"Dogma": Axiomatic & Pragmatic Thinking in Vegan Politics.
27 July 2017 [link youtube]
Yep. It's me, talking about vegan politics. In Thailand.
Youtube Automatic Transcription
all right we're gonna try to do this as
a two-hander rather than a monologue I always felt I was wanted to do videos talking other people by the way talking with other people like even if it's mostly me talking about the topic I really think there's a kind of unwanted intensity to me staring straight into that camera and saying give me your soul well you know what I mean like especially so many topics I really think it's better if I'm talking to my girlfriend and you know I'm checking like you understand what I'm saying you she can jump in anytime but maybe she has done in the same topic I think it's a lot more human to see that kind of interaction maybe especially when you're talking about politically important issues or philosophically dense and difficult issues I know I got one piece of fan mail for the last video we did talking about being in politics said vegan politics on the thumbnail a guy wrote in but he said what a contrast it was to these other channels there aren't that many where it's a couple but the couple work from a script and they sit there and stare into the camera so it's not even like two people having a conversation right it's two people sitting there in tandem in parallel staring into the camera and I'm a totally artificial way of talking yeah what do you think about that I thought that's a good question that reminds me you know but yeah yeah that's a good point and now here's the next line on my script you know so I just say I dig that but I mean some people also write in a complaint like I'm preventing you from talking because you could say anything you want to say you could just type anyway some of these topics like sums the topic is like my life for my it's me complaining about my university education obviously obviously not gonna interests a so look one of the words I see thrown around basically a lot of what goes on in vegan politics right now people kind of try to bully each other into into activism you know like you ought to feel bad about yourself because you're not as much as an activist it's like the John sidecars video oh that's a good I didn't think of that yeah no that's are you going to the protest on Sunday right yeah oh no I'd rather watch Game of Thrones right yeah yeah yes and no that's a relatively polite indirect for you but I think a lot of the political discourse you know if people trying to inflate their own egos their own sense of self-importance that's understandable but also people trying to kind of insult and diminish each other like you're not a real activist or you're not doing all you can for the movement and so on anyway some of that's inevitable like if you work in the fashion industry the same thing goes on to some stem like you're not a real fashion designer you're not really committed to the fashion the way I am you know that stuff goes on you know so in theater in fashion okay so what's some of that but I mean guys we got to keep it under control and in this game of people pulling each other I see the word Dogma being kicked around in a peculiar way now I want to kick this off by saying let's really think about the difference between the word dogma and the word axiom I think in general when we want to be flattering we say that things are axiomatic and when we want to insult them we say that they are dogmatic my dictionary definition of axiom is a statement or proposition that is regarded as being established accepted or self-evidently true so you know I mean what is the difference between a Dogma or an axiom you know what's the difference between you know a lot of these things work that way you can look some oh you want to look up Dogma but contrast yeah go on cool see see she can interrupt anytime she wants so Dogma by contrast is defined as a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly truth right but I mean fundamentally we're talking about dogmas or axioms we're basically talking about one belief that is required by another set of assumptions you know if we do not believe a then how can we believe me or do B C and D something else follows from it um you know John McDougall the diet guru he puts forward the idea that is I think dogmatic or if you want to flatter it you can say axiomatic he puts forward the idea that there is such a thing as a human diet in the same that would that we can talk about your time status you said it in different contexts right Hippos yeah so if you got a hippo well no no but it's more still exists it's species-specific right so his point is if you're keeping a hippo in captivity you have to know what is a hippo diet you have that the appropriate food we have eponymous if you're keeping some kind of monkey in captivity scientifically we can study what is a human diet in the same way that we can study and establish other species diet and then as you know his conclusion is that a human appropriate human diet the human diet is starch based so it's vegan but specifically you know he has a lot of others was everybody know that is you know an axiomatic mode of reasoning that is dogmatic I'm comfortable with it but you don't actually discredit what he's saying by calling it a dogma or by saying that this is this is dogmatic reasoning unnatural vegan and many vegans who were influenced by Peter Singer have an approach Peter singers form of so-called utilitarianism they have a Dogma thinking about veganism in terms of suffering you know and I don't I had a supporter on patreon asked me about that I was for a major on asking me an exasperated way how is it possible that you support veganism but you don't you're not trying to minimize the amount of animal suffering that I don't think in this way with suffering being the crucial concept and Hendra but I had a couple messages back for them