New Values: Politics, Personhood, Meaning of Life.
30 September 2017 [link youtube]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
but whose yen no ask yourself really to
keep his cool he did an excellent job throughout the whole conversation I can't find any fault with him frankly uh the audience really got restless and he's got offended you know they were really challenged by this in a way they weren't expecting to be challenged in this conversation if there's a disaster some people are running away from the disaster and some people are running toward it now why are they running toward it yes in part it is simply because they believe they can make a positive difference they believe they can try I don't want to be one of the people running away but of course this is only in small part due to the possibility that I can make a positive difference with many of these problems the enormity of them is so great that anyone can say as an objective fact maybe I can't make any positive difference or the positive as I can make is very very small whether we're talking about vegan politics First Nations W the most fundamental value I have shaping this whole direction this whole side of my character that links me to both research and humanitarian work and issues as diverse as Cambodia and the Kree in a jib way in Canada the most fundamental value I have under this heading is of wanting to take responsibility even if I can't there's no way that I or you or anyone can take responsibility for the history of the British Empire and the terrible decisions they made in how they've handled Canada's indigenous people the Cree the edge where the den a the Mohawk the airflo okay there's it's it's actually impossible for me to take responsibility for that but I want to it's impossible for me to take responsibility in any sense for the daily atrocity the unbelievable moral obscenity of factory farming we've had this cultural development over hundreds of years that led up to the current stainless steel perfection of the meat and dairy industry right there's no way I can take responsibility for it but I want to and I want you to as well I want you to try a bonus Yin [Music] uh-uh new yen politics gets interesting politics gets really really interesting when we're no longer talking about differences of opinion we're no longer talking about contrasting factual claims but we're talking about differences in the values I just had a wonderful conversation with a guy named to ask yourself that lasted many many hours the name of his YouTube channel was ask yourself his name is Isaak Brown and he's now a full-time youtuber supported by his YouTube revenue and by donations on patreon now at the first mention of this some of my longtime viewers and supporters will be asking did we talk about racism and we did at Great Lengths and without either party becoming uncouth or hostile we had a very polite meaningful and enjoyable discussion about racism including the racism of some of my fellow youtubers Cory McCarthy and Tara McCarthy and that's gonna get mentioned here really as kind of a segue to what I want to talk about in this video it's not the main theme or not the main point of interest that I'm here bringing up and summarizing we did discuss I also want to put in a disclaimer for most of this part of the conversation Isak aka ask yourself isaac was really playing playing devil's advocate or playing a sort of traditional role in Socratic methods correct dialogue in large part he was not stating his own convictions he was stating views that were opposing the mine in such a way that would draw out implicit assumptions caused me to more fully define what my position is and why that's my position or what actions are consequences my policy positions might entail again totally um you know polite and frankly fascinating conversation one of the best conversations I've had in years and I reached out to a lot of people here through vegan YouTube so I really can credit for that and I thanked him extensively the other conversation however what I don't want you to do in the audience watching this video I don't want you to try to impute any opinion to Isaac on the basis of what I'm saying here basically I'm just somewhere and what I said and a large part of what he said even if it is getting some rise from pension here it was really just him playing devil's advocate and playing this Socratic dialogue sort of role so don't jump to any conclusions about what his own political views are on these or any matters from this particular video in - wave if you think this video was too long the actual conversation I had with ask yourself 100 for hours and hours include an amazing range of topics including our views on the ever-popular unnatural vegan we just proposed it was gonna have a debate with my experience the natural vegan and for him the conversation probably started around 2:00 a.m. and ended closer to 8:00 a.m. it wasn't just the me it was a whole room of people but for several hours it was him and I talking directly and continuously I by the way I was actually working out I was outdoors I was running up and down the side of a mountain a mountain here with stairs on side I was getting exercised so I was often out of breath whose answered his questions it was great conversation it made my day quite simply alright so the part of the conversation gonna summarize did indeed begin with my challenging him and him challenging me on the question of to what extent his friends cuz he is personally friends with Cory McCarthy and he's spoken at some length with Tara McCarthy so to what extent his friends Cory McCarthy and Tara McCarthy are pro genocide or indeed racist in the garden-variety sense of the term racism now I introduced you know some kind of facts for his consideration this is not just a matter of opinion examples of things they've said on YouTube that he was unaware of so again before we get to the discussion about values sort of this earlier phase what we're dealing with merely matters of fact an opinion within the realm of political theory or political science just mentioned I think one of the deeper differences between myself and Isaac is that he really does think of matters in terms of abstract ideals first and foremost and I think of things in terms of abstract ideals last and least and this may not be obvious if we're talking about something we we agree about my veganism or the future the vegan movement or something or even what's what positive things can we do in the next couple of months for the future the vegan boom because we did talk about that kind of stuff brass tacks practical stuff he was starting with putting together a vegan round table and we talked through some of the issues and options concerning that um but to give a specific example when the conversation progressed from overall questions of racism may be primarily white versus black racism when it progressed on to racism against First Nations status of indigenous people in Canada the criative with the den a he asked me repeatedly you know maybe two or three times what was the ideal situation I wanted you know what was the final end point or outcome what was the goal or you might say what was the utopia he did not use to work like utopia but he said okay well what you know what is it you want what is the position you're tending towards as a as an outcome as and he did use words like ideal you know what is it ideally you'd want and I never answered that question I mean if you're looking at this from a political science perspective you notice I didn't ever answer that question by talking about the ideals I was in pursuit of I would answer by giving a particular example of a real-world problem that I wanted to solve and you know you could criticize me by saying my perspective on these issues is just one of crisis management is just one of pragmatic short-term particular changes I want to make and not one of an idealistic