Vegan Gains in Afghanistan: the last conversation we ever had.

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so [Music] so [Music] all right so i'll give the link below if you want to see on screen exactly what it was vegan gaines said and exactly what i said in reply to him and what i assume or even what i hope is the last conversation i ever have with this guy but um you guys already know i was pushing him on the issue of having a meaningful life and he really did not want to reply to that he really didn't want to deal with the question i was talking about having a morally upstanding life oh stein would having an intellectually rewarding life moving forward positively and kind of the last um dodge or deflection he engaged in was instead trying to answer about how much money he makes how he makes more money than i do which is just it's just misdirection it's just not the topic of conversation you know do you want to go into real estate you can make a lot more money in real estate than on youtube but that's not what we're talking about you know um we were talking about the difference leading a meaningful life in a meaningless one and how to grow older how to grow wiser while growing older instead of just playing video games and living a kind of self-indulgent life and this kind of thing anyway so he finally did answer the question of what kind of person does he want to be in five to ten years now he's gonna get there by just bragging about how much money he makes and by claiming that playing video games is justified because you can make so much money doing it and this was my reply quote does anyone here think that vegan gains would make less money if he actually followed the advice set out in this video would he receive less in donations if he directly imitated the two examples in the video of people who engaged in humanitarian work with syrian refugees do you think he'd become a worse person if he started caring about the real world in terms of reading and learning not just humanitarian engagement as opposed to playing video games anyone so there are a lot of funny little ironies built into this um i know vegan gains has wanted to talk tough about islam in the past he's wanted to offer a very harsh criticism of islam well um you know he could especially from his position of privilege frankly in terms of his level of fame and income from you know sharing his pins in the internet he could have raised money and gone over and got involved and done humanitarian work in um you know really anywhere in the muslim world he could have gone to afghanistan what have you and he could have started producing much more well-informed deep and profound reflections on you know the cultural effects of islam and what's wrong with it and the knock-on effects it has on people's lives whether it's on people's psychology education gender roles or what have you um i know he made videos in the past in a really shallow way just keeping scorn on islam go out there live with it see what it does to people and you know try to make a positive difference he could have gotten involved with i mean i'm just saying uh you know he's also keep scoring on feminism you know in a really shallow way well you could put those two together what about getting involved with women's education in afghanistan you know i.e trying to oppose the tendency of the taliban and other muslim extremists their tendency to exclude women from having access to education to actually getting out and fighting for women's equality through education whether in afghanistan or whatever anywhere in the in the muslim world what about again if he came onto that i don't think anyone could say that vegan gains would have less public support and less interest if he actually did take on a sincerely humanitarian engagement with the muslim world syria happened to be the example we talked about now this takes me to the main topic i want to discuss in this video which is hope and when vegan gains first came on the scene i remember him being interviewed actually by a huge range of people i remember being interviewed by uh the amazing atheist on his show that was then called the drunken peasants i remember him being interviewed by a happy healthy vegan um when vegan gains first achieved a certain level of fame there was real excitement attached to hope right and the hope was that he was going to play some kind of positive role in leading the vegan movement and instead what we've all learned with the passage of time and repetition is that there is there is there is no hope um he is never going to do anything positive for anyone as as i just discussed with him you know face to face it was just in a written format going back and forth he is never going to do anything but sit in his ass and live a life devoted to short-term self-indulgence playing video games whatever makes them feel happy in the moment what is a life of complete indulgence there's no answer there is no complete self-indulgence right but the opposite there is complete devotion to doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do there is complete devotion to doing the best you can being devoted to make the world a better place to being a better person yourself and part of that is indeed making the commitment hey my life is not just about feeling good it's not just about chasing a feeling it's not about how i feel it's not even just about what i know it's about fundamental questions of right and wrong [Music] in terms of what i'm doing on this channel and in terms of what i'm doing with my life i've said again and again i'm not interested in optics i'm not interested in cultivating the appearance of being a good person i'm not interested in the marketing or public relations reality of seeming to be a good person whether that's on social media or as the leader of a political movement or as an activist i'm really interested in the question of being and becoming a better person and it is strangely moving for me to listen to that video clip you've also just heard where i'm suggesting to vegan gains hey you know you really have the money in the bank you've got the viewers and you've got the fame if you're interested in islam if you're interested in presenting a critique of islam you can go to afghanistan you can go to afghanistan as a filmmaker you can go to afghanistan as a youtuber as a vlogger whatever you want to say as a social commentator like you can go and have that experience and come back and talk about what it means you're interested in the critique of feminism you could go and interview some of the feminists who are there trying to provide schooling and education and literacy to children and you know again i'm not saying you have to lose your sense of humor i mean you could go and do that and then make youtube videos with the contrast between feminism in a starkly muslim contrast like humanitarian work in afghanistan and what you see on university campuses in toronto fine you know like there's so much creative potential there but you look back at that and whatever you may think of vegan gains the man he is the man he has become you recognize there was this awesome potential for personal growth for personal change for him to be for him to become a better person if he would just in this sense live up to his own hype if he would just go down the rabbit hole and pursue his own interests beyond the short-term satisfaction of sitting in front of a camera fatuously passing judgment on things that he's never even done five minutes of research on that he's never even read a wikipedia article about i made this video partly because i thought it was important just in terms of fair play to provide the context for that bizarre quotation that email he sent me where he's saying something incoherent about helping syrian refugees to let you know what the context for that discussion was but also it has stuck in my mind that a colleague in the vegan movement asked me what do i think richard's motivation was what was it in the past and what is it now why is it that he's doing the bizarre and aberrant things that he does and i had to say back honestly if you check out the interview i did with vegan gains years and years ago back when we were friends but interview he did for my channel you'll notice that when i ask him what is he planning to do in the future what does he think he's going to do the next five years of his life what's he going to do in terms of activism leadership in the vegan movement what he says is that he wants to buy a house he wants to make a ton of money he wants to be rich and famous and buy a house what he said to me in that interview i believe and also in other conversations was that all he wants to do is sit around play video games whenever he wants to wake up whenever he wants to become rich and famous like live streamers like pewdiepie and ninja playing video games making no effort at all he wants in this sense to remain forever in a playpen or you might say in a pig pen of reckless short-term self-indulgence that is in brief the tragedy of vegan gains and i know for everyone in the audience if you just stop and reflect on your own life whether it was a period of six months or a period of six years there's some period of your life where you felt that way there's some period of your life where you live that way and there might even now be a temptation for you to live that way so in this sense there's a really important lesson for us one at all to look at vegan gains reflect on what it means to have a meaningful life for ourselves what kind of sacrifices what kind of commitment it's going to take there is no particular destination in afghanistan that i'm saying vegan gains should have gone to there is no particular purpose to that trip or that journey and it didn't have to be afghanistan it could have been numerous other countries anywhere on the map the journey we're talking about here is of challenging your own ignorance challenging your own indolence challenging your own childishness and then discovering yourself to be constructing yourself into some kind of adult becoming the person that it is you want to be fashioning yourself into the instrument of your own philosophy and to do that you don't have to go to afghanistan you don't have to come from or go to any place whatsoever but you've got to start asking yourself hard questions and you have to start coming up with new answers that make you uncomfortable because fundamentally you've got to feel uncomfortable with the person that you already are