The Black and White Issue.
15 July 2016 [link youtube]
People often presume that a problem is black and white "in theory", but more murky in practice: in this case, I argue that some issues (that arise when putting political ambitions into motion) are actually more black and white in practice than in theory.
At one extreme, some vegans describe the cause as if it eclipsed all other moral concerns, and all other humanitarian ambitions; disillusioned with this, some vegans instead discuss veganism as if (1) it were morally equivalent to any other ambition (to make the world a better place), and (2) as if meat-eaters engaged in humanitarian work were equal to (or even superior to) vegans attempting to do the same job.
Youtube Automatic Transcription
black and white video for a black and
white issue shout out to the only vegan ice cream substitute in China that I know of this is accidentally vegan this is basically like a popsicle that's made out of mushed up rice and sugar water I've never seen that before in Taiwan or Hong Kong but we have it here in unn so regard that with some interest sorry if you guys can hear the sound of construction from outside of my window I hear that twenty-four-seven beautiful downtown kunming china um look this is supposed to be a short video but it's actually but a huge issue huge issue ethically but also huge issue just in my own life I was watching a vegan cheetahs you now broadcast a few minutes ago and you know cheetah was reflecting on something that for him is very real and I relate to why it's real for him but i think really shows the lack of real world experience he has with humanitarian projects with taking political ambitions and putting them into action and it also reminded me very much of a conversation at recently with one other vegan just via skype uh cheetah was saying that he doesn't feel that veganism is any better than any other human rights issue he was saying that there are questions of human rights such as black lives matter such as children starving in africa such as choose your tier jerking example and he felt that there are good people who are not vegan people who eat meat what have you who are trying to make the world a better place by engaging with any of those issues political issues human rights issues etc and that it's ridiculous for vegans to think that they're morally superior to those people I talked about this with a one of my fellow vegans over Skype someone who doesn't have a youtube channel and that fellow vegan she had up being kind of out of the workforce for a few years taking care of a child she's a she's a parent and she said something similar with a different set of examples a different sort of focus and emphasis but she was like cheetah she was reacting to the kind of ridiculous ego trip that some vegans seem to be on in thinking both that veganism is the answer to all ethical political questions that veganism is the only way to make the world a better place and the notion that vegans as individual people are innately morally superior to someone who eats meat but who may be tackling some very serious problem in the world what I said to her then it's actually similar to what i have to say duh to the cheetah now I think you have a lack of of real-world experience and thank you you've met whether it's because you've been out of the workforce for a few years we haven't dealt with this type of issue for a few years you've forgotten or you haven't seen firsthand the way in which questions of veganism overlap in the workplace in the field in practice with any other humanitarian potentially may have and sometimes just makes that other humanitarian pretension into a complete joke let's say you're involved with humanitarian work in Laos Cambodia or Thailand I'm choosing examples that you guys know or close to my own heart close to my own past work experience is there a difference between having a crew of 20 men set down in a small village part of a humanitarian project let's assume this is the most basic indisputable form of humanitarian aid possible they're going to this village to help alleviate poverty and starvation so you got 20 guys one of them's an architect one of them is a specialist in plumbing you got a bunch of guys who do agricultural reform you know whole bunch of specialists whole bunch of people willing to work and lend a hand somehow you've already done the fundraising raise this money ok do you think it has an impact a significant impact if all 20 of those guys at the end of their days work immediately go to drink alcohol and visit prostitutes as a huge impact and I'm sorry to say this is not really a hypothetical example if you have real-world experience in third world development I hate this use the word development but that's that's what people call it in poverty alleviation projects and humanitarian work yes the simple issue of whether or not the employees of your charity are going to the brothel or visiting prostitutes this can have really dynamic consequences on the target community or visiting whether it's a small town you know a small remote town where there's the total population is small or even if it's a big city in the major cities of Southeast Asia like you know VN Chen the capital city of Laos or put on pen you know there were in effect whole whole neighborhood's dominated by you know the Lords of poverty by people who had gotten rich from united nations programs from you know international NGO programs people who are employed by charities of various kinds sometimes including christian charities and their lifestyle choices shall we say in terms of luxury in terms of food in terms of wine in terms of women had a massive impact on and transformed whole parts of the city and it is odious and it does in many cases make a joke out of what's being done with the rest of the donors money so I myself was in projects where in terms of the budget I would be getting paid next to nothing because I live there permanently I'm getting paid you know three hundred dollars a month one thousand dollars mother getting paid next to nothing and there'd be someone flown in for the project so someone will be paid