Veganism: Mission & Mandate, Evil & Idiocy (vs. Joe Vegan & Vegan Cheetah)

if you guys have washed my channel in
the past you know one of the mottos I kind of live by here is that I try to make videos that are not just interesting short-term that are not just significant if you were to watch them today 2016 they'd still be interesting or meaningful if you come back and watch them five years from now 10 years now you don't know the short-term controversy that's going on and I try to make them in a way so that if I myself came back and watch them five years from now 10 years from now they'd still be interesting to me even though I've forgotten about the short-term conifers today the sense in which this backfires is when I later want to delete a video take it out of the few because then no one watched you know what I look back at that anything really no no but I talk about some meaningful stuff here there's some stuff you're at wanna I just wanted to leave that don't wanna lose you know mixed in with whatever the short-term controversy is so the short-term controversy I'm going to talk about in this video alludes to guys like Joe vegan guys like Martin Lewis guys like a vegan cheetah but there is also more philosophical broad question here that I'm going to couldn't address and a more tactical political question for the future of veganism um okay last things first let's let's deal with the really meaningful stuff first then we'll come back to whatever idiots like Joe vegan um message I have to share today with my fellow vegans my fellow aspiring vegan activist people who want with the world a better place is do not let veganism become the next Esperanto now you may now wonder what the hell would I mean by that if you go to Google Image Search and um you know you put in Esperanto conference you may see some images of conferences from around the world and they may look better than they may look more impressive than any vegan or animal rights conference you've been to or that you've seen images of you may think wow Esperanto has a lot going on i remember when i lived in cambodia they used to have a poster up for classes they were teaching trying to teach cambodian people how to speak esperanto it may seem to you like Esperanto is a tremendously successful social movement because it is we'll come back this in its foundation it has social political ass operations it's not just just the language but you can't lose sight of what the original mandate and the original objectives of Esperanto were so I wanted to state this up front the other thing to remember is vegans you know we feel sorry for ourselves a lot of the time not without reason we have reason to feel sorry for herself no nothing wrong with that being vegan can be hard it's hard if you live in Saskatchewan it's hard if you live in Cambodia I've lived in both places I can speak to both um but you know as much hard work as it is to get used to being vegan to get used to the discipline in terms of the diet and the lifestyle yeah how hard it is for me to buy shoes that fit me in China and do not have leather as a vegan yeah there are things there are things that are hard there are things that we feel sorry for ourselves about and there may be the conflicts with your family and the alienation from your friends and the social probes yeah there are ways in which being vegan is hard but it's interesting to keep in mind the obstacles involved mean vegan are miniscule compared to the obstacles involved in learning a language right so that's interesting comparison Esperanto is language Esperanto is a man-made artificial language so the level of investment you you have look let's say let's say you're not that interesting veganism let's say you're someone who really cares about ecology you're someone who really cares about the environment and you want to be serious with ecological politics so you just look at the unisom think I guess I have to be vegan for this reason like some people like that some people they're real interest is not animal rights the real interest is not veganism it's something else but they have to become vegan as part and parcel of their other aspirations in life I don't think I've ever met anyone who admitted that to me but it must exist them you know every possible combination and permutation human nature exists yeah if you were in that situation you have to say look the hurdles for getting involved with ecology via veganism are not that high you can do it you can throw out all the cheese in your fridge you can throw out your leather shoes you can make it work if you want to get serious about First Nations politics American Indian politics indigenous peoples politics if you have to learn a language like Navajo that's huge barrier if you have to learn a language like Cree like a jib way like mohawk I need the Iroquois way it's a huge barrier years of incredibly hard work in order to have any credibility to be involved and in the past I've given advice those who watch the channel for a long time is given advice to other people who are struggling with you know their own lack of legitimacy and trying to find a voice than veganism movement I've given them advice talking things look why don't you publish a children's book why you could record a song you could do anything positive any little bit of activism within veganism will get you you know the respect of and collaboration with an interest of other vegans and you start to get something positive for me so it's not that hard the barriers to entry here are not that high they're not that difficult um but Esperanto you know you have to look back at the original mandate for why this movement existed why it still exists and Esperanto was actually founded with the very lofty goals of world peace and the promotion of scientific progress now you may say oh well that's just ridiculous nobody takes that serious oh I don't know today maybe fewer fewer people do takes her submitted I don't know um but the point is Esperanto was not started to just be a fun language like klingon or Vulcan or elvish it wasn't supposed to be a joke it wasn't supposed to be used to language that people learned for fun the concept of Esperanto was found in Eastern Europe where there was intense racism there still is still as a lot of races in Eastern Europe and where a lot of the racism did break down or along linguistic lines at that time so in general you know Russians heated the Polish and Ukrainians hated the Russians and everyone was anti-semitic there was Andy you know so there was all kinds of different hatred against the Jews and of course there was a lot of hatred and fear of the gypsies the Roma etc etc so there were all these ethnic lines in Eastern Europe and some of them of course many of the borders in Eastern Europe had changed recently and continued to change so who was and who wasn't polish who was and who wasn't Estonian those things were changing there was a lot of intense ethnic and nationalistic a tree along ethnic lines the