Answers! Patreon-exclusive Q&A (May 8th, 2016)

hey what's up this is may 8th 2016 this
is the voice of a guy his first name is ISIL his last name is Mazar you probably know me from my youtube channel which is called a ballast yell this is my first attempt to invite and answer questions from my supporters on patreon and I really do appreciate the support I've received from everybody I'm gonna start by answering a question that nobody asked which indeed concerns the money and it's a way of thanking you guys for your support already at this stage I think as of today I've only been asking for donations on patreon for 6 or 7 days and as you guys know I've encouraged people to give the minimum not the maximum which i think is a much more positive thing in the long term I mean I'd much rather have you know a large number of people with each person just paying $1.00 then I would have a small number of people paying large amounts of money but where that support is inconsistent or difficult to justify or where I can't really provide value from my end where it's a struggle for me to be producing enough content enough quality content to reward someone who's donating $100 or what-have-you but I really do appreciate it and look as of today I believe the total the total amount I'm receiving in donations per month is now over two hundred US dollars two hundred dollars per month and if you guys watch my channel you know I am poor enough that this is not an insignificant amount of money to me when I'm in China I'll be earning eight hundred and fifty US dollars per month I think that's the current exchange rate in the Chinese currency five thousand five hundred yuan I think it's about eight hundred fifty US dollars off the top of my head so yes two hundred US dollars is a significant amount of money although you guys already know the story my reasons for doing this at this time are not fund raising but I think one interesting question that nobody asked and I'm gonna answer anyway is of whether or not in future I might really turn my attention towards fundraising proper of trying to raise the most money I can either for a project or foundation now that is a temptation for me and I think that's a real career path that's open to me I do have a fairly deep background in the nonprofit sector both in terms of my study of charities and what I've learned from participating in them myself really you know there's a third category this is gonna sound a bit strange but that some of you will know the truth of it I learned a lot about humanitarian work from doing it and from studying it but you know what I probably learned the most from the third category of conversations in cafes you know informal talk with people who had years and years of experience in that sector and I had a lot of conversations of that kind over many years as much as I learned from books a lot some of those conversations face-to-face were even more valuable probably you know if I hadn't done the book reading I wouldn't have known the right questions to ask I wouldn't have known how to appreciate what I was being told but you learn a lot off-the-record informally by interviewing people so anyway I do have that that kind of background and it comes up every so often in my life you know so in the past I worked in museums I did NGO related work NGO related research and Southeast Asia so charity work whatever you want to say I also have a long history of involvement with Buddhism Theravada Buddhism which included the critique of what they do and don't do in the charity sector just a couple of months ago a friend of mine in Hong Kong was complaining on the internet about the failure of Buddhist charities to address some current crises in the world and I wrote to him right away with a real plan of action saying look if you want to set up your own foundation here's how we do it step one two three four and I was able to speak in real detail to really present a plan of action that we could we could start on tomorrow and we're within five years we could really have a serious foundation that would employ the two of us it wouldn't employ ten people or 50 people but it would at least employ the two of us in doing real work that makes a difference in the world and I said look here's how we set it up legally here's how we do the fundraising you know if you want to get serious let's talk so that friend of mine if he's hearing this he knows who he is I've only got one friend at Hong Kong so he's I think I think it's fair to say he is the only friend I still have from my years of involvement with Buddhism which is very sad and reflects badly on that whole scene I still have a couple friends who are involved with the the Hindu side of scholarship in academia but none of the buddists have have stayed in touch with me um and I wish I wish they would I have actually had by the way have had some fan mail from people who started following my web presence because of Buddhism and who became vegan only because of my constant internet so they discovered my work because of Buddhism and then listened to what I had to say about veganism and made the change that's it's a nice positive thing that's spun out of that but my point is here in in my intro to this Q&A session is that yes in the future it really is possible I will devote my energies to setting up and operating a charity or a non-profit foundation and of course veganism would be a large component of that how exactly you define that foundation what exactly it does whether it's focused on Asia or you know one particular country in Asia or Canada or what have you those are difficult questions but in many ways the type of crises in my life make it more likely that I'm gonna do that kind of work you know the fact like versa if I had a successful career as an architect I couldn't do that if I had decided to become a lawyer in Taiwan I couldn't do that and I would be spending years and years getting a law degree and so on and then trying to earn enough money to justify against the years spent getting a law degree the very peculiar paths have been forced onto in life makes it much more likely that I will set up and run a charity at some point and apart from that's that's talking about a permanent charity a permanent foundation to say still is likely in the future but before then obviously I might also do fundraising for specific project so you know as vegans a specific project can be can be helping one elephant can be helping one monkey it could be something very very specific like that but I can imagine doing you know fundraising for a specific event for a specific action in the future but that's not what we're doing right now hopefully what we're doing here on patreon is really creating a wonderful crossroads for you guys to meet and interact with one another for you guys to stay in touch with me and I hope it can inspire a lot of positive activity and also of course I hope it's entertaining and interesting for you guys to hear the sound of my voice right now and and what-have-you and you know for $1 a month I hope that you guys do feel it's it's worth your time and it's worth your money it's very easy for me to put myself in your shoes I know the type of content I would be looking out for on the Internet myself and you know it's it's hard to see how this could go wrong let's put it that way all right I got a um so I guess this is question one there's a comment you guys might have missed from aleena so I have a user who's using the name of Lena who writes that she lives in a non democratic state the UAE the United Arab Emirates and she reflects on the lessons she's drawn from my recent videos including my long interview with an 18 year old new vegan activist you guys may or may not have seen the full the full recording for that is about an hour and 15 minutes long with a young woman who just became vegan a few months ago and wanted to talk to me about effective activism for veganism in Canada but in with this this patron Alina Alina is writing about her own experience in the United Arab Emirates which is not a democracy and that she has to think very carefully about the type of activism to engage in because any kind of street protest or aggressive approach will actually put people in prison so this is rewarding for me again I've actually I've had some fan mail recently from North Africa from Muslim states in northern Africa I do you know I have some Muslim viewers living in Muslim majority countries and although you know my channel doesn't cater to them I think it's indicative of my you know pragmatic down-to-earth real world approach that the lessons I'm talking about learning from politics they feel are applicable to their situations you know obviously I think you can't say that for durianrider and you can't say that for a group like direct action everywhere I think what they're saying you know if you were watching in North Africa or the the Emirates or what-have-you you'd have to say this is insane this can't possibly work here now I wrote a medium length reply to Alina you know what you guys can see on patreon if you click around and find it in broad brushstrokes what I think is interesting here in this interaction is that fundamentally the issues I'm discussing with Alina are the same as what I've been trying to alert people to in the Western world because they're asking the question of how can we be effective as activists as vegans in pursuit of social change how can we be effective given the cultural considerations that surround us given the political context that surrounds us you know in a fairly deep sense so I make some suggestions here I know I did study the politics of the Muslim world when I was in university I do I mean you know I have some knowledge on paper