Activism Motivated By Money: Veganism & Patreon.
05 August 2018 [link youtube]
https://www.patreon.com/a_bas_le_ciel
#Vegan #Vegans #Veganism
Youtube Automatic Transcription
we're gonna talk about money in politics
we're gonna talk about the dynamic way in which collecting donations for a cause changes everything the particular examples we're dealing with may involve YouTube may involve this unique website called patreon may or may not involve veganism but let me tell you sign folks a lot of the lessons that are gonna be described in this video could apply almost any cause almost any movement almost any youtuber so if you're not vegan you've never seen this channel before give me five minutes of your time let's see where this goes if we're gonna talk about the problems of the money motive in politics one of the most important things is that we start off being honest about what we are contrasting it to it's deceptively easy to tell yourself that there is a world of real politics that's separate from world of fake politics the fake world being entirely created by the motivations that money bring into the game the influence money has on politics can't be used to separate something real from something fake people give donations to reveal causes all the time if you read your local newspaper even something relatively corny like a young girl gets hit by a car and people donate money to try to help her this kind of response to a human tragedy people figure out that the sewage being dumped in the ocean makes it unsafe to go swimming and people start to gather money together to try to lobby City Hall or the provincial Parliament or somebody try to improve water quality there can be completely sincere ecological movements of this kind where money's involved for money is of decisive influence and indeed when you look into at any particular case it may just be a very small number of wealthy people or even just one millionaire who has a decisive voice in it and that does not mean your political cause is fake the influence of money is not the difference between something fake and something real I'd like to point out by contrast if we were talking about architecture now I'm using architecture as an example I could instead say art or fashion it's not the case that we can say Oh over here is the world of real architecture the pursuit of an aesthetic ideal the exploration of ideas about structure and form and how to house people and how to design a shopping mall how to design a church that takes place on a piece of paper with a pencil it's a purely philosophical exploration of what architecture could be should be ought to be and then over here there's this separate corrupt world of money being paid for buildings to be great in the real world no no this is really the opposite in a sense you can say the people who just sit down and fantasize about what buildings ought to be with pencil and paper the people who don't care about what the free market demands but what customers demand whether they're building a mall or a church or homes for people that in a sense the purely abstract pursuit of architecture philosophically on a chalkboard or the realm of ideas that in a sense that's fake that in many ways the reality of what architecture isn't ought to be is exactly in the interplay between these two things that you do have theoretical and S that I can even philosophical considerations but that the real-world considerations that normally do make themselves felt the people become aware of because of money because of the pressure to make money and of architecture that this is actually something real and positive without an appreciation for which we're not really talking about architecture again we could say the same of fashion so on and so forth but there's a second distinction I want to bring in here there's a difference between architecture and talking about architecture so there are the companies that actually are involved in the design and construction but then there's another world of critics people who appreciate architects people who want to discuss and debate what the future of architecture should be of course the history of architecture which buildings were successful or failures in what way learning from those mistakes and indeed to some extent they're probably going to want to entertain questions that come out of a purely ideal or idealize or idealizing view of what architecture could or should be there's gonna be some philosophical discussion there now if I were to ask you where's the money at in this distinction is there more money in architectural appreciation architectural criticism Architectural Digest magazine Architectural journalism or let's just say also architectural documentary filmmaking people making films with orange is there more money in that world or in steel and concrete actually designing then building structures shopping malls houses churches we all know where the money is at and here's the problem for many of us involved in charity work politics aspirations to make the world a better place vegan or non-vegan it's the exact opposite all the money is in talking about politics or making documentary films about politics and none of the money isn't actually making the difference in the real world so veganism being an example we have a situation where somebody can film themselves just even having a fight in the street yelling it so maybe even I've seen examples this film themselves having a fight with their own parents having a dispute talking about veganism they can upload this to the internet and ask for donations and do fundraising these types of short film clips can really be your whole career we have many many examples of vegans now on patreon and so on earning several thousand dollars from month they have a well-funded career but it's not for veganism itself neither veganism as a political enterprise nor in terms of actually cooking food or baking cookies or or say you know real world example might be actually helping the homeless helping poverty stricken field by making vegan food and giving them for free can imagine doing fundraisers or anything like that it's all that money is going into talking about veganism talking about politics not actually doing politics again the difference being like making short films about architecture as opposed to actual architectural firms now whom there are many reasons why of course this is an asymmetrical and unfair comparison veganism ultimately is an ethical argument to some extent in ecological argument to some extent of health argument but it's not productive in the same way that building a shelter for people to sleep in is going to be productive and generate revenue I understand but have set up some distinctions here about what's real and what's fake that I think often get ignored and people are very quick to throw insults at one another about what's authentic and what's inauthentic what's well motivated and what's not well motivated what's real and what's fake without thinking these things over so if we're going to talk about the influence of money in politics we have to have something to contrast it to and this is the contrast I'd like to introduce to you my audience which is actually the issue of love it's a very cold kind of love I'm talking about this video so I'm going to coin the phrase cold love in parallel to cold charity