The Image of the Ringing Bell.

hey what's up this is a brief by my
standards video in response to a comment on YouTube the content of this is not gonna come as a shock to anyone who's been familiar with my channel for say one year maybe not even for one month but it's an interesting comment and my reply really I think reflects the kind of funny background I have in Buddhist philosophy and how that continues to in some ways enrich my involvement in the political discourse here on vegan YouTube as veganism takes its first faltering steps towards being a real political movement okay Matt blender writes to me and says quote whenever I would here freely enduring writers say quote we helped them so much and they are just ungrateful how dare they go against us close quote I would just cringe I personally was inspired by freely to go vegan and I'm thankful I found her but that doesn't mean I over anything even if she shouted me out and helped to increase my subscriber count or my view count I would be grateful that she did that but that doesn't mean I'm now forever indebted to her and can never criticize her I felt the same way when vegan last called a vegan cheetah just because they were friends doesn't mean yes to enable his bad behavior he needed a reality check and he took that as a betrayal period I don't get it period I've only seen a couple of Jax videos but I found to be confusing not really having any sort of direction and definitely desperate for views close quote I'm gonna read my reply but you know I'd also say those are things I can sympathize with I can sympathize I mean that's why I wanted to have jack on my channel so I wanted to promote him and do a YouTube do do a Skype conversation with him and post on YouTube as a as a podcaster what have you um you know I think that's probably true that he is lacking direction and his desperate reviews um you know but I'm not necessarily gonna be sworn full or hateful towards him for that that's that's kind of a human human understandable human reaction to being marooned in the situation he's in because he bought himself a plane ticket to paradise he got there figured out paradise wasn't at the other end of that plane - anyway I think he is in a tough spot in terms of his transition away from the cult-like subculture within veganism and hopefully he makes a transition to be engaged with a more meaningful durable part of this vegan thing we got going on all right here is my reply as I as I wrote to Matt blunder there's an image of a ringing Bell the fact that a bell wakes you up in the morning or alerts you to a fire saves your life or suddenly changes your direction doesn't mean that the Bell knows something you don't know and it doesn't mean that you should respect or revere the Bell in fact it doesn't even mean that you should trust or rely on the same Bell again I think that many many people had a sense of gratitude toward freely or other vegan personalities who happen to play the role of the ringing Bell in alerting them to the reality of meat consumption etc so like I said the intro that really comes straight out of my background and put its philosophy taking that image and putting that forward that way um I really wanna say above that this is what people ask me all the time these might laughter fake no it's completely sincere I'm laughing all the time at the absurdity of my daily life at the what's become normal in my life but yeah part of what makes my life so absurd is that I am someone who made a transition from having this kind of deep background in Buddhist philosophy Buddhist textual study etc etc to now playing the role of one of the you know clowns in the chorus clamoring for uh you know cultural and political change towards creating some kind of vegan society on any scale I would settle for a small town in Michigan going vegan okay which what do you want um but you know for sure this reflects the the practice I had have said recently that you know even my experience running a blog gave me practice for dealing with what I'm dealing with now on YouTube definitely my education in parliamentary democracy and political science and politics that such prepared me for I'm doing on YouTube but it's also kinda interesting that once in a while the discourse and debates that went on within Buddhist philosophy and within Buddhism as a religion prepared me for answering this kind of question so yeah the fact that the Bell woke you up in the morning the rain Bell saved you from fire burning your house down doesn't mean that you owe the Bell the sense of gratitude of fealty and obviously this has to do with in case you don't know it has to do with the role of gods in Buddhism in Buddhism they do believe in God's plural roughly similar to ancient Greek pillar plurality of gods but they don't actually revere the gods in the way that Christians do nor even in the way that the ancient Greeks do because there's a sense that the gods don't know anything that human being wouldn't know and they definitely don't know anything that they don't know the special things that the Buddha knew and that the Buddha came came into this world to to teach blah blah blah