The Real Vegan Drama: Progress is a Matter of Perspective, Change is a Matter of Fact.
03 September 2016 [link youtube]
[纯素主义，中国]
Here's the link to the channel mentioned (by a guy named Dorney): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSIxjUKxnKu7U_hrVTIwcEw/videos
Youtube Automatic Transcription
because I've lived in so many different
cultures in so many different contexts and I've had to move and relocate so many times I've had the experience of buying free weights and carrying them back to my apartment many many times and it seems like a shallow and yet profound life lesson that some whenever you buy free weights the best workout you'll ever have is when you're carrying them home because I've never owned a car so I just bought i just bought 60 kilograms yeah 30 kilograms in 30 kilograms of free weights and had to carry them home from the shop one in each hand walking the whole way you get that weight dragging on your shoulder oh it's a great workout but probably I'll never again get as much exercise out of those free weights as I just had in buying them dating them home I think when I was last in Canada i had i had 45 i forget what they were i had a couple weights that were really heavy and i had to make two trips you know I had to go Carrie just one and then go back and carry just the other um hope you guys aren't getting too much noise pollution to the window look I've been saying for years and years and years a phrase I made up although I think many other people have said similar things progress is a matter of perspective change is an objective fact change is something we can measure we can talk about it we can debate it sure but the existence of change the necessity have changed the factors driving change and the results of change are real objective effects progress like beauty is in the eye of the beholder you can actually see a lot of strange signs of progress in looking at this pamphlet this is a pro vegan propaganda pamphlet that's distributed at some vegan restaurants and other institutions here in conveying in 2016 this is a very useful form of activism the people who made this pamphlet are definitely activists partly because at the back of the pamphlet it actually has listenings the last few pages give you the telephone numbers and addresses of vegan restaurants neighborhood by neighborhood also vegan grocery stores of ecological agencies and charities this sort of thing um I've been involved with this sort of movement before I was vegan back in 1998 1999 definitely 1999 you know ecology issues like deforestation the Green Party um yeah I think the same questions I'm engaged with today I was definitely already engaged with the 1999 and I have seen the changes in both Western culture and Asian culture in how these things are addressed and thought about starting with us right off the bat that the cover you know the imagery they've chosen has really changed the focus on ecology ecology as being you know what's on the cover the the you know destruction of the urban environment the tox ification of the the air we we breathe the water we drink and so on and the depiction of the earth as an increasingly red and yellow globe the title for this they've chosen is who wouldn't want health but already you can see from the cover that this isn't just about the health of your body this is what the health of the planet this is about the destruction of our ecology and one of the most striking changes is that you do eventually get the corny photograph of Jesus and the corny photograph of the Buddha sorry [ __ ] it's a photograph of a painting I don't want to mislead you guys this is not actually a not a real photograph of Jesus um you know and the attempt to sort of construe that that veganism is somehow connected to positively connected to these these religions but that appears on page 48 and page 49 of this pamphlet is almost the last thing before the listings at the very end of the book I can tell you from experience this type of vegan propaganda ecological buganda 10 15 years ago this stuff Jesus and the Buddha would have been page 1 that would have been the main point up front and to be sure the agencies the activists the political organizations creating the stuff they would have identified as Buddhists or with one of the other new religious movements and what have you so already there's a change whether or not it's progress as a matter of there is a very real change when i look at this pamphlet and compare it to even within China within the Chinese culture don't judge me try this country amongst in Chinese civilization in this atmosphere I can see very real change between this and where we were at just 10 years ago now what do they lead with if Jesus and the Buddha are buried basically at the back of this pamphlet what do you think is on page one protein so as a list of different vegan foods so I'm sure many of you can't read chinese we can see there's a table or you may not be able to read it this this tiny scale a list of different vegan foods how much protein and how much fat they contain compared to meet and this very much does reflect there's some other detailed nutritional information right up front first three pages are all tables of nutrition facts very neatly well presented information as you may know black beans lead the table but nobody in China eats black beans hung black beans being much more impressive than than tofu health concerns about whether people can be vegan are addressed in here but health ecology environmental degradation first and foremost and questions of animal ethics and suffering are in here but the religious or supernatural arguments is pushed to the very back so yeah the title is who wouldn't want health but of course it's asking us much more than that uh I've had a big impact on two of my teachers so far a third teacher already was vegan before I got here so i didn't i didn't have such an invite her back she know I'm lying i had an impact in her in a different way so a third teacher of mine who already was vegan she watched my video on community with the chinese translation and i think that did make a big impact on her i already had a video up