cold charity is an old term in in political science if I sit down and talk with my own mother this has happened I saw my mother eating two eggs for breakfast and I happen to know this offhand if she's just one egg she's already at a hundred percent of her maximum daily dose of cholesterol it's eating just one whole egg a day is not advisable in terms of human health you know I'm vegan so I am biased but still just cholesterol alone it's a huge issue in terms health and when we're sitting there and talking to her and saying you know you're killing yourself I mean I'm just looking at you eating breakfast right now and you're putting yourself into an early grave you know now is that motivated by love again it's a very cold very peculiar form of love but when we get into these arguments whether they're about health whether about pure ethics or ecology or a combination of all three this is something that's incredibly easy to lose sight of especially in our era when these discussions are being monetized when they're the basis for fundraising when they're actually being packaged as a product as a film clip as a kind of low-level documentary to generate revenue directly through YouTube and donations through through patreon I see a lot of street activism and even if it's not rude or reproachful or hateful it does not come from this place of love I talked about this on my channel meeting more like two years ago I can remember discussions about this issue of the importance of the role of love in politics and it came up briefly but dramatically in my debate with Maude vegan about drug policy where I really challenged her asking when you were talking about legislating about making drugs legal illegal and so on the ethics of drug policy are you really thinking about this with a sense of love for the addicts themselves because it sounded to me like she was talking about passing laws with the attitude of just letting these people die or even wanting them to die off as quickly as possible it's kind of very callous indifference to their deaths as opposed to wanting to do what's in their best interest acting with a kind of love in principle that I think a legislator has to have towards his or her people so this measure this has come up before let me give you a somewhat salacious but I think useful example hypothetically let's say you meet up and talk to a distant cousin someone you haven't talked to you in five years it could be a cousin could be a co-worker but I mean somebody you don't know very well but someone you know for a long time and it's sitting and talking about what's been going on in his life since you last seen him what you discover is that he has really he's boasting he's boasting about what he's been doing in his private life and he's fallen into the habit of getting women drunk plying women with alcohol going out and drinking and then when these women are asleep when they've passed out from drinking so much having sex with him and for him and for his circle of friends or the few people he's told this to he perceives this as completely normal now for many people watching this video of both genders this is not a completely hypothetical example many people in different cultures you will have encountered someone with these these attitudes now let's say you're having this conversation with your distant cousin and you decide you're really gonna try to challenge his assumptions of course there's a sense in which you can have this discussion first and foremost and explicitly for his victims for his presumed victims for the women you're imagining who are suffering the consequences of his conduct right but if you're gonna engage in this conversation with him what you were gonna try to philosophically and ethically break down the difficult questions of responsibility that are involved here my my crucial advice to you is for the purposes of this conversation for the purposes of this outreach education and activism you can see on one with this just like talking to a stranger on the street about wearing they're wearing fur I think you've really got to do it out of a sort of love for him like look I'm gonna try to explain to you why this is ethically wrong for your benefit it's for you it's because ultimately the question I'm asking is what kind of person do you want to be and I'm telling you out of love for you in your best interests I want you to be a better person I want you to be a person who does the right thing I want you to be another person who even understands there was a question here about doing the right thing and you're gonna try to educate him and bring him up to that level it is very easy by contrast for vegans to talk to meat-eaters or people wearing fur be wearing leather as if their purpose is to represent the victims as if their purpose is to walk up to somebody and say hey don't you realize the fur coat you're wearing those animals were killed by putting an electrode up their anus here I have a picture I have a videotape of the horrible suffering that's behind this fur coat and were your whole attitude of engaging with them is that you represent the victims that you're doing something for the animals we said all the time as vegans or I'm doing something for ecology for the planet for the atmosphere etc etc of course I understand why people have this attitude of course I do and my point is not that the victims or the ecological consequences don't matter but there is a discipline that I think is central to real politics it contrasts the fake politics or we set those things aside say okay I'm gonna have this conversation with you for you for your benefit I'm gonna talk to you about this in a in a sense to make you a better person shouldn't even put it that way I'm doing this with a kind of love and indeed it is a very cold love if you discover you know your cousin is this kind of alcoholic rapist living in this dissolute manner it's probably it's probably gonna be a challenge to muster up this charitable sense of cold love for him and say hey I want to talk to you about doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do which you've got to do it with love and in the same way to reach out to people in activism in politics and say I'm doing this out of love for the people concern for the person concern for you I'm tryna act gets you to ask what kind of person do you want to be etc again I already mentioned this has real parallels with drug policy and what-have-you so patreon donations fundraising they really imperil the most basic assumptions of what education outreach activism politics of content creation is all about I was very very reluctant to allow advertising of any kind on this channel only people have been with this channel from the very first days we'll remember that there was a long period where there were no advertisements at all and then very minimal advertisements boy filter shouldn't be that that conflict conflict of interest there I'll come back to that when I opened my patreon for patreon supporters I insisted everyone pay only one dollar don't pay more than one dollar my motives arriving the patient I really wanted to be across roads people would meet each other not really for revenue generation for the channel at all these mixed feelings about that I struggled a lot with this with this question but what it really comes down to you here is the problem