about the politics that part of the world and it does it continues to enrich my life my studies in that area but I have never lived in a Muslim majority country it's not my my personal area of interest or expertise nevertheless I have mentioned that a few times in my youtube channel I do take politics in that part of the world seriously and really having a deep sense of comparative political analysis is an important part of what I do when I look at political problems in Cambodia I can appreciate that as bad as they may be they're still very different from political problems in Indonesia right next door and many many people again I mostly deal with left-wing people but left-wing people often show up and want to intervene in these situations and they're not even going through the step of an analysis that says well this is bad but is it as bad as what's happening in the country next door how can we understand this in a kind of comparative context and you know obviously it doesn't I'm not saying that all interventions are wrong or misguided but it's very easy to become hysterical about a political situation and in the strictest sense you lose a sense of perspective if you don't evaluate a situation in its context that way including comparative evaluation so the suggestions are made here for a Muslim cultural context you know I point out the significance of institution building and charity building it's obviously relates to what I was just talking about my own life possibility of making foundation and pointing out that in a in a non democratic muslim-majority context you do still have the freedom to to own and operate a restaurant most Muslim countries do you know if you're in a Muslim country that tolerates a Chinese restaurant and that allows a Chinese restaurant to have Buddhist imagery inside the Chinese restaurant not all Muslim states do and some that's illegal like to have a statue of the Buddha inside a Chinese restaurant but if you have that much freedom then you actually already have the real possibility of a form of very effective activism in building restaurants and the Muslim countries to generalize they tend to have a very positive view of certain types of charity zakat zakat style charity so you know you could have a vegan foundation that is giving alms to the poor that is feeding poor people or that's engaged in other traditionally acceptable forms of Muslim charity but where that charity is vegan we're implicitly or educationally you're not just feeding the poor you're maybe also trying to teach the poor how to feed themselves and you're making a point about your charity not killing animals or what-have-you in passing if you can package that in a way that's politically acceptable and that resonates culture that's meaningful in a Muslim cultural context that's going to be much more powerful than just expressing your outrage or or street protests and again it's it's even more of a problem because if the street protests put you in prison you're not accomplishing anything by going to prison and there there are a few other examples there in that reply where I asked the question of what what kind of charity might be effective there certainly would be the possibility within a Muslim state to address things like heart attacks and cancer to have a health based approach where you know you're educating people on how to cope with these things and again it's easy for me to imagine how you can package that in a in an acceptable form for Muslim society you know if you're also against alcohol and against cigarettes you know you could present that in a way where veganism is one component of it but we are not directly challenging the the political status quo but as I said at the start of this in broad brushstrokes what I'm discussing here with with Astrid I'm sorry I've read the wrong name what I'm discussing here with Elena it really is the same set of questions that have been challenging my viewers with for many many months months ago I had videos addressing the group direct action everywhere in a decadent Western democratic setting where I'm really asking a question is outrage effective as the core of activism is that the way we really would want to broach these issues is that really the way to speak to either a broad audience of the public or any specific segment what really the outcomes again questioning cultural context legal and political context questioning what are the better alternatives and a democratic society to have meaningful outcomes but also I'm questioning who are you you as an individual if you are an architect you probably have a better option than running into a restaurant and screaming at people or running into a butcher shop and screaming at people and direct action every where their core method during the last several years has been running into those places and screaming it's not food it's violence etc other slogans and really including screaming and weeping in a very emotional way very incoherent emotional form and you can see they have their own videos that demonstrate this where they show their leaders weeping and screaming at strangers and so on now okay that's already know I where I stand on that but already in the Western contra context questioning the politics of outrage questioning outrage as an effective mode of pursuing social change and saying but who are you if you are an architect you have something better to do with your time you have other talents you probably for one thing don't have that much time to waste but you have other avenues to pursue social change in a Western democracy or even in the in the United Arab Emirates frankly architects are not necessarily brilliant you can meet some architects who are complete idiots I have I've met some architects who are not very bright but I'll tell you one thing if you're an architect you know how to draw you have drafting skills you almost certainly have access to an office that can print large full-color posters architects both use you know plotter printers to do graphic design but you know a part of architecture isn't just the you know the actual planning of the building you often have to present to clients visualizations this is what it will look like when it's complete so you know glossy full-color illustrations are an important part of what architecture firms do these days as you might guess I do have some experience of this in my own professional work right away just within an architect's own office what he could do to positively impact veganism you call channel writes I can think of a lot of things even if the guy is not particularly bright just given the artistic aspects of architecture now hopefully even if someone's an architect we also assume they're they're literate they're definitely at a higher level of literacy than someone like Duran probably they can put together information or do original research probably they can be involved in some form of legal advocacy of lobbying government probably there's a lot more they can do and as you've all served you say on my youtube channel this does not mean that I I think there's no role whatsoever for street protests I think we have to think about street protests as a rally as a way of rewarding people who already are vegan and even then it's probably not the best way but really you know we have to be a piece of the fact that vegans want all the same things normal people wanted a life boyfriends want to find girlfriends girlfriends want to find boyfriends people want to meet each other and be sociable and they want to break the isolation of being vegan and deal with the you know for the agony and the struggle of it all and there is a real role for the you know the social elements of protest but at the same time of course I'm warning against I'm warning against this becoming an end in itself and definitely for many many many vegans of many different political stripes this has been distorted as if Street protests is the only method of pursuing political change and there's no respectable way to come to that conclusion in terms of learning the lessons from history and when you talk to someone like Elena here in the United Arab Emirates or you're looking at China or Cambodia or any other place that has shall we say limited democracy many of those issues are again put into a very interesting contrast because suddenly the stakes are higher going to jail is no joke and it's really worth wondering are you making a positive change on the steps that lead to your going to jail okay next question Astrid writes in astrid says apologies if i missed a video of yours you've talked about the benefits of being in a democracy when it comes to trying to make change and obviously the benefits living in a democratic and country compared to the dictatorships of the world but what are your personal views on the morality of democracy her question goes on to reflect a little bit further so that's the end of question Astrid the core of her question is what are your personal views on the morality of democracy well my engagement with these issues is is fairly deep I do think first and foremost of ancient writers like Thucydides Aristotle etc the ancient Greek discourse on democracy that is not idealistic if you actually read through Citadis he is a very harsh critic of democracy including the tendency of democracy to start Wars another famous voice in that discourse who does not mean anything to me personally I don't feel connection you know John Stuart Mill is another great critic of democracy where he does illustrate the value of democracy but you know John Stuart Mill was was actually very concerned about the oppression of minorities you know when you have majority rule one of the negative aspects of that is the the bullying of and