talking about how with my first teacher i communicated the concept that veganism is not just a diet veganism is a political struck I compared that to the issue with cigarette smoking the decision for one person to quit smoking cigarettes maybe just about health who would want health right but the decision that we as a culture as a society of the country that we want to make progress towards having zero smokers we want to eliminate this from our culture from our civilization that's something very different and it inevitably involves political decisions political struggles changes to laws etc etc I had a second teacher here all these are conversations in Chinese and by the way my ability to speak Chinese is level one um I had a second teacher here who should quite young I think she's 21 she was only my teacher for about one week and she said to me in this kind of high chirpy voice she put on a sort of cute voice and she said jokingly oh well um you know I eat meat but I could never kill an animal she was saying stuff like this and she was you know trying to be to be cute about it um and I said back in a very low voice very slow pace and slow dark tone and is not intentional or contrived i was speaking very slowly and clearly because my ability to speak chinese is so poor i had to think through each word I was saying with him but I said to her yeah he could you kill animals every day without even thinking about it everyone who eats meat does and if you think you couldn't kill an animal face to face you're wrong you could do it the same way you could kill a human being and she was shocked at this and she insisted that know that while she eats meat she wouldn't possibly have the heart to actually you know slaughter an animal herself or kill a human being and again I said to her in this very sort of slow serious tone because I have to think through each word I'm saying in Chinese I'm speaking solely not making dramatic pauses intentionally but you know I said to were basically sure he could everybody can everybody in this school right now is a killer whether they know it or not and if you study the political history of China or you study the political history of Cambodia or the political history of canada or any other country what you learn is as soon as circumstances demanded people resort to violence people kill other people with no hesitation especially the people like you who thought they never would are never could do it I said every single person in this school except me it's killing animals on a daily basis without giving it a second thought because there is no way to eat meat without killing animals um now again I did not think these words would have a big impact on her I was really just struggling to communicate at all because I'm a student I'm just learning Chinese figured out that this actually quite a devastating effect on her and you know I I didn't mean to upset her it's interesting isn't that kind of conversation it's not like she's seeing slaughterhouse footage or anything we're really just talking about in the abstract but she said some more things to me that day you know within within the day not maybe at that moment that really showed me that this this conversation a huge impact on her and I get my mother teacher that the first teacher she had just never thought about the fact that leather requires that you kill em she'd never thought about it she's she's smart too she's not idiot she just she had encountered leather only as a finished product and actually that first teacher she never ate ate eggs she had some kind of food allergies does need eggs she had never thought about what eggs are how they're made you know whether or not yet what the biological function of an egg egg she was shocked when I explained to her that you know eggs are actually for a chicken to reproduce and this kind of thing right people who grow up in the city you can be smart you can be brilliant first issues excellent excellent teacher knows a lot about the history of languages and so on but she's never given this stuff and he thought and you know I think that second teacher in a very real sense had never thought about now maybe she's used that cute line before you know trying to be cute and again she's 21 maybe every other time she says oh I eat meat every day but I could never kill an animal there's this thing in a lot of cultures Western culture Chinese culture if someone is a good looking female where people just don't take what they say seriously even when really it's a very serious matter it's very deadly serious matters oh oh good for you aren't you cute aren't you wonderful aren't you bright aren't you charming and you know I didn't respond by saying aren't you branch chairman I responded by saying people like you kill animals every day and when the circumstance arises people like you kill other human beings absolutely no hesitation uh but the question she came back to me with not that day but the the in the days to follow I think the very next day her concern was what you see in the first few pages here she was asking me seriously about getting enough protein in the vegan diet and for you know I didn't say I thought she was joking or something guy named dorney get the link to door news channel blurred or knee has a video talking about that about the importance of not giving phony nutritional advice as a vegan and one of the things Doran he says in that video is very true he says just because you've heard the question a hundred times like I've heard the question about protein a hundred times that doesn't mean that the person asking the question is being insincere because they they haven't asked it a hundred times and that was really true of this teacher I figured out after a few seconds but sort of in disbelief like you really want to do the protein thing and then I realize oh you actually want to know about protein content vegan food and so I did answer a question verbally again I'm speaking Chinese just not not really a language I could speak as a wait a minute I went back to my room I got a copy of this exact pamphlet I brought it to run gave it to her on a short of the table said yeah you can