to fly from Paris to pinole penh cambodia and stay in a hotel the hotel costs 200 US dollars a night so the cost of that flight and the cost of putting that person hotel is enormous compared to my salary and its enormous compared to the money actually being given to poor people the money actually going into delivering the outcomes that the project is supposed to be pursuing there have been many books written on this subject I myself was the editor editor and ghostwriter for a very interesting book on the subject you know there has been a lot of research on this on aid effectiveness and measuring real-world outcomes for humanitarian projects but I'm coming by at this point the ethics of the actual individuals involved apart from the disbursement of the budget has a huge impact yes it matters whether you've got 20 guys who are all going to the bar to get drunk after work or all going to the brothel or if you have people who regardless of their paycheck Rose so much money they're being given really take seriously their ethical commitment to the project and its goals 24-7 a huge difference and people in that line of work will say things to you and said things like this to me if you engage in a critique of what's going on in that industry those say things like well what do you expect do you expect us to live like Buddhist monks and I was in the minority of people who could stare them back right in the face and say have you ever tried living in a Buddhist monastery the reality is there are Buddhist monks who do humanitarian projects there are Buddhist monasteries that are more luxurious than this room I'm living in right now I myself have met and interviewed one Buddhist monk who was running a charity a legit NGO charity that charity wasn't helping the poor it was helping AIDS orphans so children whose parents had died of hiv/aids you know he lived in a Buddhist monastery he was a real Buddhist monk the only real collaboration yet he had some support from his mom and he used that Buddhist monastery as his home and his office and he collected donations and gave tours to visitors and showed them his project he was kind of trying to build like a little village where these kids could grow up you know a series of buildings um these kids whose parents had died but in most cases of the parents knew in advance you know for a couple of years aids would kill them relatively gradually they know they were going to die so they could make arrangements for their kids as orphans so very sad very difficult situation totally legit NGO charity and he lives like a Buddhist monk what do you want he sleeps how much they pay etcetera ah ah so you know this kind of cynicism as if it's inevitable that because you're a project manager for a charity you should be drinking imported wine eating imported cheese eating steak going to nightclubs going to brothels living this kind of ludicrously luxurious life in the midst of third-world poverty it really is an open question now obviously this has been a long intro to talking about veganism the impacts for eating meat are in many ways much more real and much more non-negotiable than the impacts for people you know drinking alcohol or visiting prostitutes I just want to say I have other videos telling this I am NOT sex- and actually I think anyone who does the real research will see that most countries to take a middle path on prostitution are taking a more effective path and prostitution is something that's inevitable it's existed in every society in history of the world I think we do ultimately need to have a tolerant attitude towards prostitution however you know when you're literally a you know a charity employee in a third world country and I've written some essays I can post links to you know it's Christian charity in northern Laos getting teenage girls pregnant and then you know arranging illegal abortions and so on you know it gets things get murky quick uh you know at a minimum you talking about a conflict of interest anyway my point is I'm not entirely sex- I'm not entirely intolerant towards these things but the contrast between the pretensions of humanitarian intervention and what actually happens with those money and what the employees of charity I should do with it can be extremely unseemly now I've said this perform this channel I have been in small towns in Laos where I was there as a charity employees an NGO workers someone with humanitarian pretensions and the impact of just five people eating steak every day you can see the environmental impacts okay you can see the blood in the river you can see the corpses the animals being chopped up at the market you know if you're talking about a project with 20 or 50 employees yes the impact in a small town in a third world country of those people eating meat is something you see day in and day out and in the big city you can kid yourself about it a bit more you see the ecological back you don't see the animal actually having its throat cut the way you do in a small town because I've seen it I've been there but yes you know there is a big difference between having a charity project where those people are really mindful II thinking about the consequences of their action for the environment for the animals etc etc 24-7 where their sincerely committed to make you pause the difference in the world and a group of people who you know the minute the clock strikes five when they're when their shift ends are going and eating you know steak frite or whatever real sorry both the both padam padam V enchant have a lot of French restaurants or French style restaurants people who are cutting the throats of a cow on daily basis this brings up a memory of a particular essay that i read on this topic from a guy who was not vegan but a guy was pointing out with a particular charity project a community a project in cambodia this group of people who are all you know Europeans white white Westers various kinds they were supposedly going to help this community and he suggested he said look in this community this remote poverty stricken town in cambodia when they're going to start a project when they're going to get people motivated when