I don't believe in Animal Rights.
06 September 2017 [link youtube]
Defining veganism.
Youtube Automatic Transcription
a lot of people talk about veganism and
animal rights as if veganism is a natural extension of a natural consequence following from animal rights what would you think if I told you that I'm a vegan and I do not believe in animal rights there are many vegans at the moment in 2017 who argue that veganism is a natural extension of human rights that actually it's just an extension of the human rights discourse it's especially popular I'd say within that category for people to try to argue that veganism is a natural consequence a natural extension of the same tendency seen in the anti-racism discourse and in the feminist discourse that somehow there's this sequence of parallel oppressions that people have been fighting to lift and the next one to go is going to be the barrier between human and animal in the same way that they imagined there was previously a barrier between man and a woman or within the United States a barrier between black and white ie the status of black people under slavery that I don't believe in any of that implicitly or explicitly veganism is a movement in which many people participate with many different competing definitions it may seem laughable to some of you if you're an outsider if you have been involved being ISM it may seem laughable that people could be members of a movement and still debating the meaning of the word but it's actually a really meaningful debate I think that veganism is still a contestable concept I think that pretty much the whole library of animal rights concepts are still really contestable in an open-ended way I think nobody can claim to know the truth of animal rights animal rights may not present us with any truths as a paradigm I think it may only present us with questions can hit you with some real-life examples in case this is too abstract for you for many vegans it's an uncomfortable exception to the rules when somebody confronts them with the fact that the production of wheat the production of grain involves killing animals involves killing insects yes but also could involve killing animals like Gophers Gophers you know complex mammals with eyes and a brain and a beating heart and red blood that's the reality of where your bread comes from if you're vegan it's the reality to make a long story short of where pretty much all your fruit and vegetables come from also it's a slightly different story in each case but yep pretty much all of them involve killing animals so is veganism or is it not opposed to the killing of animals many many vegans who define the idea and defined the movement in those terms then have to deal with this as an uncomfortable exception to the rules and they engage in Jesuitical reasoning of one kind or another I think it's important not to be consistent in your propaganda message that doesn't really matter to me too much you know yeah you may have different types of messages for different types of audiences I think it's really important to be consistent when you're alone looking at yourself in the mirror I think it's important to be consistent when you're in intimate conversations with your loved ones your girlfriend your boyfriend your parents your grandparents your children about what veganism is and what it means to you I think it's important to be consistent in your own heart in your own mind with yourself I think it's important that you're not living a lie not even if it's a liar living for a good cause and I do I do believe that veganism is a good cause even when people pursue it for the wrong reasons or even when people pursue it for internally contradictory reasons yeah every time you buy an airplane ticket you are paying for someone to go around in a golf course it'll flip there you're paying for someone to go around in a golf cart with a shotgun shooting birds to make sure there aren't birds flying into the aircraft engine it's a little bit different in different climates and the different but yeah you know killing killing birds is part of keeping an airport running by and large depends if the airport is close to a forest or not the Paris depends on the climates instep but yeah sometimes it's more of a problem sometimes less but pretty much each and every Airport you'll go to has some measures in place largely violence to keep birds away from the runway to keep them out of aircraft engines so that the people in the airplanes are safe as a vegan you're probably familiar with the mode of reasoning of saying hey look if you're morally comfortable with eating pork then you have to be morally comfortable with slitting the throat of the pig yourself right it can't just be that it's moral for someone else to kill the pig and for you to eat the pig either you're taking responsibility for the consequences of your actions or you're not well are you taking responsibility for the concept consequences of your actions when as a vegan you eat bread and you know you're killing Gophers when you buy an airplane ticket and you know you're killing Birds I am consistent because as I said my paradigm my model of veganism is not based on animal rights it's not based on the belief that each animal has a soul it's not based on the belief that we should extend to all animals the model of so-called love and care and affection that people often feel towards household pets like dogs and cats I don't share the view that we should extend that feeling to bears and cows and cockroaches in fact if you watch my videos about domestication of animals I don't even think it's an impulse that's healthy or that we should celebrate in terms the relationship between human animals and wolves or between humans and cats or what-have-you I think that's a deeply deeply flawed paradigm to base