objective or utopian goal or what have you you know maybe that's a criticism that has some has some teeth as some pertinence resum say oh yes look at my views but I think on a deeper level this shows it shows a real difference between my way of thinking in his and of course I am much older than him with much different experiences in life although we both started off in southern Ontario Canada so who knows maybe as the years go past maybe he'll come a little bit further over to my side again I don't really mean about any issue but in the procedural way he thinks about some of these political issues concision is in large part the art of a mission so I'm not summarizing the whole conversation here and I probably could I probably could go through it blow-by-blow because we just had this conversation within the last couple of hours and I am cursed with a good memory it is a curse sometimes you can be haunted by overly accurate memories in this life I think it drives some people mad but at any rate again don't assign any of this to him he probably would have a different summary from his perspective but jumping had several stages in the conversation there was a really interesting turning point and before we got to this turning point already I was really framing the whole conversation in a way that put indigenous peoples issues first and foremost that's partly because that's sincerely what I care about I wasn't gonna engage in this conversation about race and racism within the North American context United States and Canada as if black and white are the only issues the issues that matter to me a lot or the Cree in the den a and the Aegean the Inuit etc etc and also for me in large part it's about language and culture not about race and ethnicity so these are values I bring into the conversation to some extent steer the way the conversation went uh it was a turning point when I mentioned a video that he had never seen a video in which taro McCarthy had a map of the United States America behind her in the video a color-coded map she managed to get a map from US Census data that showed the United States break broken up into a bunch of very small squares and it showed where black people lived and where there were the fewest black people with who was an absolute white majority etc so what percentage of the different districts in perrault's the United States is black and in this video Tara was explaining her reasons and what-have-you for why she and her husband they wanted to live in an area with the fewest possible black people that was their position now I mentioned this I was raising this of course my overall point here was either were willing to call these people racist ie racist in their policy positions racist in their most of you or I think we are getting into a semantic argument where racism is being defined so narrowly that it becomes meaningless or indeed laughable you might think that in this conversation we were already talking about personal values in a sense we were but not since I mean here and now this is really the turning point in the conversation where it went from really being matters of fact and matters of opinion being shared by the two sides to matters of personal values where this is no longer a debate this is no longer an exchange of objective factual information where you're not I'd certainly was not trying to convince the other side of anything we're no longer talking about things we're talking about who we are and who we aspire to be why we are the way we are why we think the way we think why we feel the way we feel why we have in the past undertaken the actions and decisions we did and in the future why we're likely to make those same choices that's when we cross this bridge into real questions of personal values Isak challenged me on this point the point of why taro was sitting there with this color-coded map United States talking about our color-coded perspective and where she was gonna live that she was planning to avoid living around African Americans he challenged me in the fun way he said is it or is it not possible for a person to make that decision without any racist inclination or any racist motivation he asked is it or is it not natural necessary inevitable that people would choose a neighborhood with a lower crime rate that they would choose a neighborhood with better schools they would choose a neighborhood where they could have an easy and comfortable life and right off the bat I respond to him I completely understand the point you're making Isaac but this is where we profoundly differ on the level of personal values and now we're gonna switch into talking about that so I was even during the conversation I was really aware of this shift where now I'm just talking about Who I am and why I am this way and the differences between me and him there's nothing to win and there's nothing to lose because I said to him no I found ly disagree with you about this although I can understand those motives and I said to him in a sense Isaac what you're doing is defending racism by indicating the extent to which racism can overlap with so can coincide with cowardice laziness and the desire to have a luxurious easy life and of course in some cases maybe people are not racist maybe it is purely those other motives cowardice and a lack of interest in making the world a better place solving social problems or engaging or even seeing social problems some people want to live in a gated community behind a high wall where they don't ever have to see poverty let alone try to solve the problem ameliorate the problem or what-have-you and I'm not one of those people oh I said to him he was using the example of you know would I or would I not be willing to move to Compton he said I can do you one better why do you think I moved to Cambodia now what do you think you know what's more dangerous really I mean I know Compton has a reputation for come on let's get real you know you're talking about a scenario which he did talk about he did raise what about providing my own daughter with an education and I was able to use not abstract examples but very real examples from my own life I said look what I was dealing with first nations whether you're talking about urban neighborhoods that are majority First Nations or if you're talking about reservations remote rural communities those of shockingly high unemployment rates shockingly high crime rates terrible education system much much worse than Compton believe me I mean Compton you know it's a great ladder in terms of being able to move up in the social hierarchy compared to the the you know baleful lack of opportunities that you find on some of the worst Native reservations in Canada or indeed just urban neighborhoods in Canada that are our majority First Nations really really terrible conditions really hopeless conditions and again with very high side what pardon me very high suicide rates very high glue huffing rates and so on attached that overall hopelessness that set in and some cases you are looking at a district that literally has 90 percent employment I've looked at some some examples like that so I mean the situation with First Nations much more bleak and much more extreme than asking me for example if I would be willing to move to Compton or I'd be willing to raise my daughter in Compton the specific scenarios I put myself in in Cambodia and in northern Laos again much much more extreme and I laughed on points that don't you realize people in Compton speak English like what do you think would be harder for me moving to Compton or moving to the border area between Laos and Myanmar at a time when there's still ongoing civil war low-level civil war on both sides of that border yeah I don't speak the language I'm struggling for words like what do you think and Nikki was really shocked and again with this transition from just talking about politics to really talking about personal values I really