they're going to announce something important in the town what they do is buy a water buffalo and ritually slaughter it and share out the meat among the community they do that that's their tradition for different types of important announcements important decisions made by the by the town mayor or by the town chief I think that town had a chief instead for the community as a whole so we said look you know the way to announce this project the way to get the community the real community on side is to do this is to pay a few dollars by a vile water buffalo and publicly execute it uh and the response from the other people i think we're mostly French in this charity project was complete horror and they their excuse for not doing this was that that would be a waste of the project money that donors had not donated the money for that reason but he pointed out in his essay all the things they did spend the money on that included literally you know wine and cheese were they had wine cheese and beef you know they're killing a cow anyway but those were only attended by wealthy elite people in the capital city none of the members of the community they were supposed to helping were there and the real cost of these you know kind of wine and cheese events these kind of hobnobbing events that were for the employees of the charity basically to celebrate their own wealth and privilege and to liaised with you know employees in the United Nations or other international charities what have you uh this also is not what the donors donated money to you for right and you know for me of course what stood out there is the point that you are killing cows anyway um in the real world context of trying to make a difference politically through charity work through NGOs through activism what have you I'm sorry but I think if people like cheetah really had that experience of seeing that incongruous contrast between the pretensions of trying to help people and the bloody reality of people indulging in eating meat on a daily basis I find that much harder to cope with and much harder to negotiate with then being part of a charitable project where the other people are sleeping with prostitutes depending on where you are prostitution may be legal it may not be illegal they may have the legal right to do that I remember on one of my projects it was a charity NGO type of thing there was another guy who worked me every day and I noticed he was going a bit crazy for some reason you know I didn't want to know about his personal life but later I was told after he quit the job you know yeah that guy he just destroyed his marriage he had a long-term well we had a wife and she left him because he had taken up with a prostitute and it wasn't merely casual prostitution apparently he had he had paid for this prostitute to live to move into an apartment he had not just been casually dabbling prostitution we had gotten seriously involved in a relationship with with the prostitute now that guy was kind of bad at his job at a number of different ways uh you know I mean he had other other feelings in life uh you know but even though I may have my own animus against prostitution some of you watching this channel will be sex positive feminists who regard prostitution is a very positive or normal part ciety some of you are conservative Catholics who regard prostitution is very negative despite what it says about prostitution the Old Testament whatever your personal take on that issue is the reality is it doesn't have the same kind of you know lamentable irreversible effects that we see every day from the meat and dairy industry and I know the meaning dairy industry is so enormous that it seems like you can ask the question what difference will one person make or what difference will 20 people make or what difference will 200 people make but that's not the point the point is the change has to start somewhere and I'm asking it to start with you and the reality is if you live in these countries Thailand Laos or Cambodia the prostitution industry is enormous it's so vast that anyone there would be within their rights to say well what difference will too two more people make or 20 more people or 200 people this is a multimillion-dollar industry with huge numbers of people involved but if if I'm the executive in a charity it's not business the charity's about helping people I think I do have every right to turn to my employees and say even if this is legal even a prostitution is not illegal I'm asking you to sign a code of conduct if you take this job that you're not going to engage in prostitution that you're not going to be a client or or prostate yourself that you are you are going to remove yourself from this equation because if we are charity workers if we're taking donors money when pursuing this mandate make the world a better place I have to ask where is the change going to come from if I can't ask this of you who can I ask it from the the guy who's 70 years old and retired you know the sex tourist you know the guy the guys down at the nightclub with a drug dealer on the corner no I'm asking it of you because you're supposed to be better than this because you made a decision to make the your career you said this was your passion I'm asking you to answer to a higher moral code than the bare minimum of what you know the law allows you to do with your life and yeah I mean veganism it is one of those things in principle I really can sympathize with where cheetah was coming from on this issue I really sympathize the extent to which he's disillusioned with the [ __ ] in the vegan community and as I mentioned this other person this this woman I've talked to on skype who's been raising a kid for a couple of years but out of the workforce I understand from a purely theoretical perspective why they would say for example someone who was a hunter someone who eats meat and hunts animals but who is really a committed conservationist who's really committed to Deep Ecology let's say why someone like that maybe from their perspective just as morally good as a vegan pursuing the same goals but in practice when you're in that village when you're seeing