but the last message hit him look you need to really accept that it's not the case like I secretly agree with you and I'm just confused about it I don't wanna measure them self I really profoundly disagree with you now suffering I'm not saying it's a good concept of no importance at all to me before they can see different people to find suffering in different ways but you know to me suffering is much less important than the idea of dignity you know I don't think I'm trying to achieve zero animal suffering on the planet was actually what some vegans would say they want to reduce or eliminate animal suffering in you know this comes up whenever we talk about well the animals you talk about releasing animals at the well and people say well but they'll die and I sit back guess what the mortality rate for animals in the wild is 100 percent yeah it's not that some of them will die all of them will die but they'll get to have a life in the wild before they don't example releasing rabbits in the world what do you think the mortality rate is for animals in captivity I'll give you a hint it's a hundred percent but they live their whole life in a cage so yeah if you're talking about rabbits or these rabbits can be happier in the wild or in your home in a hut in a cage my answer is not about happiness is not about suffering it's about dignity and a lot of time that's with human dignity also so when we were talking about eating roadkill or something we talked about eating eggs from backyard hands or something I think it's actually beneath my dignity to eat chicken eggs you regardless even if it's the happiest chicken in the world it's a free-range chicken and meat so listen I asked you this question about my human dignity any that and again not if I'm abandoned on a desert island or in some extreme survival situation so for me dignity is a really important concept suffering not so much I have a different approach but it is dogmatic reasoning the approach of a natural vegan I would say the approach of everyone who imitates Peter Singer consciously or unconsciously of saying this is the value of suffering this is how we can quantify it Peter Singer has quite a number of other dogmas or axioms a lot of he has a lot of axiomatic reasoning about so-called cognitivism that he thinks he can define what intelligence is and isn't and then he defines suffering as roid its consciousness etc so so this is dogmatic this is axiomatic and people like a natural vegan are really wrong to say that they can kind of divide the world of vegan politics into good and evil we're good is pragmatic and evil is dogmatic or evil is actually matter you know some things we can reason through in an axiomatic way and some we can't you know so just ok we were watching vegan gains vegan gains had a video about a guy who really sincerely does not understand the theory of gravity and does not understand how the world can be a sphere he's into Flat Earth reasoning someone and it's pathetic and it's very easy to insult this guy as an idiot because he believes in a flat earth and so on but on the other hand I can see that the education system has kind of failed to move past dogma and axiom you know we can we can teach how gravity works as a simple dogma as a simple axiom and maybe some people are gonna get it and some people aren't you know so anyway just say but axiomatic reasoning is useful in some ways and not in others so look I've put this out there my own dog have mentioned this in one other YouTube video if I were to actually state my engagement with veganism as a Dogma it is the following I even wrote this down before making this video I normally write nothing down my own Dogma is if more and more people refuse to buy animal products the world would be a better place okay if thousands of more people refuse to buy animal products if millions of more people refuse about whatever the number is and we can have increasing numbers and more more and that Dogma is phrased in that way because it's not specific to health it's not specific to ecology it's not specific to some utilitarian notion of total animal suffering total suffering or pleasure versus pain or anything else like that right I ask you is this inherently flawed because its dogmatic I can say to you sincerely I believe in this dogmatically you know this is an axiom where this is a dog might believe in I think you know you can find fault with it or you can say it fails to address the same thing that dr. John McDougall --zz Dogma addresses or fails to address the same things that utilitarian do remove it but a lot one of the first videos on my channel I talked about the meaning of the word ideology that ideology had become a bad word that we're all supposed to pretend we don't have any ology we don't know what it is so look let's stop treating ideologies as a dirty world let's admit to ourselves that if we're serious about politics we do deal with ideology with questions a video a few questions of ideals and idealism also it's related but different committee ology I feel we got to kind of move past this thing with dogma and axioms and we can just acknowledge in an open and honest way dogmatism is an aspect of veganism some elements of veganism are dogmatic doesn't mean they have to be ridiculous doesn't mean we're gonna disintegrate into some kind of oppressive you know Catholic monarchy from the 14th century it really doesn't and I think the more honest with ourselves we can be about the role of dogma in our own beliefs then in a meaningful sense the more pragmatic we will be in dealing with politics that's that's a wrap and it's not that I didn't let her get a word in edgewise I promise you I had not read what you had written down was totally new to me so it was interesting she's a viewer and watching your channel so yeah I like to digest joy what'd you say that's right so respond I mean there was a time when you watch me on YouTube from afar when yet by YouTube and now you know you just watch it a much closer like live streaming face to face
