2. What if Beauty is Irrelevant? (vegan / vegans / veganism)

irreducible e every political ideology
is individual is that it has to be about me it has to be about you and it has to be about us you would have to be blind deaf and dumb to ignore that beauty and promises of beauty promises that you will become more beautiful have had a massive galvanizing effect on this movement and those are based on scientism I hope this video is look back on and 10 years from now and laughed at I hope veganism is so highly evolved 10 years from now that people look back and find it incomprehensible that beauty and weight loss and health advice and these these scientific factoids that they will ever see as central and crucially important to beacon hey what's up this video is in some ways a sequel to reflections that were in an earlier monologue here that is titled beauty is meaningless those themes have come up again again on this channel but this video is also a direct sequel to a video I just recorded that's also in sepia tone I'm reflecting on the role of science in veganism in 2016 so in the video that you may have just watched five minutes ago I was reflecting on the question of whether or not science itself is really something integral to veganism or if it's something incidental whereas the core of the ISM is ethical and ecological now in this video I'll ask what seems like an easy question about beauty but the reality is the promises based on science that have redefined veganism in the last 10 years shall we say haha they are scientistic promises of health and beauty it would be impossible to underestimate the significance of beauty the cult of beauty the myth of beauty that you will be beautiful that you will be made beautiful by veganism in what this diet and this social movement have become unless you've been tremendously powerful and again I've reflected in past videos back in the year two thousand one it wasn't like that at all animal rights and like a proto veganism it was then just you know the word vegetarian was really used not vegan you know it was based on outrage over vivisection over puppies being used in experiments there was this whole discourse of people wanting to get back to the land of a more authentic less technological less industrialized way of life there were various forms of rebellion I remember when I was talking about it with another youtuber violent vegan he was saying you know yeah these were the people who duh you know crawl through a hole in the fat fence at the glastonbury festival it was influenced by anarchist political ideals it was about everything except beauty yeah I'd like again 2001 is not that long ago but the idea that animal rights had anything to do with beauty was was very very distant then and again the the notions with in ecology that were prevalent were totally different like the idea of ecology back then the main concern was actually rainforest was preserving woodland preserving timber preserving trees forested areas species habitat preventing species exceeds those are the big ideas today most of that has been forgotten the ecology is thought of in terms of gaseous emissions almost exclusively I mean the discourse in veganism today is dominated by beauty fitness health carbon dioxide emissions only a couple of other themes and it's amazing how marginal even vivisection is because I've said in this channel people accuse me of being pro vivisection who else is even talking about vivisection I anyway I wish there was a richer more intellectually rigorous deeper engaged with these issues but for right now you would have to be blind deaf and dumb to ignore that beauty and promises of beauty promises that you will become more beautiful have had a massive galvanizing effect on this movement and those are based on scientism not science but scientistic thinking theorizing anecdotes now I've just come through warning my audience again it's the theme of photo many times the science is so estranged from the social perception of the science that we're really talking about politics and not science most of the time you know and with human beauty it gets even more surreal I was in England I think at two different points during the decade when one woman absolutely represented the pinnacle beauty in that culture and that woman is Nigella Lawson now if you're American even you cannot imagine the me Nia the power this woman had the iconic presence as a beauty icon Nigella Lawson had for about 10 years in the British Isles and like if you're too young to remember it you don't know if you're too old if you weren't paying attention you know but I mean she was more of a dominant beauty icon in England for about 10 years then Marilyn Monroe ever had been in the United States and if you don't believe me let me tell you Marilyn Monroe she's much exaggerated because of you know she died young and there were you know she had a love affair with the president united states there are different reasons why she's become remembered as if she were unique i computed but the reality is every week Marilyn Monroe had a movie in the theaters there were a hundred other beautiful women competing for that same iconic role but Nigella Lawson and again this relates to veganism more ways than one one of the reasons why she was so potent and powerful an image of beauty was that she was an excuse for people to indulge in their bad habits so Nigella Lawson represented not just physical beauty but the idea that you could be physically beautiful while eating chocolate and decadent desserts and well being a good housewife and a good mother and cooking like I don't know poached eggs of you know muffins whatever I mean this you know this is the so-called revival of English cuisine if you believe there is such a thing on this earth as in English cuisine shepherd's pie and all that huh um but I mean she played to the audience is yearning to believe that diet and exercise were not so important that you could