of one people perceiving you as being motivated by money and believe me even if you're making only 100 dollars people will perceive this and to the problem of people actually being motivated by money right so if I know for a fact that I can make more money with a political criticism of Jordan Peterson and of course and over-the-top very dramatic criticism of Jordan Peterson that will generate money directly here on YouTube not even getting into patreon donation and of course another video discussing Aristotle Socrates Athenian democracy political philosophy it's gonna generate nothing at all I am NOT the kind of person who is motive above that and guess what probably my very next video of coming up I've got more videos talking about political philosophy of Aristotle from ancient Greece I'm gonna have more videos that I'm in political philosophy but when I open up YouTube and it tells me how much money I'm making on each video which it does I can see that by far exponentially the last video I made saying that Jordan Peterson was an idiot made much more money many people not all I think most people they will be strongly influenced with that whether or not they are whether or not you perceive them as being influenced by money you have the reality of being influenced about money right and the perception itself of course can be a very powerful thing I got a question from closed at plant-based news asking me to talk about this issue in particular how patreon is changing the game whether patreon is a good thing or a bad thing and I wrote back to him and said point one patreon works poorly as a platform for activism because it was not designed to be a platform for political activism okay it was designed to replace the tip jar feature on many websites and to be more suitable for the arts and I note here the arts really means entertainment in comparison to crowdfunding websites like Kickstarter however the fact that it works poorly for political activism doesn't mean that individual activists have a better alternative it may be the best option you've got so let's just mention a project I've wanted to get off the for quite some time I put up a series of videos about a storybook storybook originally written in Chinese I translated in from Chinese to English and then other people translated into other languages and this storybook in its way raises for the the philosophical question about veganism for children and for parents to sit down and read it to their children in a way that isn't gory that isn't scary that is an age inappropriate it's not like showing the slaughterhouse footage to small children and of course the next step was to find an illustrator get the book Illustrated and publish it now I'm not going to tell you it's impossible for me to fund this project through patreon through donations whatever you do but look guys if I go out on the street tomorrow and I have my girlfriend hold a camera and I just start a shouting match with let's say a Muslim Imam or you know a Catholic nun about veganism if I just say you know I mean this is I'm using these examples because they'll be more dramatic if I go out and I there's a Catholic nun on the street and we we just start yelling at each other like idiots about slaughtering animals for no reason you know that one video alone would generate more money both directly here on YouTube and through donations through patreon then you know frankly I'm sorry but a much better idea something artistic and creative it's good for the movement and good for a lot of things like illustrating that story book right so come back to my original image we're in a situation where real politics real veganism real active isn't the real movement starts to be consumed overly influenced it starts to bend under the influence of this kind of you know secondary what should be an echo of real politics but increasingly isn't increasingly that comes to take on the misleading appearance of being the real thing and I say again the distinction here isn't about money versus no money money's a motive in both cases if I want to illustrate and publish that children's storybook I'm also gonna need to spend money on just to note when my father died I thought I was going to inherit enough money to print that children's storybook my father had nine kids and I inherited much less money than he told me I was gonna inherit well that's what happens do you have nine kids um that's the way the cookie crumbles so in reality the money I inherited for my father I pretty much just spent moving back to Canada after living in sharp tears there was nothing there to get that story book illustrated and published so that's that is how that turned out but whether it's that I'm spending my father's money or asking for donations both examples all examples include spending money and even when you talk about a hundred percent volunteer forms of activism people are donating time and they're spending money to be there in reality even when everyone's a volunteer there's still questions of money involved okay point two is I wrote to close patreon is vastly superior to conventional fundraising in one important respect I'm going to say that again patreon is vastly superior to conventional fundraising in one important respect it allows donors to talk to the person they're donating to you'll never be able to talk to the president of peda People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals nor even the leaders of smaller organizations like direct action everywhere or l214 in the way that my patreon subscribers are able to talk to me okay you can take any example you want to if you donate money to the Catholic Church you don't get to talk to the Pope right if you donate money to any given cause Greenpeace an ecological cause a political party in reality the level of Transpo at sea or just just the capacity to ask a question and get an answer this is unparalleled what we have going on right here right now and you know in the past that did have allegations against my channel I had allegations that I was motivated by money and I was able to answer those questions one on one whether it was via youtube videos via skype vitamin I was able to answer people's concerns and you're very unlikely to get that satisfaction with any other model we have today in terms of you know whether you think of this as political activism entertainment or in a worrying gray area that that makes us the - okay my patreon supporters ask questions and I make youtube videos in reply sometimes I meet them in person sometimes I do conversations by a Skype or telephone or whatever but for the most part YouTube is a is that medium here and this type of interaction has produced some of the most interesting content on my channel politically philosophically and personally this can create transparency and accountability or at least it creates the possibility of transparency and accountability right now of course that's not the only reason for people to talk to me but politically it's an important one to talk about here and you know in the early days of my channel people just wanted to know what was my view on abortion what was my view on feminism what was my view on a variety of things and that is a form of transparency in politics that matters how well do you know the people you're supporting how well do you know their politics or what