a two-hander rather than a monologue I always felt I was wanted to do videos talking other people by the way talking with other people like even if it's mostly me talking about the topic I really think there's a kind of unwanted intensity to me staring straight into that camera and saying give me your soul well you know what I mean like especially so many topics I really think it's better if I'm talking to my girlfriend and you know I'm checking like you understand what I'm saying you she can jump in anytime but maybe she has done in the same topic I think it's a lot more human to see that kind of interaction maybe especially when you're talking about politically important issues or philosophically dense and difficult issues I know I got one piece of fan mail for the last video we did talking about being in politics said vegan politics on the thumbnail a guy wrote in but he said what a contrast it was to these other channels there aren't that many where it's a couple but the couple work from a script and they sit there and stare into the camera so it's not even like two people having a conversation right it's two people sitting there in tandem in parallel staring into the camera and I'm a totally artificial way of talking yeah what do you think about that I thought that's a good question that reminds me you know but yeah yeah that's a good point and now here's the next line on my script you know so I just say I dig that but I mean some people also write in a complaint like I'm preventing you from talking because you could say anything you want to say you could just type anyway some of these topics like sums the topic is like my life for my it's me complaining about my university education obviously obviously not gonna interests a so look one of the words I see thrown around basically a lot of what goes on in vegan politics right now people kind of try to bully each other into into activism you know like you ought to feel bad about yourself because you're not as much as an activist it's like the John sidecars video oh that's a good I didn't think of that yeah no that's are you going to the protest on Sunday right yeah oh no I'd rather watch Game of Thrones right yeah yeah yes and no that's a relatively polite indirect for you but I think a lot of the political discourse you know if people trying to inflate their own egos their own sense of self-importance that's understandable but also people trying to kind of insult and diminish each other like you're not a real activist or you're not doing all you can for the movement and so on anyway some of that's inevitable like if you work in the fashion industry the same thing goes on to some stem like you're not a real fashion designer you're not really committed to the fashion the way I am you know that stuff goes on you know so in theater in fashion okay so what's some of that but I mean guys we got to keep it under control and in this game of people pulling each other I see the word Dogma being kicked around in a peculiar way now I want to kick this off by saying let's really think about the difference between the word dogma and the word axiom I think in general when we want to be flattering we say that things are axiomatic and when we want to insult them we say that they are dogmatic my dictionary definition of axiom is a statement or proposition that is regarded as being established accepted or self-evidently true so you know I mean what is the difference between a Dogma or an axiom you know what's the difference between you know a lot of these things work that way you can look some oh you want to look up Dogma but contrast yeah go on cool see see she can interrupt anytime she wants so Dogma by contrast is defined as a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly truth right but I mean fundamentally we're talking about dogmas or axioms we're basically talking about one belief that is required by another set of assumptions you know if we do not believe a then how can we believe me or do B C and D something else follows from it um you know John McDougall the diet guru he puts forward the idea that is I think dogmatic or if you want to flatter it you can say axiomatic he puts forward the idea that there is such a thing as a human diet in the same that would that we can talk about your time status you said it in different contexts right Hippos yeah so if you got a hippo well no no but it's more still exists it's species-specific right so his point is if you're keeping a hippo in captivity you have to know what is a hippo diet you have that the appropriate food we have eponymous if you're keeping some kind of monkey in captivity scientifically we can study what is a human diet in the same way that we can study and establish other species diet and then as you know his conclusion is that a human appropriate human diet the human diet is starch based so it's vegan but specifically you know he has a lot of others was everybody know that is you know an axiomatic mode of reasoning that is dogmatic I'm comfortable with it but you don't actually discredit what he's saying by calling it a dogma or by saying that this is this is dogmatic reasoning unnatural vegan and many vegans who were influenced by Peter Singer have an approach Peter singers form of so-called utilitarianism they have a Dogma thinking about veganism in terms of suffering you know and I don't I had a supporter on patreon asked me about that I was for a major on asking me an exasperated way how is it possible that you support veganism but you don't you're not trying to minimize the amount of animal suffering that I don't think in this way with suffering being the crucial concept and Hendra but I had a couple messages back for them but the last message hit him look you need to really accept that it's not the case like I secretly agree