be beautiful that you could again she was celebrated as the pinnacle of beauty while literally sneaking into your pantry and pigging out she used the word pigging out on snacks and so on down there uh ah Nigella Lawson if you now look back objectively if you just do a google image search for like Nigella Lawson young or youth what she look like as a young woman actually when she was slim there are some pictures up you know ethnically she's not that different from myself I believe she's of mixed Jewish and British ancestry issues of you know Western European Jewish ancestry that in reality is you know if mixed with somebody from the British Isles uh you know like when I look at the pictures of her when she was a young woman she could be one of my cousins and if she were my cousin you know I'd say there was nothing wrong with her when you look at those pictures he's not bad looking but it's such a contrast to see the cultural value of the beauty icon that was foisted on to her actually when she was a middle-aged one when she was relatively old for a beauty icon and the reality of who she was as just an ok looking person someone who was not born with tremendous beauty or what have you but a powerful cultural set of symbols were attached to her about the meaning of life about the good life about being a good mother and a good cook and and being good in the sense of enjoying your life self-indulgence the Aristotelian idea of the good life tremendously powerful and of course she had the best hair and makeup and professional photography and she was made to appear much more beautiful than she was and you know I just say by the standards of anyone who appears on television by the standards of the woman who reads the news or gives you the weather forecast she never biologically had any great advantage in being a one of the great natural beauties of her era nevertheless if you're honest with yourself you can remember in England she was absolutely the dominant beauty icon for a long period of time and people do respond to that whether they'll admit it to themselves or not people latch on to those figures they latch on to the anecdotes about health and science that come out of that whether it's these little things like oh you know chocolate is good for you oh you know a glass of wine every day is good for you every glass of wine causes brain damage each and every one every dose of alcohol causes brain damage don't kid yourself you never get those brain cells back your brain will try to repair itself you'll get some new brain cells but they're not the same ones you had before every time you fall down a flight of stairs on your head you also get brain damage the ideal the optimal dosage of alcohol is zero don't compromise don't kid yourself but there are all these powerful things in our culture inviting us to kid ourselves and you know the male counterpart I actually wanted to contrast or two because I mean this is I hope I don't to say more about that if you don't know this from experience people do change their lives in response to a beauty icon like that people cook differently eat differently women raise their children differently women feed their husbands differently and men who are not yet married look for a different kind of wife I wonder I'll bet you could interview guys from this from my generation in England I'll bet you could interview guys if they were honest they would say when they finish University they were trying to marry a woman like Nigella Lawson because she was so much more powerful than just someone who was like a singer as a sex symbol because she brought together you know the household the cooking the image of the independent professional so many you know and of course affluence and self-indulgence there's so much packing into this you know maternity as well as beauty and vitality all these things in one in one cultural product that everyone in the British Isles was was lining up to buy you know another one that again you can google in five seconds I don't think I need to insert images here you know the singer Iggy Pop Iggy Pop who is only now fading from memory because his fame was so huge for such a long time I'm sure in his later years I assume he did use steroids or testosterone or other performance-enhancing drugs but you know in his early years his physique was definitely natural except for the the performance enhancing drug of heroin he was a heroin addict for a tremendous a long time Iggy Pop his whole career he performed nearly naked you know at least with no shirt on but he would wear very revealing attire and he was a sex symbol on a scale that again is difficult for people to imagine today Iggy Pop was adored by heterosexual women he was adored by gay men it was definitely a beauty icon for the gay community and straight men wanted to emulate him and he knows because he's talked to people who've told them you know an interview so he reflects in this there were people who started using heroin because they wanted to look like Iggy Pop because they wanted to imitate this rock star he was a vocalist he was a singer as an icon of beauty and those are two contrasting examples but God it shows the power Beauty has to transform society you know and to change people's lives sometimes damaging them horribly like I know it may just seem like a joke oh you know people watch Nigella Lawson and they started cooking eggs for breakfast and before they didn't before they just ate breakfast cereal but it's no joke you really think about the knock-on implications of that you think about the millions of chickens battery hens living in cages through the British Isles you think I mean you know and it was I remember there were newspaper articles saying that grocery stores were ordering more eggs and the grocery stores that had sold out of eggs because Nigella Lawson's TV show had encouraged so many people in England to cook eggs like never before and that people were going back to the type of