noticed a shift in how the how the audience was engaged to they were really challenged by this in a way that they were not challenged at all by the conversation we're having previously so he started asking questions like well he was sincerely interested in her stay in my position he was asking me things like what would I be willing to go and live in Somalia you know why or why not what what was the explanation for why I as a person would prefer to live in a poverty-stricken civil war area with terrible education than to live in luxury and comfort and what for what reason do I regard people as cowards for wanting to avoid dealing with important social and political issues and even economic issues than their own society why do I regard people as cowards and immoral for retreating behind you know the gated fence of a wealthy community making what he sees as rational decisions that are in their own self-interest now this is a point it's a difference in values I am not disputing whether or not those decisions are rational they're rational but they're their motives are based in a set of values that are different from mine and it's a set of values that I consider despicable no ask yourself really did keep his cool he did an excellent job to it the whole conversation I can't find any fault with him frankly the audience really got restless and it's got a fan well they were really challenged that by this in a way they weren't expecting to be challenged in this conversation I think for one thing the same way people find it strangely out of place in the 21st century when I were used words like dignity and honor I don't think anyone was expecting to hear the word cowardice in this in this conversation I don't think anyone had even ever thought before that the decision to live in a wealthy whites-only neighborhood reflected cowardice that the decision not to face up to poverty and violence and other serious problems that this was connected to cowardice that cut people quick and you know another word I used was despicable I said look I'm being being asked to you there's a difference between you and me is ever seen me and many other people but yeah the people on the other side of this difference in values I do regard them as despicable I understand they are people who just want a life of ease and comfort and luxury to what extent that entails cowardice and to what extent that entails racism given this conversation is another matter but yeah I'm owning up to the fact I despise that and I use an example some of you already know from this YouTube channel I said look it was even like this when I was talking to my own grandmother now to some extent that grandma is on one of my two grandmother's this drove to some extent that had some positive emotional attachment to her she used to buy Lego for me every every Christmas and every birthday she gave me presents she gave me socks you know whatever she's my grandmother haha but to me in terms of her values yeah she was a despicable person she wanted to pontificate about politics so much so that she enrolled in classes on politics at the University of Toronto as an auditing student being in her retirement in her old age over 65 just so she could go there and lecture them she says you could tell a captive audience for opinions ago [Music] she went and played tennis at a at a golf club mmm you know once every couple of days you know she could talk about these political issues she was basically a bit of a cookie cutter left-winger you know so these issues with the poor and miscellaneous political issues she she took a stand on but she wasn't willing to sacrifice her own comfort in in even the smallest way imaginable she wasn't willing to drive to Compton or do anything else I mean she her life after her retirement was from my perspective a life of self-indulgence and hypocritical self-indulgence in terms of what her political values and convictions were right and very polite never insulted her on it but sure she and I had sat down and had meaningful conversations you know one point it was I was telling her well look I've been living in Southeast Asia I'm trying to do this kind of humanitarian work in this kind of research and so on and now next this is where I'm moving and so on point she asked me why I didn't just learn French and move to Quebec you know and in that conversation I really had to turn it around on her and I really had to explain to her look if these are the principles you live by you know it doesn't matter whether you decide to make a difference in Compton or in Laos or Cambodia or Haiti or Somalia another example talked about with with ask yourself different people are going to find different opportunities to make a difference in the world and then there are people who just want an easy life who just want a life that's safe and self-indulgent cowardly they're people want to live in voluntary ignorant and there are people who want to live like hypocrites from the safety of their condominiums from the safety of their Golf Course and their Tennis Club from their walled community and yeah I I'm not just morally opposed to that there's a real difference to myself in those people on the level of values that comes out in this conversation now you can't really understand what's going on in this conversation if you think it's a bate if you think I'm trying to present facts that will convince the other side to come over and share my opinion I'm not were into this realm of personal values where I'm just disclosing I'm just explaining to you this is who I am this is how I think this is how I feel maybe in the past tense this is how I ended up this way this is why it turned out this way and there's absolutely no expectation on my part that I'm gonna convince ask yourself to feel the way I feel or think the way I think I'm really just interested in exploring the difference between us and between difference we myself and the other members of the audience or the public at large or even the culture I grew up in because I know I'm in a very small minority of people in Canada who feel this way the response in the audience was much more hostile much more defensive than anything asked yourself said I can find no fault whatsoever and what ask yourself said he behaved himself wonderfully I mean has say really was playing this kind of Socratic role find no fault in him and what I felt from the audience several the audience elite they got on the microphone and they they spoke they spoke from their perspective to they were asking questions that amounted to wanting to know how did I draw the line who was I to judge and it's not really about me judging other people it's really about what kind of person am i what kind of person do I aspire to be what kind of person are you and what kind of person do you aspire to be and I can express to you I can explain to you I can answer those questions we can get into more detail and give a more complete robust portrait of how I draw the line of why exactly I think this way or you know how my how my opinion applies to different kinds of desert island scenarios but ultimately all we're doing is drawing an ever more detailed portrait of me and my values we're not putting together a case that's gonna convince anyone else to come over to my side we're just gonna understand more and more it's to some extent more more psychological complexity what those differences are why they exist if there's a disaster some people are running away from the disaster and some people are running toward it now why are they running toward in yes in part it is simply because they believe they can make a positive difference they believe they can try maybe they're gonna try and end up making things a thousand times worse but some people are running away to safety to their life of comfort and some people are running toward the problem because they're sincerely interested in solving the problem improving Miglia rating dealing