Veganism vs. Vegetarianism in my own life / subjective experience.
22 February 2017 [link youtube]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
I just broke up laughing in the middle
of recording a video thanks to some funny comments in the live stream so kudos kudos to you guys yeah that's the first time that's ever happened good for you I should I should break up laughing at the mill my own videos more often that's great um look I was making a video here I had some thoughts who I was out walking just now I never really had thought before but the contrast between vegetarianism and veganism in my own life in the way I'm about to discuss earlier today I was watching a video somebody the last reading correctly guessed it was a video from sorcerer murasa Saoirse Morales and said hi to me on Twitter earlier today so it went looked at her video she had a video where she was criticizing someone who has been vegetarian for stickers so it was an ethical vegetarian vegetarians a look if you're Haskell vegetarian it doesn't make sense unless it's a transition to veganism course I completely agree with if you are a vegetarian for ethical reasons or ecological reasons or both inevitably you have to make transition to being vegan or it doesn't make sense it makes sense only as a transitional I thoughts completely agree with sources point um it led me to think for a moment however about how vegetarianism and my own subjective experience was different for veganism and for me part of the difference is the time of my life I got older I got more mature and I certainly did develop a more tolerance and cooperative set of attitudes towards politics as opposed to like many people may be in my youth I was a bit more revolutionary in my aspiration I still do think that veganism is something that tries to change the world it has a horizon of wanting to I mean Neil abolish the meat dairy industry abolish the slaughterhouses fundamentally changed the way humans animals what together in the future but I do not think it's a revolutionary movement and things quite misleading to think of it or represent it as if it's a violent or revolutionary movement however it's a pretty fundamental challenge to society i would say that growing up my ideas about vegetarianism were influenced in a subtle and pervasive way for one thing because i grew up in an immigrant ciety I grew up in toronto in toronto canada it is incredibly rare to meet indigenous people First Nations people the kree the Aegean Mohawks the Euro clog you I've met a few in Toronto but very very rare and on the contrary you meet vegetarians from China from India etc etc my father was involved with and influenced by Hinduism at an early age at one stage of my father's university career he actually wanted to learn Sanskrit and study Hindu philosophy and this kind of thing way back in the 1950s my father is 100 years old but I mean as you say this is long before you know like in the late 1960s there was a much more popular Western reaction to Hinduism in American culture what have you and that not happened yet so my father guidance that stephanie was young man i do think that through my father's influence and simply through the kind of influence of living in Toronto I do think that i saw vegetarianism as a personal commitment to an ethical ideal that isolated you from society and put you in the position of maintaining your own moral purity despite the meat-eating society around you a refusal to assimilate into a meeting society but not as an attempt to transform the society so for example a Brahmin Hindu Brahmin who becomes an immigrant who migrates from India to England or Canada the United States is stereotypically someone is going to try to maintain their own purity maintain their own religious tradition or maintain a vegetarian diet for themselves and their family but they're not trying to transform British society or Canadian society to resemble a Hindu Brahmin society they're not trying to turn it from the problem there are many reasons for that including the fact that you know Hinduism is an exclusive religious community they're not trying to let people there aren't encouraged people to convert into the religion and especially the upper castes like Brahmins they're even more exclusive so you know it's an exclusive club and you can't just join nor are they trying to convert the whole world to join unlike say Christianity many Christians do want the whole the question so for me subjectively what I was reflecting on is that the transformative aspirations of veganism wanting to transformable side the abolitionist aspirations want to abolish the meat and dairy industry diet is something very different from just the way I personally perceived vegetarianism before I became vegan and the unexplained factor here I'd only have to get into this video is just that definitely I was younger and when I was younger it was vegetarian I think it's true that I both flirted more with a revolutionary aesthetic haha in terms of my thoughts and just feeling like a political dissident in in Canadian society but it's also true that I I also felt more powerless and the kind of experiences talked about on this channel ad nauseam have said so many times you know going to City Hall and really being involved in an understanding political processes whether it's in a boardroom or you know what Parliament is the understanding i developed of both economic and procedural aspects of politics and justice nebulas time went on you know that both led me to have a more conciliatory cooperative and tolerant set of attitudes towards politics but it also led me to have very down-to-earth faith that we can make a difference in the same way that Mothers Against Drunk Driving can change the laws against drunk driving can change the culture of how people drink alcohol and how people take taxis and all these other things in the same way that you know the status of homosexuals has changed without a revolution there never was a gay revolution but there was a you know complex community-based you know political movement that did change Western civilization and many fundamental ways change the laws change the cultures the culture from from root to branch that in the same way veganism can can advance can make progress I mean I just say ultimately there I use the word empowering or imperfect as I've gotten older it's true that my aspirations became less revolutionary my form of descent you know became more refined or even more conformist you could say but tear with that is a real sense of the power that common people have if five or ten people can get together and everyone throws five dollars into a hat and you know cooperates and gets organized that I you know I do see in the modern Western world how porous the establishment is and probably when I was younger I saw the establishment is something all powerful and myself as powerless and felt that me and people like me and my generation could never influence political outcomes or social change in any way and that of course lends to a more rambunctious set of anti-establishment sentiments that's it people um so obviously a completely idiosyncratic completely subjective set of reflections now for me vegetarianism was a very different ideology than veganism but even back when I was vegetarian I could remember being so excited to meet someone else who happen to be vegetarian an ethical vegetarian and really wanting to make friends them really you know feeling we had something profoundly important in common like especially out here when I was remember when I was only vegetarian and living in asia-- and you meet someone else and think oh we got to go and almost never did the other people feel that way the other people just thought they were vegetarians don't take deal so nice to nice to know of a circle of friends thanks to youtube thanks to the one is the internet who take veganism seriously the same lies you and see the same more remote horizon of proceeding toward some kind of meaningful social change