look it up um I also said you were verbally to be honest I said I weigh 100 kilograms you weigh only 50 kilograms I get enough protein so I think you can get enough protein instead but that's anyway that's not the perfect answer the perfect answer was what I did it was that I gave her that that pamphlet so look guys progress as matter of perspective changes an objective fact he are things better now than they were 10 years ago are they better here in China are they better in Scotland are they better in Germany and so on I think we can all say in some ways the veteran some ways they're not i can definitely tell you one of the things this pamphlet reflects is a loss of optimism about the Buddhist religion itself I can remember a time when people were tremendously optimistic that Buddhism was going to play a really positive role in leading the world towards a much more ecological future that Buddhism was going to be a major force especially here in Asia especially in places like Taiwan China but even Sri Lanka Thailand you name it that Buddhism was going to be a powerful force for ecology if not vegetarianism and veganism specifically and this booklet I think really reflects the failure of Buddhism and that that optimism is now dead and gone I know as you know I myself also lost my optimism about Buddhism for me personally I used to be a scholar but it makes me very much engaged those things that's why i can say with such confidence I've seen equivalent pamphlets Hong Kong Taiwan here in China for many many many years I but I even saw them back when I was still in Canada because within the Chinese Chinese diaspora and in Canada Chinese minority in Canada would have you things change one of the reasons why things change what changes an objective fact is often that they just can't stay the same a lot of you watching this video will think that the main thing on my mind today today of all days is going to be this bizarre demi-monde of vegan gossip of people trying to make money by making up stories about my private life including the legal details of my divorce case or you know my alleged sex life my relations with women or what have you the sense and we don't know first of all you know you may not believe it but i do really laugh at that stuff to me that stuff is hilarious and it's hilarious almost all the time because i know what's true and what's false event the only time when it wasn't hilarious was this situation where a friend of mine was saying it so i assumed what he was saying was true i assumed he knew what he was talking about talked about that recently on the internet but in all the other cases i know that what these people are saying about me is nonsense so on the one hand i don't mind that they're building a mythology around me and on the other hand it's just silly and i can laugh it off etc etc the sense in which it is really sad and we have to worry about how veganism is changing it doesn't really have to do with me personally it really has to do with the future of the vegan movement I have no doubt that this is just a phase yes people are motivated by money they're going to continue to move it about money some things never to go never go out of fashion like blue jeans i I don't I mean if I know I'm famous for criticizing the permanent vacation lifestyle I think people will always need to go on vacation there will always be people making vacation videos if you want to do a review of a restaurant or a resort or a vacation destination great go ahead do it there's a totally legitimate need for that I think human beings always want to find numbers the opposite sex sometimes the same sex people want to find somebody to love people want to find somebody to admire people are interested in human beauty and health so there will always be people on the internet wearing bikinis and presenting that aspect of human nature i think you know again it's not something that's going to go out of style its essence is going to disappear those aspects of veganism both digital veganism and real political things they're with us forever it's not going to go away and i do see the positive aspects of that as well as the negative now there are other things that I'm really concerned about being lacking within veganism I've just now written a children's book in both English and Chinese actually wrote it first in Chinese then translated it from Chinese English a children's story book and I'm going to talk to illustrators but getting it Illustrated if you look around more than zero but it's pretty lame what's out there if you're a parent who wants a storybook that reflects on vegan themes vegan issues or the talks with these things in a way that a child might relate to and hopefully it's not just propaganda you can't give this stuff to kids all right um you're not going to take your kids to watch the letter has videos I hope but hey some different strokes for different folks um you know whether it's at that level of education and outreach whether it's the community organizations political institutions would have you you know I've always said my problem is not with the shallowness of the shallow content with the beaded which is here forever my problem is with the lack of depth and the deepest content there were lack of robustness in those political institutions those elements but I mean you know the vegan drama thing or as it pertains to myself personally it is going to disappear because there's there's nothing to say so some of you may not have noticed is still now the people who are trying to make money gossiping about me they're recycling things from four months ago that they already know to be false so I mean trying to treat it as if it's a new scandal or new topic of interest more than four months ago I already dealt with a totally false idea that I was trying to spark up a romance with a particular sixteen-year-old here on YouTube I think everyone sorry I could say everyone knows it unless this is the first video you've seen the people who themselves are really maliciously spreading this lie at this point all of them know it because I already had a video up addressing that before durianrider was aware of