FRANCE IS HELL (FOR VEGANS)

so I got a question from a patreon
supporter named James hey James what up I generally just use people's first names and not their last names in these interactions um James is asking a question that I'm both interested to answer and that I had many videos on in the past and that I probably should make new videos about in the future James is asking me about my life in France he says he did watch my video in the past called why I am NOT French that video it's really weird I've gone back and looked at that once that video was recorded during a really really bleak time in my life I think that was back when I was applying for jobs and hadn't found a job yet when it was really not clear if I was gonna be learning Japanese or Chinese or what I was doing in university and my career in this couple years but for a lot of reasons probably also you know my divorce and what-have-you I was really really down when I recorded that video and it shows that's a real like not even the content of what I'm saying but the tone of that and the last time I watched that video it did it well live-streaming this talking to people I was playing it was like wow like I was really really low when I recorded that video I thought God at some point I have to go back and do why I am NOT French version to you know cover that same material at twice the pace and like you know even if your talk even if you're telling a sad story you shouldn't really be sad while you're telling the story it doesn't it doesn't work on camera so well but yeah my experience living in France and attempting to become a French citizen and so on it's it's worth talking about it's worth reflecting on and of course positively and negatively my experience with France has shaped my whole life and will continue to shape the rest of my life it's still a big deal I really don't know I don't think my daughter is gonna grow up in France much but it's not impossible it's not impossible that France will be her her home and that I will have to be more involved with France the future I doubt it but it's possible so look James writes and asked to me he says since you're interested in replying to patreon supporters questions and not so many up and put to you recently because I already answered all your question great ever since I watched your video why I'm not French I've been curious as to how you survived as a vegan in a country that is so anti vegan and right he alludes to the fact that it's a little bit easier in Paris because there's so many foreigners in Paris as opposed to beyond the provinces whoo so look and he then asks how useful is it to know French is a language anyway ok yeah Frances help for vegans France is hell there is no point you know uh and one of the guys I knew in France he was a former employee of peda People for the Ethical Treatment he said pet as policy was that they really made a big effort to mmm you know promote peda within Germany promote veganism in places like the Netherlands Denmark but they felt that France was hopeless after years and years of experience of them trying to promote veganism and animal rights maybe that France is really especially hopeless the culture of taking pride in meat and cigarettes and alcohol and of being extremely defensive really offensive if anyone dares to question a lifestyle based on constant indulgence in meat and cigarettes and alcohol this this is like the national pride of France and this is a distinctive national characteristic now of course there are exceptions to the rule of course one out of a million Frenchmen have questioned and challenged this culture today tradition but that's what you're gonna deal with every day now why is it in the French context that I'm discussing meat in the same category as cigarettes and alcohol because I do think in that culture that's very much how they're received that meat is imagined as being one of the good things in life one of the indulgences one of the enjoyments and they will you know passionately defend a lifestyle that's not just incidentally about the enjoyment of the good things in life but a lifestyle that's really predicated that has its mean focus it puts at its center of gravity indulging in these these things even if it kills you like I think there's maybe no other country in the world where if you tell someone that you know eating meat causes heart attacks they will completely accept that and continue they have no interest you know because for them meat is in the same category as cigarettes and alcohol and they are deeply committed to justifying the destruction of their own body the destruction of their own mind etc under the heading of the enjoyment of life if the enjoyment of life entails suicide by a thousand tiny cuts they are down for it that is bedrock in French culture so you're never ever gonna make any progress in France with the health based argument now I mentioned this I think this isn't any thought I've told before maybe many times before I forget I went to one vegan event in France in particular what I've been called vegan at outreach or vegan activism whatever and you know what you heard from the French was after they had seen this kind of traumatizing documentary well what you say may be true but everything in moderation now the everything in moderation man sure in France means cigarettes and alcohol and meat seven days a week most likely three meals a day like well their idea of moderation is total self-indulgence all the time that is the French idea of moderation like the French idea of moderation is getting drunk during your lunch break while you're on the job but then having a cup of coffee before you go back to work to try to straighten yourself out like it is really I mean causes this is this is so I really grew up with questioning within Canada when I was a young a teenager what did people mean by balance what did people mean by moderation and what I found is that these are watch words these are meaningless meaningless watch words that people use not even to justify their indulgences just to distract you from it's like there isn't even a justification it's just a distraction it's like yeah well you know you're killing you know millions of animals and destroying the world's you caught ecology and you're destroying your own health yeah moderation answer any of those concerns yeah well you know like you know water pollution caused as a knock-on effect of the the median history yeah moderation it's