that animal having its throat slit when you're seeing the blood pour into the river when you're seeing the cow [ __ ] ruining the village the places the children would play making life terrible for human beings as well as terrible for the animals whose life is torture from the day though from the day they're born till the day they die when you're there in that context just like this sort of impalpable question of what do you do when work ends yes it matters if you're a drunk yes it matters if you're a heroin addict matters if you're if you're going to the brothel even if you have that right when we're pursuing those kinds of outcomes when we're answering to some kind of higher moral code all those things matter matter tremendously and you know they matter because of who we are they matter because of who we become and they also matter because of those immutable outcomes they have in the real world and you know a lot of you guys think I'm a jerk and that's cool I own it all right and in the charity industry a lot of people thought I was a jerk because I didn't go to the brothel I didn't go to the sports bar I didn't drink alcohol I didn't compromise in many ways I lived more like a monk then those other people in that industry but man as the years go by the ultimate victims of the permanent vacation lifestyle are the people who are on vacation themselves and the ultimate victims of the alcohol and the prostitutes and the life of self-indulgence are the people who are indulging themselves because boy five years go by that way and a guy like me I may be a jerk but I'm hitting the books I'm learning I'm suffering I'm looking for a way to make a positive difference in the world any way I can all that process I go through changes Who I am even if it doesn't change the world or even it changes the world and only a tiny way and the other people the people who are saying what difference will it make what difference does it make if we won more steak what if differences make of a one more pot of yogurt or one more one more piece of ice cream that's made out of a cow's tit instead of rice milk you know the people say what difference does it make the difference that it makes is you homeboy because after you've been doing this for five years or ten years you've come to resemble everything you despised you've become that [ __ ] scumbag in downtown vientiane or downtown padam pen and I've seen them some of them work for the United Nations some of them work for the EU some of them work for United States aid doesn't matter some of them work for that Catholic Church straight up okay you've been corrupted by your own [ __ ] humanitarian pretensions and see what you will eating food is something you probably do at least three times a day it's an ethical decision you make the changes who you are and changes the world around you at the same time and I'm sorry I thank you people including cheetah who's a friend of mine if you get out and have more that real world experience you'll you'll feel more of that fire that I'm trying to share with you right now you'll feel more that contempt for people who try to have it both ways people who try to wear that crown of making the world a better place but they themselves are not trying to be better people they're not true trying to do the best they can and in 2016 if you ask me is being vegan an ineluctable element of being the best person you can be of trying your best and doing the best you can you're damn right it is
white issue shout out to the only vegan ice cream substitute in China that I know of this is accidentally vegan this is basically like a popsicle that's made out of mushed up rice and sugar water I've never seen that before in Taiwan or Hong Kong but we have it here in unn so regard that with some interest sorry if you guys can hear the sound of construction from outside of my window I hear that twenty-four-seven beautiful downtown kunming china um look this is supposed to be a short video but it's actually but a huge issue huge issue ethically but also huge issue just in my own life I was watching a vegan cheetahs you now broadcast a few minutes ago and you know cheetah was reflecting on something that for him is very real and I relate to why it's real for him but i think really shows the lack of real world experience he has with humanitarian projects with taking political ambitions and putting them into action and it also reminded me very much of a conversation at recently with one other vegan just via skype uh cheetah was saying that he doesn't feel that veganism is any better than any other human rights issue he was saying that there are questions of human rights such as black lives matter such as children starving in africa such as choose your tier jerking example and he felt that there are good people who are not vegan people who eat meat what have you who are trying to make the world a better place by engaging with any of those issues political issues human rights issues etc and that it's ridiculous for vegans to think that they're morally superior to those people I talked about this with a one of my fellow vegans over Skype someone who doesn't have a youtube channel and that fellow vegan she had up being kind of out of the workforce for a few years taking care of a child she's a she's a parent and she said something similar with a different set of examples a different sort of focus and emphasis but she was like cheetah she was reacting to the kind of ridiculous ego trip that some vegans seem to be on in thinking both that veganism is the answer to all ethical political questions that veganism is the only way to make the world a better place and the notion that vegans as individual people are innately morally superior to someone who eats meat but who may be tackling some very serious problem in the world what I said to her then it's actually similar to what i have to say duh to the cheetah now I think you have a lack of of real-world experience and thank you you've met whether it's because you've been out of the workforce for a few years we haven't dealt with this type of issue for a few years you've forgotten or you haven't seen firsthand the