"you're either vegan or you're not" (Supreme Banana & Political Science)
30 March 2017 [link youtube]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
the challenge I face here on YouTube all
too often is trying to say something deep about an inherently shallow topic I'm responding to a sort of manifesto from Supreme banana she made a political statement about veganism worth talking about and a lot of my regular viewers and supporters asked me to comment on it but I'm gonna jump in at the deep end of the pool on this one put yourself in the position of an American citizen at the end of World War two the United States is just one one of the largest most violent most terrible wars in the world and the government the United States is using taxpayers money not just to hand out cigarettes soldiers but to hand out millions and millions of cigarettes for free to Germans to German civilians it's amazing and it's bizarre but at that time the American government was so Pro tobacco I don't know if they believe in this because they thought maybe in the future all Europeans would start buying tobacco export United States I have no idea what the reasoning was but the American government was using taxpayers money to hand out millions of cigarettes for free like candy and huge numbers of servicemen huge numbers of soldiers ruled you became hooked on cigarettes during their years of service in the army when they returned back home they took that bad habit with them alright it's not really adequate to respond to that situation simply by focusing on your own personal purity simply by engaging in a form of passive boycott and deciding I am never gonna smoke cigarettes again the reality is you're living in a world you would have been let's say the year is 1950 or 1951 or something in the aftermath of World War 2 you're living in a world where cigarette companies movie companies television so much of the visible culture around you is actively propounding and encouraging people to smoke cigarettes and just recently just a few years earlier when World War 2 was winding down the government itself at public expense was trying to increase the number of people addicted to this ultimately harmful drug okay the parallels to veganism are all too clear yeah I can decide that I personally will never eat meat again I will never drink milk again I will never buy leather shoes again I live in a city where advertising glorifying those things is literally painted on the walls around me right posters adorned every Street the messages promoting cheap readily available meat they surround me that on television on radio and every possible broadcast made in movies even to some extent and yes there's also a whole structure of how government and corporations and even the education system are all linked to one another in promoting the message that milk and eggs and meat are things that human beings need to eat on a daily basis or else they're gonna collapse and you know there are other illustrations too I think there's a fairer to some extent the establishment is even into promoting the notion that hey beer isn't all that bad or one glass of wine a days know that that even though literally each and every serving of alcohol causes brain damage this is the kind of cultural context we live in now look guys on the other side it's understandable during World War Two would tobacco be on the top of anyone's list of political concerns know you're kind of distracted kind of distracted by some other things going on the murders of millions of people the sudden revelation of the atom bomb you know punctuating this conflict on a vast scale the renegotiation of peace treaties and borders all over the whole world chaos and revolution and anti imperialist rhetoric and you know the disintegration of the British Empire the emergence of new nation-states there was so much going on for most people who cared about politics who really cared did they have the capacity to care about this to care about cigarettes it's a problem even now or at any given time for veganism when is the question of institutional support for political support for animal products when is that going to be at the top of anyone's mind so you might be expecting this video to be a sort of critique of the definition of the word vegan and for me to complain the supreme banana has been trying to expand the definition of the word vegan to include people we meet as if they're vegan that's not my point at all supreme banana has a comment up a few days after she recorded the video where she clarifies and I quote it doesn't make sense for someone who is not 100% vegan to call themselves vegan this will just create a slippery slope and technically anybody could be a quote-unquote vegan I wasn't clear when I spoke about the definition I rather meant we should change your definition of the community not change the definition of the word change your definition of acceptance and what actions deserve applause aka every true effort I think it's okay to call yourself a part-time vegan or transitioning vegan or working on being vegan and honestly call yourself whatever the hell you want but what matters is not perfection it's the effort the actions and the intention so you're saying we should we should applaud these people who are trying to make a positive difference even if they're not vegan she's not saying to to change the definition of vegan itself um for me the deepest issue here in what's you know relatively shallow