of recording a video thanks to some funny comments in the live stream so kudos kudos to you guys yeah that's the first time that's ever happened good for you I should I should break up laughing at the mill my own videos more often that's great um look I was making a video here I had some thoughts who I was out walking just now I never really had thought before but the contrast between vegetarianism and veganism in my own life in the way I'm about to discuss earlier today I was watching a video somebody the last reading correctly guessed it was a video from sorcerer murasa Saoirse Morales and said hi to me on Twitter earlier today so it went looked at her video she had a video where she was criticizing someone who has been vegetarian for stickers so it was an ethical vegetarian vegetarians a look if you're Haskell vegetarian it doesn't make sense unless it's a transition to veganism course I completely agree with if you are a vegetarian for ethical reasons or ecological reasons or both inevitably you have to make transition to being vegan or it doesn't make sense it makes sense only as a transitional I thoughts completely agree with sources point um it led me to think for a moment however about how vegetarianism and my own subjective experience was different for veganism and for me part of the difference is the time of my life I got older I got more mature and I certainly did develop a more tolerance and cooperative set of attitudes towards politics as opposed to like many people may be in my youth I was a bit more revolutionary in my aspiration I still do think that veganism is something that tries to change the world it has a horizon of wanting to I mean Neil abolish the meat dairy industry abolish the slaughterhouses fundamentally changed the way humans animals what together in the future but I do not think it's a revolutionary movement and things quite misleading to think of it or represent it as if it's a violent or revolutionary movement however it's a pretty fundamental challenge to society i would say that growing up my ideas about vegetarianism were influenced in a subtle and pervasive way for one thing because i grew up in an immigrant ciety I grew up in toronto in toronto canada it is incredibly rare to meet indigenous people First Nations people the kree the Aegean Mohawks the Euro clog you I've met a few in Toronto but very very rare and on the contrary you meet vegetarians from China from India etc etc my father was involved with and influenced by Hinduism at an early age at one stage of my father's university career he actually wanted to learn Sanskrit and study Hindu philosophy and this kind of thing way back in the 1950s my father is 100 years old but I mean as you say this is long before you know like in the late 1960s there was a much more popular Western reaction to Hinduism in American culture what have you and that not happened yet so my father guidance that stephanie was young man i do think that through my father's influence and simply through the kind of influence of living in Toronto I do think that i saw vegetarianism as a personal commitment to an ethical ideal that isolated you from society and put you in the position of maintaining your own moral purity despite the meat-eating society around you a refusal to assimilate into a meeting society but not as an attempt to transform the society so for example a Brahmin Hindu Brahmin who becomes an immigrant who migrates from India to England or Canada the United States is stereotypically someone is going to try to maintain their own purity maintain their own religious tradition or maintain a vegetarian diet for themselves and their family but they're not trying to transform British society or Canadian society to resemble a Hindu Brahmin society they're not trying to turn it from the problem there are many reasons for that including the fact that you know Hinduism is an exclusive religious community they're not trying to let people there aren't encouraged people to convert into the religion and especially the upper castes like Brahmins they're even more exclusive so you know it's an exclusive club and you can't just join nor are they trying to convert the whole world to join unlike say Christianity many Christians do want the whole the question so for me subjectively what I was reflecting on is that the transformative aspirations of veganism wanting to transformable side the abolitionist aspirations want to abolish the meat and dairy industry diet is something very different from just the way I personally perceived vegetarianism before I became vegan and the unexplained factor here I'd only have to get into this video is just that definitely I was younger and when I was younger it was vegetarian I think it's true that I both flirted more with a revolutionary aesthetic haha in terms of my thoughts and just feeling like a political dissident in in Canadian society but it's also true that I I also felt more powerless and the kind of experiences talked about on this channel ad nauseam have said so many times you know going to City Hall and really being involved in an understanding political processes whether it's in a boardroom or you know what Parliament is the understanding i developed of both economic and procedural aspects of politics and justice nebulas time went on you know that both led me to have a more conciliatory cooperative and tolerant set of attitudes towards politics but it also led me to have very down-to-earth faith that we can make a difference in the same way that Mothers Against Drunk Driving can change the laws against drunk driving can change the culture of how people drink alcohol and how people take taxis and all these other things in the same way that you know the status of homosexuals has changed without a revolution there never was a gay revolution but there was a you know complex community-based you know political movement that did change Western civilization and many fundamental ways change the laws change the cultures the culture from from root to branch that in the same way veganism can can advance can make progress I mean I just say ultimately there I use the word empowering or imperfect as I've gotten older it's true that my aspirations became less revolutionary my form of descent you know became more refined or even more conformist you could say but tear with that is a real sense of the power that common people have if five or ten people can get together and everyone throws five dollars into a hat and you know cooperates and gets organized that I you know I do see in the modern Western world how porous the establishment is and probably when I was younger I saw the establishment is something all powerful and myself as powerless and felt that me and people like me and my generation could never influence political outcomes or social change in any way and that of course lends to a more rambunctious set of anti-establishment sentiments that's it people um so obviously a completely idiosyncratic completely subjective set of reflections now for me vegetarianism was a very different ideology than veganism but even back when I was vegetarian I could remember being so excited to meet someone else who happen to be vegetarian an ethical vegetarian and really wanting to make friends them really you know feeling we had something profoundly important in common like especially out here when I was remember when I was only vegetarian and living in asia-- and you meet someone else and think oh we got to go and almost never did the other people feel that way the other people just thought they were vegetarians don't take deal so nice to nice to know of a circle of friends thanks to youtube thanks to the one is the internet who take veganism seriously the same lies you and see the same more remote horizon of proceeding toward some kind of meaningful social change