they're what they're trying to accomplish or what have you but yeah ultimately if someone we just had a controversy with Tannen mojo if someone wants to come on camera and lie or evade the problem or evade the truth you know you can ask them questions whether or not they're their answers are true is of course another matter okay number three on this list here we're applying to close from plant-based news number three however there are counter arguments even within the scope of this conversation I did a fundraiser for court case so I asked for donations to support a court case it was important in the vegan movement at the time and I was able to raise over $6,500 in about one day it took a little more than 24 hours I was able to do this because of the platform of support had built up on patreon and a course on YouTube however I was still denounced and defamed by people including plant-based news including clothes personally exactly the person who sent me this email including his news channel here on YouTube even though I was entirely open accountable and transparent answering questions about the progress of the court case on patreon and YouTube therefore we have a real example here of how crowdfunding and patreon specifically can basically destroy a person's life and if a massively dissuasive or negative effect on activists themselves now I'm just gonna pause for a second here I recently heard Paul Beshear and Isaac Isaac used the name ask yourself on YouTube so ask yourself is Isaac Paul Bashir and Isaac talking about Ian fighting within the vegan movement and really what they meant by infighting was one vegan denouncing another one vegan defaming another and the negative impacts this disaster moment and it was striking to me that is open with both of them expressing pity for Gary Yourofsky Gary Yourofsky is a famous and infamous activist in in veganism and I had to ask the question I just said it a text message to Isaac's tonight and asked the question has anyone ever threatened to kill Gary Yourofsky have had vegans threatened to have him beaten up and dragged to a courthouse dragged to a police station where they would present evidence they allegedly had of of serious crimes you know sexual crimes that they said he was guilty of on the Internet as he had people threatening to beat him up in the streets drag him to a police station and convict him with false evidence of made-up evidence as he had people accuse him of being a pedophile of being a sexual predator of raping underage girls because I had all of that and more as Gary Yourofsky had people accuse him of being a wife-beater of committing financial fraud of carrying out fraud in the scam the Internet is the same fundraising for the core case has he had all these things presented as fact and and people falsely claiming they had evidence to back it up because I faced all of that and more within the vegan movement and at every stage idiots complete idiots would dismiss my side of the story and try to vindicate the other side of the story by claiming that I was only motivated by money now this is despair the fact like on patreon I was making maybe two hundred dollars a month at the time you know it changed a little bit but the amounts of money involved were very very small it was like you really think and and the amount of money I was spending on airplane tickets was huge it was like whoa come on you know I had a job I just moved to China how could you possibly imagine that my side of it it's motive money and but you know two horrible terrible lies about my personal life about my mother about for some reason was always my mother not my father but whatever but about my ex-wife about my daughter about my family life but and above all else obviously the element that went to court the allegation that I was a pedophile and a sexual predator these were really unbelievably you know harsh forms of defamation and I don't think Gary Yourofsky ever injured anything like that I'm aware I'm aware of the kind of controversy that that's surrounding him I followed his career through its last several years and then he gave up and quit guess what I didn't give up and and by the way if you guys don't know the story of course you can see the story when I was accused I offered to go to the police station I said ok if you you say you have evidence giimpse against me you say you have charges against me you say you're gonna beat me up and dragged me to the police station I wrote back to the person make the accusations ok let's meet at the police station I'll meet you there I knew these were lies I knew this was defamation I knew these were false claims being made and of course for some mysterious reason what I was told back in reply was no no no they didn't want to go to the police station they just wanted to meet me and beat me up so I've faced this kind of violence I've seen the war stupidity of the vegan community and again when I heard Paul Bashir and and Isaac talking about this I don't know you know it's great that you have compassion for Gary Yourofsky but what I went through was much much worse and it shows the danger the real danger of getting involved with this kind of activism especially once the money motive is involved especially once you open yourself up to this kind of criticism because you're generating revenue through donations or through patreon now in numerous other ways there are movements being torn apart by allegations and questions about where does the money go I just read out a comment from a viewer the other day asking about Paul Bashir's organization cube of truth anonymous for the voiceless asking but where does the money go there questions are hounding Wayne Young over a direct action everywhere about where does the money go there to what extent are these organizations motivated by money and simply to what extent are they accountable for the money in some cases those questions are going to be reasonable and in some cases they're going to be unreasonable but you better be prepared to answer those questions in my case it was dirt simple I got these donations I handed over the donations to the lawyer to the law firm there's nothing else to be accounted for much more complex than meat I mean this did all my donations were for a single a single purchase a single to pay for a single court case a single event in one lump sum so this was really very easy for me to clear my name but still I got this question from closed at plant-based news and closed you yourself were dead wrong in this you defame me on your new show you subscribe to the stupidest hypothesis possible which was that the whole court case the whole conflict was a sham motivated by money as if I would participate in denouncing myself on the internet i'ma I'm a divorced parent I have a five-year-old daughter as if I would put these horrible rumors and accusations on the internet against myself just to generate like $200 it's it's insane and clothes you bought it plant-based news you took that story forward to tens of thousands of viewers and you defamed me further you were that stupid he wasn't the only one sir I know here so you know in addition to German writer vegan cheetah Charles Marlow Joe vegan all these other channels got into this act of recycling these incredibly stupid rumors trying to defame me and discredit me and engaging me pardon pardon me they