with or at least researching and trying to understand the problem to make policy recommendations for other people to solve the problem or something of that kind right I don't want to be one of the people running away but of course this is only in small part due to the possibility that I can make a positive difference with many of these problems the enormity of them is so great that anyone can say as an objective fact maybe I can't make any positive difference or the positive difference I can make is very very small whether we're talking about vegan politics First Nations value the most fundamental value I have shaping this whole direction this whole side of my character that links me to both research and humanitarian work and issues as diverse as Cambodia and the Kree in a Ghibli in Canada the most fundamental value I have under this heading is of wanting to take responsibility even if I can't there's no way that I or you or anyone can take responsibility for the history of the British Empire and the terrible decisions they made in how they've handled Canada's indigenous people the Cree the achieve where the den a the Mohawk the euro flow it there's it's it's actually impossible for me to take responsibility for that but I want to it's impossible for me to take responsibility in any sense for the daily atrocity the the unbelievable moral obscenity of factory farming I didn't create that system you know I was born into this world I had nothing to do with it I don't profit from the meatpacking industry I've never been employed and I feed packing factory you know from a million different angles we've had this cultural development over hundreds of years that led up to the current stainless steel perfection of the meat and dairy industry right there's no way I can take responsibility for it but I want to and I want you to as well I want you to try even if you can't do anything about it I want you to want to try I want you to share with me in that wanting as a matter of personal values and I know I'm in a minority even amongst vegans I mean I'm in a minority within a minority believe me amongst white Canadians in reference to the racial issues the First Nations issues at anti-colonial I'm in a minority of a minority believe me I know and that's why it's so precious for me it's so worthwhile for me to reach out on the internet and try to meet those couple of other people who share those values with me even if we share them in a state of despondency a state of despair of knowing that our ability to make a positive difference may be tiny may be infinitesimally compared to the scope of the problem here and now or even the historical depth of the problem over recent centuries now I think you catch my drift in one sense whether we're talking about a neighborhood within your own City a neighborhood like Compton or you know when I lived in Regina all the cities in the Canadian Prairies have at least one neighborhood have at least one slum that's mature First Nations people First Nations people living in poverty in Regina Saskatchewan III knew of one neighborhood like that there probably several and you know houses are falling apart the poverty is obvious all I remember seeing footage of a neighborhood like that in in Manitoba I think in Winnipeg Manitoba and the poverty was palpable you could see it on the front lawns you know as the camera just went down the road you could see the poverty and the hopelessness and the unemployment of that and the drug addiction it was visible and just looking at the street how this neighborhood was flowing apart whether we're talking about a neighborhood within the city you live in we're talking about a faraway place like Cambodia and Laos took from my perspective it it doesn't matter we're talking about the aspiration to be engaged with these problems whether it's civil war poverty crime or what have you as opposed to the impulse whether it's cowardice or not trying to ignore them trying to live a life separated from them and insulated from them we did have questions from the audience challenging me asking well what if some people just don't care what if it's none of these issues you know that I've mentioned what if it's not the desire to what if it's not a desire for luxury and laziness or voluntary ignorance what you know what if it's something else aren't there other motives others and I very readily said yes there are and I'll give you examples right now so this is again this is not me poking holes in my own argument this is me explaining why such a large percentage of people don't share these values and come with me I said yes just two examples one maybe you're a medical doctor who's trying to cure cancer and you sit down and have this conversation with me whether it's about poverty and civil war in Southeast Asia or the situation for the Korean a ghibli within Canada and you say well that's all well and good but the only thing you care about is doing this research to find a cure for cancer and you don't care if you stay in 5-star hotels or one star hotels you don't care if you live a life of luxury or live a life of policy perfect you don't care if you live a life of luxury or you live a life of poverty you're just committed to doing whatever it takes so you can do your research try to find this cure for cancer at all cost I understand that and a lot of people live lives of quiet desperation working hard for causes that are much more humble than finding a cure for cancer with that mentality where they regard themselves as an instrument of some grant design or some grand goal that in their minds justifies them living in luxury or living in poverty them living the way they do with no engagement and no concern for these other social political issues I understand that again I'm not trying to convince anyone I'm just examining what my values are what their values are and why they're so different and the only other example I used was of a man who joins the army and who just wants to be the best sniper he can possibly be remember I went through the process I signed up to join the army and I met some guys in the army with some attitudes like that there are guys and they don't care who they gotta shoot in the head they just want to be the best they can possibly be at that action that is their art that is their paintbrush and that is their cannabis is putting a bullet through a human brain as elegantly and efficiently as possible and they're willing to sacrifice everything to do it they don't care if they have to live in a cave they don't care if they have to live in the desert they don't care if they live in the jungle or if they're up on the freezing cold Arctic Arctic tundra that's their canvas that's their paintbrush that is the art that justifies everything else in their lives that's they're focused on and they they may indeed not give a damn about any other social and political problems whether it's a neighborhood within their own city like Compton or far-off Cambodia and they probably don't even care who it is they gotta shoot in the head by the same token the doctor working on the cure for cancer probably doesn't care who it is he's performing experimental surgery honors cancer treatments on he may be saving the lives of nice people terrible people this is his art this is his paintbrush this is canvas I can understand all those perspectives and I can understand the differences in values that separates me from those people but that's the fascinating thing about this side of politics when we really get down to it when we move past the differences in matters of mere facts and opinion then we get down to this bedrock where all we can say is this is who I am and this is who I aspire to be and we can simply contrast that to whoever you are and whatever dream it is you want to dream and whether or not we here and now in the pursuit of a better world whether it's under the heading of veganism ecology health politics whether or not we can dream a little dream together cooperate make something positive about us Yin