any moral argument on that it's moral to love your dog in a certain way therefore it's this is therefore this is how we should treat these other animals I believe that animals in the wild should leave dignified lives that have as little to do with human beings as possible although the reality in the 21st century is that we have a moral responsibility to protect wilderness to protect habitat against the encroachment of our fellow human beings and to act in the best interests of the species themselves of biodiversity of the continuation of particular species even though with wildlife management that may actually entail killing particular animals what is my definition of veganism I'll tell you my definition of veganism is this if I as just one person can refuse to buy animal products of any kind in my small small way of making the world a better place it's better ecologically it's better ethically and it's better for my own health if you would join me if you and you and you would join me a few dozen a few hundred a few thousand it would make the world a better place ecologically ethically and for your health for all of our health right and then beyond that the next step is if we can get organized politically so that at least other people are inspired to become veganism or maybe just to create the conditions in the world to make it easier for people to become and remain veganism running vegan grocery stores vegan daycares vegan old folks homes vegan restaurants lobbying government for legal changes all the things that are going to enable the vegan ization of our community our cluster of friends whatever it may be of our generation right then that's the logical next step that grows out of that definition that approach but that approach ultimately is addressed to the tremendous evil of factory farming of cows in their millions and billions living their whole lives in a steel cage beneath a steel sky on a concrete floor being born and living a life of nothing but suffering never seeing the clouds in the sky just to produce food that is unnecessary and unhealthy right this is the central challenge the veganism addresses but it's not the only challenge right my definition of veganism really leaves an open door to the reality of where your bread comes from of how airports operate in terms of birds flying around in terms of wildlife management culling animals killing animals outright for the purpose of trying to maintain habitat for the greater good of that ecosystem of making the decision that maybe a species of predator is overpopulating and is driving another species to extinction that maybe a plague has broken out all the hard decisions that Park Rangers have to make in managing habitat my philosophy encompasses and includes all that positively not as an exception to the rule for me that's the rule my version of veganism includes killing animals and is actually not based on a concept of animal rights it's based on what I call the wildlife management paradigm
animal rights as if veganism is a natural extension of a natural consequence following from animal rights what would you think if I told you that I'm a vegan and I do not believe in animal rights there are many vegans at the moment in 2017 who argue that veganism is a natural extension of human rights that actually it's just an extension of the human rights discourse it's especially popular I'd say within that category for people to try to argue that veganism is a natural consequence a natural extension of the same tendency seen in the anti-racism discourse and in the feminist discourse that somehow there's this sequence of parallel oppressions that people have been fighting to lift and the next one to go is going to be the barrier between human and animal in the same way that they imagined there was previously a barrier between man and a woman or within the United States a barrier between black and white ie the status of black people under slavery that I don't believe in any of that implicitly or explicitly veganism is a movement in which many people participate with many different competing definitions it may seem laughable to some of you if you're an outsider if you have been involved being ISM it may seem laughable that people could be members of a movement and still debating the meaning of the word but it's actually a really meaningful debate I think that veganism is still a contestable concept I think that pretty much the whole library of animal rights concepts are still really contestable in an open-ended way I think nobody can claim to know the truth of animal rights animal rights may not present us with any truths as a paradigm I think it may only present us with questions can hit you with some real-life examples in case this is too abstract for you for many vegans it's an uncomfortable exception to the rules when somebody confronts them with the fact that the production of wheat the production of grain involves killing animals involves killing insects yes but also could involve killing animals like Gophers Gophers you know complex mammals with eyes and a brain and a beating heart and red blood that's the reality of where your bread comes from if you're vegan it's the reality to make a long story short of where pretty much all your fruit and vegetables come from also it's a slightly different story in each case but yep pretty much all of them involve killing animals so is veganism or is it not opposed to the killing of animals many many vegans who define the idea and defined the movement in those terms then have to deal with this as an uncomfortable exception to the rules and they engage in Jesuitical reasoning of one kind or another I think it's important not to be consistent in your propaganda message that doesn't really matter to me too much you know yeah you may have different types