Vegans: We're More Hated than Jehovah's Witnesses.

a bonus yen they see you from DC yep
what's your favorite spot to eat in DC now that I'm vegan it's a little tough it's a little different for me you know eating habits man you know everybody going vegan and vegetarian you know just watching Noah the other day and I decided to do it - I'm actually vegan right now bringing on the vegan diet go to vegan diet leader in about two months I mean I was a vegetarian for years before that well when I went all the way plant-based I want to say it's three and a half years now okay you were saying in the parking lot that chicken is real bad for you go what you got a phone bro like we do everything like that's what I try to tell people like with food let you Google your pants your shirts the stores you're going to the on Instagram your on Twitter you want everything everything you eat everything that's out there you could do research on if you have children and you worried about the future in your community who's around then maybe you should just do a little homework or what you eating just you know do a little knowledge on it would you say hey I don't even know what a happy meal look like thank god he's four years old your four year old vegans you love green juices and apples and strawberries and berries that's when he snacks on you don't mean so no I would never do that I didn't even eat that [ __ ] when I was pregnant just so he wouldn't eat it so it's different you want to give your kids you know better things than what you experienced about us Yin I'm going to make a culturally specific comparison here and so somebody watching this who's maybe in Germany or even New Zealand might not get this the way someone from Canada or the United States would what thoughts or feelings come to mind when I just say to you the words Jehovah's Witness now Jehovah's Witnesses especially in the 1980s and this has changed a little bit since the year 2000 thing the Jehovah's Witnesses were constantly the subject of jokes and insults by stand-up comedians they were really hated and resented publicly and like in terms of public protests or demonstrations they really did nothing wrong all they did was walk up to people and try to talk about their doctrine like when you think about it this is the most minor of inconveniences having a Jehovah's Witness knock on your door or having Jehovah's Witnesses standing by the side of the road with pamphlets willing to talk to you be in a democracy that's a very important form of freedom speech and they became intensely hated I would say in the the 1980s and 1990s here in Victoria we have people who stand on the street promoting Amnesty International take the phone off the hook they're sorry um we have people stay on the street promoting Amnesty International and they don't wear masks and they don't show solder has footage they just stand there wearing a kind of uniform holding a clipboard and ask to talk to you as you go by and you don't have I have talked to them for maybe 45 minutes it's pretty long I don't know it felt like forever minutes maybe it was only 20 minutes I had one long conversation with them once and now I walked past them almost every day and I regard it completely negatively and they're not doing anything wrong if you're doing this kind of protest and I know they were telling me specifically Melbourne and Sydnee multiple times per week every week of course in the same places you know not every single day but again and again they're cycling locations you have to realize that for the people in that neighborhood something that might have been intriguing or even charming the first time they saw it is going to become resented and oppressive the tenth time they see it or if it becomes a feature of their daily life I'm a vegan and I don't really want to see slaughter as footage when I'm walking on the sidewalk every day so the effect of that is going to be much greater than the impact in terms of creating this kind of public resentment of Amnesty International and they say I feel that resentment even with Amnesty International just standing over there with their clipboard now again this is culturally specific some people get at some won't especially if you're a bit older what thoughts or what feelings come to your mind when I say the word Hari Krishna the Hari Krishna's especially in the 1980s they would stand around at airports playing music and singing you play music live with live instruments to promote their religion and anyone can say well what a harmless inoffensive form of protest or demonstration or I tweet that's not what you guys do you don't just play music or smile at people and tell them oh no you're showing something really offensive and upsetting to people you know thought iris footage you know and and Hari Krishna's became the butt of every joke there was so many it was a common thing in stand-up comedy and now I can remember watching a movie from the 1980s a comedy that made a joke on camera about Hari Krishna's so this is a contrast between approximant the 1980s and today Hari Krishna's became the butt of many jokes there are many movies and stand-up comedians making jokes about this even though like again they did nothing wrong there's nothing so offensive or even intrusive about their form of demonstration poke protester activism and you'll notice that that disappeared they stopped doing that they stopped the the religion still exists by the way but they stopped this I mean I guess I can't even call it an aggressive form of street activism it's really nothing and yet that was enough to create so much resentment and so much hatred now the contrast I'd make is this and this is I'm saying this to challenge vegans to say this is no the only way outside of many major cities in Asia also even in the Western world there is a Buddhist temple on the top of a mountain and you can't see it but you know it's there you can google it you can talk about it so outside of Taipei is Dharma drum Mountain beautiful views you got to take a bus up that well if you if you really want you can walk up the steps to the Buddhist temple it's there for you anytime you want to go its austere it's forbidding it's not necessarily welcoming there's nobody telling you hey you know you you know you really gotta go there's nobody singing and dancing there's nobody knocking on your door trying to sell you this and the level of respect and esteem the