way in which questions of veganism overlap in the workplace in the field in practice with any other humanitarian potentially may have and sometimes just makes that other humanitarian pretension into a complete joke let's say you're involved with humanitarian work in Laos Cambodia or Thailand I'm choosing examples that you guys know or close to my own heart close to my own past work experience is there a difference between having a crew of 20 men set down in a small village part of a humanitarian project let's assume this is the most basic indisputable form of humanitarian aid possible they're going to this village to help alleviate poverty and starvation so you got 20 guys one of them's an architect one of them is a specialist in plumbing you got a bunch of guys who do agricultural reform you know whole bunch of specialists whole bunch of people willing to work and lend a hand somehow you've already done the fundraising raise this money ok do you think it has an impact a significant impact if all 20 of those guys at the end of their days work immediately go to drink alcohol and visit prostitutes as a huge impact and I'm sorry to say this is not really a hypothetical example if you have real-world experience in third world development I hate this use the word development but that's that's what people call it in poverty alleviation projects and humanitarian work yes the simple issue of whether or not the employees of your charity are going to the brothel or visiting prostitutes this can have really dynamic consequences on the target community or visiting whether it's a small town you know a small remote town where there's the total population is small or even if it's a big city in the major cities of Southeast Asia like you know VN Chen the capital city of Laos or put on pen you know there were in effect whole whole neighborhood's dominated by you know the Lords of poverty by people who had gotten rich from united nations programs from you know international NGO programs people who are employed by charities of various kinds sometimes including christian charities and their lifestyle choices shall we say in terms of luxury in terms of food in terms of wine in terms of women had a massive impact on and transformed whole parts of the city and it is odious and it does in many cases make a joke out of what's being done with the rest of the donors money so I myself was in projects where in terms of the budget I would be getting paid next to nothing because I live there permanently I'm getting paid you know three hundred dollars a month one thousand dollars mother getting paid next to nothing and there'd be someone flown in for the project so someone will be paid to fly from Paris to pinole penh cambodia and stay in a hotel the hotel costs 200 US dollars a night so the cost of that flight and the cost of putting that person hotel is enormous compared to my salary and its enormous compared to the money actually being given to poor people the money actually going into delivering the outcomes that the project is supposed to be pursuing there have been many books written on this subject I myself was the editor editor and ghostwriter for a very interesting book on the subject you know there has been a lot of research on this on aid effectiveness and measuring real-world outcomes for humanitarian projects but I'm coming by at this point the ethics of the actual individuals involved apart from the disbursement of the budget has a huge impact yes it matters whether you've got 20 guys who are all going to the bar to get drunk after work or all going to the brothel or if you have people who regardless of their paycheck Rose so much money they're being given really take seriously their ethical commitment to the project and its goals 24-7 a huge difference and people in that line of work will say things to you and said things like this to me if you engage in a critique of what's going on in that industry those say things like well what do you expect do you expect us to live like Buddhist monks and I was in the minority of people who could stare them back right in the face and say have you ever tried living in a Buddhist monastery the reality is there are Buddhist monks who do humanitarian projects there are Buddhist monasteries that are more luxurious than this room I'm living in right now I myself have met and interviewed one Buddhist monk who was running a charity a legit NGO charity that charity wasn't helping the poor it was helping AIDS orphans so children whose parents had died of hiv/aids you know he lived in a Buddhist monastery he was a real Buddhist monk the only real collaboration yet he had some support from his mom and he used that Buddhist monastery as his home and his office and he collected donations and gave tours to visitors and showed them his project he was kind of trying to build like a little village where these kids could grow up you know a series of buildings um these kids whose parents had died but in most cases of the parents knew in advance you know for a couple of years aids would kill them relatively gradually they know they were going to die so they could make arrangements for their kids as orphans so very sad very difficult situation totally legit NGO charity and he lives like a Buddhist monk what do you want he sleeps how much they pay etcetera ah ah so you know this kind of cynicism as if it's inevitable that because you're a project manager for a charity you should be drinking imported wine eating imported cheese eating steak going to nightclubs going to brothels living this kind of ludicrously luxurious life in the midst of third-world poverty it really is an open question now obviously this has been a long intro to talking about veganism the impacts for eating meat are in many ways much more real and much more non-negotiable than the impacts for people you know drinking alcohol or visiting prostitutes I just want to say I have other videos telling this I am NOT sex- and actually I think anyone who does the real research will see that most countries to take a middle path on prostitution are taking a more effective path and prostitution is something that's inevitable it's