it before durianrider had tried to capitalize on a try to use it to to slander me that video you can check the stamp the video is called fake diet real politics now I made that video partly because the whole thing was hilarious partly because they're deeper and more interesting political issues involved but the fact that someone like Charles or like durianrider the fact that somebody would be today trying to dig that up and use it again against me well I mean whether it's to hurt me whether it's with malice or whether it's just to get attention just to try to have a scandal when all of that was already dealt with four months ago and you know there were elements of it that are amusing and we're talking about four months ago that already shows you that this can't last the this situation has changed the stuff about my divorce I already dealt with months and months ago anyone who wants to know more about my divorce it's boring really nothing new has happened into my divorce in three years there is no scandal there is nothing exciting or new about I know that whether or not you know it or without you you know believe ridiculous stories the meetup but another story but the fact that this has already gotten into an echo chamber this has already gotten into relying on on the one hand making up fiction complete lies and recycling material from the past this already shows you that it can't last uh that things have to change because they can't stay the same and that's a very easy judgment to make because like I say progress is a matter of perspective changes the objective fact I didn't see this change coming I wouldn't have predicted this the fact that i can say things have to change does not mean i have any insight whatsoever in to what's what's going to happen next what's happening the future i can tell you what i want i can tell you that i have a dream and one of the reasons why this doesn't depress me or upset me too much is what you could basically call the Donald Trump factor any scandal that I have to deal with now is a scandal I don't have to deal with five years from now five years into the future and from you know so Donald Trump very few of you be old enough to remember that he had so many sex scandals back in the 1980s I think in the nineteen eighties a long long long time ago his his love life used to really be in the newspapers today of course you know they're all kinds of political controversies about him but I don't see anyone saying that he's discredited because of his relationships back at that time all those scandals were already dealt with um you it bothers me it bothers me for the same reason that I didn't like to see durianrider drag the name of veganism through the mud it bothers me to see other people dragging the whole vegan cause through the mud just for the sake of short-term profit just for the sake of a kind of notoriety and for a few thousand dollars yes it's sad yes it's exploitative in hip-hop terms its people being a culture vulture it's people trying to make money out of the movement out of the subculture trying to make money out of the culture and not making a positive contribution so yes it's sad and it's bad for veganism on many levels but for me personally I've already seen this effect like the first time people made allegations that there's something scandalous about my divorce oh there's something scandalous about my sex life now the first time people kind of take it seriously but there's a boy cries wolf effect at this point nobody believes anything to rewrite it says I feel yes yes absolutely no credibility and when other channels pick up his lies and recycle them which is a large part of what happens oh yeah you think I grew up a millionaire you really hey even if other channels say it as soon as others find out that's the source oh this is just rehashed from during writer nobody takes it seriously anymore so on that side there's a there's a boy who cries wealth effect and on my side like I say like Donald Trump okay if I've got to deal with this now let's do it because I don't want to deal with the five years from now whoever you are watching this look yourself in the mirror really think about it five years from now it's going to be 2021 what are you doing in the year 2000 21 I can tell you what I want you to be doing I want you to making a positive difference in this world as a vegan by and for veganism maybe you're going to have a full-time job that leaves you very little time but I at least want veganism to have a foundation they have multiple foundations that are more powerful and influential than petta is today pedda People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals we should be able to eclipse them we should be able to do them I don't today we're more pathetic than the Green Party and the Green Party is pretty pathetic we should be able to outdo the Green Party our message is more important now and for the future than Mothers Against Drunk Driving they have a fabulous organization we should outdo mothers against drunk driving and then those of you who are going to be too busy at a desk job or you know saving the world in other ways you may be finding a cure for cancer you may be a scientist you may be an architect but you may work behind the counter at starbucks I may be working behind the counter at starbucks believe me the thoughts crossed my mind maybe an overeducated starbucks employee it's completely possible my future you may be working on a submarine for the US Navy whatever it is I hope at an absolute minimum you can do something really positive by being engaged with robust foundations that are pursuing those goals to the vegan cause and I mean irony of ironies oh man I just made a video on it that's the that's the realest thing in the game all right ultimately none of us are out here debating our past history and that's why I think we're open to someone who's a former criminal someone who's a former drug addict etc taking on a leadership role something that's happened more than once more than one a former drug addict more than one former convicted criminal has risen to prominence here in veganism because veganism ultimately really is about the future and it's the future I want to worry about and this whole channel is an invitation to all of you I hope you'll come along with me and join in the worrying
