Veganism: Personal Purity vs. Politics.

I got a question from the illustrious
activist extraordinaire Joey carb strong I mentioned that in some my earlier videos I dealt with this issue of personal purity consciously and unconsciously shaping the way people approach veganism the way they preach veganism the way they organize engaging vegan activism and that in the past I'd made videos criticizing what he asked me where the videos were what the title the video was I couldn't find oh my god I got over seven hundred and forty videos on this channel I actually asked one of my fans I sent an email to one of my supporters on patreon asking do you remember where I talked about this he may get back to me may not but you know that's when it's time to make a new video on a topic even if you you think maybe it came up in a podcast maybe it came up in a conversation maybe it came up between minutes eighteen and thirty two in a two-hour long video I don't know but we're talking about it now this could be a relatively succinct it to the point video here with my girlfriend Melissa can you can jump in at any time your interest because you've never had this problem you approached veganism in terms of ecology first and foremost and you kind of weaned yourself off recycling and don't waste electricity model of veganism into uh you know activist based so that's totally different people approached it in a spiritual way I mean consciously and unconsciously some people come into veganism and they're not a way or I mean they may just have a background in Sunday school they may have been a mainstream Christianity and bring that into veganism they may have a background in mainstream yoga you know watered-down Hinduism for white people and bring that if it they're bringing in a lot of different presuppositions that may come in unexamined into how they think about veganism how they put it into practice how they try to achieve how do they try to either create a vegan movement on a small scale or a vegan world on a large scale or manage their own non vegan family and all these other challenges the pursuit of personal purity we encounter first and foremost through the refusal to buy things the boycott and the boycott mentality or huge part of veganism and it's really easy for people to just take you know the boycott of meat and dairy and then extend it to more and more things well at the same time the logic of purity is kind of internally extending further and further through the refusal to be morally complicit in purchasing or participating in any of these things or activities that would in a sense taint your soul taint your body taint who you are so I mean you know inevitably of course veganism involves the refusal to buy things I'm not criticising that in this video however it's very easy for people to in an unexamined way slip into saying okay I don't just refuse to buy dairy milk I also refused to buy palm oil well is there really a criterion that separates palm oil and palm oil plantations from rubber and rubber plantations and exactly the same climate impacting exactly the same animals including Iran's hands and various tropical birds and what have you if you cut down the forest to grow rubber including a latex rubber how is that different from cutting down the forest to grow palm oil either palm oil is vegan or rubber likewise either is or isn't vegan with by the same criteria right and I think there are some people even it's only a few watching this video who would say yeah they also refused to buy rubber they refused to buy car tires and they refused to buy condoms because they also regard rubber as immoral in the same way of course some people refuse to buy diamonds obviously in a sense diamonds are vegan in a sense referee unit says pavo's vegan but they're extending the same logic of the boycott the boycott mentality of the refusal to buy things outward further and further and is the logic of their own personal purity of them were meaning untouched by the type of moral compromise that is involved in mining diamonds farming and producing rubber or producing palm oil out of you know starting off with a forest we're presuming and clear-cutting the forest to grow to grow palm oil and then the the farming process thereafter all the fruits and vegetables we buy are produced through firstly destructing the destruction of natural habitat and then you know constantly maintaining a vigil where you kill potential and actual Verma animals that would come in and he you know eat whatever it is you're growing so on durian farms you know they do shoot monkeys here in the tropics here and said live here in the tropics so you know if you have a durian farm here and monkeys come over the fence and come in and try to eat your crops from durian farmers have to shoot monkeys more often feral pigs you know get into all fruit farms but including you know these chocolate and they shoot feral pigs so fruit farming in that sense directly they shoot large mammals of course insects rodents when you're talking about you know I mentioned this a million times I have a video called wheat hills and it's like well look wheat farming don't kid yourself people kill groundhogs and those kinds of mammals to produce it right so my point is here in an unexamined sense some people may present that as a purely political and ethical stance that they were extending their boycott further and further they may refuse to buy a cellphone because of the you know ethics of how the cellphone has many very understandable but nothing to do with veganism they refuse to buy one thing after another extend this up further and further what may or what they may not present overtly is that this is at the same time extending the the culture of personal purity where I am the kind of person who would never own the blank well I'm the kind of person who would never compromise in ways x y&z now you can read many books I've reviewed a couple of books that take this more starkly the puritanical and spiritual view there are some vegans room they're not in the closet about it they really do present this in religious clothing as a belief in their own