the suppression of and you know minority peoples within that country now that's interesting because of course John Stuart Mill's own experience was primarily in England and secondarily with India he actually devoted a lot of his time to advocating for human rights in India we would say I'm simplifying just say human rights in India obviously two completely different contexts you know the British Empire of recent centuries as opposed to to ancient Greece but I mean I just say I say this in preamble my personal views on the morality of democracy do not hinge on you know specific anecdotal problems that just happen to come up in the newspaper this month they do stretch back over thousands of years and are based on drawing lessons from from somewhat terrible chapters of the history of the world I very honest with myself about the the immoral aspects of democracy democracy has a funny tendency of starting Wars democracy has a terrible tendency to be unstable to be fleeting and I think what most people ignore today in 2016 democracy also can fail and the failure is not always dramatic it's not always like Cambodia collapsing into sort of genocide today in 2016 I think it's quite fair to say that Mexico is a failure of democracy when you read about a town in Mexico where the mayor is assassinated and then they try to elect another mayor and that an error is also assassinated because local you know drug cartels local drug dealing gangs control that town and where there are no police and no law you know there are Mexico is not a dramatic failure of democracy it hasn't collapsed into genocide or civil war but nevertheless Mexico I would say is a failed democracy and obviously there's there's a large literature written by specialists about that and Mexico is really a very important example to consider for one thing it's literally next door to the United States you know it's not Muslim it's Catholic it doesn't have problems with mass illiteracy or many of the other excuses the fillers democracy in many many ways Mexico has benefited from neoliberalism in recent decades economically Mexico has been through a period of rapid improvement not a period of of collapse or declining standards of living or what-have-you but nevertheless it's a failure so that's that's really a very grave warning about the fragility of democracy and I think it's fair to say everyone just wants to ignore it and nobody is comfortable really paying attention to and learning from the failure of democracy in Mexico it might be an exaggeration to say the same about recent failings of democracy in Greece or what have you to give one example in terms of what I regard as immoral in democracy so the question uses some some interesting phrasing here says you know you reflect that democracy is in some ways fundamentally based on and perpetuated by some evils that is true so it's give you an example I I do believe that discrimination against people based on their ability to pay is evil in the following sense you have a university a certain number of people get to study architecture staying with the same example and other people are gonna get kicked out or refused I think it is completely immoral to choose who will become an architect based on their ability to pay so that is a separate question from whether or not the university costs money might you know if the tuition is five thousand dollars if it costs five thousand dollars that's one thing but are you admitted or not admitted do you have the opportunity based on your ability to pay based on the money you already have it's quite possible to have a situation where poor people are admitted and their payment is is deferred that it's delayed let's say okay well ten years from now you got to pay back the tuition here there are many many ways to cope with tuition fees in different different countries around the world but my point is that that that is a fundamental form of discrimination that I believe is immoral and the democratic society I live in is completely skewed by that bias now again within Canada Canada has some elements of socialism they're pretty crappy I nobody looks at Canada as a great positive example of a successful country neither in terms of democracy nor in terms of social services but many many people including Americans exaggerate the the supposed socialism of our health care system I would say again regardless of the price it is deeply immoral from my perspective for access to medical care to be based on your ability to pay so you have two people who both need a cancer operation who gets the operation if it's only the person who can pay for it or if it goes first to the person who can pay for it and the second person has to wait longer maybe die of cancer because their their operation is delayed that to me is fundamentally immoral now ironically within Canada we have a different a different social system in each province each province has its own healthcare system and its own laws governing these things but sometimes the provinces that have the best medical system have the most immoral medical system by this criterion so the province of Quebec it may have the best quality of hospitals the best quality of medical care in Canada but they they absolutely have a a two-track system or two-tier system this way where you know the system has basically been corrupted by cash services they have both a socialist system and they have a fee-for-service system competing with each other within the province in a very strange legal gray area that the government tends to flip-flop on and people tend to be in denial about so to me again you know I live in a society where these questions never get asked and never get answered it is totally immoral to operate a prison on a for-profit basis in my opinion I do not see how any democracy can justify that I do it like I'll just mention I do believe prisons should exist there are people who idealistically claim that all prisons should be abolished there should be no prisons in the world I don't I don't believe that however the concept of running a prison as a business on a for-profit basis is to me fundamentally and intrinsically immoral and now within that tell you about the prisons and correction service the idea that someone will get better treatment based on their ability to Patti so to me that's a deep evil that's completely one completely unacceptable I don't think you should have a better lawyer a better trial a better outcome that you should go to a better prison because you're wealthy to me this is completely undemocratic completely immoral and yet the majority of democracy in the world accept these things without any any hesitation so now my final point under this heading why is it that access to the political system itself is based on the ability to pay to me this is completely immoral completely unforgivable why is it that I can't talk to the mayor or I can't talk to my member of Parliament's in the United States you can't talk to your Congressman why is it that my ability to have a voice in government is actually based on my ability to pay why is it that my access to the law itself requires thousands and thousands of dollars to go to a lawyer I this is it's a problem so obvious that nobody wants to address it both getting a lawyer and getting time in court and in getting your voice heard again this isn't just Canada United States this is also true of France England what have you your ability to contest these things is based on your ability to pay so to me I mean obviously anyone can think of a better way to organize both of these issues but this has this has become an unquestioned assumption about how Western democracy operates and really it has nothing to do with capitalism and has nothing to do with socialism as nothing anything else it's a fundamental core question of democracy you know right now my ability even to to have of my divorce relies on my paying thousands and thousands of dollars to a lawyer my divorce admittedly is a private matter but if I want to challenge the fact that a factory is polluting a river if I know that if I can prove that in a court of law why is it impossible for me to have a voice the factory owner has a voice because he has money so he has access to Parliament he has access to lawyers what about me why is it that I have to do fundraising and get donations do very hard to do to raise thousands of dollars to give to a lawyer so that I can challenge that so I can debate that that will unthinkable to Aristotle to you know to Siddha teas and the theoreticians of ancient Athens even though Athens had its own contradictions obviously the slave-owning society and extremely unequal their assumption that you could just show up and talk to the government was very deep their idea of what a trial was their idea of what an election was was profoundly different if you actually read Aristotle's constitution of Athens you will find a very interesting critique of voting itself Aristotle did not believe in electing people through voting very very interesting but I leave that aside so Astrid there are some thoughts in response to your thoughtful question sorry so that was question from Astrid my next question is from Alexa Alexa Arats she asks hip-hop recommendations / playlist so this is good I'm trying to trying to like the tone slightly I guess you know I would say in general if you're downloading hip off from the internet Raekwon is somewhat underweight rated Raekwon is one of the members of the the wu-tang clan and although he's associated with his early period his early period was when he was on the radio was more popular he really continued to consistently put out mixtapes for free so apart from his albums a very long list if you go to Wikipedia get discography