keep his cool he did an excellent job throughout the whole conversation I can't find any fault with him frankly uh the audience really got restless and he's got offended you know they were really challenged by this in a way they weren't expecting to be challenged in this conversation if there's a disaster some people are running away from the disaster and some people are running toward it now why are they running toward it yes in part it is simply because they believe they can make a positive difference they believe they can try I don't want to be one of the people running away but of course this is only in small part due to the possibility that I can make a positive difference with many of these problems the enormity of them is so great that anyone can say as an objective fact maybe I can't make any positive difference or the positive as I can make is very very small whether we're talking about vegan politics First Nations W the most fundamental value I have shaping this whole direction this whole side of my character that links me to both research and humanitarian work and issues as diverse as Cambodia and the Kree in a jib way in Canada the most fundamental value I have under this heading is of wanting to take responsibility even if I can't there's no way that I or you or anyone can take responsibility for the history of the British Empire and the terrible decisions they made in how they've handled Canada's indigenous people the Cree the edge where the den a the Mohawk the airflo okay there's it's it's actually impossible for me to take responsibility for that but I want to it's impossible for me to take responsibility in any sense for the daily atrocity the unbelievable moral obscenity of factory farming we've had this cultural development over hundreds of years that led up to the current stainless steel perfection of the meat and dairy industry right there's no way I can take responsibility for it but I want to and I want you to as well I want you to try a bonus Yin [Music] uh-uh new yen politics gets interesting politics gets really really interesting when we're no longer talking about differences of opinion we're no longer talking about contrasting factual claims but we're talking about differences in the values I just had a wonderful conversation with a guy named to ask yourself that lasted many many hours the name of his YouTube channel was ask yourself his name is Isaak Brown and he's now a full-time youtuber supported by his YouTube revenue and by donations on patreon now at the first mention of this some of my longtime viewers and supporters will be asking did we talk about racism and we did at Great Lengths and without either party becoming uncouth or hostile we had a very polite meaningful and enjoyable discussion about racism including the racism of some of my fellow youtubers Cory McCarthy and Tara McCarthy and that's gonna get mentioned here really as kind of a segue to what I want to talk about in this video it's not the main theme or not the main point of interest that I'm here bringing up and summarizing we did discuss I also want to put in a disclaimer for most of this part of the conversation Isak aka ask yourself isaac was really playing playing devil's advocate or playing a sort of traditional role in Socratic methods correct dialogue in large part he was not stating his own convictions he was stating views that were opposing the mine in such a way that would draw out implicit assumptions caused me to more fully define what my position is and why that's my position or what actions are consequences my policy positions might entail again totally um you know polite and frankly fascinating conversation one of the best conversations I've had in years and I reached out to a lot of people here through vegan YouTube so I really can credit for that and I thanked him extensively the other conversation however what I don't want you to do in the audience watching this video I don't want you to try to impute any opinion to Isaac on the basis of what I'm saying here basically I'm just somewhere and what I said and a large part of what he said even if it is getting some rise from pension here it was really just him playing devil's advocate and playing this Socratic dialogue sort of role so don't jump to any conclusions about what his own political views are on these or any matters from this particular video in - wave if you think this video was too long the actual conversation I had with ask yourself 100 for hours and hours include an amazing range of topics including our views on the ever-popular unnatural vegan we just proposed it was gonna have a debate with my experience the natural vegan and for him the conversation probably started around 2:00 a.m. and ended closer to 8:00 a.m. it wasn't just the me it was a whole room of people but for several hours it was him and I talking directly and continuously I by the way I was actually working out I was outdoors I was running up and down the side of a mountain a mountain here with stairs on side I was getting exercised so I was often out of breath whose answered his questions it was great conversation it made my day quite simply alright so the part of the conversation gonna summarize did indeed begin with my challenging him and him challenging me on the question of to what extent his friends cuz he is personally friends with Cory McCarthy and he's spoken at some length with Tara McCarthy so to what extent his friends Cory McCarthy and Tara McCarthy are pro genocide or indeed racist in the garden-variety sense of the term racism now I introduced you know some kind of facts for his consideration this is not just a matter of opinion examples of things they've said on YouTube that he was unaware of so again before we get to the discussion about values sort of this earlier phase what we're dealing with merely matters of fact an opinion within the realm of political theory or political science just mentioned I think one of the deeper differences between myself and Isaac is that he really does think of matters in terms of abstract ideals first and foremost and I think of things in terms of abstract ideals last and least and this may not be obvious if we're talking about something we we agree about my veganism or the future the vegan movement or something or even what's what positive things can we do in the next couple of months for the future the vegan boom because we did talk about that kind of stuff brass tacks practical stuff he was starting with putting together a vegan round table and we talked through some of the issues and options concerning that um but to give a specific example when the conversation progressed from overall questions of racism may be primarily white versus black racism when it progressed on to racism against First Nations status of indigenous people in Canada the criative with the den a he asked me repeatedly you know maybe two or three times what was the ideal situation I wanted you know what was the final end point or outcome what was the goal or you might say what was the utopia he did not use to work like utopia but he said okay well what you know what is it you want what is the position you're tending towards as a as an outcome as and he did use words like ideal you know what is it ideally you'd want and I never answered that question I mean if you're looking at this from a political science perspective you notice I didn't ever answer that question by talking about the ideals I was in pursuit of I would answer by giving a particular example of a real-world problem that I wanted to solve and you know you could criticize me by saying my perspective on these issues is just one of crisis management is just one of pragmatic short-term particular changes I want to make and not one of an idealistic objective or utopian goal or what have you you know maybe that's a criticism that has