existed in every society in history of the world I think we do ultimately need to have a tolerant attitude towards prostitution however you know when you're literally a you know a charity employee in a third world country and I've written some essays I can post links to you know it's Christian charity in northern Laos getting teenage girls pregnant and then you know arranging illegal abortions and so on you know it gets things get murky quick uh you know at a minimum you talking about a conflict of interest anyway my point is I'm not entirely sex- I'm not entirely intolerant towards these things but the contrast between the pretensions of humanitarian intervention and what actually happens with those money and what the employees of charity I should do with it can be extremely unseemly now I've said this perform this channel I have been in small towns in Laos where I was there as a charity employees an NGO workers someone with humanitarian pretensions and the impact of just five people eating steak every day you can see the environmental impacts okay you can see the blood in the river you can see the corpses the animals being chopped up at the market you know if you're talking about a project with 20 or 50 employees yes the impact in a small town in a third world country of those people eating meat is something you see day in and day out and in the big city you can kid yourself about it a bit more you see the ecological back you don't see the animal actually having its throat cut the way you do in a small town because I've seen it I've been there but yes you know there is a big difference between having a charity project where those people are really mindful II thinking about the consequences of their action for the environment for the animals etc etc 24-7 where their sincerely committed to make you pause the difference in the world and a group of people who you know the minute the clock strikes five when they're when their shift ends are going and eating you know steak frite or whatever real sorry both the both padam padam V enchant have a lot of French restaurants or French style restaurants people who are cutting the throats of a cow on daily basis this brings up a memory of a particular essay that i read on this topic from a guy who was not vegan but a guy was pointing out with a particular charity project a community a project in cambodia this group of people who are all you know Europeans white white Westers various kinds they were supposedly going to help this community and he suggested he said look in this community this remote poverty stricken town in cambodia when they're going to start a project when they're going to get people motivated when they're going to announce something important in the town what they do is buy a water buffalo and ritually slaughter it and share out the meat among the community they do that that's their tradition for different types of important announcements important decisions made by the by the town mayor or by the town chief I think that town had a chief instead for the community as a whole so we said look you know the way to announce this project the way to get the community the real community on side is to do this is to pay a few dollars by a vile water buffalo and publicly execute it uh and the response from the other people i think we're mostly French in this charity project was complete horror and they their excuse for not doing this was that that would be a waste of the project money that donors had not donated the money for that reason but he pointed out in his essay all the things they did spend the money on that included literally you know wine and cheese were they had wine cheese and beef you know they're killing a cow anyway but those were only attended by wealthy elite people in the capital city none of the members of the community they were supposed to helping were there and the real cost of these you know kind of wine and cheese events these kind of hobnobbing events that were for the employees of the charity basically to celebrate their own wealth and privilege and to liaised with you know employees in the United Nations or other international charities what have you uh this also is not what the donors donated money to you for right and you know for me of course what stood out there is the point that you are killing cows anyway um in the real world context of trying to make a difference politically through charity work through NGOs through activism what have you I'm sorry but I think if people like cheetah really had that experience of seeing that incongruous contrast between the pretensions of trying to help people and the bloody reality of people indulging in eating meat on a daily basis I find that much harder to cope with and much harder to negotiate with then being part of a charitable project where the other people are sleeping with prostitutes depending on where you are prostitution may be legal it may not be illegal they may have the legal right to do that I remember on one of my projects it was a charity NGO type of thing there was another guy who worked me every day and I noticed he was going a bit crazy for some reason you know I didn't want to know about his personal life but later I was told after he quit the job you know yeah that guy he just destroyed his marriage he had a long-term well we had a wife and she left him because he had taken up with a prostitute and it wasn't merely casual prostitution apparently he had he had paid for this prostitute to live to move into an apartment he had not just been casually dabbling prostitution we had gotten seriously involved in a relationship with with the prostitute now that guy was kind of bad at his job at a number of different ways uh you know I mean he had other other feelings in life uh you know but even though I may have my own animus against prostitution some of you watching this channel will be sex positive feminists who regard prostitution is a very positive or normal part ciety some of you are conservative Catholics who regard prostitution is very negative despite what it says about prostitution the Old Testament whatever your personal take on that issue is the