for Raekwon you you can get a pretty impressive list of free legally free to download mix tapes that Raekwon continued to produce throughout his whole career I don't know I could say more about hip hop lately I've been listening a lot to an obscure mixtape from Ghostface called put it on the line that's a little bit older as those two examples already mentioned a lot of my own engaged with hip hop is shaped around whoo Tang Clan that era and that sub-genre of rap music not not sure how much I should say in terms of the younger generation you know little B all of his music is free you do have to do a lot of it is garbage but you know given that it's free anyway if you want a little B mixtape that's maybe a good representation of his work he has one called God's father the gods father mixtape again you can download that for free there are at least four or five good tracks on that many of them are bad but you delete them this is really the era of free music in general as my life progressed you know around the time when I was a university students myself let's say around around 1999 the only music I listened to was on the one hand hip hop and the other hand Johann Sebastian Bach like a certain type of classical music that was very mathematical and structured and then when I heard all the songs I liked by Bach a thousand times I stopped listening to classical music and it was just rap music it was just hip-hop so now rap music is really the only the only music I listen to I assumed that I would stop listening to rap music when my daughter was born and I was really working and living as a full-time father however as you guys know I now see my daughter so rarely that I do listen to rap music when my daughter is not around and she's not around most of the time it's there anyway I guess feel free to ask more questions if you want to know and maybe this is boring for the rest of my listeners so I'm gonna move on okay Genevieve Gabrielle she asks aisel do you think it is important for vegans to stay on social media like Facebook does it make a difference I think it does but maybe I am deleting myself close quote okay you know I like to keep it real you know not being on social media is a luxury I wish my life was so meaningful and so busy that I had no reason to use social media I wish I knew so many vegan activists that I had no reason to contribute to YouTube or to talk to you people on paper that would be wonderful can you imagine if I was living in a situation where I was getting so much done in terms of real world activism that there was just no point in engaging in social media or internet activism I can imagine that likely to happen so I mean just say I do not regard social media as a luxury I regard not being on social medias a luxury if you can exclude it from your life if you can avoid it or you can minimize it then probably there are a lot of other things going well in your life and then that that's a luxury you can afford in a recent video I reflected on on YouTube that if I had taken all of this time that I put into YouTube and instead put it into meeting up with the same vegans here in Victoria several of whom really disliked me and not all of them but you know several of them do it would have accomplished nothing it would have been a complete waste of my time I think I went to just enough events here to to recognize that it was wasting my time and I've actually just recently gotten some fan mail from other vegans here in Victoria who who never met me um and they also were writing to me saying you know they really appreciate my YouTube channel and that they also are a bit shocked at what's going on in the local vegan scene here but you know I mean for myself back when I was living a much more meaningful life in some ways when I was really engaged with what was going on around me and Laos I wasn't on social media at all and I was very very careful with my web presence and with what articles I put online I did publish some articles in the internet because the the politics was in the real world and in my face and what-have-you and it would be very it would be wonderful to imagine that one day in the future I would be so busy with you know making a meaningful difference directly in the real world that I would be contributing less and less to the Internet that that would be very positive but it's unlikely so in my own life now you guys know what's up with me I think I might be putting more time into YouTube more time into the internet because the rest of my life is going to be pretty meaningless being bogged down with schoolwork both as a student doesn't end as a teacher in China and I'll be very isolated from and alienated from anyone with really common interests common passions myself and I think that's true for the majority of vegans right now in 2016 the most common thing I hear from vegans in the Internet is that they do not know any other vegans in real life so that's why they're on the Internet but if they if they were I mean again we all use this word community when there really is no community for vegans not online and not anywhere in the real world so far as I can see with possible exceptions like Taiwan if you want to talk about Buddhists vegans in Taiwan etc I think for any of us if we had a real community that would be the point at which you could stop wasting time on social media and okay I'm gonna I'm keepin it all the way real some of the time I spent on social media I regret and it hurts me emotionally and it feels like a waste but like I feel epically I have to do it anyway I just spent some time yesterday sending some messages to complete strangers on the internet who were vegan you know writing them because they were vegan saying hi I'm on my way to Thailand you know do you want to meet up because I'm passing through Thailand on my way from Canada to China at this stage mile it feels bad and I've done that for so many years and it brings back the memory of so many efforts to make friends or just introduce myself to make connections with other people because they're vegan to build on common ground and where it ends badly or it starts badly or just you never get any reply yeah you know putting yourself out there making yourself available emotionally to try to connect with strangers to try to have those those mean could a social media sometimes it does hurt me and it does feel exhausting and it does feel like a waste of time and I think a lot of people end up embittered and stop doing that and even stop replying when other people write to them when it's someone else trying to initiate and trying to make that connection I think the truth is as a character I am NOT embittered by the experiences of that I've had horrible terrible experiences I have not let them and bitter me and there's both good and bad to that the negative aspect is that I'm still really suffering you know I'm still really feeling this stuff as it happens if you're embittered if you're jaded if you're closed off from those feelings and emotions then by the same token you're not suffering in the same way I still am really trying to make new connections you know like a teenager let's say like a teenager who's just transferred to a new school that's my situation in life you're the new kid in the high school everyone else has friends you don't have any friends because you just move to this town you know as a teenager that's my situation again and again and now I'm moving to China and it's gonna be that way again both on the internet and in real life I mean that vulnerable situation and I do get hurt and I do suffer but that process of Perpetual suffering is preferable to being jaded to being unfeeling to being closed off from new experience so that's that's as real as it gets Jenny that's my that's my response to your question she also asks what is your favorite thing to eat in China I am actually gonna dodge that question by mentioning a food you guys won't have heard about they're one of one of the only vegan foods that's really a native indigenous vegan food in northern Thailand and Laos both countries northern Thailand and Laos is called Khao lam I'll post a link because you'll never guess how to spell it but yo Cal Lam is a method they have of taking fresh cut bamboo and putting rice inside of it and they will normally chop up some kind of local potato such as the Tarot or another tuber and then the sometimes they'll add some coconut fat some bits of coconut or something else there are different recipes and different regions different perdition's they often add some other some purple rice which is called king's rice so that the whole thing is purple when you eat it and they roast it on an open fire and the the taste of the smoke gets into it and so on and not only is it vegan it's actually pretty close to antiseptic in a country where most of the food is filthy and can carry disease this whole thing is kind of boiled from the inside out and you you break off the the bits of bamboo you peel back the bamboo layer and then you get to eat the the rice and other ingredients that are inside rice and it's potato so that is actually healthy it's actually safe and the vast majority of white people do not know that exists I can remember again in terms of just reflecting on this I mean I'm not a loner by nature I remember I took a long bus trip going through Thailand and Laos want you know one day where the bus takes hours and hours and hours and I made friends with like 15 people on that bus trip you know obviously is not deep friendship but you have several hours together talking and so you know these guys were all talking to me in their friends with me you know by the end of the trip from him for they were terrified to try Cal lamb there was a very disconsolate