defame me and they discredited me again and again on the basis that whatever I was saying was motivated by money that I was somehow engaging in fraud or a scam that was really important to the illusion that they were weaving in their own minds after the public was that you know even though what I was saying I thought it was obviously more credible than what turn writer was saying sir I mean it covered so many things including just the stamps in my passport there were lies about a million different things involved and it was very easy for me to show the stamps in my passport was very easy for me to show documentary proof and evidence of what was really going on but the notion that um I was I was fabricating this evidence for the money motive that was a powerful distortion powerful bias in those events as they unfolded okay that went on and on and that involved over a hundred thousand people you can pretend this was a small thing a blip in history the vegan movement I hope so I hope so guys because let me tell you something I don't in my life it's not gonna be forgotten it's still a problem when I apply for jobs it's still a problem when I first met my girlfriend's parents you know when I make new friends or you know again like my girlfriend's relatives new people come into my life what they see on the Internet are these ugly allegations against me scam artist wife beater or cult leader sexual predator that's on the internet forever it was backed up by you clothes it was backed up by plant-based news you bought it hook line and sinker and it's not plausible but you thought that whole story was quote unquote a scam for money through your words so there's the ultimate warning about when we mix money with politics I mean all charity involves money all charity is donation driven but there are real dangers and most people will be well advised not to take the risks that I take not even and stepping forward and trying to do something as wholesome and positive as getting a children's storybook illustration okay guys let's come back to first principles and then call this a wrap when you reach out to people in real world activism you've got to do it from a place of love whether you're doing that on the street with a complete stranger at the office with a co-worker with your own mother or what have you but I say again it is a very cold love because it is a type of love that involves to be blunt moral superiority and moral inferiority exactly what you are explained to them is why one set of choices is morally inferior morally irresponsible and another one is morally superior morally responsible but you've got to discipline yourself to engage in that discourse out of love for that person themselves the person who's receiving the message you're not in that moment in that act in that moment of activism outreach education engagement you're not doing it for the animals you can't do it with range or outrage or sorrow thinking about a cow bleeding into a trough or even holding up that picture or what have you shock value I've had separate videos talking with us I think what we're doing here it's not in any way shocked is a is a short-term solution and for the purpose of this video it's a distraction from the theme I I want to talk about a real politics well if you're asking what is the difference between real and fake it's not the difference between asking for donations and not asking for donations it's not the difference between a purely philosophical or ideal pursuit of politics akin to a purely philosophical or ideal pursuit of architecture and something that involves money the free market consumer satisfaction and real-world outcomes and it's also not simply the difference between the thing itself the criticism appreciation discussion of the thing and people engaging in debates about what the future of the thing ought to be again whether it's architecture veganism politics or even a religion like Buddhism or or what-have-you these things are all inextricably bound up in one another I really think the criterion of the real the difference between what's real and what's fake is exactly that hard to touch quality of love cold love you've got a struggle you've got to discipline yourself to keep that love in the game I may be sitting on this microphone right now because I'm paid to be sitting here right but the message I'm delivering to you I've got to believe I've got a feel that it's genuinely for your benefit that that I'm delivering this that this is something that's making your life better and that's not reaching out for you the microphone this is recorded on some people used to complain about my quality this cost over $200 this was paid for by donations from patrons like you I have a new video camera arriving I think in the next 10 days I think again over $200 paid for by donations from patrons like you there is a real sense in which this video right now and even the next video I do on Aristotle it's not X trickable it's not separable from money because we've opened this door to having advertising donations and so on the possibility of this being a pure art form is closed but we've got to think about especially with activism with politics but even with political philosophy talking about Aristotle is different from talking about street activism I know but in some ways it's it's similar exactly the meaning of the word real when I say keeping it real is that struggle to keep it rooted in a sense of love for the recipient for the beneficiary for the target audience and when you can't do that that's when you need to take yourself off the street that's we need to take yourself out of the demonstration or take yourself off camera and you need to re-examine the tactics the message you're delivering who you're delivering it to and how because when you're really honest with yourself when you're examining what it is you're doing if it's not motivated by love from my perspective it doesn't matter whether or not it's motivated by money some other set of motives what you're doing is not real politics or by my standards it's not real enough
we're gonna talk about the dynamic way in which collecting donations for a cause changes everything the particular examples we're dealing with may involve YouTube may involve this unique website called patreon may or may not involve veganism but let me tell you sign folks a lot of the lessons that are gonna be described in this video could apply almost any cause almost any movement almost any youtuber so if you're not vegan you've never seen this channel before give me five minutes of your time let's see where this goes if we're gonna talk about the problems of the money motive in politics one of the most important things is that we start off being honest about what we are contrasting it to it's deceptively easy to tell yourself that there is a world of real politics that's separate from world of fake politics the fake world being entirely created by the motivations that money bring into the game the influence money has on politics can't be used to separate something real from something fake people give donations to reveal causes all the time if you read your local newspaper even something relatively corny like a young girl gets hit by a car and people donate money to try to help her this kind of response to a human tragedy people figure out that the sewage being dumped in