some has some teeth as some pertinence resum say oh yes look at my views but I think on a deeper level this shows it shows a real difference between my way of thinking in his and of course I am much older than him with much different experiences in life although we both started off in southern Ontario Canada so who knows maybe as the years go past maybe he'll come a little bit further over to my side again I don't really mean about any issue but in the procedural way he thinks about some of these political issues concision is in large part the art of a mission so I'm not summarizing the whole conversation here and I probably could I probably could go through it blow-by-blow because we just had this conversation within the last couple of hours and I am cursed with a good memory it is a curse sometimes you can be haunted by overly accurate memories in this life I think it drives some people mad but at any rate again don't assign any of this to him he probably would have a different summary from his perspective but jumping had several stages in the conversation there was a really interesting turning point and before we got to this turning point already I was really framing the whole conversation in a way that put indigenous peoples issues first and foremost that's partly because that's sincerely what I care about I wasn't gonna engage in this conversation about race and racism within the North American context United States and Canada as if black and white are the only issues the issues that matter to me a lot or the Cree in the den a and the Aegean the Inuit etc etc and also for me in large part it's about language and culture not about race and ethnicity so these are values I bring into the conversation to some extent steer the way the conversation went uh it was a turning point when I mentioned a video that he had never seen a video in which taro McCarthy had a map of the United States America behind her in the video a color-coded map she managed to get a map from US Census data that showed the United States break broken up into a bunch of very small squares and it showed where black people lived and where there were the fewest black people with who was an absolute white majority etc so what percentage of the different districts in perrault's the United States is black and in this video Tara was explaining her reasons and what-have-you for why she and her husband they wanted to live in an area with the fewest possible black people that was their position now I mentioned this I was raising this of course my overall point here was either were willing to call these people racist ie racist in their policy positions racist in their most of you or I think we are getting into a semantic argument where racism is being defined so narrowly that it becomes meaningless or indeed laughable you might think that in this conversation we were already talking about personal values in a sense we were but not since I mean here and now this is really the turning point in the conversation where it went from really being matters of fact and matters of opinion being shared by the two sides to matters of personal values where this is no longer a debate this is no longer an exchange of objective factual information where you're not I'd certainly was not trying to convince the other side of anything we're no longer talking about things we're talking about who we are and who we aspire to be why we are the way we are why we think the way we think why we feel the way we feel why we have in the past undertaken the actions and decisions we did and in the future why we're likely to make those same choices that's when we cross this bridge into real questions of personal values Isak challenged me on this point the point of why taro was sitting there with this color-coded map United States talking about our color-coded perspective and where she was gonna live that she was planning to avoid living around African Americans he challenged me in the fun way he said is it or is it not possible for a person to make that decision without any racist inclination or any racist motivation he asked is it or is it not natural necessary inevitable that people would choose a neighborhood with a lower crime rate that they would choose a neighborhood with better schools they would choose a neighborhood where they could have an easy and comfortable life and right off the bat I respond to him I completely understand the point you're making Isaac but this is where we profoundly differ on the level of personal values and now we're gonna switch into talking about that so I was even during the conversation I was really aware of this shift where now I'm just talking about Who I am and why I am this way and the differences between me and him there's nothing to win and there's nothing to lose because I said to him no I found ly disagree with you about this although I can understand those motives and I said to him in a sense Isaac what you're doing is defending racism by indicating the extent to which racism can overlap with so can coincide with cowardice laziness and the desire to have a luxurious easy life and of course in some cases maybe people are not racist maybe it is purely those other motives cowardice and a lack of interest in making the world a better place solving social problems or engaging or even seeing social problems some people want to live in a gated community behind a high wall where they don't ever have to see poverty let alone try to solve the problem ameliorate the problem or what-have-you and I'm not one of those people oh I said to him he was using the example of you know would I or would I not be willing to move to Compton he said I can do you one better why do you think I moved to Cambodia now what do you think you know what's more dangerous really I mean I know Compton has a reputation for come on let's get real you know you're talking about a scenario which he did talk about he did raise what about providing my own daughter with an education and I was able to use not abstract examples but very real examples from my own life I said look what I was dealing with first nations whether you're talking about urban neighborhoods that are majority First Nations or if you're talking about reservations remote rural communities those of shockingly high unemployment rates shockingly high crime rates terrible education system much much worse than Compton believe me I mean Compton you know it's a great ladder in terms of being able to move up in the social hierarchy compared to the the you know baleful lack of opportunities that you find on some of the worst Native reservations in Canada or indeed just urban neighborhoods in Canada that are our majority First Nations really really terrible conditions really hopeless conditions and again with very high side what pardon me very high suicide rates very high glue huffing rates and so on attached that overall hopelessness that set in and some cases you are looking at a district that literally has 90 percent employment I've looked at some some examples like that so I mean the situation with First Nations much more bleak and much more extreme than asking me for example if I would be willing to move to Compton or I'd be willing to raise my daughter in Compton the specific scenarios I put myself in in Cambodia and in northern Laos again much much more extreme and I laughed on points that don't you realize people in Compton speak English like what do you think would be harder for me moving to Compton or moving to the border area between Laos and Myanmar at a time when there's still ongoing civil war low-level civil war on both sides of that border yeah I don't speak the language I'm struggling for words like what do you think and Nikki was really shocked and again with this transition from just talking about politics to really talking about personal values I really noticed a shift in how the how the audience was engaged to they were really challenged