young woman trying to sell cow lamb out of a out of a basket and I could speak Lao so I showed it out to the window to her she was shocked to see a white man speaking Lao as fluently as I could back then I now haven't really spoken these languages for ten years but I called out the window to her and I was speaking to her and Lao and you know she brightened up so much you could see she was really hurt and depressed she's a very poor person obviously and she was trying to make money selling this this food Callum to foreigners in buses you know when in theory she could have sold some to truck drivers but nobody was buying it because they they didn't even know what it was it looks like she's selling bamboo sticks you know they don't know it I remember trying to encourage the other people on the bus to try this this exotic food that is that is vegan anyway it made her day that I spoke to her in Lao and I bought several and gave them to other people on the bus for free and they were still really afraid to eat it until I ate it in front of them and so and then they were all delighted that the thought it was delicious anyway I mentioned this as another example I mean I'm not a loner I don't have a problem making friends everywhere I go I am sociable and I meet people so and you guys have some sense of my character on YouTube I also am NOT a nice guy it's something else of tax again but you know you have those kinds of experiences again again and as I say for me my situation still is that I'm the new kid at the at the high school and I'm still having to move to a new town start again with nothing nothing but a backpack and really having no friends in this world so hopefully over the long term you know my internet presence has some positive effect in my life in that respect too it would be great if now when going to China there was one person in China who knew me from from YouTube or one person in Thailand or what have you that would be great next question is from Mike on Raw so if you guys have seen just yesterday yesterday night I uploaded a video giving a shout out to Mike on Raw and responding to another issue from his YouTube channel Mike asks could you discuss what you have found are the pieces necessary for a movement to have success you have talked about things that won't work on their own and you have talked about how political influence at all levels is important but pain political influence create success on its own what are the critical parts okay close quote end of question so obviously this could be a one-hour monologue and response to this given my background of my interest in life to give a somewhat limited reflection in just two parts one the most successful political movements are the most invisible so in this I mentioned you know in a recent video Mothers Against Drunk Driving the campaigns to address and indeed demonize you know drunk driving like scientifically it's actually possible for a person to drink alcohol and drive a car and a completely responsible and safe way politically that's an inconvenient fact but we have set up laws that make it completely illegal for anyone to drink alcohol and drive a car and I agree with that I mean that's the only way you can you have to have a law that applies to everyone equally you can't have a law that says well if you're really good at driving drunk we'll let you do it but you know over a period of decades the Crusades against drunk driving and the Crusades to really kind of limit the culture of alcohol have been very very successful and they're also largely invisible now at the at the opposite extreme another example I talked about recent video was the question of the conspiracy for who killed JFK this type of conspiratorial movement for political change and of course lobbies that are paid for by industries would have you there are many political movements that in this sense also are invisible why do I mention this well for one thing the success of Mothers Against Drunk Driving is not unique they don't have any special advantages their methods and their successes can be reproduced can be imitated can be learned from and by contrast some vegans want to draw attention to the abolition of slavery specifically the abolition of slavery in Georgia in the United States and the southern United States and many aspects of that are unique and cannot be reproduced you know the liberation of slaves in Haiti fascinating history that I was i myself have read a great deal about but there's no way I can say oh yeah look at the situation for slaves in Haiti several hundred years ago and now obviously we can just apply these lessons to Canada in 2016 no you have to be able to recognize when something is comparable when it's reproducible when it is something you can generalize about and when really it's it's quite unique now I mean in Haiti the Revolution that freed the slaves involved real violence of the most gruesome kind including tremendous violence by the white people on behalf of the slave owners but the slaves themselves you know it was said at the time and not without without reason the flag of the Revolution was of a white baby impaled on a spike because they would the slaves would kill the slave masters and they would routinely take a spear and you know murder the babies murder the infants of the slave masters and then marched the next town with a spear with a dead baby at the end of it now I mentioned this only it's incredibly gory chapter of history but let's keep it real when other vegans talk about using slavery the abolition of slavery as a model for social change for veganism is that really what you're talking about homeboy I don't think so I don't think at all we're really talking about a situation where you you want to emulate that type of violent social change and now obviously I mean most people who really study that history they have mixed sympathies because of course slavery is bad they want to see slavery end but they understand why the extreme violence happened it's it's tragic but learning from that tragedy and what lessons you apply now especially in a democratic society where you can go to City Hall you can collect donations and hire a lawyer and challenge these things in a court of law you know the slaves in Haiti couldn't do that you know when there are so many politicians open to us that's really worth challenging and as I say so the the real contrast I'm making is between this idea I'm putting forward that the most successful political movements are the most invisible and then on the other hand people tend to think that the squeaky wheel gets the grease so that's an idiom that's a sort of childhood idiom we have in English the squeaky wheel gets the grease the point of that phrase is to say that complaining gets results you know street protests complaining being the squeaky wheel no I don't think that gets results I think again whether you look at Mothers Against Drunk Driving or any other you know again campaigns against smoking cigarettes to reform you know labeling and health standards for cigarettes etc etc those are the most successful and and they're also the most invisible and the culture of complaint is not really the culture you you want to be imitating although again as I've said earlier in this in the same podcast I do have sympathy with the social reasons for why people want to organize rallies and protests and I don't I don't regard them as completely worthless um coming back to Mike's question here part two the second aspect I wanted to mention if you're really sick asking the question what what is the the critical aspect the critical aspect is money okay the critical issue is economic why is petaa the most powerful voice for veganism in the world today People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals not because they're smart not because they're right not because they're good at what they do because they got money okay they pay wages they employ people all right I hear a lot of BS about being a full-time activist on the Internet the employees of petaa are probably the only full-time activists in the world that the majority of them how many vegan agencies can you say employ people now you guys know if you watched my channel I don't like peda there are a lot of things I dislike about them I think they're kind of dumb and they're kind of goofy and you know they've been on the wrong side of history on a number of different issues not it's not perfect most vegans of course hate them because they kills their animals or they hate them because they have posters of naked women in them etc etc but guess what at the end of the day you know money talks you can refer to the first first of the second question I answered where I thought of the day that I deeply disagree with this that in a democratic society freedom of speech should not be based on the ability to pay but in answer to this question that is the answer now you've heard me say on YouTube I had this experience with the Green Party in Canada I could also talk about my experience of Buddhism both of those examples what really mattered was motivating elderly people to support you so if you have highly motivated retired people older than 65 who are giving you $100 a month so there could be elderly Chinese people who give money to a Buddhist temple could be elderly white people who give money to the Green Party whatever that forms the economic basis for a successful political movement that is the brutal ugly truth nobody else is gonna tell you Mike yes you know the foundation for a successful political movement is financial and the foundation for those finances in my opinion is transparency and accountability right and transparency does not mean democracy so like those Chinese people when they