War: should veganism imitate "the peace movement"?
03 March 2017 [link youtube]
Here's the link to the earlier conversation we had (a podcast over an hour long), titled, "Two Vegan Activists from Two Generations." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0YwTARMCXk
Youtube Automatic Transcription
as you can tell this is an intro tacked
onto the start of podcast but this is really an edited excerpt from a much longer conversation I had with a younger vegan activist here on YouTube Adrian if you go back a whole year on this channel I was talking to her back when she was just starting University she was very optimistic about getting involved with vegan activist groups on campus and when we did this next interview a year later all that optimism is God so I hope she stays in touch with me I mean I always say this I'm really into this for the future of the movement and it's great to see people like Adrian struggling with the contradictions she got involved with a animal rights group that was not vegan and then she's having to look at oh my god these people say they support animal rights but they meet every day it'll make you feel old whether or not that kind of experience in vegan politics will actually lead you being more mature or not it'll definitely make you feel older and it was so great target Adrian again I guess I'll try to give a link below the video to the the conversation episode in the past because that is still here on YouTube you can check that out but we get to watch adrian get older and more experienced the more mature and hey i'm getting older and more experienced more mature two guys I am I've changed I've changed into thirds of town hopefully for the better look so in this spontaneous conversation that follows the next few minutes there's this evocative image that comes up I didn't have this plan to script it obviously but this image comes up where I contrast the type of violence we have in war of humans against humans and the endless pointless seemingly infinite violence of human beings against animals you know the ongoing slow-motion disaster that is the meat and dairy industry you know I just wanted to bring in here another image that I've talked about in terms of questioning effective activism recently on Twitter I made the comment you know vegans who want to imitate the type of street protest that we associate with the Vietnam War why is it so hard to realize that you're imitating failure you know I think it's a really interesting contrast to talk about the peace movement as opposed to the vegan movement and people like Gary frenzy oh and I do this although they do it I think in a very childish way they don't really think about it let me say something every single protest you've ever seen TV footage of of people protest against the Vietnam War was a failure the protest individually were a failure the movement as a whole was a failure the vietnam war didn't end until there was a geopolitical arrangement between China and the United States it was a negotiated settlement as part of the so-called strategic triangle involving China Russia and the USA every single protest against the Vietnam War that whole peace movement was a failure and I think you can measure it's a failure more than one way you can measure the different outcomes they were hoping to achieve but the most obvious being an actual entity NM war failed failed failed so you know veganism is different we can have a lot of small victories we can have a lot of small victories in the next 200 years before the big victory comes we really can live in a world where it is not normal to wear leather shoes anymore partly because leather is obsolete you'll need leather shoes we can I think within my lifetime we can switch from having a culture where eating meat is considered normal and necessary and healthy to a culture where generally people regard me as something unhealthy as something like cigarettes or alcohol or even if they think it's normal because alcohol and cigarettes are still normal where it's just perceived with that kind of odious awareness that you're doing something bad you know about yourself for the animals for ecology that it's unhealthy and unnecessary and you know an awareness that our culture is in a transition that does chief depth a nabol you know it's really it's not pie in the sky to say that we as vegans we can win to something worth waiting to something again but how are we going to get there it's not going to be through imitating the methods of the peace movement a peace movement that looking back at the last 20 years and looking back at the last hundred years has only failed and failed and failed right since September 11 of 2001 there have been peace marches all over the world there's been a peace movement all over the world you try to show me any sense in which it has been victorious so you're asking yourself what you can do in your community in your lifetime here and now don't imitate failure look at examples of social movements that sought to change the world and actually it had some success something we're talking about whether you look at regulations against seatbelts Mothers Against Drunk Driving community-based movements or it is a lot you can look at there's a lot to think about but that you know specific Wars come and go with tremendous violence against specific objectives but I mean the war of human beings against animals I've never talked about it that way before it's just an image that came up your spontaneously it's a secret war because it's going on all the time and it's invisible to the people who participate in it it's so much taken for granted as just part of the background violence of daily life here and now anyway I don't know I mean in the other side of it like in France now it's being debated this is only a debate it's not a law but it's been proposed that France could have a law just to make sure there are security cameras in every slaughterhouse I would love to see no it's only a bill so it's not too might not make sorry maybe I'm wrong but I daughter I checked into it like two days ago so you know it's been proposed but the law is and it's not a lawyer yet it's just an idea but you know I've always wondered but that it was something when you talking about the reality of the dairy industry whether it's the slaughterhouses of the other stages if you got a law passed that just made the industry more