other part of the background Eastern Europe's history that you have to remember is that latin formerly had tremendous political and social significance there was one of the parts of the world where Latin was really really important so Esperanto was both trying to replace Latin in terms of the progress of civilization progress of science providing a lingua franca as we say for educated minds to exchange their views with in Eastern Europe organic made sense and it was also supposed to help bring about world peace supposed to overcome racism and that's amazing invidious hatred and it isn't interesting I mean if you think conceptually about an alternative history just for Eastern Europe well if Esperanto had succeeded than Esperanto would in places like Poland and the Ukraine Ukraine where there is currently a war 2016 as an intense war being fought in eastern Ukraine with very real body count variable costs in terms of millions of dollars etc etc you can imagine that Esperanto might have really provided an alternative to Russian and English and today those are the lingua franca they're the dominant language with the options you've got for communicating across those boundaries those barriers the barriers between Ukrainian and polish between I guess you know Jews and anti-semitic people with the the Roma and what have you so Esperanto it wasn't a ridiculous idea at the start but you got you got mission creep right if that was the point of Esperanto world peace the progress of science a new lingua franca at what point do you recognize this is a failure the people I've met and spoken to cleaners people over the internet who defended Esperanto defended in the following terms oh well you know when you go on vacation in Western Europe if you know Esperanto you can meet people you know like through couchsurfing and other websites you can meet people who will meet up with you and have a beer and people who will let you stay at their house like you know it's this social networking thing it's not the point it's not point of Esperanto right the point is not for it to be like Klingon or elvish is not for it to be a hobby right and if you've already given up all of those goals all those objectives if you're at that point where you've sacrificed the entire mission and mandate of Esperanto and it's just something cool and funny that you can do over social media it's not just become meaningless it's worse than meaningless right because you're asking people to sacrifice hundreds of hours of their lives for something's really worse than nothing I have you might you might as well learn going on at that point um this happens in veganism two and half as veganism in a short span of time you know there's a guy who's channel i can still shout out I I shouted it out when nobody had heard of it I showed it and promoted a guy called vegan mojo when nobody heard him when he had only ten viewers because his channel it just started I had a couple videos up I can still promoted next last time I checked he was only getting like 200 views per video on his more recent videos which is you know said but for me one of the distinctive things about vegan mojo you know whatever you can criticize him everyone's nobody's perfect everyone's deserving criticism but you know in his early video something he said so clearly and I heard him say it again lately is that his objective is to create a vegan world you know of course there are a million ways to phrase it I'm not saying that's the best but doesn't matter a million ways to phrase it but he would criticize other forms of activism things like direct action everywhere date different forms of street protests different forms of extremism and different digital vegan activist on YouTube people like freelee the banana girl he would criticize musim is this going to contribute to our goal or long-term goal or mandate of bringing about a vegan world and there I mean you know that kind of question ok so is Esperanto the way to create world peace or the progress of science are both because they were packaged together at one time is Esperanto the way to pursue world peace today in the Ukraine today in Poland today in Cambodia so I actually seen it promoted in Cambodia if not we got to change our plans we got to think strategically glad I think tactically we got everything this whole project and otherwise it becomes a joke right with veganism similarly if you do not have some clear mandate of that kind for what you're doing even if you're making comedy videos even if you're making music videos you know you have to question it or you have to change that because or you even have to we identify what is your doing maybe you gotta stop being vegan first and foremost and join an ecological movement or human rights based movement or some other potent I don't know the most fundamental problem I have with these other channels like Joe vegan and lately vegan cheetah maybe he'll change I think they really do lose that mission and mandate they lose that sense of why they're doing this or why any of this matters you know like Esperanto veganism ends up becoming this meaningless hobby that just happens to be why people are brought together on the Internet why people happen to be connected by these social networks and that becomes a platform for some pretty meaningless content now yes there's money involved yes there's popularity involved yes there is sexuality involved I mean vegan cheetah and NGO vegan something else they have in common is they both by their own description of very low levels of education I mean this is from you know this stuff in their videos obviously they're both guys have talked to to some extent but you know Joe vegan openly talks with the fact that he never had a chance to go to university etcetera etc now look um okay let's take the books out of the shot here um there are a lot of things you can get out of an education I'm not here talking about some kind of elite the Science Center notion of education one of the things I really learnt and saw through formal education but you could get it informally you could get it by hanging out at a comedy club you know I did actually spend my time around actors and playwrights and artists and sculptors and one of the core concepts you get out of having an education in the arts which neither these guys have like you know Joe vegan doesn't have it cheetah doesn't have it some like Martin Luther said they do not have an education in the arts you know pandering to your audience is not morally neutral it's not the default mode of behavior it's actually something horrible joerger [ __ ] had something bad in the earth and you understand that the fact that this is what your audience wants to hear isn't a justification for anything it's the opposite if you're an artist the whole point is to understand what it is your audience wants to hear and then to subvert that and challenge that expectation to use that as raw material to make something original and brilliant and surprising and challenging