just ridiculous but they they believe that I mean this is not a trivial or shallow problem in French culture this goes right to the bone so when you're living in France that's what you're dealing with and you know you're dealing with with a culture that is not incidentally anti-vegan it's profoundly committed to being to being anti vegan and I mean I got to see that from so many different angles including the hatred against myself my wife real hatred really worth saying as such from medical doctors and nurses from people in those positions where their assumptions about me and my wife because we were vegan it's not enough to say there were negative assumptions they hated us for being vegan and you know in one case I got to see a doctor flip where this doctor worked with us long enough to realize that we were actually rational and pro science and into empirical methods and [ __ ] it was [ __ ] despicable and like you know oh my god this is oh look this also relates to me so it's a whole different topic but the French culture of authority of authoritarianism and how medical professionals fit into that that's also a deep deep you know aspect to the culture their own you know respect for authority and disrespect for you if you're challenging Authority and you know I mean all the time we were meeting doctors doctors and nurses those types of people we're gardeners who said things that were considered true like maybe 70 years ago sometimes 50 years ago like what they were saying was legit medical science but 50 years at a date minimum you know and you know the science of nutrition really has changed but if you're talking to a doctor who is 50 years old who maybe you know who went to university 30 years ago um you know went to med school 30 years ago they were using a textbook that was published 30 years before that and their professor in the med school was 60 years old it is very easy to get into a kind of lag where you're meeting people who are experts but their expertise is lagging so far or behind and then again you combine this with this ultra authoritarian culture you know so have you just got a comment coming I'm live streaming want to record this David asks are you sure that this is French culture or is it more of a general Western culture I know many America that know David I do I do feel confident telling you this is really French culture I'm talking about and I'll give you a real simple example so in Canada we produce cheese our government takes taxpayers money to support the dairy industry so we can produce cheese our Canadians proud of their cheese no do Canadians have the delusion that cheese is what makes Canada great no in France you will literally meet people who believe that cheese that French cheese is what makes France great it's the national destiny and the national mission and it's what France is all about and that therefore the government to support you will meet people in France who really believe that some kind of advanced cured beef or you know foie gras foie gras is legislated as special protected national patrimony if you guys know foie gras is a type of duck fat that involves torturing the duck it's an especially brutal form of meat production and they so it's that's their alleged legislation government policy they believe that so no not everywhere is like France and I mean the French idea of democracy is very very different from the American idea of democracy even the French idea of a university classroom so in a French political science classroom cos Po there is no debate there is no Socratic method there is one man who gets to talk sitting at a table that's on a stage at the front nobody else gets to say a word and that's it it's a it is a purely top-down lecture that's how they teach political science now in the United States you know a stereotypical political science you know especially an advanced level course is gonna be this kind of [ __ ] American style workshop where people sit in a circle and the professor pretends that he respects the ideas of the students and the students all know that they should repeat back to the professor his own ideas you know both political science and Business School in the United States use a lot of round table formats and they talk about Socratic method and you know it's a bit hypocritical but still no it is very very different these aspects of French culture I'm talking about um so look at me and the other huge issue here this is the first thing I thought of when he asked about how hard is it to be vegan in in France dude hygiene hygiene [ __ ] terrible terrible in France the vast majority people of France have no [ __ ] concept that if they touch a dog they can't then touch food with their bare hands and sell it to you they'll drop things on the floor or on the ground outdoors and pick them up and eat them like when you do find vegan food like bread you don't want to [ __ ] buy it because it's been handled in such filthy conditions no no concept of the the germ theory of disease the biological reality that contact spreads germs and viruses so even when you do find something vegan if you're paying attention it's so goddamn filthy you don't want to eat that either you know so who the yeah it's heroin it's absolutely [ __ ] terrible how did I cope I bought chickpeas I bought you know not canned chickpeas dry chickpeas in a bag and every [ __ ] day I made my own hummus for myself and my wife and when I was there we eventually ordered protein in the mail vegan protein powder before that vegan protein powder came that was the most miserable [ __ ] time of my life I could not find anything that was vegan that contained protein at all in France I went through a really really rough time just eating bread was [ __ ] abominable it was just terrible sorry you know and also got to see this so I was in the South of France where it's hot but when we got there in winter they don't have fruit at a season they're not importing fruit and vegetables from North Africa and Spain let alone Mexico in the winter so like even the availability of fruit vegetables a lot of it like okay there are great grapes for one month of the year grapes or whatever example you want but then when in the winter when they're not in season because everyone's eating so much meat there's no market for it they're not they don't have that stuff so even that was shockingly poor when I when I got there in the winter on that trip I've lived in France and a few different time of