transparent if you have a law that allowed for example journalists to go in and film it anytime you know it got announced or with five minutes notice or something you know I maybe I'm still an optimist about human nature but I cannot believe that the majority of human beings in Canada would accept the reality of what that industry is they could just see it you know I maybe I'm still naive yeah I'm I babe I made my parents lodgers wings and they weren't faceplant they're like yeah that happens like get over it like I don't know how I came from them but yeah it's erotic towards animals my dad like I lived near the burlington pig slaughter house and he was laughing about 8,000 pigs being killed every day like yeah please don't give a [ __ ] and you're like oh I just taste good is nothing I mean it's weird for me though because you know my my objection is not really the violence or isn't to all violence what I hate about it is meaningless violence you know what I mean like if you're fighting a war and there's an objective to the war and you're trying to win the war and the war is over at some point you think okay this is violence but it's not meaningless there's a purpose as an objective and you know the war we're fighting against animals it's just a war every day that has no purpose and no positive outcome at no little paws bochum except for you know the kind of self-indulgence of I was going to say a small number of people but I guess it's the stuff of those in millions and nines people who feel that it's you know enjoyable eat bacon or whatever it is that to me is the part that's that's really so disgusting and they'll believe me I know particular Wars can be really meaningless I understand I understand nothing another thing or it's really meaningful are great but for me I you know I'm not uh not as as totally anti violence or aunt or pacifist as some of the vegans are you know there have been wars where you know the question is are you going to exist or you're not going to exist and you get a group of you have to fight for survival I really do relate to that innocence but my sense of horror at it might have to pay it forward is for the meat and dairy industry is the meaninglessness of that violence and the infinite scope of it so the plan is for this to go on forever it to me it's so inaccessible I just say you know um my father is not the deepest guy he's not the deepest rucksack in the shop but i can remember because you talking about driving in burlington of these areas but when he drove past what were then new factory farms for chickens and new factory farms for pigs were with Ashley a steel building you know he hadn't grown up seeing that he would always really really be shocked by that he just the sight of that how different that was from his idea of a farm from what farms looked like when he was a kid you know he was I could see he was shaken up by that you know I was just seeing the steel structure from the outside you know but you had some idea you could guess what was going on inside yeah my dad actually gives lots of friends that are dairy farmers or chicken farmers you he dug a what's it called foundation for like 10 sugar Barnes a couple years ago yeah if I just down the road from my house you can smell it in the cell right Cisco yeah yeah wasn't that the town where I was a small kid the water the local drinking water for humans was poisoned because of the lagoons for the pigs so you know what happens to the pig [ __ ] after they clear away the pig [ __ ] that was actually poisoning the water supply the humans relied on and you know I can't say nobody cares but I could say like everyone was making up different excuses for it you know we have that old saying in Canada this is like really canadian slang no smoke no baloney I know if you know that thing that's like yeah well you know the pigs are poisoning the water supply but no smoke no baloney that means like if you can't put up with the pollution you can turn any money you can't you can't put meat on the table this kind of thing you know and yeah my I would prefer to both have no smoke and no baloney yeah let's get rid of the meat on the table let's also get rid of the unbelievable you know rushing pollution in this stuff yeah uh you know God give me I just got an email from someone asking me why do you think so many vegans become misanthropes you know why do they develop this kind of age of your old man well when you regard everyone else on the planet or ninety eight percent of people as living in this kind of willful ignorance as making excuses for this you know unbelievable immoral ugly violent travesty every day of their lives you start to develop a pretty a pretty grim view of your fellow human and at the same time you know I still reach out to other vegans just because they're vegan I still try to stay positive and optimistic about these other crazy people I meet on the internet like oh you're vegan I want to be your best friend but as you know most I experienced other vegans is also pretty negative so I'm still like a try first I met my first bacon on campus this week it was pretty great oh oh but so what you don't count your boyfriend didn't you drag your boyfriend into being vegan or no no not really Oh drama he's asking me the other day he's like I would you know any like he's eating yogurt there be an end cuz this is the wood why like I'm just trying to be healthier are you are you handling be vegan not tell me you you gotta ask yourself how you're gonna feel about it too cuz i've been i've been talking to someone lately and she did drag her boyfriend into being vegan and her boyfriend was really really overweight like I think he was like 300 pounds and he dropped he lost like 20 pounds being when he became vegan but still he's got a lot of weight to lose he was like really really really heavy but ethically if you know your boyfriend only became vegan because you forced him to I'm like please don't be vegan because you think that I need you to be like be vegan because you believe in the ethics and morals of it like don't it liked or to yourself just because you think I need you to be like Road do it is because I I took me four years maybe get after watching Earthlings so like what I'm not gonna let I force him to do it it took me forever well right but then so what when you saw Earthlings were you like 14 or something like if you were pretty young when you became vegan yeah okay but that's that's different if you're 28 is different if you're 35 just saying like taking when you started 14 taking four-year this is kind of different