cultures in so many different contexts and I've had to move and relocate so many times I've had the experience of buying free weights and carrying them back to my apartment many many times and it seems like a shallow and yet profound life lesson that some whenever you buy free weights the best workout you'll ever have is when you're carrying them home because I've never owned a car so I just bought i just bought 60 kilograms yeah 30 kilograms in 30 kilograms of free weights and had to carry them home from the shop one in each hand walking the whole way you get that weight dragging on your shoulder oh it's a great workout but probably I'll never again get as much exercise out of those free weights as I just had in buying them dating them home I think when I was last in Canada i had i had 45 i forget what they were i had a couple weights that were really heavy and i had to make two trips you know I had to go Carrie just one and then go back and carry just the other um hope you guys aren't getting too much noise pollution to the window look I've been saying for years and years and years a phrase I made up although I think many other people have said similar things progress is a matter of perspective change is an objective fact change is something we can measure we can talk about it we can debate it sure but the existence of change the necessity have changed the factors driving change and the results of change are real objective effects progress like beauty is in the eye of the beholder you can actually see a lot of strange signs of progress in looking at this pamphlet this is a pro vegan propaganda pamphlet that's distributed at some vegan restaurants and other institutions here in conveying in 2016 this is a very useful form of activism the people who made this pamphlet are definitely activists partly because at the back of the pamphlet it actually has listenings the last few pages give you the telephone numbers and addresses of vegan restaurants neighborhood by neighborhood also vegan grocery stores of ecological agencies and charities this sort of thing um I've been involved with this sort of movement before I was vegan back in 1998 1999 definitely 1999 you know ecology issues like deforestation the Green Party um yeah I think the same questions I'm engaged with today I was definitely already engaged with the 1999 and I have seen the changes in both Western culture and Asian culture in how these things are addressed and thought about starting with us right off the bat that the cover you know the imagery they've chosen has really changed the focus on ecology ecology as being you know what's on the cover the the you know destruction of the urban environment the tox ification of the the air we we breathe the water we drink and so on and the depiction of the earth as an increasingly red and yellow globe the title for this they've chosen is who wouldn't want health but already you can see from the cover that this isn't just about the health of your body this is what the health of the planet this is about the destruction of our ecology and one of the most striking changes is that you do eventually get the corny photograph of Jesus and the corny photograph of the Buddha sorry [ __ ] it's a photograph of a painting I don't want to mislead you guys this is not actually a not a real photograph of Jesus um you know and the attempt to sort of construe that that veganism is somehow connected to positively connected to these these religions but that appears on page 48 and page 49 of this pamphlet is almost the last thing before the listings at the very end of the book I can tell you from experience this type of vegan propaganda ecological buganda 10 15 years ago this stuff Jesus and the Buddha would have been page 1 that would have been the main point up front and to be sure the agencies the activists the political organizations creating the stuff they would have identified as Buddhists or with one of the other new religious movements and what have you so already there's a change whether or not it's progress as a matter of there is a very real change when i look at this pamphlet and compare it to even within China within the Chinese culture don't judge me try this country amongst in Chinese civilization in this atmosphere I can see very real change between this and where we were at just 10 years ago now what do they lead with if Jesus and the Buddha are buried basically at the back of this pamphlet what do you think is on page one protein so as a list of different vegan foods so I'm sure many of you can't read chinese we can see there's a table or you may not be able to read it this this tiny scale a list of different vegan foods how much protein and how much fat they contain compared to meet and this very much does reflect there's some other detailed nutritional information right up front first three pages are all tables of nutrition facts very neatly well presented information as you may know black beans lead the table but nobody in China eats black beans hung black beans being much more impressive than than tofu health concerns about whether people can be vegan are addressed in here but health ecology environmental degradation first and foremost and questions of animal ethics and suffering are in here but the religious or supernatural arguments is pushed to the very back so yeah the title is who wouldn't want health but of course it's asking us much more than that uh I've had a big impact on two of my teachers so far a third teacher already was vegan before I got here so i didn't i didn't have such an invite her back she know I'm lying i had an impact in her in a different way so a third teacher of mine who already was vegan she watched my video on community with the chinese translation and i think that did make a big impact on her i already had a video up talking about how with my first teacher i communicated the concept that veganism is not just a diet veganism is a political struck I compared that to the issue with cigarette