the ocean makes it unsafe to go swimming and people start to gather money together to try to lobby City Hall or the provincial Parliament or somebody try to improve water quality there can be completely sincere ecological movements of this kind where money's involved for money is of decisive influence and indeed when you look into at any particular case it may just be a very small number of wealthy people or even just one millionaire who has a decisive voice in it and that does not mean your political cause is fake the influence of money is not the difference between something fake and something real I'd like to point out by contrast if we were talking about architecture now I'm using architecture as an example I could instead say art or fashion it's not the case that we can say Oh over here is the world of real architecture the pursuit of an aesthetic ideal the exploration of ideas about structure and form and how to house people and how to design a shopping mall how to design a church that takes place on a piece of paper with a pencil it's a purely philosophical exploration of what architecture could be should be ought to be and then over here there's this separate corrupt world of money being paid for buildings to be great in the real world no no this is really the opposite in a sense you can say the people who just sit down and fantasize about what buildings ought to be with pencil and paper the people who don't care about what the free market demands but what customers demand whether they're building a mall or a church or homes for people that in a sense the purely abstract pursuit of architecture philosophically on a chalkboard or the realm of ideas that in a sense that's fake that in many ways the reality of what architecture isn't ought to be is exactly in the interplay between these two things that you do have theoretical and S that I can even philosophical considerations but that the real-world considerations that normally do make themselves felt the people become aware of because of money because of the pressure to make money and of architecture that this is actually something real and positive without an appreciation for which we're not really talking about architecture again we could say the same of fashion so on and so forth but there's a second distinction I want to bring in here there's a difference between architecture and talking about architecture so there are the companies that actually are involved in the design and construction but then there's another world of critics people who appreciate architects people who want to discuss and debate what the future of architecture should be of course the history of architecture which buildings were successful or failures in what way learning from those mistakes and indeed to some extent they're probably going to want to entertain questions that come out of a purely ideal or idealize or idealizing view of what architecture could or should be there's gonna be some philosophical discussion there now if I were to ask you where's the money at in this distinction is there more money in architectural appreciation architectural criticism Architectural Digest magazine Architectural journalism or let's just say also architectural documentary filmmaking people making films with orange is there more money in that world or in steel and concrete actually designing then building structures shopping malls houses churches we all know where the money is at and here's the problem for many of us involved in charity work politics aspirations to make the world a better place vegan or non-vegan it's the exact opposite all the money is in talking about politics or making documentary films about politics and none of the money isn't actually making the difference in the real world so veganism being an example we have a situation where somebody can film themselves just even having a fight in the street yelling it so maybe even I've seen examples this film themselves having a fight with their own parents having a dispute talking about veganism they can upload this to the internet and ask for donations and do fundraising these types of short film clips can really be your whole career we have many many examples of vegans now on patreon and so on earning several thousand dollars from month they have a well-funded career but it's not for veganism itself neither veganism as a political enterprise nor in terms of actually cooking food or baking cookies or or say you know real world example might be actually helping the homeless helping poverty stricken field by making vegan food and giving them for free can imagine doing fundraisers or anything like that it's all that money is going into talking about veganism talking about politics not actually doing politics again the difference being like making short films about architecture as opposed to actual architectural firms now whom there are many reasons why of course this is an asymmetrical and unfair comparison veganism ultimately is an ethical argument to some extent in ecological argument to some extent of health argument but it's not productive in the same way that building a shelter for people to sleep in is going to be productive and generate revenue I understand but have set up some distinctions here about what's real and what's fake that I think often get ignored and people are very quick to throw insults at one another about what's authentic and what's inauthentic what's well motivated and what's not well motivated what's real and what's fake without thinking these things over so if we're going to talk about the influence of money in politics we have to have something to contrast it to and this is the contrast I'd like to introduce to you my audience which is actually the issue of love it's a very cold kind of love I'm talking about this video so I'm going to coin the phrase cold love in parallel to cold charity cold charity is an old term in in political science if I sit down and talk with my own mother this has happened I saw my mother eating two eggs for breakfast and I happen to know this offhand if she's just one egg she's already at a hundred percent of her maximum daily dose of cholesterol it's eating just one whole egg a day is not advisable in terms of human health you know I'm vegan so I am biased but still just cholesterol alone it's a huge issue in terms health and when we're sitting there and talking to her and saying you know you're killing yourself I mean I'm just looking at you eating breakfast right now and you're putting yourself into an early grave you know now is that motivated by love again it's a very cold very peculiar form of love but when we get into these arguments whether they're about health whether about pure ethics or ecology or a combination of all three this is something that's incredibly easy to lose sight of especially in our era when these discussions are being monetized when they're the basis for fundraising when they're actually being packaged as a product as a film clip as a kind of low-level documentary to generate revenue directly through YouTube and donations through through patreon I see a lot of street activism and even if it's not rude or reproachful or hateful it does not come from this place of love I talked about this on my channel meeting more like two years ago I can remember discussions about this issue of the importance of the role of love