Meat and Human Intelligence: Science and Society.

at an early age I found out that alcohol
causes brain damage I was a child but I was already a somewhat lanky child lanky and sarcastic when I found that out and in many ways that was the first step that led me to becoming vegan and that led me to really a very philosophical perspective on the world and of being extremely critical of the culture I lived in the excuses that were so commonly made in my culture and the contradictions within the lives of all the people around me if you live in a country like Canada or Scotland to different countries that have lived in you're surrounded by people who are living with brain damage caused by alcohol and who are voluntarily inflicting brain damage on themselves through alcohol and you will also meet many women who are mothers who have inflicted brain damage on their own children by drinking alcohol while they're pregnant and years later I guess when I was a teenager I remember reading a scientific article talking about the fact that in Canada and countries like Canada brain damage caused the infant's through alcohol was a much more serious and much more widespread problem than hiv/aids but at that time hiv/aids was the focus of tremendous public education efforts including special programs having to do with the small number of infants being born with serious health problems or with AIDS itself because their mothers were infected by the disease and this article was saying yes in some countries hiv/aids is a bigger problem but actually perhaps a country like Canada he's engaging in a sort of self deception because hiv/aids is actually easier for us to talk about easier for us to reflect on easier for us to moralize about then the role that alcohol has in so many of our lives now I myself drink zero alcohol I made that decision at a pretty early age that I was not gonna drink alcohol but I did have a couple of years of drinking in my teenage years but that doesn't change the fact that I live in a society where I'm surrounded by people for whom alcohol shapes their lives profoundly alcohol dominates the social time the free time the the concept of relaxation itself the concept of leisure the concept of work what motivates people what rewards people the way people interact the way people make friends meet their lovers learn to respect each other learn to love each other learn to reconcile their differences all of those things in Western culture are shaped by alcohol use and all the while alcohol use very literally causes brain damage it causes brain damage to the adults who drink it and obviously there's this other issue haunting our society of how many millions of people have impaired brain function every day of their lives to the rest of their lives because their mothers drank alcohol before they were born while they were in the womb I have watched and listened to some documentaries that were brutally honest about those facts where you had people who themselves had brain impairment because of their mother's drinking alcohol reflecting on the ways in which they changed their lives it doesn't just you know reduce your wattage like a dimming the intensity of a light bulb it doesn't just in some simple mathematical sense make you less intelligent of course it impacts your emotional character it impacts what kind of person you are in a way that's difficult for us to describe difficult for us to reflect on difficult for us to admit to ourselves and again it's hard to deal with on a one-to-one basis of perhaps you and your own brother and it's much more difficult to deal with when you scale it up socially to think about millions of people in the effect it has or if you think about people who are in positions of tremendous political power people like the president United States Prime Minister of England who made themselves have seriously impaired brain function due to these common culturally accepted factors the things so many of us make excuses for so many of us say we should compromise about so many of us say we should just be moderate and reasonable about like alcohol causing brain damage now say for me in my personal progression towards becoming a vegan finding out that alcohol caused brain damage and then reflecting on the excuses that were so commonly made for it being normal and natural and necessary that has striking parallels to finding out that meat is not only unnecessary for human health but is actually damaging to human health and then seeing the excuses that people around me made that meat was meat consumption was normal and natural and necessary and that we had to accept this this had always been part of our culture the soul is part of our civilization and again meat like alcohol it has these you know tremendous cultural values ascribed to it meat you know it's like to celebration to know concepts of generosity it's linked to all kinds of religious rituals even if you think something like Thanksgiving or Christmas are not that religious the ceremonial eating and sharing of me these are powerful tokens in Western culture Western civilization and for me there's a very real parallel and there's a there's a parallel with the powerful role of scientific knowledge in contrast to cultural assumptions when you look at those two now culture masks the significance of science in our lives in many ways and one of them is simply the use of language itself if you think about the word heart attack or the word stroke the medical use of stroke this seems to suggest a single event that happens in a short span of time at one moment in your life and either it happens or it doesn't it's very common to read newspaper articles or to talk to ordinary people even to talk to medical doctors who discuss heart attack and stroke as if there were roll of the dice as if you can go through your life eating a diet that includes bacon and cheese and so long as the plaques develop in your arteries in a way that doesn't result in heart attack or stroke you're lucky you're fine there's no harm done the idea