smoking the decision for one person to quit smoking cigarettes maybe just about health who would want health right but the decision that we as a culture as a society of the country that we want to make progress towards having zero smokers we want to eliminate this from our culture from our civilization that's something very different and it inevitably involves political decisions political struggles changes to laws etc etc I had a second teacher here all these are conversations in Chinese and by the way my ability to speak Chinese is level one um I had a second teacher here who should quite young I think she's 21 she was only my teacher for about one week and she said to me in this kind of high chirpy voice she put on a sort of cute voice and she said jokingly oh well um you know I eat meat but I could never kill an animal she was saying stuff like this and she was you know trying to be to be cute about it um and I said back in a very low voice very slow pace and slow dark tone and is not intentional or contrived i was speaking very slowly and clearly because my ability to speak chinese is so poor i had to think through each word I was saying with him but I said to her yeah he could you kill animals every day without even thinking about it everyone who eats meat does and if you think you couldn't kill an animal face to face you're wrong you could do it the same way you could kill a human being and she was shocked at this and she insisted that know that while she eats meat she wouldn't possibly have the heart to actually you know slaughter an animal herself or kill a human being and again I said to her in this very sort of slow serious tone because I have to think through each word I'm saying in Chinese I'm speaking solely not making dramatic pauses intentionally but you know I said to were basically sure he could everybody can everybody in this school right now is a killer whether they know it or not and if you study the political history of China or you study the political history of Cambodia or the political history of canada or any other country what you learn is as soon as circumstances demanded people resort to violence people kill other people with no hesitation especially the people like you who thought they never would are never could do it I said every single person in this school except me it's killing animals on a daily basis without giving it a second thought because there is no way to eat meat without killing animals um now again I did not think these words would have a big impact on her I was really just struggling to communicate at all because I'm a student I'm just learning Chinese figured out that this actually quite a devastating effect on her and you know I I didn't mean to upset her it's interesting isn't that kind of conversation it's not like she's seeing slaughterhouse footage or anything we're really just talking about in the abstract but she said some more things to me that day you know within within the day not maybe at that moment that really showed me that this this conversation a huge impact on her and I get my mother teacher that the first teacher she had just never thought about the fact that leather requires that you kill em she'd never thought about it she's she's smart too she's not idiot she just she had encountered leather only as a finished product and actually that first teacher she never ate ate eggs she had some kind of food allergies does need eggs she had never thought about what eggs are how they're made you know whether or not yet what the biological function of an egg egg she was shocked when I explained to her that you know eggs are actually for a chicken to reproduce and this kind of thing right people who grow up in the city you can be smart you can be brilliant first issues excellent excellent teacher knows a lot about the history of languages and so on but she's never given this stuff and he thought and you know I think that second teacher in a very real sense had never thought about now maybe she's used that cute line before you know trying to be cute and again she's 21 maybe every other time she says oh I eat meat every day but I could never kill an animal there's this thing in a lot of cultures Western culture Chinese culture if someone is a good looking female where people just don't take what they say seriously even when really it's a very serious matter it's very deadly serious matters oh oh good for you aren't you cute aren't you wonderful aren't you bright aren't you charming and you know I didn't respond by saying aren't you branch chairman I responded by saying people like you kill animals every day and when the circumstance arises people like you kill other human beings absolutely no hesitation uh but the question she came back to me with not that day but the the in the days to follow I think the very next day her concern was what you see in the first few pages here she was asking me seriously about getting enough protein in the vegan diet and for you know I didn't say I thought she was joking or something guy named dorney get the link to door news channel blurred or knee has a video talking about that about the importance of not giving phony nutritional advice as a vegan and one of the things Doran he says in that video is very true he says just because you've heard the question a hundred times like I've heard the question about protein a hundred times that doesn't mean that the person asking the question is being insincere because they they haven't asked it a hundred times and that was really true of this teacher I figured out after a few seconds but sort of in disbelief like you really want to do the protein thing and then I realize oh you actually want to know about protein content vegan food and so I did answer a question verbally again I'm speaking Chinese just not not really a language I could speak as a wait a minute I went back to my room I got a copy of this exact pamphlet I brought it to run gave it to her on a short of the table said yeah you can look it up um I also said you were verbally to be honest I said I weigh 100 kilograms you weigh only 50 kilograms I get enough protein so I think you can get enough protein