diet that had been out of fashion since world war two or since the 1960s the people were eating more eggs and more bacon you know it's it may sound harmless but there is harm there is vodka wouldn't be vegan if I didn't believe there was real arm that comes out of that even though it may seem as as cute as anything else that's put on TV and I mean in the case of beauty icon like Iggy Pop or Charlie Parker Charlie Parker was a jazz musician known as bird his nickname was bird of the bird you know bird he knew he encountered it he encountered people who wanted to be jazz musicians who started using heroin so they could imitate Charlie Parker and his his charisma his just his face he was a handsome guy his status he wasn't a sex symbol in the same scale as as Iggy Pop but definitely for musicians that generation I think they all knew somebody who started using heroin to imitate Charlie Parker and it would probably depending on what's seen you weren't you if you were if you were old enough to remember the 1970s you probably knew people who got involved with hard drugs because they were influenced by Iggy Pop so I mean it's a sad and strange and terrifying thing what I said before about science is that interesting set of reflections to look back and realize something that seems so central to veganism as its presented today really is ancillary really is something peripheral it's not essential it's not Central what the core of veganism today really is the same as what the core veganism would have been 2,000 years ago 3,000 years ago in ancient philosophy whether we were presenting it in India or China or ancient Greece or ancient Rome the core of the message has to be do this because it's the right thing to do but on the other hand looking at it a little bit more sociologically the question of what kind of society do we want to have and what kind of people do we want to be that's where both the power the power of beauty in a sense can be contrasted to the power of veganism is a social for me I do not want to be a part of a society that's built on mindless murder I do not want to be part of society that averts its gaze that chooses to live in ignorance to look away from the horror of pigs living their entire lives on concrete in a steel cage having the throat cut etc whatever example of a factory farm you want to use to me that's not a society I want to be a part of and in terms of virtue ethics to the man I want to be I refuse to be that man I refuse to be complicit I refused to be passive I refuse to accept that so I reject that culture I reject those cultural values I reject in a sense the man I used to be I reject who I was you know before i became vegetariana before i became vegan and i embarked on a journey of personal change that inevitably seeks its counterpart in social change but the same thing is happening in other directions all the time even just inspired by beauty people see Nigella Lawson and they see sophistication affluence beauty self-indulgence and they really feel there are women who looked at that image on television and they said that's the kind of woman I want to be there were men who said I want that to be my wife etc I was not one of them I was not seduced let me tell you um and and they also believed just as passionately that is the society they want to be a part of they want to be a part of a society of women who wake up in the morning and make bacon and eggs for their husband and you know it's not hard to see what seductive about that in terms of conservative social values there are many things that that pull at the human heart that way and whatever with people like Iggy Pop the image of freedom potency power again sophistication but above all else beauty yeah it's a powerful and dangerous component of what we've been playing with so look I hope this video is looked back on 10 years from now and laughed at I hope veganism is so highly evolved 10 years from now that people look back and find it incomprehensible that beauty and weight loss and health advice and these these scientific factoids that they were ever seen as central and crucially important to veganism but right now in 2016 I've got to recognize that it's the most powerful aspect of veganism that the difference between 2001 2016 and large part has been the motivating force that weight loss beauty and that changing self-perception I've brought to the game and the worst part of that is it's it's both the type of people who become the early adopters and their motivations in moving forward this is a distinctive thing that marks us bday that unifies us that shows who's really vegan is not is that you are willing to face up to that truth witnessing that truth and admitting it to yourself how terrible and how terrifying it being a witness to the grim reality of animal agriculture a massive scale that's what makes us vegan that's what we have in Congress not bicycles not bikinis not yoga not even you know your food preferences irreducible in every political ideology is individual is there it has to be about me it has to be about you and has to be about us even insane semi-religious political movements like communism that deny the existence of individual of course they rely on individuals believing in this caring about this being motivated by this doing the right thing veganism is no different yes it is about the individual is about self-interest but there are selfish motives that are a part of it that animate it and move it forward but unlike many other movements it's an ethics it is an ethos if you like it's an ethical system that has this cosmological dimension precisely because we don't want to live like the Amish we don't want to live as an isolated religious community separated from the rest of society the point is not that we want to rent 40 acres and say well on these 40 acres there aren't any animals being executed inevitably this is a political movement that has the desire to shut down the factory farms every