set of concerns Nepal that's understandably so the deepest issue here is the kind of passive mindset that can be fostered by consumer centered activism I think that supreme banana does think of veganism just as a boycott just as a decision made by isolated individuals well I understand how immoral the meat and dairy industry is so I am gonna change my lifestyle I'm gonna reduce or eliminate my use of these things and she just sees it in terms of that abstract mathematical formula of millions and millions of people reducing their consumption of these things and then industry in society beyond that responding now III simply don't think if you were in the context of the year 1949 or 1950 one I don't think you could honestly look at the world around you and say this is how we're going to eliminate the smoking of tobacco not this alone of course it's a great start it has to start somewhere and has to start with you making the commitment to quit smoking you can't really advocate for the abolition of tobacco in our society if you're still smoking yourself it's a start don't get me wrong and some percentage of people are gonna wake up to how harmful and dangerous tobacco is even though there are all these other pressing political issues around you but obviously you need people to get organized and Lobby government to change attitudes inside the halls of power to change attitudes inside the establishment to change attitudes even inside university departments that teach health and medicine inside hospitals I mean with veganism we deal with specialized medical professions like dietitians and of course oncologists and cancer specialists are involved in both the organs but veganism the arguments both cigarettes there is an institutional and political dimension of this that goes far far beyond you know reduce at Arianism and goes beyond a definition of vegans as merely the ultimate reduce deterrence right vegans become the people who are engaged in that long term struggle and in many ways not all that type of struggle with cigarettes has been won compare the year 1950 to the year 2000 in terms of the status of cigarettes in our society it's a tremendous transformation people still have the freedom to choose to smoke cigarettes but not inside hospital not inside a boardroom not inside a school not inside most government offices right things have changed profoundly even though a significant percentage the population is still smoking tobacco right and the word is out the cultural perception of tobacco has changed in the basic fundamental medical underst that is a bad habit is now universally understood even by the people who sheepishly continue to smoke tobacco knowing that they're harming their health knowing that in some way they're making the world a worse place by smoking tobacco every way alright um the real reason why I like a strict definition of veganism again not to misrepresent what's free banana said or why she said it the real reason why I care about it is that my view of veganism is not passive is not purely consumerist it's not purely a boycott my view of veganism is dynamic and politicized and is about lobbying for organizing for social change cultural change political and legal change changes in the universities changes in how schoolchildren are taught about meat and milk and eggs changes at every level of government changes in how prisoners in prisons are fed changes and how old people and all folks home are fed changes at every level that will have to be lobbied for and debated and ultimately won right why is it that hospitals give their patients food that we know scientifically no makes them sick it's a big question and it's not gonna be answered overnight hospitals are not gonna easily or lightly give up feeding bacon and eggs to their hospital patients it's absurd and it's surreal but we still are at that level of asking those kinds of questions school boards are not going to easily or lightly stop giving children propaganda that they ought to drink milk every day and that they ought to eat eggs every day which really happens right now throughout the whole Western world right and I saw I remember I saw photographs of this the beef board in Australia and the bizarre propaganda they expose children to in Australia in the Austrian school world okay you're never gonna solve those problems with these attitudes that supreme banana expresses understand why from a consumer centered perspective in terms of merely changing consumer behavior she thinks the most important part of veganism is go people oh you quit eating cheese that's wonderful she's just arguable positive affirmation for people who made small efforts and recognizing those efforts and thinking in terms of the aggregate total amount of consumption being reduced whether you have 5 million people who are reduced at Ariens or just 5 thousand people who are a hundred percent pure vegans right she would rather have a larger number of people who are not really committed to the cause ethically not really committed to the cause politically but who are reducing their consumption okay I sympathize I do her position is rational right but I'm looking at the whole picture I'm looking at the whole process of cultural and political change and I'm seeing just like at the end of World War two if the American government is supporting the cigarette industry to this extent where they're handing out cartons of cigarettes to conquered people in Europe they're handing out