instead but that's anyway that's not the perfect answer the perfect answer was what I did it was that I gave her that that pamphlet so look guys progress as matter of perspective changes an objective fact he are things better now than they were 10 years ago are they better here in China are they better in Scotland are they better in Germany and so on I think we can all say in some ways the veteran some ways they're not i can definitely tell you one of the things this pamphlet reflects is a loss of optimism about the Buddhist religion itself I can remember a time when people were tremendously optimistic that Buddhism was going to play a really positive role in leading the world towards a much more ecological future that Buddhism was going to be a major force especially here in Asia especially in places like Taiwan China but even Sri Lanka Thailand you name it that Buddhism was going to be a powerful force for ecology if not vegetarianism and veganism specifically and this booklet I think really reflects the failure of Buddhism and that that optimism is now dead and gone I know as you know I myself also lost my optimism about Buddhism for me personally I used to be a scholar but it makes me very much engaged those things that's why i can say with such confidence I've seen equivalent pamphlets Hong Kong Taiwan here in China for many many many years I but I even saw them back when I was still in Canada because within the Chinese Chinese diaspora and in Canada Chinese minority in Canada would have you things change one of the reasons why things change what changes an objective fact is often that they just can't stay the same a lot of you watching this video will think that the main thing on my mind today today of all days is going to be this bizarre demi-monde of vegan gossip of people trying to make money by making up stories about my private life including the legal details of my divorce case or you know my alleged sex life my relations with women or what have you the sense and we don't know first of all you know you may not believe it but i do really laugh at that stuff to me that stuff is hilarious and it's hilarious almost all the time because i know what's true and what's false event the only time when it wasn't hilarious was this situation where a friend of mine was saying it so i assumed what he was saying was true i assumed he knew what he was talking about talked about that recently on the internet but in all the other cases i know that what these people are saying about me is nonsense so on the one hand i don't mind that they're building a mythology around me and on the other hand it's just silly and i can laugh it off etc etc the sense in which it is really sad and we have to worry about how veganism is changing it doesn't really have to do with me personally it really has to do with the future of the vegan movement I have no doubt that this is just a phase yes people are motivated by money they're going to continue to move it about money some things never to go never go out of fashion like blue jeans i I don't I mean if I know I'm famous for criticizing the permanent vacation lifestyle I think people will always need to go on vacation there will always be people making vacation videos if you want to do a review of a restaurant or a resort or a vacation destination great go ahead do it there's a totally legitimate need for that I think human beings always want to find numbers the opposite sex sometimes the same sex people want to find somebody to love people want to find somebody to admire people are interested in human beauty and health so there will always be people on the internet wearing bikinis and presenting that aspect of human nature i think you know again it's not something that's going to go out of style its essence is going to disappear those aspects of veganism both digital veganism and real political things they're with us forever it's not going to go away and i do see the positive aspects of that as well as the negative now there are other things that I'm really concerned about being lacking within veganism I've just now written a children's book in both English and Chinese actually wrote it first in Chinese then translated it from Chinese English a children's story book and I'm going to talk to illustrators but getting it Illustrated if you look around more than zero but it's pretty lame what's out there if you're a parent who wants a storybook that reflects on vegan themes vegan issues or the talks with these things in a way that a child might relate to and hopefully it's not just propaganda you can't give this stuff to kids all right um you're not going to take your kids to watch the letter has videos I hope but hey some different strokes for different folks um you know whether it's at that level of education and outreach whether it's the community organizations political institutions would have you you know I've always said my problem is not with the shallowness of the shallow content with the beaded which is here forever my problem is with the lack of depth and the deepest content there were lack of robustness in those political institutions those elements but I mean you know the vegan drama thing or as it pertains to myself personally it is going to disappear because there's there's nothing to say so some of you may not have noticed is still now the people who are trying to make money gossiping about me they're recycling things from four months ago that they already know to be false so I mean trying to treat it as if it's a new scandal or new topic of interest more than four months ago I already dealt with a totally false idea that I was trying to spark up a romance with a particular sixteen-year-old here on YouTube I think everyone sorry I could say everyone knows it unless this is the first video you've seen the people who themselves are really maliciously spreading this lie at this point all of them know it because I already had a video up addressing that before durianrider was aware of it before durianrider had tried to capitalize on a try to use it to to slander me that video you can check the stamp the video is called fake diet real politics now I made that