that a heart attack is just something that happens at one moment it's built into the very word and content of a heart attack the concept of a stroke it actually the reason why we use the word stroke comes from the phrase a stroke of the hand of God and if you go back 500 years or so that was actually the long form of this at that time mysterious medical condition of people having a stroke that this was an act of God that suddenly took away your ability to think or use your limbs properly etc the symptoms of strokes are various not everyone has the same symptoms but it's a dramatic and horrifying medical condition even on a more simple level if someone asks you if a child ask you what is a stroke you have to say it's a type of seizure and if you look into why the word seizure is used this comes from a seized to grab something this again ultimately the ancient idea is of a spirit seizing you of you being possessed by a demon or a spirit and again the idea that this isn't that happens in one moment it's actually more horrifying in a more subtle and profound way to realize that these problems like atherosclerosis atherosclerosis a word that even I've heard real medical specialists mispronounce atherosclerosis it's difficult to say it's difficult to understand what it is the reality is that the underlying conditions that really unify stroke and heart attacks such as atherosclerosis which is basically having plaques obstructions build up in your bloodstream in the circulation your blood this is a problem all the time and for the vast majority of people in a country like the United States of America it's not just a problem your old age it's not just a problem when you have a heart attack it's a problem from when you were 6 years old until the day you die because 6 year olds in America eat bacon eat cheese have a diet that causes atherosclerosis that causes so called hardening of the arteries again is that description really useful that causes these plaques to build up that obstruct the flow of blood through your whole body now what's much more horrifying to realize again heart attack describes something just centered in your heart stroke it's even more nebulous and absurd where is a stroke what is a stroke what does this mean inside your body the reality is that atherosclerosis is something that happens everywhere that you have blood circulating it impacts your toes and it impacts your eyes and above all else it impacts the circulation of blood inside your own brain in a subtle and profound and pernicious sense the plaque in your bloodstream the accumulation of cholesterol related blockages throughout your body impacts who you are how you think how you feel in a way that's much it's just as invidious it's just as scary and disturbing to think about as having to reflect on whether or not you are a different person today because your mother drank alcohol while she was pregnant with you or perhaps your mother was addicted to cocaine during her pregnancy I have men spoke to one man who had to live with that he knew for a fact that his mother was addicted to crack cocaine during the pregnancy and he did have symptoms he did have health problems as a result that I had met many more people for him alcohol impacted their lives in those ways and one member of my own family was severely [ __ ] severely mentally disabled for his whole life because of choices that his mother made during the pregnancy so these things do touch us all they touch me in my life but it's also scary to reflect the extent to which non diagnosed conditions all around us are shaping who we are how we live how we think and how we feel in a profound and simple sense what we call Alzheimer's disease is atherosclerosis Alzheimer's disease is an extreme condition where the blockages the impaired circulation of blood within your brain is having severe symptoms but long before you reach the point where you would be diagnosed for that condition or where any kind of diagnostic medical tests be performed on your brain or on your arteries the blockages the hardening of plaque the effects of cholesterol in the human diet will be changing the way how you think the way you feel the way you perceive the world this is not a spectrum condition but in the same sense in which you may never have a heart attack you may eat bacon and cheese every day live to be a hundred and then be hit by a bus however even if you never have a heart attack and you never have a stroke the reality of how the blood is circulated through your heart through your muscles through your body will be impacted 24 hours a day seven days a week at all times by the blockages in your bloodstream which is basically what we call atherosclerosis and the connection between cholesterol and atherosclerosis is not debatable it's now one of the simplest most universal medical facts the connection between atherosclerosis and will be called Alzheimer's disease was already documented in the first article by dr. Alzheimer on this subject describing what it was in the human brain okay the point is even if you never reach that point of having a diagnosed condition such as Alzheimer's who you are how you think and how your brain operates is being impaired by the cholesterol in your diet and again when you scale that up when you think about it on the scale of millions of people around you that's when it really becomes terrifying in the same sense that the social impacts of drinking alcohol become truly terrifying I did research not too long ago less than two years ago now about the period of World War one history of Russia Asia during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson when I was looking in detail at the decisions Woodrow Wilson made in relation to a certain set of political problems I didn't just think that his decisions were inept or incompetent I actually thought that this man was insane and I was reading you know directs u.s. diplomatic corps wires communications in the United States and Japan at that time communication to the United States in Russia at