by this in a way that they were not challenged at all by the conversation we're having previously so he started asking questions like well he was sincerely interested in her stay in my position he was asking me things like what would I be willing to go and live in Somalia you know why or why not what what was the explanation for why I as a person would prefer to live in a poverty-stricken civil war area with terrible education than to live in luxury and comfort and what for what reason do I regard people as cowards for wanting to avoid dealing with important social and political issues and even economic issues than their own society why do I regard people as cowards and immoral for retreating behind you know the gated fence of a wealthy community making what he sees as rational decisions that are in their own self-interest now this is a point it's a difference in values I am not disputing whether or not those decisions are rational they're rational but they're their motives are based in a set of values that are different from mine and it's a set of values that I consider despicable no ask yourself really did keep his cool he did an excellent job to it the whole conversation I can't find any fault with him frankly the audience really got restless and it's got a fan well they were really challenged that by this in a way they weren't expecting to be challenged in this conversation I think for one thing the same way people find it strangely out of place in the 21st century when I were used words like dignity and honor I don't think anyone was expecting to hear the word cowardice in this in this conversation I don't think anyone had even ever thought before that the decision to live in a wealthy whites-only neighborhood reflected cowardice that the decision not to face up to poverty and violence and other serious problems that this was connected to cowardice that cut people quick and you know another word I used was despicable I said look I'm being being asked to you there's a difference between you and me is ever seen me and many other people but yeah the people on the other side of this difference in values I do regard them as despicable I understand they are people who just want a life of ease and comfort and luxury to what extent that entails cowardice and to what extent that entails racism given this conversation is another matter but yeah I'm owning up to the fact I despise that and I use an example some of you already know from this YouTube channel I said look it was even like this when I was talking to my own grandmother now to some extent that grandma is on one of my two grandmother's this drove to some extent that had some positive emotional attachment to her she used to buy Lego for me every every Christmas and every birthday she gave me presents she gave me socks you know whatever she's my grandmother haha but to me in terms of her values yeah she was a despicable person she wanted to pontificate about politics so much so that she enrolled in classes on politics at the University of Toronto as an auditing student being in her retirement in her old age over 65 just so she could go there and lecture them she says you could tell a captive audience for opinions ago [Music] she went and played tennis at a at a golf club mmm you know once every couple of days you know she could talk about these political issues she was basically a bit of a cookie cutter left-winger you know so these issues with the poor and miscellaneous political issues she she took a stand on but she wasn't willing to sacrifice her own comfort in in even the smallest way imaginable she wasn't willing to drive to Compton or do anything else I mean she her life after her retirement was from my perspective a life of self-indulgence and hypocritical self-indulgence in terms of what her political values and convictions were right and very polite never insulted her on it but sure she and I had sat down and had meaningful conversations you know one point it was I was telling her well look I've been living in Southeast Asia I'm trying to do this kind of humanitarian work in this kind of research and so on and now next this is where I'm moving and so on point she asked me why I didn't just learn French and move to Quebec you know and in that conversation I really had to turn it around on her and I really had to explain to her look if these are the principles you live by you know it doesn't matter whether you decide to make a difference in Compton or in Laos or Cambodia or Haiti or Somalia another example talked about with with ask yourself different people are going to find different opportunities to make a difference in the world and then there are people who just want an easy life who just want a life that's safe and self-indulgent cowardly they're people want to live in voluntary ignorant and there are people who want to live like hypocrites from the safety of their condominiums from the safety of their Golf Course and their Tennis Club from their walled community and yeah I I'm not just morally opposed to that there's a real difference to myself in those people on the level of values that comes out in this conversation now you can't really understand what's going on in this conversation if you think it's a bate if you think I'm trying to present facts that will convince the other side to come over and share my opinion I'm not were into this realm of personal values where I'm just disclosing I'm just explaining to you this is who I am this is how I think this is how I feel maybe in the past tense this is how I ended up this way this is why it turned out this way and there's absolutely no expectation on my part that I'm gonna convince ask yourself to feel the way I feel or think the way I think I'm really just interested in exploring the difference between us and between difference we myself and the other members of the audience or the public at large or even the culture I grew up in because I know I'm in a very small minority of people in Canada who feel this way the response in the audience was much more hostile much more defensive than anything asked yourself said I can find no fault whatsoever and what ask yourself said he behaved himself wonderfully I mean has say really was playing this kind of Socratic role find no fault in him and what I felt from the audience several the audience elite they got on the microphone and they they spoke they spoke from their perspective to they were asking questions that amounted to wanting to know how did I draw the line who was I to judge and it's not really about me judging other people it's really about what kind of person am i what kind of person do I aspire to be what kind of person are you and what kind of person do you aspire to be and I can express to you I can explain to you I can answer those questions we can get into more detail and give a more complete robust portrait of how I draw the line of why exactly I think this way or you know how my how my opinion applies to different kinds of desert island scenarios but ultimately all we're doing is drawing an ever more detailed portrait of me and my values we're not putting together a case that's gonna convince anyone else to come over to my side we're just gonna understand more and more it's to some extent more more psychological complexity what those differences are why they exist if there's a disaster some people are running away from the disaster and some people are running toward it now why are they running toward in yes in part it is simply because they believe they can make a positive difference they believe they can try maybe they're gonna try and end up making things a thousand times worse but some people are running away to safety to their life of comfort and some people are running toward the problem because they're sincerely interested in solving the problem improving Miglia rating dealing with or at least researching and trying to understand the problem to make policy