video partly because the whole thing was hilarious partly because they're deeper and more interesting political issues involved but the fact that someone like Charles or like durianrider the fact that somebody would be today trying to dig that up and use it again against me well I mean whether it's to hurt me whether it's with malice or whether it's just to get attention just to try to have a scandal when all of that was already dealt with four months ago and you know there were elements of it that are amusing and we're talking about four months ago that already shows you that this can't last the this situation has changed the stuff about my divorce I already dealt with months and months ago anyone who wants to know more about my divorce it's boring really nothing new has happened into my divorce in three years there is no scandal there is nothing exciting or new about I know that whether or not you know it or without you you know believe ridiculous stories the meetup but another story but the fact that this has already gotten into an echo chamber this has already gotten into relying on on the one hand making up fiction complete lies and recycling material from the past this already shows you that it can't last uh that things have to change because they can't stay the same and that's a very easy judgment to make because like I say progress is a matter of perspective changes the objective fact I didn't see this change coming I wouldn't have predicted this the fact that i can say things have to change does not mean i have any insight whatsoever in to what's what's going to happen next what's happening the future i can tell you what i want i can tell you that i have a dream and one of the reasons why this doesn't depress me or upset me too much is what you could basically call the Donald Trump factor any scandal that I have to deal with now is a scandal I don't have to deal with five years from now five years into the future and from you know so Donald Trump very few of you be old enough to remember that he had so many sex scandals back in the 1980s I think in the nineteen eighties a long long long time ago his his love life used to really be in the newspapers today of course you know they're all kinds of political controversies about him but I don't see anyone saying that he's discredited because of his relationships back at that time all those scandals were already dealt with um you it bothers me it bothers me for the same reason that I didn't like to see durianrider drag the name of veganism through the mud it bothers me to see other people dragging the whole vegan cause through the mud just for the sake of short-term profit just for the sake of a kind of notoriety and for a few thousand dollars yes it's sad yes it's exploitative in hip-hop terms its people being a culture vulture it's people trying to make money out of the movement out of the subculture trying to make money out of the culture and not making a positive contribution so yes it's sad and it's bad for veganism on many levels but for me personally I've already seen this effect like the first time people made allegations that there's something scandalous about my divorce oh there's something scandalous about my sex life now the first time people kind of take it seriously but there's a boy cries wolf effect at this point nobody believes anything to rewrite it says I feel yes yes absolutely no credibility and when other channels pick up his lies and recycle them which is a large part of what happens oh yeah you think I grew up a millionaire you really hey even if other channels say it as soon as others find out that's the source oh this is just rehashed from during writer nobody takes it seriously anymore so on that side there's a there's a boy who cries wealth effect and on my side like I say like Donald Trump okay if I've got to deal with this now let's do it because I don't want to deal with the five years from now whoever you are watching this look yourself in the mirror really think about it five years from now it's going to be 2021 what are you doing in the year 2000 21 I can tell you what I want you to be doing I want you to making a positive difference in this world as a vegan by and for veganism maybe you're going to have a full-time job that leaves you very little time but I at least want veganism to have a foundation they have multiple foundations that are more powerful and influential than petta is today pedda People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals we should be able to eclipse them we should be able to do them I don't today we're more pathetic than the Green Party and the Green Party is pretty pathetic we should be able to outdo the Green Party our message is more important now and for the future than Mothers Against Drunk Driving they have a fabulous organization we should outdo mothers against drunk driving and then those of you who are going to be too busy at a desk job or you know saving the world in other ways you may be finding a cure for cancer you may be a scientist you may be an architect but you may work behind the counter at starbucks I may be working behind the counter at starbucks believe me the thoughts crossed my mind maybe an overeducated starbucks employee it's completely possible my future you may be working on a submarine for the US Navy whatever it is I hope at an absolute minimum you can do something really positive by being engaged with robust foundations that are pursuing those goals to the vegan cause and I mean irony of ironies oh man I just made a video on it that's the that's the realest thing in the game all right ultimately none of us are out here debating our past history and that's why I think we're open to someone who's a former criminal someone who's a former drug addict etc taking on a leadership role something that's happened more than once more than one a former drug addict more than one former convicted criminal has risen to prominence here in veganism because veganism ultimately really is about the future and it's the future I want to worry about and this whole channel is an invitation to all of you I hope you'll come along with me and join in the worrying