that time of course had been recorded for for history and then I start to look into the health of Woodrow Wilson I'll provide a link to one website below this video it's actually not unreasonable to say that Woodrow Wilson was in a technical sense insane and Woodrow Wilson's health conditions the deterioration of his brain of his ability to think coherently or of course link to stroke and the basis for the strokes plural that he suffered is doubtless atherosclerosis now there's another stereotype here that Woodrow Wilson is important and challenging throughout his whole career Woodrow Wilson he was never a fat man he was rail-thin he was strikingly thin he had gaunt sheets if you look at most photographs of him don't look at the paintings that are flattering he is much leaner than most male models he was a very lean man but nevertheless the meat and dairy products in his diet impaired his ability to think they caused him to have paralysis in some of his limbs at different times at one point his life he went blind in one eye when the blood in your brain does not circulate properly it results in these kinds of very real impairments and how you think how you feel your ability to use your limbs and so on and Woodrow Wilson is a remarkable example of that however he's an extreme example the question what we'll never know is when you look at someone like Donald Trump right now in 2016 Donald Trump could become the next president in States Donald Trump has cholesterol problems Donald Trump takes medicine to lower his cholesterol levels medicines called statins and he believes he has his cholesterol under control if you're vegan you're in the tiny minority people who truly have your cholesterol under control because you have zero dietary cholesterol your body generates its own cholesterol Donald Trump has never had these extreme symptoms that Woodrow Wilson has to my knowledge general Trump has never gone blind in one eye he's never had his hand paralyzed he's never had the obvious signs of stroke and of these atherosclerosis related health problems circulation of blood in his body and brain however he certainly has a very well-documented history of aberrant behavior of incoherent and arguably somewhat insane thinking and speech and conduct in the last 15 years if you were to look back on how Donald Trump's behavior has changed I was character has changed because that's he's been on television since the 1980s almost continuously his mannerisms has changed in a very real sense who he is has changed one of the remarkable things about Donald Trump could have I believe him on this Donald Trump says that in his whole life he's never used alcohol he's never used drugs of any kind he's been clean and sober and he has various emotional and intellectual reasons for why he did that so we may be looking at an instance in Donald Trump where you see the deterioration of his faculties the deterioration of his thinking and the basis for that is perhaps not even an extravagant diet perhaps simply a standard American diet where your levels of cholesterol and your body's long term struggle with atherosclerosis is impairing and degrading your brain function I think our very idea of what it means to grow old of what kind of sanity mental alacrity sharpness is normal for someone at 50 years of age how much learning you're capable of at thirty years of age and a profound sense our idea of what it is to be an adult in this culture has been shaped by our broad-based use of alcohol cigarettes cholesterol on her diet and the degradation of the human capacity to think and feel the reshaping of who we are through what we put in our bodies and the reality is that that very basic insight or that very basic concern of just expressed to you was not possible just a few generations ago it was only thought made possible through the progress of science in the last few decades and still today many people will respond with shock and horror if you raise these issues the same way that during my childhood people would be shocked and horrified if you talked openly about women drinking alcohol during pregnancy and still to this day I meet women who drink alcohol during pregnancy when my own wife was pregnant I'm not divorced but when my own wife was pregnant we met and talked to medical doctors and other people and the medical doctors would also complain that they still had patients coming in who were drinking alcohol all the way through their pregnancy who were ignoring it is a real ongoing problem in Canada in France in Scotland and it impacts humans as individuals and ultimately it shapes and reshapes their whole society but the perspective I've shared with you in this video in many ways would have been impossible just a few generations ago it would have been laughed at one generation culture my childhood but the increasing availability of scientific research the increasing ease with which we can read at least in English on the Internet real peer-reviewed sources in which we can confirm our concerns about these things that will now inevitably change the world again it was very difficult for people to admit at one time you look at the history of cocaine that cocaine was poison there was a time when people thought cocaine was a miracle cure it was very hard for us in Western civilization to admit that tobacco was poisoned you have to go way back centuries and centuries ago but there was a time when we believed nicotine when we believed tobacco was a miracle cure for all kinds of things including deafness they still put tobacco in people's ears and so on was ridiculous many of these drugs and people first encountered them there was reckless optimism and you know the leave that meat and alcohol are so much a part of the meaning of our lives of what we do with their leisure time of who we are as people that's become a crutch that all of Western civilization hobbles along on and I'm looking forward to the day when we stop making excuses but the crutches down and when we truly get to see what we're capable of as adults