Q&A2 (Part 4) Unpopular Ethical Arguments and Democratic Pluralism.

yo what up I got two more questions from
my nearly infinite pile dealing this time with matters of vegan ethics and effective activism in a democratic contacts from two very different angles hiroki wrote to ask what I think about a current biotechnology the ethics of a current biotechnology that grow human organs within the bodies of pigs so technology of this kind has been around during my lifetime I remember when the first shocking images were in the newspapers of a human ear being grown on the body of a rat a lab rat and the current method is reported as scientists growing human organs inside pigs by injecting human stem cells into Pig embryos to produce human Pig camara embryos the purpose of this video is not to discuss in detail the science behind this method now Haruki sent this to me and he was anticipating correctly that I would respond to this with horror it is not a shocking new news story to me as I say technologies along these lines have been coming during my lifetime I have read about broadly similar things before although there are some details to this approach that are new new to me in 2016 but I think Haruki is basically asking the question shouldn't this be illegal because from a vegan perspective it is immoral now my answer may or may not surprise you based on how much you have been watching the videos on this channel on a very deep level I do not approach these matters in a dictatorial way I do not look at morality as something that one person should decide at one time as a dictator in the way that you know in the Catholic Church in theory the Pope can issue a writ the Pope can issue a resolution and this is supposedly infallible and true for all time thereafter now in reality that's not even how the Catholic Church works of course but on a very deep level I instead see a public morality as something that can and should be debated by large numbers of people and it open-ended an ongoing process even where I personally have a strongly held view so this partly relates the question of democracy and it partly relates to the philosophy of knowledge supported by Karl Popper call poppers a modern philosopher not an ancient one but Karl Popper you know put forward a theory of falsifiability of knowledge which basically there are many elements to it but one important aspect of what he had to say of a human knowledge is that it's important that we're honest with ourselves about why we believe things and what could prove us wrong so in this case you know this is the morality of exploiting pigs to grow human organs inside their bodies now it does seem to me that this crosses the line that this crosses every line that this crosses a bunch of moral lines I'd never even imagined to me that seems morally wrong uh from A to Z you know it seems completely immoral and unforgivable but I recognize the limits of my own knowledge I'm not an expert on this not at all I've read this much correct and there are other people who are experts and I recognize that even though my feelings about this are strong I could be proven wrong I could learn more about this someone could explain something about this to me that really changes my mind so I acknowledge the falsifiability of my own views that my views are not divine they aren't absolute they're subject to change and even if someone couldn't convince me of that today maybe in time the facts themselves will change like maybe in the next 20 years the nature of this technology will change in such a way that I could be persuaded although as they say even though that's hard to imagine I'm really insisting on on the importance that here but as I've already alluded to also I do not think of myself as the Pope neither of veganism nor of what law and morality should be in Canada nor what law and morality should be in the whole world I really think that there should be a public discourse where the people who are experts on this issue have the opportunity to convince me to convince my fellow rational human beings and were ultimately there's some kind of a vote to decide it now the ultimate example this especially in Canada you know is the question of the morality of abortion it's still debated in Canada but ultimately in Canada the morality of abortion but the reality of abortion was decided by a referendum so any time the government doesn't want to deal with it all they have to say is look we had a referendum you know the people decided and you know I do think the question can be asked repeatedly you can't have the same referendum every five years but whatever every 25 years if you want to you can have a referendum on that issue and it's certainly a wonderful luxury to feel that you live in a country where you respect the majority of voters enough that issues like that can be debated discussed and decided through a democratic club aside uh let's say you live in a country where the majority of people are devout Catholics do you believe that a referendum can decide gay rights you know you guys have already guessed we haven't heard me say a hundred times you know I support equal rights for gays etc I do but if I live in a country where that's a minority view what's the road ahead is the road ahead for an unpopular minority to seize control of the government and to force enforce legislation that's wildly unpopular with the vast majority of people or is there a road ahead that convinces the majority of the public look even though you may be a devout Catholic I need you to respect this as a principle of Human Rights that improves lives for your fellow man and that improves our society as a whole because there are many things that I may disagree with person I that nevertheless may improve society as a whole I another debatable example should gambling be legal or illegal for me personally I feel totally comfortable with gambling being illegal one hundred percent illegal I feel that way but I want to live in a society where that's not decided by one dictator by one people figure where it's not decided by one matter of principle handed down by a king or dictator for all time and I can recognize that I might be proven wrong you know maybe if people have real expertise that really studied the issue you know the social impacts of gambling maybe they can put together a very convincing argument that you know what there are there's harm and there are also benefits and that for us to all live together as a society really I should be tolerant towards gambling and that legalization of gambling is an okay thing for a sizable maybe I can be convinced of that maybe the majority of people in my society can be committed that but maybe that process has a kind of value that's more important than what I think or what you think um so I think those questions are really of tremendous fundamental importance even when I'm looking something as horrifying as growing human organs inside the body of a pig do I think it's morally wrong yes I think it's unforgivable I think it's an abomination but I don't think my opinion counts are much and I mean I think nobody on the planet should ever wear alligator boots again you know boots made out of the skin of value i just see no reason i see no moral justification for why that should exist there's no technological need for it there's no medical need for it there was no social benefit for it obviously by contrast there must be some benefit you know to human health to doing these terrible things to pigs right so I can't even get the majority