in politics and it came up briefly but dramatically in my debate with Maude vegan about drug policy where I really challenged her asking when you were talking about legislating about making drugs legal illegal and so on the ethics of drug policy are you really thinking about this with a sense of love for the addicts themselves because it sounded to me like she was talking about passing laws with the attitude of just letting these people die or even wanting them to die off as quickly as possible it's kind of very callous indifference to their deaths as opposed to wanting to do what's in their best interest acting with a kind of love in principle that I think a legislator has to have towards his or her people so this measure this has come up before let me give you a somewhat salacious but I think useful example hypothetically let's say you meet up and talk to a distant cousin someone you haven't talked to you in five years it could be a cousin could be a co-worker but I mean somebody you don't know very well but someone you know for a long time and it's sitting and talking about what's been going on in his life since you last seen him what you discover is that he has really he's boasting he's boasting about what he's been doing in his private life and he's fallen into the habit of getting women drunk plying women with alcohol going out and drinking and then when these women are asleep when they've passed out from drinking so much having sex with him and for him and for his circle of friends or the few people he's told this to he perceives this as completely normal now for many people watching this video of both genders this is not a completely hypothetical example many people in different cultures you will have encountered someone with these these attitudes now let's say you're having this conversation with your distant cousin and you decide you're really gonna try to challenge his assumptions of course there's a sense in which you can have this discussion first and foremost and explicitly for his victims for his presumed victims for the women you're imagining who are suffering the consequences of his conduct right but if you're gonna engage in this conversation with him what you were gonna try to philosophically and ethically break down the difficult questions of responsibility that are involved here my my crucial advice to you is for the purposes of this conversation for the purposes of this outreach education and activism you can see on one with this just like talking to a stranger on the street about wearing they're wearing fur I think you've really got to do it out of a sort of love for him like look I'm gonna try to explain to you why this is ethically wrong for your benefit it's for you it's because ultimately the question I'm asking is what kind of person do you want to be and I'm telling you out of love for you in your best interests I want you to be a better person I want you to be a person who does the right thing I want you to be another person who even understands there was a question here about doing the right thing and you're gonna try to educate him and bring him up to that level it is very easy by contrast for vegans to talk to meat-eaters or people wearing fur be wearing leather as if their purpose is to represent the victims as if their purpose is to walk up to somebody and say hey don't you realize the fur coat you're wearing those animals were killed by putting an electrode up their anus here I have a picture I have a videotape of the horrible suffering that's behind this fur coat and were your whole attitude of engaging with them is that you represent the victims that you're doing something for the animals we said all the time as vegans or I'm doing something for ecology for the planet for the atmosphere etc etc of course I understand why people have this attitude of course I do and my point is not that the victims or the ecological consequences don't matter but there is a discipline that I think is central to real politics it contrasts the fake politics or we set those things aside say okay I'm gonna have this conversation with you for you for your benefit I'm gonna talk to you about this in a in a sense to make you a better person shouldn't even put it that way I'm doing this with a kind of love and indeed it is a very cold love if you discover you know your cousin is this kind of alcoholic rapist living in this dissolute manner it's probably it's probably gonna be a challenge to muster up this charitable sense of cold love for him and say hey I want to talk to you about doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do which you've got to do it with love and in the same way to reach out to people in activism in politics and say I'm doing this out of love for the people concern for the person concern for you I'm tryna act gets you to ask what kind of person do you want to be etc again I already mentioned this has real parallels with drug policy and what-have-you so patreon donations fundraising they really imperil the most basic assumptions of what education outreach activism politics of content creation is all about I was very very reluctant to allow advertising of any kind on this channel only people have been with this channel from the very first days we'll remember that there was a long period where there were no advertisements at all and then very minimal advertisements boy filter shouldn't be that that conflict conflict of interest there I'll come back to that when I opened my patreon for patreon supporters I insisted everyone pay only one dollar don't pay more than one dollar my motives arriving the patient I really wanted to be across roads people would meet each other not really for revenue generation for the channel at all these mixed feelings about that I struggled a lot with this with this question but what it really comes down to you here is the problem of one people perceiving you as being motivated by money and believe me even if you're making only 100 dollars people will perceive this and to the problem of people actually being motivated by money right so if I know for a fact that I can make more money with a political criticism of Jordan Peterson and of course and over-the-top very dramatic criticism of Jordan Peterson that will generate money directly here on YouTube not even getting into patreon donation and of course another video discussing Aristotle Socrates Athenian democracy political philosophy it's gonna generate nothing at all I am NOT the kind of person who is motive above that and guess what probably my very next video of coming up I've got more videos talking about political philosophy of Aristotle from ancient Greece I'm gonna have more videos that I'm in political philosophy but when I open up YouTube and it tells me how much money I'm making on each video which it does I can see that by far exponentially the last video I made saying that Jordan Peterson was an idiot made much more money many people not all I think most people they will be strongly influenced with that whether or not they are whether or not you perceive them as being influenced by money you have the reality of being influenced about money right and the perception itself of course can be a very powerful thing I got a question from closed at plant-based news asking me to talk about this issue in particular how patreon is changing the game whether