donate their money to the Buddhist temple they may have no control over what happens to that money they don't get to vote they don't get a referendum they don't get they don't even get a debate or discussion but what they will get if it's a good Buddhist temple is a report telling them what happened to the money and then of course they can decide in the next year if they want to donate again or not they might cancel their donation so you know okay so much money went into repainting the roof so much money did this so much money did that and you know it may be a course that some of the money is being spent to take care of orphans to give food to starving people actually some Buddhist temples do animal rights stuff also to liberate animals from cages and this kind of thing that's that's another story there could be a one-hour discussion right there but you know you you add it all up and you give them a list and even in the complete absence of democracy that can be a very powerful and meaningful thing that's the complete answer to your question for the purpose of this podcast Mike obviously I could speak about it even greater length yeah the foundation is financial and economic the foundation for that has to do with trust with credibility with legitimacy and the foundation for that in turn is transparency and accountability that's the essence of the thing and the most successful movements are the most invisible it's not the case that the squeaky wheel gets the grease it's a misconception I've got a question coming in from two of my longtime viewers here Ava and Haruki they asked Haruki and I were wondering what would be your favorite or most memorable books you read so far both fiction and nonfiction and for what reasons so I'll give a two-part answer one on fiction and one on nonfiction I have read incredibly little fiction in my adult life incredibly little the only I mean the most of the fiction I have read as an adult has been for historical reasons so like I mean you know when I'm reading Buddhist philosophy I don't consider that fiction in a sense some of it is fiction you know if you're reading but if you're studying ancient Buddhist philosophy that to me is not what we normally consider fiction it's not like reading a novel that's really study or research would have you something I may return to to reading here you really need to have a certain kind of mentality for that the original novels for the water merchants and that's a very strange title the water margin is a very strange reflection on the history of of China that's a fictional work but again I'm reading it for nonfiction reasons and it's much misunderstood it's been made into many many kung-fu movies and it's often presented as a sort of Robin Hood style adventure of heroes but really the book is very political it's published in four volumes in English translation by Sidney Shapiro in the future there will be better translations it's not it's not a great English translation but it's okay but I mean politically there are many many reflections on how the court system worked on justice and injustice on how the political system worked and I mean it manages to be somewhat entertaining but the tone of condemnation is consistent throughout and one of the strangest things when that book is adapted into a modern movie or modern cartoon because it has many times they turn almost all of the the villains into heroes but really that book is presenting most of the the major characters as villains and that gets a it's a bizarre or cultural transformation that tends to just get overlooked whether they're sort of made into fun-loving good guys but in the original book it's that the crimes they commit are taken very seriously and look and I just gave you one example from that story there's a there's a guy who's guilty of murder and through complete financial corruption he really escapes punishment and rather than being in prison you know it's so corrupt that he's paid bribes to the prison wardens so he's allowed while other people in the prison are being tortured and other people in the prison are having to work on a farm in a sort of slavery situation he's allowed to stroll out of the prison go down the road sit in a restaurant overlooking the river and get drunk and eat food at this restaurant and in the story he doesn't appreciate this at all he doesn't feel privileged he does it depicts him as being completely self-righteous haughty contemptuous and totally self pitying totally preoccupied with how difficult his life is even though the book has just described to you him walking past people who are being tortured who are being whipped and working in the field or everything and the reader is really told this guy is guilty of murder and there's no justification for it's not you know it's not a good it's not a morally gray area that murder you know he's a bad guy this is this is sort of confronting the audience in its own time as a very very biting satire but you know somehow people read that and they see these these characters as heroes or they they manage to miss the point but really that's a very dark cross-section of Chinese society pre-modern Chinese society the only book of contemporary fiction that I have read in 15 years is the the series Game of Thrones Oh the series is called A Song of Ice and Fire by Georgia or Martin the TV show Game of Thrones is now very famous and again what what I'm interested in those books are really the reflections on on political philosophy they also have some political content in them but in terms of fiction really for like 15 years that's that's it that's the only thing I've read it's interesting we never fight with in Game of Thrones I I really can't relate to the stuff that's about childhood that's about you know from the perspective of the very young characters I'm not interested in the kind of teenage romance elements that are there because some of the storylines have romance with young people but a lot of the scenes where it's kind of mean old men sitting around a table talking about war in politics there's a lot that I do relate to and some of the lines that are very simple very throwaway of have really stayed with me there's one scene where a child is questioning a much older man about a battle that's just happened you know he's saying you know why did you fight these people why did you kill these people and the answer that comes from the older man this is to a child a real child he just says they were foes you know the reason why that has an impact on me as a reader is that those novels they really do take the time to talk about the complex morally murky political situation that surrounds those types of episodes but then in the core of that you have these you know terrible simplicity's you know what's the answer to that question why why did you guys just have to fight to the death with swords and it's not being glorified it's not being presented as something fun or adventuresome or citing it's presented as this brutal you know feudal dystopia but at the end of the day what can you say to a child they were foes you know so there are there are reflections of that kind in that series that's I do value and the do stay with me so then in the nonfiction category I'll just give a brief shout out to lucidity 'he's so among the ancient greeks lucidity 'he's a very moving and jarring critique of democracy that at the same time describes for you how democracy works in ancient Athens there is an edited version of Thucydides great work his main Opeth that is under the title on justice power and human nature so that's the title given to a compressed version a set of excerpts from Thucydides in English so it's a much shorter book but if you can't spell Thucydides and you just want to google that so Google ancient Greece on justice power and human nature and you should find the version of the book I'm alluding to I can't say through Citadis is a book that changed my life because I read it relatively late in life but it's it's a book I deeply appreciate and I have commented on on my youtube channel before ok next question Scarlett gone raw asks ok so now we're getting into more autobiographical stuff here why the enormous sacrifice to teach in China she asks I understand your passion as an Asian Studies and politics but to be so separated from personal freedoms liberties and sorry to mention your ongoing precarious situation with your wife involving your daughter I can't help but speculate that it's not the right timing for this intellectual opportunity um so pause there the question actually goes on uh well the timing is peculiar and it's forced by a number of factors my lawyer tells me I've got something like 18 months before there's any progress with the divorce it seems to me possible that something will happen about 10 months from now at the soonest something but the French legal system in case you haven't heard is not quick so my whole situation with my wife and daughter so far as I know based on the information I have including most of all the information from my lawyer is is that it's in suspended animation is that nothing is going to change for one for one year my situation at the University here in Canada is another reason well I have to do this now and not later my situation with my career and needing to earn a living is yet another reason there there are several different factors forcing it to be now and not later but if I stayed here in Canada I would actually be in a worse circumstance for seeing my daughter not better so I know that sounds strange but it's true now among the things I did you've recently seen the video where I reflect on the horrible ways in which my my wife really has harmed me despite that as soon as I had the plan in place