cigarettes not just to American soldiers but to the Germans to the people who were their enemies just a few months ago that's how deeply the government and the industry support each other a light bulb has to go on at some point where you say this cannot purely be a matter of my personal purity or my encouraging others to emulate me in that purity or to do what they can to reduce their consumption so I do think that supreme banana has a valid point here although it's limited and I think I have a valid point also it is nice to be nice if you meet someone who's just a reducer terian or someone who is inspired by the idea of veganism but they only can appropriate a little piece of that idea into their own lives into their own lifestyle into their diet or what have you if you meet someone who still wears leather shoes and still eats a steak once a month but is trying to reduce their impact if you have it in your heart to be nice to them to be encouraging to them to be positive of them that's basically what she's singing the praises of she's saying it's nice to be nice it's great to be positive and encouraging towards those peep who are not vegan who are reduced Aryan because if we have 5 million reduced Aryans they can significantly reduce their negative impacts on the world in terms of ecology in terms of animal exploitation etc etc you know without being vegan and we can recognize that we can be nice about it ok it's a valid point it's a point but I want us to move beyond a view of the world that sees us as merely reducing our negative impacts I want us to move on to a much more dynamic model of veganism as a social movement where we're trying to get organized to have the maximum positive impact and you baby just getting organized with 50 people or you may be getting organized with 500 people or you may be getting organized with just 5 ok but when you're looking around and ask yourself who are the people who I can take with me to City Hall who are the people I can take with me to the school board who are the people who are really gonna have the level of Verve and tenacity and talent and intelligence and dedication and self-discipline to make a difference in this broader institutional political and cultural context who's who's with me it's not gonna be a wishy-washy produced Arian you're going to be looking to get into that kind of organization political organization with other people who are not just 100 percent vegan but who are I think 100 percent vegan for the right reasons two more points real quick I'm tempted to end the video just there right now I have a children's story book about veganism it's a story book for children written in Chinese translated into English and German and Russian it's very sentimental and moving story but at the end of the day yeah it's kind of vegan propaganda it's explaining the cause of veganism for an audience of children and parents and kids cuz they marry this guy in theory the best artists for this book may be a meat-eater maybe there's someone who's a 100% professional great artist whose maybe there are Pro they've already Illustrated ten or 20 different children's storybooks and they can sit down with the paintbrush and do a great job illustrating the storybook and then go to McDonald's afterwards eat a hamburger right but you know you know I'm interviewing different artists leave something to it and that's not movie for its top I'm looking for someone who's vegan who's really vegan Harvey not reduced to terian not vegetarian not eating a steak let's no oil and I'm even looking for somebody who's even for the right reasons someone who's an ethical vegan not just health-conscious vegan or something else you know what I mean and ideally someone who's an ethical vegan who's even an activist who has you know that's what I'm looking for that's what I'm looking for why is that does it matter more does it matter more if I'm getting into a situation where I'm spending time and money and the artists getting paid artists isn't working for free and I'm collaborating with someone in a political movement however tiny however miniscule in this example who do I want to work with I want to work with somebody who's really vegan I want to work with somebody who's really vegan for all the right reasons and even if you don't feel that way now I guarantee you as you move from a more passive view of veganism to this more dynamic view of veganism or aspirational view of veganism I think you'll start to feel the same way I think if you're actually going to meetings at the school board or at a boardroom or whatever you just have the news of the vegans when you sit down to that meeting and there are other people there who are literally eating an ice cream cone and wearing leather when the show of the meeting you think this isn't what I got in the car - yes I feel let down I feel in terms of my time and my effort hey great all kinds of causes do result in vegans collaborating with meat-eaters I've used many examples of the channel of vegans collaborating with hunters and what-have-you but as with the example of cigarette smoking if we're putting together that team of people what's not just about me quitting smoking it's about the fact that as a society I want all of us to quit smoking I want to see those legislative changes I want to see those changes at health education I want to see everything as step one I can't really advocate for that cause very well if I can't at least put together a few people who really do have the self-discipline to quit smoking themselves and to give voice to that moral cause