Buddhist religion gets just for that austerity and silence of saying here we are on the top of this mountain we've got something worth having we have a doctrine to teach you when you're ready to learn it the attitude the public has towards those forms of Buddhism Buddhism on the top of a mountain and I would say that's true whether you're talking about a mountain in Southeast Asia or Taiwan or even New York and so on this has been imitated this this method it's completely different now obviously I'm not suggesting some kind of really simple binary application of this to veganism today but I'm pointing out the range of options is far more diverse there's far more to think about here than just street activism versus a pancake stand but in terms of the resentment you you know you should try to understand my mentioning you know if I was on the same street corner in Melbourne just having a vegan pancakes stand every Wednesday the people who hate veganism wouldn't hate that pancakes then it wouldn't be responded to in the same way you know and if we can if you can produce something that is really attracted to people that really has something of substance and merit you have something that's worthwhile to offer whether it's at the top of a mountain or it's on the beach or it's in a cave you know and it's there that earns you a different it's a different type of public perception different kind of respect it's a whole different dynamic to the situation so yeah I mean you know the level of hatred Jehovah's Witnesses received and hard Christians received I think it's fine I mean Paul accepts it I think but everyone has to realize that your group is going to receive exponentially more hatred and resentment from the general public than that even though obviously on a factual level you're right I mean you know I don't believe in Jehovah's Witness and I think at the with their religion is [ __ ] it's not the point of course what you see on that screen I mean I assume you guys are showing clips from from farm to fridge or one of these major documentaries oh no I'm not I'm not reviewing the particular slaughterhouse footage but I know I mean the slaughterhouse footage is real the ecological facts are real the health I mean the health and all the other elements to this puzzle I am NOT saying on that level you're wrong but nevertheless from the perspective of the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Hari Krishna's they think they're right too and you know there's gonna be a cultural and we will see okay right so you make a totally valid point but I'm gonna disagree with anyway something can be valid but here's the problem the Internet's Hollow so one of my first videos addressing this is titled on community that's the whole title and there's a special playlist for it people were so inspired by that video that we did and that's that I called my manifesto video it says what my channel is all about will my approach to begin ism and that video was translated into many many languages it's been translated and translated into Russian and German a long list of Chinese Japanese I think is on there there's a long list of languages this is a short video and the title already tells you on community you get a sense of what this is talking about um the problem is when you get to the top of the mountain there has to be something there and it has to be real right so you know obviously we're not actually talking about literally a buddhist temple here when you when you go on that internet it's really hollow there's nothing for you you're all alone you know now you know incredibly few places I think maybe Tel Aviv in Israel there is really a vegan community there are some maybe institutions or structures or something well I'll give you a real word exam I don't want this to be hypothetical want this to be very very real let's say we start with 30 million dollars which is compared to what petaa spends every year is not a lot of money if you look at the budgets of big vegan organizations and let me say in a major city like San Francisco it could be any major city we choose we build absolutely the best health club and sauna it's just a gym with many with a swimming pool with many amenities you could have a small hotel there it's a very desirable place to be maybe their conference facilities and here's the thing you're only allowed to be a member if you're vegan now you could maybe have some rules if you're non vegan you can bring a guest for one day get a one-day pass or something now I'm not putting this forward as the world's most effective form of activism but I'm speeding this issue of there being something on top of the mountain an institution like that again like a synagogue is a real place if you convert to Judaism you join the Jewish community there were actual benefits there's a retirement home you can go on a vacation cruise to the Seychelles Islands you know with you could there are various things you can participate in and join actual institutions and what-have-you and for the vast majority of people around the world with with veganism there's really nothing it's hollow once you get into there is no community there is no institution I actually think that having that kind of institution and you know if people come who are non-vegan as guests or for a special event if for one day past obviously you'd provide them with the information say look we have a really great facility here if you want to join you know here's what you need to know here's the pamphlet or whatever about you know health effects of eating whatever you're gonna put in the pamphlet what slaughterhouse the slaughterhouse footage ecology health the whole thing you'll put in that pamphlet look this is the reason why this whole place exists and why we don't allow meteors to be members now this is this was about um you know that's that's comparable to the mountaintop because there's really something there and again the feeling someone is gonna have even if they were excluded from it even someone who maybe visits that or knows about it who knows it's there on the Mount of those go I think is a kind of esteem and respect that's very different from the feelings they'll have for um you know people who are really an obstruction on their way to work where every day on their way to work they've got a look at these people with the the video monitors and so on hope that doesn't fill you with reckless optimism look I'll