recommendations for other people to solve the problem or something of that kind right I don't want to be one of the people running away but of course this is only in small part due to the possibility that I can make a positive difference with many of these problems the enormity of them is so great that anyone can say as an objective fact maybe I can't make any positive difference or the positive difference I can make is very very small whether we're talking about vegan politics First Nations value the most fundamental value I have shaping this whole direction this whole side of my character that links me to both research and humanitarian work and issues as diverse as Cambodia and the Kree in a Ghibli in Canada the most fundamental value I have under this heading is of wanting to take responsibility even if I can't there's no way that I or you or anyone can take responsibility for the history of the British Empire and the terrible decisions they made in how they've handled Canada's indigenous people the Cree the achieve where the den a the Mohawk the euro flow it there's it's it's actually impossible for me to take responsibility for that but I want to it's impossible for me to take responsibility in any sense for the daily atrocity the the unbelievable moral obscenity of factory farming I didn't create that system you know I was born into this world I had nothing to do with it I don't profit from the meatpacking industry I've never been employed and I feed packing factory you know from a million different angles we've had this cultural development over hundreds of years that led up to the current stainless steel perfection of the meat and dairy industry right there's no way I can take responsibility for it but I want to and I want you to as well I want you to try even if you can't do anything about it I want you to want to try I want you to share with me in that wanting as a matter of personal values and I know I'm in a minority even amongst vegans I mean I'm in a minority within a minority believe me amongst white Canadians in reference to the racial issues the First Nations issues at anti-colonial I'm in a minority of a minority believe me I know and that's why it's so precious for me it's so worthwhile for me to reach out on the internet and try to meet those couple of other people who share those values with me even if we share them in a state of despondency a state of despair of knowing that our ability to make a positive difference may be tiny may be infinitesimally compared to the scope of the problem here and now or even the historical depth of the problem over recent centuries now I think you catch my drift in one sense whether we're talking about a neighborhood within your own City a neighborhood like Compton or you know when I lived in Regina all the cities in the Canadian Prairies have at least one neighborhood have at least one slum that's mature First Nations people First Nations people living in poverty in Regina Saskatchewan III knew of one neighborhood like that there probably several and you know houses are falling apart the poverty is obvious all I remember seeing footage of a neighborhood like that in in Manitoba I think in Winnipeg Manitoba and the poverty was palpable you could see it on the front lawns you know as the camera just went down the road you could see the poverty and the hopelessness and the unemployment of that and the drug addiction it was visible and just looking at the street how this neighborhood was flowing apart whether we're talking about a neighborhood within the city you live in we're talking about a faraway place like Cambodia and Laos took from my perspective it it doesn't matter we're talking about the aspiration to be engaged with these problems whether it's civil war poverty crime or what have you as opposed to the impulse whether it's cowardice or not trying to ignore them trying to live a life separated from them and insulated from them we did have questions from the audience challenging me asking well what if some people just don't care what if it's none of these issues you know that I've mentioned what if it's not the desire to what if it's not a desire for luxury and laziness or voluntary ignorance what you know what if it's something else aren't there other motives others and I very readily said yes there are and I'll give you examples right now so this is again this is not me poking holes in my own argument this is me explaining why such a large percentage of people don't share these values and come with me I said yes just two examples one maybe you're a medical doctor who's trying to cure cancer and you sit down and have this conversation with me whether it's about poverty and civil war in Southeast Asia or the situation for the Korean a ghibli within Canada and you say well that's all well and good but the only thing you care about is doing this research to find a cure for cancer and you don't care if you stay in 5-star hotels or one star hotels you don't care if you live a life of luxury or live a life of policy perfect you don't care if you live a life of luxury or you live a life of poverty you're just committed to doing whatever it takes so you can do your research try to find this cure for cancer at all cost I understand that and a lot of people live lives of quiet desperation working hard for causes that are much more humble than finding a cure for cancer with that mentality where they regard themselves as an instrument of some grant design or some grand goal that in their minds justifies them living in luxury or living in poverty them living the way they do with no engagement and no concern for these other social political issues I understand that again I'm not trying to convince anyone I'm just examining what my values are what their values are and why they're so different and the only other example I used was of a man who joins the army and who just wants to be the best sniper he can possibly be remember I went through the process I signed up to join the army and I met some guys in the army with some attitudes like that there are guys and they don't care who they gotta shoot in the head they just want to be the best they can possibly be at that action that is their art that is their paintbrush and that is their cannabis is putting a bullet through a human brain as elegantly and efficiently as possible and they're willing to sacrifice everything to do it they don't care if they have to live in a cave they don't care if they have to live in the desert they don't care if they live in the jungle or if they're up on the freezing cold Arctic Arctic tundra that's their canvas that's their paintbrush that is the art that justifies everything else in their lives that's they're focused on and they they may indeed not give a damn about any other social and political problems whether it's a neighborhood within their own city like Compton or far-off Cambodia and they probably don't even care who it is they gotta shoot in the head by the same token the doctor working on the cure for cancer probably doesn't care who it is he's performing experimental surgery honors cancer treatments on he may be saving the lives of nice people terrible people this is his art this is his paintbrush this is canvas I can understand all those perspectives and I can understand the differences in values that separates me from those people but that's the fascinating thing about this side of politics when we really get down to it when we move past the differences in matters of mere facts and opinion then we get down to this bedrock where all we can say is this is who I am and this is who I aspire to be and we can simply contrast that to whoever you are and whatever dream it is you want to dream and whether or not we here and now in the pursuit of a better world whether it's under the heading of veganism ecology health politics whether or not we can dream a little dream together cooperate make something positive about us Yin