too often is trying to say something deep about an inherently shallow topic I'm responding to a sort of manifesto from Supreme banana she made a political statement about veganism worth talking about and a lot of my regular viewers and supporters asked me to comment on it but I'm gonna jump in at the deep end of the pool on this one put yourself in the position of an American citizen at the end of World War two the United States is just one one of the largest most violent most terrible wars in the world and the government the United States is using taxpayers money not just to hand out cigarettes soldiers but to hand out millions and millions of cigarettes for free to Germans to German civilians it's amazing and it's bizarre but at that time the American government was so Pro tobacco I don't know if they believe in this because they thought maybe in the future all Europeans would start buying tobacco export United States I have no idea what the reasoning was but the American government was using taxpayers money to hand out millions of cigarettes for free like candy and huge numbers of servicemen huge numbers of soldiers ruled you became hooked on cigarettes during their years of service in the army when they returned back home they took that bad habit with them alright it's not really adequate to respond to that situation simply by focusing on your own personal purity simply by engaging in a form of passive boycott and deciding I am never gonna smoke cigarettes again the reality is you're living in a world you would have been let's say the year is 1950 or 1951 or something in the aftermath of World War 2 you're living in a world where cigarette companies movie companies television so much of the visible culture around you is actively propounding and encouraging people to smoke cigarettes and just recently just a few years earlier when World War 2 was winding down the government itself at public expense was trying to increase the number of people addicted to this ultimately harmful drug okay the parallels to veganism are all too clear yeah I can decide that I personally will never eat meat again I will never drink milk again I will never buy leather shoes again I live in a city where advertising glorifying those things is literally painted on the walls around me right posters adorned every Street the messages promoting cheap readily available meat they surround me that on television on radio and every possible broadcast made in movies even to some extent and yes there's also a whole structure of how government and corporations and even the education system are all linked to one another in promoting the message that milk and eggs and meat are things that human beings need to eat on a daily basis or else they're gonna collapse and you know there are other illustrations too I think there's a fairer to some extent the establishment is even into promoting the notion that hey beer isn't all that bad or one glass of wine a days know that that even though literally each and every serving of alcohol causes brain damage this is the kind of cultural context we live in now look guys on the other side it's understandable during World War Two would tobacco be on the top of anyone's list of political concerns know you're kind of distracted kind of distracted by some other things going on the murders of millions of people the sudden revelation of the atom bomb you know punctuating this conflict on a vast scale the renegotiation of peace treaties and borders all over the whole world chaos and revolution and anti imperialist rhetoric and you know the disintegration of the British Empire the emergence of new nation-states there was so much going on for most people who cared about politics who really cared did they have the capacity to care about this to care about cigarettes it's a problem even now or at any given time for veganism when is the question of institutional support for political support for animal products when is that going to be at the top of anyone's mind so you might be expecting this video to be a sort of critique of the definition of the word vegan and for me to complain the supreme banana has been trying to expand the definition of the word vegan to include people we meet as if they're vegan that's not my point at all supreme banana has a comment up a few days after she recorded the video where she clarifies and I quote it doesn't make sense for someone who is not 100% vegan to call themselves vegan this will just create a slippery slope and technically anybody could be a quote-unquote vegan I wasn't clear when I spoke about the definition I rather meant we should change your definition of the community not change the definition of the word change your definition of acceptance and what actions deserve applause aka every true effort I think it's okay to call yourself a part-time vegan or transitioning vegan or working on being vegan and honestly call yourself whatever the hell you want but what matters is not perfection it's the effort the actions and the intention so you're saying we should we should applaud these people who are trying to make a positive difference even if they're not vegan she's not saying to to change the definition of vegan itself um for me the deepest issue here in what's you know relatively shallow set of concerns Nepal that's understandably so the deepest issue here is the kind of passive mindset