being in France and a few different homes but really when I lived there and applied to become a citizen it was absolutely [ __ ] terrible and everywhere we went we were hounded and disrespected and treated like [ __ ] most memorably by medical doctors and so on but sure I mean like you know yeah sitting in a restaurant and paying to have [ __ ] flatbread with olive oil you know have pizza with no cheese on it is a ripoff and it's [ __ ] awful and that's about the only thing you can get in the South of France you can have them make you a pizza without any cheese on it so you know that's basically just flatbread but you're paying the same amount that someone else is paying that the same meal with meat and so you're getting just bread for $20 or whatever it's it's just [ __ ] awful and as is inevitable you know the tiny number of people you meet there who are vegan tend to be insane and you know you got to ask a vote nurture versus nature on that I know this is like an overused trope the nurture versus nature hypothesis but you wonder is was this person crazy before they became vegan or is this someone who became vegan but they're coping with this same [ __ ] horrible stress I got to cope with and it's driven them crazy or it's drawn out there you know that side of their personality you know what I mean you got to ask yourself that question when you uh you know when you meet those people and you know god damn I'm where I was in the South of France basically everything was infested with cockroaches not even complaining it's a beautiful part of the world but everything is infested with cockroaches I was in Perpignan near the border with Spain French Catalonia you know Catalan borders man if you're gonna live there and you I had a newborn baby I was a vegan but I was killing cockroaches cuz I don't want my daughter or my daughter plays on the floor you know she's a babe you crawls I would lay down clean mats and every day I would scrub and clean those mats you'd have a nice soft you know rubbery set of mats to play on a newborn baby I'm not gonna let I don't want cockroaches crawling on my baby daughter so I'm killing cockroaches everyone all the vegans I talked to they're all of them we're killing cockroaches we talked about it I mean it's a good it's an interesting type of conversation you know I'm vegan you're vegan you know we talked to all its the phases we talked about cat food there were vegans there who were buying cat food that was made out of meat and you know talk about how they feel about it they were vegans they're killing cockroaches I remember the one guy who opened a vegan restaurant really a vegan cafe you try to sit there but he was so [ __ ] crazy he would come out and lecture us like not even starting conversation like I'm sitting there with my wife and infant daughter just trying to [ __ ] relax and eat a vegan like a vegan tiramisu a vegan pudding and you know [ __ ] relax for five minutes as the parent of a newborn infant before I go back to my apartment and this guy comes out of the kitchen and just stands there Theodore table with a [ __ ] leaflet and is lecturing you about how there's scientific evidence that you know cockroaches are highly intelligent and then if you're really vegan you shouldn't kill khakha yeah I sympathize that guy that guy also he was doing the thing that you know you see some vegans on YouTube do but who's doing real like he really exercised a lot he was really muscular and when people came in and asked him like if you could be here with literally flex his muscles he would wear a tight t-shirt roll his t-shirt he said look I'm vegan and I'm really pumped up I wonder he probably was taking steroids I wonder I wonder if his behavior was so crazy because he was on some steroids and some you know testosterone booster or hormone that probably explains cuz his behavior was really erratic but he was he was he was in good shape he was a muscular guy he was a very lean very muscular guy still not good-looking life is unfair but yeah and you know whenever meat eaters would come into that restaurant of course they'd end up just feeling alienated and convinced that vegans are insane and the food was terrible the desserts were okay but the food was terrible anyway so yeah I mean look the other question here is is it actually worthwhile knowing French it is if you are Canadian and you want to get a job in politics or in the Canadian government so for me it's been a big big question whether or not you should learn French otherwise if you're from anywhere else the French know it their own language has become less and less useful and they especially resent that in exactly the part of the world I lived in for so many years in Cambodia and Laos Cambodia Laos in Vietnam were formerly French colonies and the French would like believe that French is still an important language there but of course it really is not so yeah we all got to make choices in life I talked to this guy recently it's we mentioned a few times he was doing humanitarian work in well around Syria so he was doing humanitarian work with Syrian refugees but just over the border fleeing from outside of Syria and you know was asking him you know are you really sure that Arabic is the right language you want to learn in terms of having a positive connection with veganism or a negative connection with vegans of connection to your own political interest and activism and so on and for anyone looking at learning French you would have to ask those same questions and as you will have gathered committing to learning French would be a very very difficult decision to make even for myself even for someone who has a past and present family connection to France and still to this day when I look at university options within Canada that say fluency and French require and I sit down and do the math and ask can I justify you know taking the time now to improve my ability in French language and the numbers just do not pencil it just does not make sense for me to make that commitment and try to pick up and improve French's language but we'll see guys if you stick with me here on patreon or watching my channel on YouTube you will get to see for yourself to what extent learning Chinese is or is not useful in the rest of my life and I will never know I may be able to look back and say how much different my life would have been or maybe how much better my life would have been if instead I'd put that effort into learning French