onto the start of podcast but this is really an edited excerpt from a much longer conversation I had with a younger vegan activist here on YouTube Adrian if you go back a whole year on this channel I was talking to her back when she was just starting University she was very optimistic about getting involved with vegan activist groups on campus and when we did this next interview a year later all that optimism is God so I hope she stays in touch with me I mean I always say this I'm really into this for the future of the movement and it's great to see people like Adrian struggling with the contradictions she got involved with a animal rights group that was not vegan and then she's having to look at oh my god these people say they support animal rights but they meet every day it'll make you feel old whether or not that kind of experience in vegan politics will actually lead you being more mature or not it'll definitely make you feel older and it was so great target Adrian again I guess I'll try to give a link below the video to the the conversation episode in the past because that is still here on YouTube you can check that out but we get to watch adrian get older and more experienced the more mature and hey i'm getting older and more experienced more mature two guys I am I've changed I've changed into thirds of town hopefully for the better look so in this spontaneous conversation that follows the next few minutes there's this evocative image that comes up I didn't have this plan to script it obviously but this image comes up where I contrast the type of violence we have in war of humans against humans and the endless pointless seemingly infinite violence of human beings against animals you know the ongoing slow-motion disaster that is the meat and dairy industry you know I just wanted to bring in here another image that I've talked about in terms of questioning effective activism recently on Twitter I made the comment you know vegans who want to imitate the type of street protest that we associate with the Vietnam War why is it so hard to realize that you're imitating failure you know I think it's a really interesting contrast to talk about the peace movement as opposed to the vegan movement and people like Gary frenzy oh and I do this although they do it I think in a very childish way they don't really think about it let me say something every single protest you've ever seen TV footage of of people protest against the Vietnam War was a failure the protest individually were a failure the movement as a whole was a failure the vietnam war didn't end until there was a geopolitical arrangement between China and the United States it was a negotiated settlement as part of the so-called strategic triangle involving China Russia and the USA every single protest against the Vietnam War that whole peace movement was a failure and I think you can measure it's a failure more than one way you can measure the different outcomes they were hoping to achieve but the most obvious being an actual entity NM war failed failed failed so you know veganism is different we can have a lot of small victories we can have a lot of small victories in the next 200 years before the big victory comes we really can live in a world where it is not normal to wear leather shoes anymore partly because leather is obsolete you'll need leather shoes we can I think within my lifetime we can switch from having a culture where eating meat is considered normal and necessary and healthy to a culture where generally people regard me as something unhealthy as something like cigarettes or alcohol or even if they think it's normal because alcohol and cigarettes are still normal where it's just perceived with that kind of odious awareness that you're doing something bad you know about yourself for the animals for ecology that it's unhealthy and unnecessary and you know an awareness that our culture is in a transition that does chief depth a nabol you know it's really it's not pie in the sky to say that we as vegans we can win to something worth waiting to something again but how are we going to get there it's not going to be through imitating the methods of the peace movement a peace movement that looking back at the last 20 years and looking back at the last hundred years has only failed and failed and failed right since September 11 of 2001 there have been peace marches all over the world there's been a peace movement all over the world you try to show me any sense in which it has been victorious so you're asking yourself what you can do in your community in your lifetime here and now don't imitate failure look at examples of social movements that sought to change the world and actually it had some success something we're talking about whether you look at regulations against seatbelts Mothers Against Drunk Driving community-based movements or it is a lot you can look at there's a lot to think about but that you know specific Wars come and go with tremendous violence against specific objectives but I mean the war of human beings against animals I've never talked about it that way before it's just an image that came up your spontaneously it's a secret war because it's going on all the time and it's invisible to the people who participate in it it's so much taken for granted as just part of the background violence of daily life here and now anyway I don't know I mean in the other side of it like in France now it's being debated this is only a debate it's not a law but it's been proposed that France could have a law just to make sure there are security cameras in every slaughterhouse I would love to see no it's only a bill so it's not too might not make sorry maybe I'm wrong but I daughter I checked into it like two days ago so you know it's been proposed but the law is and it's not a lawyer yet it's just an idea but you know I've always wondered but that it was something when you talking about the reality of the dairy industry whether it's the slaughterhouses of the other stages if you got a law passed that just made the industry more transparent if you have a law that allowed for example journalists to go in and film it anytime you know it got announced or with five minutes notice or something you know I maybe