to move to Kunming China I wrote to my wife and invited her to come and visit me there you know she could bring my daughter or she could leave my daughter behind so my ex-wife for her you nan you nan is the province in China and could Ming is the city that's really the center of the world for my ex-wife her research her area of expertise that's that's really the core of her own area of interest and that's where we met we met Yunnan and we lived there together what eight years ago or something now a long time ago and it's a very meaningful opportunity for her to come and spend time and in connect so I knew there would be a good chance that she and my daughter would actually come to join me there temporarily or or you know possibly for a few months or what have you it also said could Ming it isn't any closer or further away from from France than Canada is I'm on the west coast of Canada is an amazing distance from France if you're on the east coast of Canada it might not be that bad but moving from here to convey in these circumstances does not put me at any disadvantage so my wife actually is prevaricate and that I knew that would actually be a very tempting opportunity for her to come to China once I was already set up in China and at first she said no and then later she wrote to me saying yes that she would come to visit me and she would bring my daughter to come in so we don't know if that's really gonna happen if you guys have watched that recent video you'll know she um she has a tendency to try to blackmail me or backstab me and it's possible that just to hurt me she would come to visit that part of China and still not allow me to see my daughter that you know that we'd be in the same city together and I would not be able to see without that's that's already what she did to me once in Europe so there's no limit as it Michels it's possible she'll literally murder me I mean I wouldn't you know you know as possible you know there's no limit to this and I've I've sort of wondered why given that she's already done these terrible things given that you would lie to a court that you'd lie to the cops what won't you do you know and there are many other way she's harming that I haven't mentioned anyway yeah so it's a strange it's a strange set of circumstances I would just point out you just started by saying why the enormous sacrifice to go to China what's the sacrifice I hope something causative comes out of it just a few months ago I applied to join the Canadian Army which would also be a huge sacrifice just a few months ago I formally spoke to the Israeli embassy people about migrated Israel which will also be a huge sacrifice so I've been looking at a whole lot of huge sacrifices most of which offer nothing positive in my life nothing positive for me or my daughter something positive could come out of this move to China so we gotta hope for the best so the question goes honest just say wouldn't it be better if you postpone this trip to China no I've got a I've got to get this done I've got to finish my education I've got to get a real job I've got to get a real home precisely so that everything's in order so that I hope I can be a good father to my daughter whenever the the divorce actually wraps up in court and we don't know it's certainly possible I'll be in a situation where I see my daughter say three months a year that happens with divorces you know it's possible I'll be in a situation where I see her every other weekend and we live in the same city we don't know but I'm gonna be in some position of larger responsibility for my daughter in the in the next several years I mean at the absolute one I don't see how the French courts could take more than two years but yeah it could be it could be still 18 months so which is I said all right next question is from Julia Jansen a question about your divorce videos I'm sorry if I got anything wrong but to me it sounds like from the time you and your ex-wife together you were suffering and for you the relationship was bad she said she sorry you said she always promised a change do you think things would get better but did you really marry a woman based on the promise that everything would get better you seem so rational and yet this decision sounds to me a bit naive I'm just curious what were your motives in the beginning relationship so I'll start by saying in written answer this question more generally I'm not offended by these questions it does not make me feel bad that people care that people want to know about these aspects and personally that's very positive from my perspective somehow below this this audio file I'll provide the links to the account I wrote I have a written account of what happened with my divorce that's hidden on my blog as it's hidden because it's not that not that easy to find if you google enough you could find it eventually um for anyone who wants to know I appreciate that you want to know that's it I'm it to me it's it's completely positive and I know exactly how it feels by contrast to be in the situation where nobody cares and nobody wants to know so from my perspective you guys could know as much you want to you already heard me say in my recent youtube video sort of disclaimer or warning that I I do avoid saying anything critical about my ex-wife I do avoid basically saying the bad things she did so it is very flattering to my ex-wife my mode of approaching this personal history but as you know also I think that's for the best but beyond that I'm you know I'm happy to have the question I'm happy for you guys to read as much as you want to read or hear as much as you want to hear about it and for some people it's deeply meaningful there are some people for whatever reason this resonates at them and it really matters them a lot but for other people they just pay attention to it because they care about me they're interested in who I am in my life and of course I've al you that even more it's that's wonderful so the specific question here you know if you're asking would you really marry a woman based on the promise that things would get better yes yeah and of course that's partly because my ex-wife has other redeeming qualities my ex-wife is very smart and very hardworking those are things I value a lot and when we first got together she was very much in love with me she was in love with me right to the end too and I just say even with the day at the airport when we split up the last thing she ever said to me was I still love you she hasn't said that for a while now since then no but I mean you know my my ex-wife had a set of very obvious positive qualities that in my mind justified giving her a chance again and again do the right thing now this both is part of the beginning relationship and the end relationship what I said at the very start of this long Q&A session about the value I placed in democracy this actually does have a real role in my relations with women and with my personal life to me it is inconceivable that I would be in a relationship with a woman where I make all the decisions or I take responsibility for things I do approach all my personal relationships in a very sort of democratic way which doesn't mean I take no responsibility doesn't mean you vote on everything but on any given issue you discuss okay is this your decision or is this my decision what do you think what do I think who's who's gonna make the call who's gonna do the work who's gonna be responsible for what happens next or I really I don't just assume the woman in my life is involved in making those decisions I really demanded a demand that has equals were really involved in thinking about it and deciding things as they happen now so at the beginning of that obviously this is part of why I valued her as a person she was smart enough she was you know engaged with related issues in terms of her own research and scholarship this obviously for me was the you know enticing prospect of being in a relationship with someone who was my intellectual equal however as I say this actually also foretells the end of the relationship of why the marriage couldn't work anymore like the the marriage could have continued if I had just become a tyrant if I just said look you know you've destroyed your credibility you don't get to make any decisions anymore from now on I'm the man in the relationship and I decide things if I had taken that approach the marriage could have lasted but from my perspective it wouldn't really be a marriage anymore it would really be you know it would be a very unequal it would be some kind of 24-hour BDSM relationship or something it would to me this would not really be conceivable so that's both the beginning in the end I both expect and I demand to be in relationships with people whom I can treat as my equals who I can debate things with as my equals where I can share the decision-making responsibilities with the other people person or people as my equals and where their opinion matters and so on where it's not just me making decisions but by the same token when you're in a marriage like that and it falls apart then you get to the point where it's like well you know you've you've harmed me you've done these terrible things to me you haven't apologized you haven't said it's gonna be back in the future there's no way to make this work and I can't just I can't relate to you like my slave I either have to treat you you know like my equal or we have to split up we have to be separate but equal you know yeah maybe that's enough of a set of reflections in response to that question all right Mar Mar ask the question I'd like to hear how your life aligns with atheism what does it mean to you you've mentioned in one of your videos that you consider yourself to be a nihilistic atheist