so people like Joe vegan I might as well you're still Jovians the example when they tell me oh well look man you know I'm sorry I say this to my audience but this is an audience once the air from from his perspective that really is a complete explanation of justification and from minus the exact opposite if your audience wants to hear that my court case is a scam and now you're willing to fabricate evidence and ignore the evidence I provide you and just you know avoid talking to me so that you can elaborate this myth rather than deal with reality and again we're not just saying what comedy resemble what he's factually speaking for himself and so this isn't just you know a poor justification is this him actually in daiting himself from my perspective from every start it's like okay so you don't understand what this game is about at all if you're going to tell me that you don't your excuse for this is that your parents when Joe vegan insults me and my experience University which did hurt me which did bug that I told him that openly and his justifications oh well this is what people want here and again he wasn't doing this in a comedy video it's like dude you you don't understand the game and you don't understand what what winning and losing it's like in this game now look one of the things I'm notorious for is that I tell people after they've proven to me that they're idiots after they've proven to me that they're incompetent after they prove to me that they have malice after they've proven to me they're dishonest with me which all of this is true jovian by the way after they've proven to me that they're never going to do anything positive for veganism the future or that's my expectation if they surprised me that's great is that I tell them look I'm never going to talk to you again so a number of youtubers have complained about this you should be asking the exact opposite question if you're on social media if your micro famous doesn't matter you have 500 viewers doesn't matter if you have 500 viewers you still don't have time to talk to 50 of them you're still making a choice who is worth your time who are you going to communicate with who are you going to collaborate with if you have just 500 followers or fans or viewers whatever you want to say you're still making that choice all the time we going to shut down are you going to bring on for your podcast you're going to interview who are you going to even write email to it's still quite decision you make every day no matter how tiny your your level of microfilm is the question is not why would I tell these people and if you fall in channel you know exam why would I tell these people never talking to you again the question is why did I ever talk to them okay I always knew Joe vegan was an idiot I always knew vegan cheetah wasn't it yet and most of the chant most of the videos i had on vegan sheet are now unlisted from this channel their unlisted or deleted because i don't want to promote the guy but I had him on we did podcast together we did video interviews together I made videos responding to the fact that people accused him of being racist and homophobic and you look it was never a mystery to me that that guy was an idiot right any of these people that a lot of the people I make the time to communicate with I know are idiots all right the question isn't why at some point when they proven to me that they have malice and said or why did I cut them let's not quick questions why did I ever get the chance why did I ever put in the time and i'll tell you why right now it's something called generosity of spirit generosity of spirit I mean you know it's out of fashion to speak this way I'm an atheist I'm not a number of any religion I don't think of these as religious values okay generosity of spirit means I don't judge you by who you are I don't judge you about what you've done in the past I don't judge you as good and evil I judge you in terms of your potential to do something positive in the future that's as generous as I can possibly be when I first met vegan cheetah he had fewer viewers than I had which is amazing i have a small channel talk about specialized topics were specialized i'm not going for a mass audience he was getting fewer viewers that i got even though he was already a bodybuilder and he had all the photos up of him with his shirt off and he was doing all kinds of crazy editing stuff but i had a bigger audience than need it so it was no self-promotion in that why would i make the time to talk to someone who was already known ex-convict you know long-term drug addict in and out of rehab obviously an idiot obviously you know someone who engages and dishonest trolling to try to get attention you know even back then he'd done that kind of stuff why would I engage with some of that because of this fundamental generosity of spirit I'm it's what I meet people I say I'm not going to judge you about who you are i'm not going to even judge you about what you're doing now not about what you've done in the past now what you're doing now i am going to judge you by your potential to do something positive in the future and that's why I reach out all these people I've reached out to vegan Ava there is no doubt in anyone's mind that she's a [ __ ] that she's dishonest that she acts with malice that she's acted with malice towards myself personally saying unforgivable things about me and my family and my daughter and my divorce my personal life and of course about my legal case all right I have even reached out to her positively because even she has some potential to do something positive in the future so that's the standard I use when I reach out to people and my standard is low alright so that's why I made the effort with people like Joe with people like cheetah whatever but at some point you know with each of these people I've reached out to and I can mention others and I know I'm infamous for this phrase I'm never going to talk to you again but that's the truth that's the Cole you make basically at some point they drop below the threshold where me talking to you is a waste of my time compared to me talking to a complete stranger on the Internet including you know any of the people who are currently in the chat i'm recording this with live chat going on right that's the end you know what some positive things come from talking to complete strangers in the internet of this one a complete stranger I've now been talking for about two months a vegan don't have that much in common have sense of humor in common find each other's jokes funny that human I don't know anything about this person but you know ok I think you've got some potential to make something positive happen in the future and you know we tend to think of ethics and morality in terms of what's selfish versus what's selfless but this is beyond that concept of good and evil this is not about that it's about your potential to do good in the future being more important than your real record of doing harm in the past