I'm still an optimist about human nature but I cannot believe that the majority of human beings in Canada would accept the reality of what that industry is they could just see it you know I maybe I'm still naive yeah I'm I babe I made my parents lodgers wings and they weren't faceplant they're like yeah that happens like get over it like I don't know how I came from them but yeah it's erotic towards animals my dad like I lived near the burlington pig slaughter house and he was laughing about 8,000 pigs being killed every day like yeah please don't give a [ __ ] and you're like oh I just taste good is nothing I mean it's weird for me though because you know my my objection is not really the violence or isn't to all violence what I hate about it is meaningless violence you know what I mean like if you're fighting a war and there's an objective to the war and you're trying to win the war and the war is over at some point you think okay this is violence but it's not meaningless there's a purpose as an objective and you know the war we're fighting against animals it's just a war every day that has no purpose and no positive outcome at no little paws bochum except for you know the kind of self-indulgence of I was going to say a small number of people but I guess it's the stuff of those in millions and nines people who feel that it's you know enjoyable eat bacon or whatever it is that to me is the part that's that's really so disgusting and they'll believe me I know particular Wars can be really meaningless I understand I understand nothing another thing or it's really meaningful are great but for me I you know I'm not uh not as as totally anti violence or aunt or pacifist as some of the vegans are you know there have been wars where you know the question is are you going to exist or you're not going to exist and you get a group of you have to fight for survival I really do relate to that innocence but my sense of horror at it might have to pay it forward is for the meat and dairy industry is the meaninglessness of that violence and the infinite scope of it so the plan is for this to go on forever it to me it's so inaccessible I just say you know um my father is not the deepest guy he's not the deepest rucksack in the shop but i can remember because you talking about driving in burlington of these areas but when he drove past what were then new factory farms for chickens and new factory farms for pigs were with Ashley a steel building you know he hadn't grown up seeing that he would always really really be shocked by that he just the sight of that how different that was from his idea of a farm from what farms looked like when he was a kid you know he was I could see he was shaken up by that you know I was just seeing the steel structure from the outside you know but you had some idea you could guess what was going on inside yeah my dad actually gives lots of friends that are dairy farmers or chicken farmers you he dug a what's it called foundation for like 10 sugar Barnes a couple years ago yeah if I just down the road from my house you can smell it in the cell right Cisco yeah yeah wasn't that the town where I was a small kid the water the local drinking water for humans was poisoned because of the lagoons for the pigs so you know what happens to the pig [ __ ] after they clear away the pig [ __ ] that was actually poisoning the water supply the humans relied on and you know I can't say nobody cares but I could say like everyone was making up different excuses for it you know we have that old saying in Canada this is like really canadian slang no smoke no baloney I know if you know that thing that's like yeah well you know the pigs are poisoning the water supply but no smoke no baloney that means like if you can't put up with the pollution you can turn any money you can't you can't put meat on the table this kind of thing you know and yeah my I would prefer to both have no smoke and no baloney yeah let's get rid of the meat on the table let's also get rid of the unbelievable you know rushing pollution in this stuff yeah uh you know God give me I just got an email from someone asking me why do you think so many vegans become misanthropes you know why do they develop this kind of age of your old man well when you regard everyone else on the planet or ninety eight percent of people as living in this kind of willful ignorance as making excuses for this you know unbelievable immoral ugly violent travesty every day of their lives you start to develop a pretty a pretty grim view of your fellow human and at the same time you know I still reach out to other vegans just because they're vegan I still try to stay positive and optimistic about these other crazy people I meet on the internet like oh you're vegan I want to be your best friend but as you know most I experienced other vegans is also pretty negative so I'm still like a try first I met my first bacon on campus this week it was pretty great oh oh but so what you don't count your boyfriend didn't you drag your boyfriend into being vegan or no no not really Oh drama he's asking me the other day he's like I would you know any like he's eating yogurt there be an end cuz this is the wood why like I'm just trying to be healthier are you are you handling be vegan not tell me you you gotta ask yourself how you're gonna feel about it too cuz i've been i've been talking to someone lately and she did drag her boyfriend into being vegan and her boyfriend was really really overweight like I think he was like 300 pounds and he dropped he lost like 20 pounds being when he became vegan but still he's got a lot of weight to lose he was like really really really heavy but ethically if you know your boyfriend only became vegan because you forced him to I'm like please don't be vegan because you think that I need you to be like be vegan because you believe in the ethics and morals of it like don't it liked or to yourself just because you think I need you to be like Road do it is because I I took me four years maybe get after watching Earthlings so like what I'm not gonna let I force him to do it it took me forever well right but then so what when you saw Earthlings were you like 14 or something like if you were pretty young when you became vegan yeah okay but that's that's different if you're 28 is different if you're 35 just saying like taking when you started 14 taking four-year this is kind of different