can you go into more detail about that best of luck to you with your move and new chapter in your life you've been through a lot in this experience we deem as life but you keep on keeping on um you presume you presume that I keep on keeping on do you hmm um look so atheism and nihilism are sort of two different things when I speak to people face-to-face it's easy for me to talk about nihilism because I know who they our I know what aspects they're gonna relate to or what this is gonna mean to them it's harder for me to talk about in a sort of generalized broadcast I like to use the term historical nihilism historical nihilism is a term used by the Communist Party of China to describe the antithesis to their ruling ideology historical nihilism is an attitude where we learn from the lessons of history but we deny the idea that history is an intrinsically evolutionary process we deny the idea that everything is getting better and better we deny the idea that everything is is necessary that so for example the Chinese Communist Party they will justify the deaths of millions of people when people were massacred under Mao Zedong by saying well this was historically necessary this was part of a positive evolutionary process etc etc so historical nihilism to begin with is the idea that no we study history but we admit to ourselves that many of the things in history are meaningless that many of the massacres and disasters did not contribute to progress that they were they were just disasters pure and simple now this of course does not mean that history lacks in lacks in meaning or lacks in lessons for us to learn I think on the contrary this opens the door to us really profoundly learning from history but it is it is closing the door on an ideological or religious reading of history nihilism has had several other historical moments that also color the meaning of the term for me the Russian nihilists had this catch phrase go to the poor be the poor and denialists in Russia were in general a non-communist attempt to address the corruption and decadence of Russian society and to lay their hands on the problem of poverty and you know the social dysfunction of pre-revolutionary Russia so it's another moment in history it doesn't mean the nihilist said all the answers in life oh I guess I could have mentioned this under the the the question about novels there's a famous novel by Turgenev the Russian author turgenyev called fathers and sons fathers and sons is probably the single most famous depiction of Russian nihilism as a philosophy although of course it's partly a ericka chur of or a critique of Russian nihilism but I don't I don't specifically identify with Russian nihilism but it's another interesting moment in history when nihilism came to the fore as a as a concept in terms of what is the core of nihilism it is similar to ancient skepticism not skepticism the way the word is used today but skepticism in the ancient Greek sense that sadly nobody seems to read or be aware of it is two different things if I say to you there is no god that is not really the same thing as saying to you there is nothing to be believed in apart from a rejection of belief in a specific ideology there is a critique of belief itself that is the core of nihilism next question Linda Carlson I work for a company that extracts minerals from the ground the mineral is essential for human welfare but the mining process is not environmentally friendly what is your opinion having gone environmentally friendly jobs or non-vegan jobs okay this is the last question today's section and I mean it's it's a simple one look I this year just a couple months ago I volunteered to join the army I volunteered to become a professional killer for the Canadian Armed Forces you better believe it that's not hypothetical my signature is on the paper I did the paperwork I went in and wrote the tests I I went through the process so you know I mean we all got to do something to survive I talked about on YouTube it was possible I would have gotten a job at Starbucks this year or what have you that happen on the other hand I have a storied career of quitting jobs for ethical reasons so I'll try to tell this anecdote really briefly but when I was in Cambodia I had a job that on paper looked like the most morally positive job but basically because of corruption corruption and incompetence on the part of my boss it was really quite immoral you know you're doing health care research healthcare research can save lives if it's corrupt it can kill people or at a minimum it's failing to save those lives it's squandering the opportunity to make that positive difference to save those lives through corruption through incompetence or what have you so it did really damage me to quit that job when I did in Cambodia I did not have any easy alternative to it but that was the right thing to do morally at that time and I tried to reform the way that company operated for the inside and I tried to express the problems etc but at you know if you're in fury errs are corrupt or incompetence you can change things easily when your superiors are corrupt our incompetence then you got to quit now if I had joined the army who knows what kind of corruption and competence I would have encountered but this is the real world coming back to the point I made before in response to the question from Mike you know Mike asked about what's what's the most effective and I talked about economic aspects of activism ultimately all morality is a luxury and you know it went when you do not have you know a better option I mean veganism at its core is about doing what's possible and practical and if you are too poor if you do not have the luxury to quit your job if you do not have the luxury to even search for a new job to replace it if you don't have a substitute if you don't have an alternative you know Lock and Load hey man you know somebody's got to wake up in the morning and drop those bombs on the Islamic state and I'm someone who comes out of a background of studying some of the worst disasters in American foreign policy you know American foreign policy in Cambodia in Laos in Haiti something else a [ __ ] the air like you know I mean I have studied some of the worst examples of American military intervention and America has made some of the same mistakes again and again but nevertheless when I had the opportunity or the seeming opportunity to sign up and be part of the next disaster I signed up for it and you know I'm not a pacifist I believe in minimizing harm minimizing the harm caused by war minimizing the harm caused by different forms of economic activity but the minimum is certainly much more than zero and it's interesting I've lived through a number of sort of in my lifetime there have been a number of failed peace protests I remember marching in the anti-war protest in Toronto that I believe still are the largest protest in history of Canada when people were protesting against starting the war in Iraq or you know what what am I going to tell you today there is no peace protests for for Isis for the Islamic state there were many conflicts that kind of the world where there is a broad consensus that resorting to the brutality of force is necessary and where it's proceeding you know mineral extraction Canada's is built on it and there are very peculiar forms of violence that are built into resource extraction what I feel is the real alternative for vegans to take seriously and it's become very marginalized being is I've tried again again to talk about a habitat conservation centred approach to veganism I think it's very misleading and counterproductive to demonize for example a specific crop the way that some vegans demonize palm oil well palm oil if you stop farming palm oil it doesn't help the endangered species doesn't help the animals that would live in that forest the only thing that will help them is habitat conservation is when you draw a line in the map and you don't say we can't draw we can't farm palm oil here you have to farm some other palm you know date palms you know anything like that it's still gonna any crop is still gonna destroy the habitat the one thing that will help the orangutans that will help the wild animals in question the only thing that will make the difference is habitat conservation is where you draw a bunch of lines in the map and say inside these lines we have no human exploitation of nature whatsoever we have real jungle we have real wilderness and inside those lines that's where the orangutans and the monkeys and the Tigers and the elephants get to live and that ultimately is also what I have to say about mineral extraction you can't turn the whole world into Disneyland there's got to be a line of the map and on one side of the line we have all the brutality of mining and mineral extraction and the other side we have land that's being preserved not to benefit humans not even for the sake of climate change or something but that is there for the animals for the forests for the wilderness to exist as a true and in itself thanks for your time guys thanks for writing in with these questions I'm happy to hear them I'm happy to answer them I really do value the quality and caliber of the questions that received anyone can pay that $1 and comment and get my attention but the one dollar alone seems to be enough to really prevent trolls from signing up durianrider says he's rich durianrider has not paid the one dollar to come online upon me he's welcome to do it so it's amazing how much higher the intellectual caliber is simply by having that one dollar as a barrier to entry in contrast to the quality of comments you get on YouTube or on blogs or other sorts of websites thank you guys all very much thank you