with you and I'm just confused about it I don't wanna measure them self I really profoundly disagree with you now suffering I'm not saying it's a good concept of no importance at all to me before they can see different people to find suffering in different ways but you know to me suffering is much less important than the idea of dignity you know I don't think I'm trying to achieve zero animal suffering on the planet was actually what some vegans would say they want to reduce or eliminate animal suffering in you know this comes up whenever we talk about well the animals you talk about releasing animals at the well and people say well but they'll die and I sit back guess what the mortality rate for animals in the wild is 100 percent yeah it's not that some of them will die all of them will die but they'll get to have a life in the wild before they don't example releasing rabbits in the world what do you think the mortality rate is for animals in captivity I'll give you a hint it's a hundred percent but they live their whole life in a cage so yeah if you're talking about rabbits or these rabbits can be happier in the wild or in your home in a hut in a cage my answer is not about happiness is not about suffering it's about dignity and a lot of time that's with human dignity also so when we were talking about eating roadkill or something we talked about eating eggs from backyard hands or something I think it's actually beneath my dignity to eat chicken eggs you regardless even if it's the happiest chicken in the world it's a free-range chicken and meat so listen I asked you this question about my human dignity any that and again not if I'm abandoned on a desert island or in some extreme survival situation so for me dignity is a really important concept suffering not so much I have a different approach but it is dogmatic reasoning the approach of a natural vegan I would say the approach of everyone who imitates Peter Singer consciously or unconsciously of saying this is the value of suffering this is how we can quantify it Peter Singer has quite a number of other dogmas or axioms a lot of he has a lot of axiomatic reasoning about so-called cognitivism that he thinks he can define what intelligence is and isn't and then he defines suffering as roid its consciousness etc so so this is dogmatic this is axiomatic and people like a natural vegan are really wrong to say that they can kind of divide the world of vegan politics into good and evil we're good is pragmatic and evil is dogmatic or evil is actually matter you know some things we can reason through in an axiomatic way and some we can't you know so just ok we were watching vegan gains vegan gains had a video about a guy who really sincerely does not understand the theory of gravity and does not understand how the world can be a sphere he's into Flat Earth reasoning someone and it's pathetic and it's very easy to insult this guy as an idiot because he believes in a flat earth and so on but on the other hand I can see that the education system has kind of failed to move past dogma and axiom you know we can we can teach how gravity works as a simple dogma as a simple axiom and maybe some people are gonna get it and some people aren't you know so anyway just say but axiomatic reasoning is useful in some ways and not in others so look I've put this out there my own dog have mentioned this in one other YouTube video if I were to actually state my engagement with veganism as a Dogma it is the following I even wrote this down before making this video I normally write nothing down my own Dogma is if more and more people refuse to buy animal products the world would be a better place okay if thousands of more people refuse to buy animal products if millions of more people refuse about whatever the number is and we can have increasing numbers and more more and that Dogma is phrased in that way because it's not specific to health it's not specific to ecology it's not specific to some utilitarian notion of total animal suffering total suffering or pleasure versus pain or anything else like that right I ask you is this inherently flawed because its dogmatic I can say to you sincerely I believe in this dogmatically you know this is an axiom where this is a dog might believe in I think you know you can find fault with it or you can say it fails to address the same thing that dr. John McDougall --zz Dogma addresses or fails to address the same things that utilitarian do remove it but a lot one of the first videos on my channel I talked about the meaning of the word ideology that ideology had become a bad word that we're all supposed to pretend we don't have any ology we don't know what it is so look let's stop treating ideologies as a dirty world let's admit to ourselves that if we're serious about politics we do deal with ideology with questions a video a few questions of ideals and idealism also it's related but different committee ology I feel we got to kind of move past this thing with dogma and axioms and we can just acknowledge in an open and honest way dogmatism is an aspect of veganism some elements of veganism are dogmatic doesn't mean they have to be ridiculous doesn't mean we're gonna disintegrate into some kind of oppressive you know Catholic monarchy from the 14th century it really doesn't and I think the more honest with ourselves we can be about the role of dogma in our own beliefs then in a meaningful sense the more pragmatic we will be in dealing with politics that's that's a wrap and it's not that I didn't let her get a word in edgewise I promise you I had not read what you had written down was totally new to me so it was interesting she's a viewer and watching your channel so yeah I like to digest joy what'd you say that's right so respond I mean there was a time when you watch me on YouTube from afar when yet by YouTube and now you know you just watch it a much closer like live streaming face to face