personal purity I think maybe it's more difficult to psychological disturbing I mean another example I have spoken I years ago I have debated with a vegan who said that she opposed all pornography because she regarded men exploiting women in pornography this was her reasoning as completely equivalent to human beings exploiting cows in the production of milk now as a bizarrely sexist statement in its way but this is this is actually what I challenge to this I propose where I said Oh what about gay pornography where it's two men voluntarily filming themselves having sex so how was that equivalent to and she was stumped she had taken the logic of veganism she extended the logic of the boycott the boycott mentality and it seems I think there was a real sense of personal purity there cuz I saw her own writing that you know she was too pure to ever watch pornography or something and she had extended it several steps from rational into irrational and also I mean it is actually kind of philosophically profoundly disturbing what if what sets is this the same as a dairy cow being held in a steel cage on a concrete floor you know and in a shed where they never see the sky and living its whole life you know producing no fuming so it's a really bizarre it's the kind of uh yeah so in but look I'm saying honestly dealing with people face to face fellow activists fellow vegans people with with good intentions they do it's it's a kind of allegorical reasoning you know they take one principle that makes sense the core ideas of veganism and then they kind of look at other ethical political situations as allegory is for one another you know I'm saying that they construe a kind of parallelism between them and then before you know it you can't wear condoms you can't use rubber tires you can't cook with palm oil and you can't watch you can't even film yourself you didn't even feel yourself and produce you can't even do make your own photography you can't you can't you can't use wooden furniture yeah right good one yeah yeah so sit just sit on the floor you know that's for your own and again see this is your house which is obviously going to be made with materials that are problematic I'm like what right what are you gonna do live in a mud hut well you can you can become a Buddhist monk and live in a cave I've met Buddhist monks who live in caves so that really exists okay that really that's an option that's an option for you but right but this is how I challenge people I think some people they would present that they say yeah don't buy wooden furniture wooden furniture cuts down the forest and destroys app that kills the animals but would they argue that would they reason it in terms of personal purity would they say I'm too pure to sit on a wooden chair therefore I'm gonna sit on the floor or would they present that to you as if their refusal to buy wooden furniture really is a boycott really is impacting the outside world as it as if quote I am saving animals live as close quote I think the latter is a delusion for the former people think they're saving animals lives whether by refusing to buy palm oil or even by refusing to buy meat and they're not so that's gonna come up again in a future video where I deal further with Tobias lien arts book it is a delusion in a capitalist society if you and I refuse to buy meat actually the impact is that we make meat cheaper for meat eaters we simply lower the price that's fundamental principles of supply and demand a boycott doesn't the boycott of meat does not save animals lives it actually makes me cheaper for the people who continue to eat meat and that is it that is a profound and important issue within Buddhist surprised me within vegan dogmatix so this you with in Buddhist dogmatix too though I'm talking a lot about Buddhist ethics if you want to save animals lives you can climb a tree and get a can of a tree that's saving an animal's life but actually simply by boycotting means simply refusing to buy meat yourself even in our thousands as vegans we don't save animals lives but I would say the justification of saving animals lives of not cutting down the trees to make the wood you're kidding yourself it's self-deception the reality is you think you're too pure to sit on wood and you know I got I got love for all the players in the game you know what I mean I'm not here saying that I hate vegans for thinking this way I can sympathize it's a natural like I sympathize that mode of thought that says okay I'm not gonna buy meat therefore I'm not gonna buy palm oil it really is it is in the true sense or it's sympathetic to me I understand these are people trying to make the world a better place and they're trying to become better people themselves but becoming a better person yourself has to be linked to outcomes doing things that make it real difference in the world taking on responsibilities that do damage going to City Hall and you know actually writing new legislation has none of this aura of personal period about it but it makes a real difference in the world right and by contrast you may imagine you're making a real difference in the world and getting deeper and deeper into an ethic and an aesthetic of personal purity I mentioned recently when you buy airplane tickets they're killing animals if you want to you can refuse to ever buy airplane tickets again that's not making it positive the difference of the world if you care about outcomes you have to roll up your sleeves and make compromises you have to sit on wooden chairs and buy airplane tickets to get to City Hall to get to Parliament to get to the Senate to make that political difference that's gonna have real outcomes in the world if you want to be a better person and you want to have some ego about what you've accomplished that's fine but that can't be based on less and less it can't be based on reducing inward the scope of what you consume and I think you know expanding outward this illusion of your own of your own personal purity managed to blow your mind you think should stuff alright under 15 minutes it is what it is hitting me up on patreon hit me up on Twitter see me when you see me