of messages for different types of audiences I think it's really important to be consistent when you're alone looking at yourself in the mirror I think it's important to be consistent when you're in intimate conversations with your loved ones your girlfriend your boyfriend your parents your grandparents your children about what veganism is and what it means to you I think it's important to be consistent in your own heart in your own mind with yourself I think it's important that you're not living a lie not even if it's a liar living for a good cause and I do I do believe that veganism is a good cause even when people pursue it for the wrong reasons or even when people pursue it for internally contradictory reasons yeah every time you buy an airplane ticket you are paying for someone to go around in a golf course it'll flip there you're paying for someone to go around in a golf cart with a shotgun shooting birds to make sure there aren't birds flying into the aircraft engine it's a little bit different in different climates and the different but yeah you know killing killing birds is part of keeping an airport running by and large depends if the airport is close to a forest or not the Paris depends on the climates instep but yeah sometimes it's more of a problem sometimes less but pretty much each and every Airport you'll go to has some measures in place largely violence to keep birds away from the runway to keep them out of aircraft engines so that the people in the airplanes are safe as a vegan you're probably familiar with the mode of reasoning of saying hey look if you're morally comfortable with eating pork then you have to be morally comfortable with slitting the throat of the pig yourself right it can't just be that it's moral for someone else to kill the pig and for you to eat the pig either you're taking responsibility for the consequences of your actions or you're not well are you taking responsibility for the concept consequences of your actions when as a vegan you eat bread and you know you're killing Gophers when you buy an airplane ticket and you know you're killing Birds I am consistent because as I said my paradigm my model of veganism is not based on animal rights it's not based on the belief that each animal has a soul it's not based on the belief that we should extend to all animals the model of so-called love and care and affection that people often feel towards household pets like dogs and cats I don't share the view that we should extend that feeling to bears and cows and cockroaches in fact if you watch my videos about domestication of animals I don't even think it's an impulse that's healthy or that we should celebrate in terms the relationship between human animals and wolves or between humans and cats or what-have-you I think that's a deeply deeply flawed paradigm to base any moral argument on that it's moral to love your dog in a certain way therefore it's this is therefore this is how we should treat these other animals I believe that animals in the wild should leave dignified lives that have as little to do with human beings as possible although the reality in the 21st century is that we have a moral responsibility to protect wilderness to protect habitat against the encroachment of our fellow human beings and to act in the best interests of the species themselves of biodiversity of the continuation of particular species even though with wildlife management that may actually entail killing particular animals what is my definition of veganism I'll tell you my definition of veganism is this if I as just one person can refuse to buy animal products of any kind in my small small way of making the world a better place it's better ecologically it's better ethically and it's better for my own health if you would join me if you and you and you would join me a few dozen a few hundred a few thousand it would make the world a better place ecologically ethically and for your health for all of our health right and then beyond that the next step is if we can get organized politically so that at least other people are inspired to become veganism or maybe just to create the conditions in the world to make it easier for people to become and remain veganism running vegan grocery stores vegan daycares vegan old folks homes vegan restaurants lobbying government for legal changes all the things that are going to enable the vegan ization of our community our cluster of friends whatever it may be of our generation right then that's the logical next step that grows out of that definition that approach but that approach ultimately is addressed to the tremendous evil of factory farming of cows in their millions and billions living their whole lives in a steel cage beneath a steel sky on a concrete floor being born and living a life of nothing but suffering never seeing the clouds in the sky just to produce food that is unnecessary and unhealthy right this is the central challenge the veganism addresses but it's not the only challenge right my definition of veganism really leaves an open door to the reality of where your bread comes from of how airports operate in terms of birds flying around in terms of wildlife management culling animals killing animals outright for the purpose of trying to maintain habitat for the greater good of that ecosystem of making the decision that maybe a species of predator is overpopulating and is driving another species to extinction that maybe a plague has broken out all the hard decisions that Park Rangers have to make in managing habitat my philosophy encompasses and includes all that positively not as an exception to the rule for me that's the rule my version of veganism includes killing animals and is actually not based on a concept of animal rights it's based on what I call the wildlife management paradigm