of people to agree with me that we can get rid of something that is just created for vanity has zero practical use like alligator boots or ostrich boots killing an ostrich to make a pair of boots out of it when technologically there's absolutely no need for it there's no benefit publicly what have you so obviously there uphill battle were looking at whenever we look at questions of exploiting animals for medical research or for actual medical treatment so if you live in a society where fur and leather where you can't even convince ten percent of the population to abolish those things when there's no benefit you have to recognize you know the depth and the length of the struggle to getting getting people on your side and motivated to care about animal rights when respecting animal rights really will cost them something okay that's enough for that one uh so but effective activism and organizing vegans Mike on raw rights to ask me when we look at ways to spread veganism so sorry mike conroy he has his own youtube channel so that's not his real name that's its youtube channels name you can check him out he says when we look at ways to spread veganism ways to make a difference if there is a large group that already exists an organized group and that has a community that already have offices that already have organization and so on is there value for in trying to work inside the group and to help them become not only better as the group that they are but a vegan version of the group of they are so whether that's within mothers against drunk driving or let's say he doesn't give it an example what if it's a wilderness conservation society of forming a vegan as a vegan infiltrating an existing wilderness Conservation Society um instead of trying to set up your own thing now to be honest with you we're basically talking about a Western democratic political context here no actually I don't think that's going to be effective and I do think I mean you know we talked about this in a relaxed down to earth way on this channel right now but I also talked about on this channel the ways in which veganism is shocking and is emotionally disturbing for vegans themselves you know for your parents if your parents delete meat and they have to confront their own kid about these issues all of a sudden a video vegan is like we're being asked about veganism tears families apart husbands who divorce their wives / veganism exists parents who hate their kids and kids who hate their parents you know it actually is something tremendous acrimonious for a lot of us in our in our personal lives and it is such a fundamental question of ethics it does impact us at least three meals a day every day and it impacts the couch you're sitting on you know whether or not you're sitting on a leather couch whether or not you're wearing a you know leather wristband for your watch and all these small things I do think that the nature of the challenge to modernity posed by veganism is so fundamental and is so uncomfortable people to deal with that you cannot just slide into an existing wilderness conservation group like the Sierra Club or like the Green Party in Canada or Ducks Unlimited you know the wetland preservation I do not think you can just you know form a vegan cell within those organizations and expect them to move your direction I think you can set up separate vegan foundations and then collaborate with and cooperate with meat-eating foundations and the advantage of that of having a separate organization is that then the nature of the collaboration cooperation is explicit so you're writing down on a piece of paper look we appreciate that you guys do habitat conservation but you guys also engage in hunting and you guys also for fundraisers sell hamburgers and hotdogs p that may not sound like a small thing up but mean on a practical level you know if you join a group even it's a it's a cancer charity but there they are actually selling hamburgers as part of their fundraiser for you as a vegan can you participate in that you know what's wrong on so many levels you know it's bad for the animals you know it's bad for the people who are eating the animals you know it's bad for ecology the nature of the ethical karma is on a daily basis of being in a a meat-eating charity of any kind you know I again in the kind of cultural context we're talking about here no it is very very difficult for me to imagine that that working for everything from the fundraising to to the practice itself but if you do have a you know separate organization then I think the question of actually having explicitly written operation agreement where you talk to another group and say look we're vegan you're not we understand that we hope you respect our position here's what we have in common what we have in common is habitat conservation what we have in common is we're trying to improve the water quality in a specific river and we as vegans were really interested in the pollution caused by the meatpacking industry or by the you know animal agriculture that's on this river and you as a separate foundation you have some different priorities different agenda but we can cooperate on some issues it here it is I think that working that it explicitly can be tremendously positive but otherwise if you try to let it be it unstated and implicit issue where you're working inside another foundation I think the acrimony and the agony day-to-day is just going to be impossible and that's the sense in which veganism is an identity and it's like identity politics if we were talking about gay rights do you need to have a separate gay rights foundation or can you as a gay person work inside a homophobic organization an organization that I sell that may sound ridiculous back in the 1970s it wasn't ridiculous and back in the 1970s not that long ago the vast majority of the big charities were homophobic and often might have a stated rule that they don't employ people who openly admit that they're gay or things like that and may you know they may be charities accomplishing good things but that openly say they they made they have homophobic mandates homophobic issues uh obviously I mean some gay people did there were plenty of gay people in the closet who engaged in charity work in political work of different kinds inside homophobic organizations however you could never get those organizations to transform themselves into gay rights organizations that way no you needed to have separate self-identified gay rights organizations and as I've mentioned many many times lately often you had much more specific organizations not just gay rights in general a specific gay group a group of gay professionals you know it could indeed be gay architects who want to be out of the closet who want to be recognized as such even though architecture is not linked homosexuality but say look we want to have a foundation that gives us a voice makes us visible gives us a presence so it could be specific specific sexual minorities within gay rights movement but it could be specific professions specific special interests and you know there can be a kind of strength in the the cohesiveness and passion you have with those those highly focused organizations because again once we're into real activism there's no money involved there's no fame there's none of this BS that we have on YouTube motivating people to act the way they act and do the things they do okay guys another I hope useful discussion for some of you just answered two questions in 60 minutes thanks all for tuning in