known people with a cheese anthropology's who are coping with that bleak future but okay that was the last part of your question what do you need to know to be a good learner here's my here's my snappy but honest answer I could talk about this for for an hour okay you have to love being wrong we don't learn from being wrong we learn from noticing that we're wrong and then pressing in deeper you have to develop the habit of mine for some people it comes naturally for some people second nature for some people it's really hard to get down of when you go through your whether it's your rereading your own work you're reading someone else's work noticing oh this proves me wrong oh this contradicts some attitude some assumption i had and not feeling sad not feeling dejected feeling delighted because when you notice that you're wrong that's when you know for a fact that you're learning something and that's when you have the opportunity to really learn something so I did a ton of research within the last year think less than less than 12 months I don't know eight months I did a ton of research on second line Island so that's an island straight north of Japan straight East of Russia straight northeast of beige angrily and all three of those countries tried to control it historically china russia japan and i basically discovered very simple facts the type of facts that interests me about that place the contradicted my expectations guarding to my whole understanding of the history of asia ancient and modern now is saqlain island the most important place and there's the world no but I realized oh I'm wrong about something here that there's something for me to learn from the history of this place and I did a ton of research on saqlain island now I put it this way i think that made a much greater educational opportunity out of the courses I took in the last year then otherwise would have been the case I created an opportunity out of some pretty boring courses that could have just been could have just written another essay about I don't know a particular King in the history of Japan or something and instead I dealt with the set of dynamic questions with the borders of those three empires met and move back and forth and above all else this reflects my own emphasis of course my research also concerned the indigenous people and what the geography of Asia meant to them independent of prior to those empires coming together but that hopeful learning process it's quite false to say that began with a desire for knowledge with a hunger for learning you can't desire to know something you're not even aware of yet when I first enrolled University I'd never heard of poly I'd probably never heard of Myanmar I probably couldn't find Burma on the map or something when I first enrolled the University and whatever 1996 you don't I mean most of my research interests as they would develop as an adult man I nowhereness of so there's no way you can start off wanting learn what you're going to learn I realize you're based in the scripture you're already adult I know I'm not talking to a teenager but still at my age nail this is still true so it's you know desire to learn the hunger is it's almost irrelevant what you need instead is that you know to practice it's not like falling scraping your knee and getting up again noticing you made a mistake noticing you're wrong about something noticing your own ignorance being really aware of the limits of your own knowledge and then feeling energized and motivated and I guess you know activating that hunger that hunger coming to the fore when you when you realize you've been wrong that I'd say is the most important thing and man I like I said I could talk for an hour the lessons you learn as an autodidact and I think sadly in a field like anthropology you you have to be in on a diet because you'll get very little help from unless you i hope if you're in a wonderful program that's great i'm happy for you but you're gonna have to teach yourself languages you're gonna have to teach yourself history and politics because none of that's in the anthropology programming most of what they do teach you is going to be irrelevant to your fieldwork you're just going to learn you know melon offski etc you just can learn canonical anthropology and you know you've got to be on that you've got to reinvent the wheel you got to reinvent the meaning of life breaking into pieces interrogate it put it back together again that's the best part of anthropology um so there is a lot more I can say about that but if there's if there's one habit of mind that I think everyone can learn it's what I've just mentioned because we don't learn from making mistakes we learn from noticing that we make mistakes you know and the just as with the growth of a tree you know it's not the density of the wood it's not the size of the tree it's not the thickness of the tree all the life is out there at the limits of the tree it's at the bark it's you know it's just beneath the skin of the bark that the tree is you know carrying out its whole struggle to survive and thrive and expand in the same way it's having an acute awareness of the limits of your knowledge so you notice when you run into something you don't understand you can't quite handle that I guess is my short answer that's the crucial habit of mind you need to work on thanks for the one dollar hit me up