that can be fostered by consumer centered activism I think that supreme banana does think of veganism just as a boycott just as a decision made by isolated individuals well I understand how immoral the meat and dairy industry is so I am gonna change my lifestyle I'm gonna reduce or eliminate my use of these things and she just sees it in terms of that abstract mathematical formula of millions and millions of people reducing their consumption of these things and then industry in society beyond that responding now III simply don't think if you were in the context of the year 1949 or 1950 one I don't think you could honestly look at the world around you and say this is how we're going to eliminate the smoking of tobacco not this alone of course it's a great start it has to start somewhere and has to start with you making the commitment to quit smoking you can't really advocate for the abolition of tobacco in our society if you're still smoking yourself it's a start don't get me wrong and some percentage of people are gonna wake up to how harmful and dangerous tobacco is even though there are all these other pressing political issues around you but obviously you need people to get organized and Lobby government to change attitudes inside the halls of power to change attitudes inside the establishment to change attitudes even inside university departments that teach health and medicine inside hospitals I mean with veganism we deal with specialized medical professions like dietitians and of course oncologists and cancer specialists are involved in both the organs but veganism the arguments both cigarettes there is an institutional and political dimension of this that goes far far beyond you know reduce at Arianism and goes beyond a definition of vegans as merely the ultimate reduce deterrence right vegans become the people who are engaged in that long term struggle and in many ways not all that type of struggle with cigarettes has been won compare the year 1950 to the year 2000 in terms of the status of cigarettes in our society it's a tremendous transformation people still have the freedom to choose to smoke cigarettes but not inside hospital not inside a boardroom not inside a school not inside most government offices right things have changed profoundly even though a significant percentage the population is still smoking tobacco right and the word is out the cultural perception of tobacco has changed in the basic fundamental medical underst that is a bad habit is now universally understood even by the people who sheepishly continue to smoke tobacco knowing that they're harming their health knowing that in some way they're making the world a worse place by smoking tobacco every way alright um the real reason why I like a strict definition of veganism again not to misrepresent what's free banana said or why she said it the real reason why I care about it is that my view of veganism is not passive is not purely consumerist it's not purely a boycott my view of veganism is dynamic and politicized and is about lobbying for organizing for social change cultural change political and legal change changes in the universities changes in how schoolchildren are taught about meat and milk and eggs changes at every level of government changes in how prisoners in prisons are fed changes and how old people and all folks home are fed changes at every level that will have to be lobbied for and debated and ultimately won right why is it that hospitals give their patients food that we know scientifically no makes them sick it's a big question and it's not gonna be answered overnight hospitals are not gonna easily or lightly give up feeding bacon and eggs to their hospital patients it's absurd and it's surreal but we still are at that level of asking those kinds of questions school boards are not going to easily or lightly stop giving children propaganda that they ought to drink milk every day and that they ought to eat eggs every day which really happens right now throughout the whole Western world right and I saw I remember I saw photographs of this the beef board in Australia and the bizarre propaganda they expose children to in Australia in the Austrian school world okay you're never gonna solve those problems with these attitudes that supreme banana expresses understand why from a consumer centered perspective in terms of merely changing consumer behavior she thinks the most important part of veganism is go people oh you quit eating cheese that's wonderful she's just arguable positive affirmation for people who made small efforts and recognizing those efforts and thinking in terms of the aggregate total amount of consumption being reduced whether you have 5 million people who are reduced at Ariens or just 5 thousand people who are a hundred percent pure vegans right she would rather have a larger number of people who are not really committed to the cause ethically not really committed to the cause politically but who are reducing their consumption okay I sympathize I do her position is rational right but I'm looking at the whole picture I'm looking at the whole process of cultural and political change and I'm seeing just like at the end of World War two if the American government is supporting the cigarette industry to this extent where they're handing out cartons of cigarettes to conquered people in Europe they're handing out cigarettes not just to American soldiers but to the Germans to the people who were their enemies just