reality is it doesn't have the same kind of you know lamentable irreversible effects that we see every day from the meat and dairy industry and I know the meaning dairy industry is so enormous that it seems like you can ask the question what difference will one person make or what difference will 20 people make or what difference will 200 people make but that's not the point the point is the change has to start somewhere and I'm asking it to start with you and the reality is if you live in these countries Thailand Laos or Cambodia the prostitution industry is enormous it's so vast that anyone there would be within their rights to say well what difference will too two more people make or 20 more people or 200 people this is a multimillion-dollar industry with huge numbers of people involved but if if I'm the executive in a charity it's not business the charity's about helping people I think I do have every right to turn to my employees and say even if this is legal even a prostitution is not illegal I'm asking you to sign a code of conduct if you take this job that you're not going to engage in prostitution that you're not going to be a client or or prostate yourself that you are you are going to remove yourself from this equation because if we are charity workers if we're taking donors money when pursuing this mandate make the world a better place I have to ask where is the change going to come from if I can't ask this of you who can I ask it from the the guy who's 70 years old and retired you know the sex tourist you know the guy the guys down at the nightclub with a drug dealer on the corner no I'm asking it of you because you're supposed to be better than this because you made a decision to make the your career you said this was your passion I'm asking you to answer to a higher moral code than the bare minimum of what you know the law allows you to do with your life and yeah I mean veganism it is one of those things in principle I really can sympathize with where cheetah was coming from on this issue I really sympathize the extent to which he's disillusioned with the [ __ ] in the vegan community and as I mentioned this other person this this woman I've talked to on skype who's been raising a kid for a couple of years but out of the workforce I understand from a purely theoretical perspective why they would say for example someone who was a hunter someone who eats meat and hunts animals but who is really a committed conservationist who's really committed to Deep Ecology let's say why someone like that maybe from their perspective just as morally good as a vegan pursuing the same goals but in practice when you're in that village when you're seeing that animal having its throat slit when you're seeing the blood pour into the river when you're seeing the cow [ __ ] ruining the village the places the children would play making life terrible for human beings as well as terrible for the animals whose life is torture from the day though from the day they're born till the day they die when you're there in that context just like this sort of impalpable question of what do you do when work ends yes it matters if you're a drunk yes it matters if you're a heroin addict matters if you're if you're going to the brothel even if you have that right when we're pursuing those kinds of outcomes when we're answering to some kind of higher moral code all those things matter matter tremendously and you know they matter because of who we are they matter because of who we become and they also matter because of those immutable outcomes they have in the real world and you know a lot of you guys think I'm a jerk and that's cool I own it all right and in the charity industry a lot of people thought I was a jerk because I didn't go to the brothel I didn't go to the sports bar I didn't drink alcohol I didn't compromise in many ways I lived more like a monk then those other people in that industry but man as the years go by the ultimate victims of the permanent vacation lifestyle are the people who are on vacation themselves and the ultimate victims of the alcohol and the prostitutes and the life of self-indulgence are the people who are indulging themselves because boy five years go by that way and a guy like me I may be a jerk but I'm hitting the books I'm learning I'm suffering I'm looking for a way to make a positive difference in the world any way I can all that process I go through changes Who I am even if it doesn't change the world or even it changes the world and only a tiny way and the other people the people who are saying what difference will it make what difference does it make if we won more steak what if differences make of a one more pot of yogurt or one more one more piece of ice cream that's made out of a cow's tit instead of rice milk you know the people say what difference does it make the difference that it makes is you homeboy because after you've been doing this for five years or ten years you've come to resemble everything you despised you've become that [ __ ] scumbag in downtown vientiane or downtown padam pen and I've seen them some of them work for the United Nations some of them work for the EU some of them work for United States aid doesn't matter some of them work for that Catholic Church straight up okay you've been corrupted by your own [ __ ] humanitarian pretensions and see what you will eating food is something you probably do at least three times a day it's an ethical decision you make the changes who you are and changes the world around you at the same time and I'm sorry I thank you people including cheetah who's a friend of mine if you get out and have more that real world experience you'll you'll feel more of that fire that I'm trying to share with you right now you'll feel more that contempt for people who try to have it both ways people who try to wear that crown of making the world a better place but they themselves are not trying to be better people they're not true trying to do the best they can and in 2016 if you ask me is being vegan an ineluctable element of being the best person you can be of trying your best and doing the best you can you're damn right it is