give you one more contrast and this is one that is a really specific dollar figure on it with all this haven't been said thirty thousand dollars is a lot less money than thirty million there's a guy who is an anti circumcision advocate I recently talked about my channel so circumcision is not I mean most people just don't want to talk about it like veganism nobody wants to think about it nobody wants to think about where the meat comes from nobody wants to think about you know the surgery on men's penises and the ethics you know surrounding it no one was think about it um how did he do this he paid thirty thousand dollars to rent a theater in near Harvard University so I don't know I think it was on campus at Harvard this theater from from what I read and he paid for a package where so we had the theater to give his lecture for one night it's a two-hour lecture and they made posters and flyers some advertising some promotion he paid a publicist this is kind of a package deal all wrapped up and he also made some YouTube videos promoting it but the YouTube videos didn't really reach anybody email not spam you know you can just dump something on YouTube and a couple hundred the other night it wasn't it wasn't YouTube that that created this phenomenon so and he prepared and presented a one-man play he gave this lecture on stage now it reached a large number of people on YouTube I don't want to give the number now the last I saw it only a couple days after it went up and he had more than 50 thousand views so I'm guessing it's more since then but he was covered by the newspapers he got into the mainstream newspapers and he's already created now really the basis for a political movement for a charity for other people who are interested in this who are one in a million God in touched part started supporting him now okay I'm not saying this is the most effective form of activism compared to what pedda does with $30,000 compared to what a lot of big vegan advocacy because there are people with real budgets in this game and you know I mean it's I think you can also compare it to I mean quite a lot of money was was donated to Gary Yourofsky you know I mean there were other comparisons to be made but I mean fundamentally you know there were posters advertising and so on but his audience you know consisted of people who wanted to hear this and then it reached a larger audience through the newspapers through YouTube probably through radio you know other forms of news media discussing it it had a knock-on effect so there there are other examples out there there are other things to consider and obviously these are not all mutually exclusive I mean life is short but you know one I keep pointing to whenever people say to me that I'm not a real vegan activist I say do you know I wrote a children's story book and I wrote it in Chinese it's a children's storybook presenting the philosophy of veganism in a form where a parent and child can sit down and read this it's not slaughterhouse footage it's cute it's interesting you know and it's in English it's in Chinese it's been translated into several other languages getting this Illustrated and published just I just challenge people is that or is that not legitimate vegan activism no there's a price tag publishing a book isn't free it's not going to cost nothing probably less than $30,000 but you know there's gonna be there's gonna be cost involved and I mean I can ask you why but I mean anyone and we used specifically in of what made you go vegan it's very likely that the storybooks you read as a child were part of it and I'm not saying this insult you but even if you don't know it a lot of people grew up even that watch Bambi even they just read story books about animals animals that talk like Charlotte's Web the story books and culture you grew up and do affect why you became vegan I think I think for all of us for me I told thistles I'm reading reading comic books like a Batman which I'm very critical of I think Batman is probably bad for children but you know the ideas about justice and morality that were in Batman impacted me much more than anything in the Bible I mean that really you know for better and for worse you know Batman and children's storybooks this stuff is out there too now I'm not insulting anyone like it's possible someone walked down the street had never thought about these ethical issues before saw a protester and became vegan on the spot I in my whole life I've known one guy who is like that but it's it's more likely even if protest is part of your process process you know after you become vegan or before he convenient it is more likely that movies including of course documentary movies but even movies like Bambi cartoons or adventures movies and books and this kind of cultural production is a big part of it so again I mean just in this discussion I'm I'm broadening the set of competing alternatives and then when you say this to people you know who have some options in life you know whatever you're just not in homeless poverty you you whether you're middle class or low of us whatever you have some stability in your life that you can devote to a project all of a sudden they realize wow okay a book project or a food service project like you know something like vegan pancakes you know like okay wow there's a whole range of things here that can be community building and movement building in a lot of different ways and we're at the end of the process I'm gonna have something to look back on that's really meaningful in my life and again someone like Hannah mania not everyone she looks back on the 100 protests she attended and there is a lot of resentment there not only resentment she also she's talked about this this is not a secret Ari but she met a bunch of her boyfriends she got laid through going to protest she stuck with it very openly on her channel it was funny um you know she's tied with those so she to it it wasn't all bad but there was a lot of resentment and disappointment and for a lot of people they're gonna have to look back and say what did I do with the last five years of my life and now we have to start making smarter choice what we do in the next five years a bonus Yin [ __ ] no live [ __ ] know what I do different about to say about it's literally Harlem verse the vegans me verb and be da it's like what do you mean planet what's the odds of creepy it [ __ ] being on the date baby me as they plant