a few months ago that's how deeply the government and the industry support each other a light bulb has to go on at some point where you say this cannot purely be a matter of my personal purity or my encouraging others to emulate me in that purity or to do what they can to reduce their consumption so I do think that supreme banana has a valid point here although it's limited and I think I have a valid point also it is nice to be nice if you meet someone who's just a reducer terian or someone who is inspired by the idea of veganism but they only can appropriate a little piece of that idea into their own lives into their own lifestyle into their diet or what have you if you meet someone who still wears leather shoes and still eats a steak once a month but is trying to reduce their impact if you have it in your heart to be nice to them to be encouraging to them to be positive of them that's basically what she's singing the praises of she's saying it's nice to be nice it's great to be positive and encouraging towards those peep who are not vegan who are reduced Aryan because if we have 5 million reduced Aryans they can significantly reduce their negative impacts on the world in terms of ecology in terms of animal exploitation etc etc you know without being vegan and we can recognize that we can be nice about it ok it's a valid point it's a point but I want us to move beyond a view of the world that sees us as merely reducing our negative impacts I want us to move on to a much more dynamic model of veganism as a social movement where we're trying to get organized to have the maximum positive impact and you baby just getting organized with 50 people or you may be getting organized with 500 people or you may be getting organized with just 5 ok but when you're looking around and ask yourself who are the people who I can take with me to City Hall who are the people I can take with me to the school board who are the people who are really gonna have the level of Verve and tenacity and talent and intelligence and dedication and self-discipline to make a difference in this broader institutional political and cultural context who's who's with me it's not gonna be a wishy-washy produced Arian you're going to be looking to get into that kind of organization political organization with other people who are not just 100 percent vegan but who are I think 100 percent vegan for the right reasons two more points real quick I'm tempted to end the video just there right now I have a children's story book about veganism it's a story book for children written in Chinese translated into English and German and Russian it's very sentimental and moving story but at the end of the day yeah it's kind of vegan propaganda it's explaining the cause of veganism for an audience of children and parents and kids cuz they marry this guy in theory the best artists for this book may be a meat-eater maybe there's someone who's a 100% professional great artist whose maybe there are Pro they've already Illustrated ten or 20 different children's storybooks and they can sit down with the paintbrush and do a great job illustrating the storybook and then go to McDonald's afterwards eat a hamburger right but you know you know I'm interviewing different artists leave something to it and that's not movie for its top I'm looking for someone who's vegan who's really vegan Harvey not reduced to terian not vegetarian not eating a steak let's no oil and I'm even looking for somebody who's even for the right reasons someone who's an ethical vegan not just health-conscious vegan or something else you know what I mean and ideally someone who's an ethical vegan who's even an activist who has you know that's what I'm looking for that's what I'm looking for why is that does it matter more does it matter more if I'm getting into a situation where I'm spending time and money and the artists getting paid artists isn't working for free and I'm collaborating with someone in a political movement however tiny however miniscule in this example who do I want to work with I want to work with somebody who's really vegan I want to work with somebody who's really vegan for all the right reasons and even if you don't feel that way now I guarantee you as you move from a more passive view of veganism to this more dynamic view of veganism or aspirational view of veganism I think you'll start to feel the same way I think if you're actually going to meetings at the school board or at a boardroom or whatever you just have the news of the vegans when you sit down to that meeting and there are other people there who are literally eating an ice cream cone and wearing leather when the show of the meeting you think this isn't what I got in the car - yes I feel let down I feel in terms of my time and my effort hey great all kinds of causes do result in vegans collaborating with meat-eaters I've used many examples of the channel of vegans collaborating with hunters and what-have-you but as with the example of cigarette smoking if we're putting together that team of people what's not just about me quitting smoking it's about the fact that as a society I want all of us to quit smoking I want to see those legislative changes I want to see those changes at health education I want to see everything as step one I can't really advocate for that cause very well if I can't at least put together a few people who really do have the self-discipline to quit smoking themselves and to give voice to that moral cause