patreon is a good thing or a bad thing and I wrote back to him and said point one patreon works poorly as a platform for activism because it was not designed to be a platform for political activism okay it was designed to replace the tip jar feature on many websites and to be more suitable for the arts and I note here the arts really means entertainment in comparison to crowdfunding websites like Kickstarter however the fact that it works poorly for political activism doesn't mean that individual activists have a better alternative it may be the best option you've got so let's just mention a project I've wanted to get off the for quite some time I put up a series of videos about a storybook storybook originally written in Chinese I translated in from Chinese to English and then other people translated into other languages and this storybook in its way raises for the the philosophical question about veganism for children and for parents to sit down and read it to their children in a way that isn't gory that isn't scary that is an age inappropriate it's not like showing the slaughterhouse footage to small children and of course the next step was to find an illustrator get the book Illustrated and publish it now I'm not going to tell you it's impossible for me to fund this project through patreon through donations whatever you do but look guys if I go out on the street tomorrow and I have my girlfriend hold a camera and I just start a shouting match with let's say a Muslim Imam or you know a Catholic nun about veganism if I just say you know I mean this is I'm using these examples because they'll be more dramatic if I go out and I there's a Catholic nun on the street and we we just start yelling at each other like idiots about slaughtering animals for no reason you know that one video alone would generate more money both directly here on YouTube and through donations through patreon then you know frankly I'm sorry but a much better idea something artistic and creative it's good for the movement and good for a lot of things like illustrating that story book right so come back to my original image we're in a situation where real politics real veganism real active isn't the real movement starts to be consumed overly influenced it starts to bend under the influence of this kind of you know secondary what should be an echo of real politics but increasingly isn't increasingly that comes to take on the misleading appearance of being the real thing and I say again the distinction here isn't about money versus no money money's a motive in both cases if I want to illustrate and publish that children's storybook I'm also gonna need to spend money on just to note when my father died I thought I was going to inherit enough money to print that children's storybook my father had nine kids and I inherited much less money than he told me I was gonna inherit well that's what happens do you have nine kids um that's the way the cookie crumbles so in reality the money I inherited for my father I pretty much just spent moving back to Canada after living in sharp tears there was nothing there to get that story book illustrated and published so that's that is how that turned out but whether it's that I'm spending my father's money or asking for donations both examples all examples include spending money and even when you talk about a hundred percent volunteer forms of activism people are donating time and they're spending money to be there in reality even when everyone's a volunteer there's still questions of money involved okay point two is I wrote to close patreon is vastly superior to conventional fundraising in one important respect I'm going to say that again patreon is vastly superior to conventional fundraising in one important respect it allows donors to talk to the person they're donating to you'll never be able to talk to the president of peda People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals nor even the leaders of smaller organizations like direct action everywhere or l214 in the way that my patreon subscribers are able to talk to me okay you can take any example you want to if you donate money to the Catholic Church you don't get to talk to the Pope right if you donate money to any given cause Greenpeace an ecological cause a political party in reality the level of Transpo at sea or just just the capacity to ask a question and get an answer this is unparalleled what we have going on right here right now and you know in the past that did have allegations against my channel I had allegations that I was motivated by money and I was able to answer those questions one on one whether it was via youtube videos via skype vitamin I was able to answer people's concerns and you're very unlikely to get that satisfaction with any other model we have today in terms of you know whether you think of this as political activism entertainment or in a worrying gray area that that makes us the - okay my patreon supporters ask questions and I make youtube videos in reply sometimes I meet them in person sometimes I do conversations by a Skype or telephone or whatever but for the most part YouTube is a is that medium here and this type of interaction has produced some of the most interesting content on my channel politically philosophically and personally this can create transparency and accountability or at least it creates the possibility of transparency and accountability right now of course that's not the only reason for people to talk to me but politically it's an important one to talk about here and you know in the early days of my channel people just wanted to know what was my view on abortion what was my view on feminism what was my view on a variety of things and that is a form of transparency in politics that matters how well do you know the people you're supporting how well do you know their politics or what they're what they're trying to accomplish or what have you but yeah ultimately if someone we just had a controversy with Tannen mojo if someone wants to come on camera and lie or evade the problem or evade the truth you know you can ask them questions whether or not they're their answers are true is of course another matter okay number three on this list here we're applying to close from plant-based news number three however there are counter arguments even within the scope of this conversation I did a fundraiser for court case so I asked for donations to support a court case it was important in the vegan movement at the time and I was able to raise over $6,500 in about one day it took a little more than 24 hours I was able to do this because of the platform of support had built up on patreon and a course on YouTube however I was still denounced and defamed by people including plant-based news including clothes personally exactly the person who sent me this email including his news channel here on YouTube even though I was entirely open accountable and transparent answering questions about the progress of the court case on patreon and YouTube therefore we have a real example here of how crowdfunding and patreon specifically can basically destroy a person's life and if a massively dissuasive or negative effect on activists themselves now I'm just gonna pause for a second here I recently heard Paul Beshear and Isaac Isaac used the name ask yourself on YouTube so ask yourself is Isaac Paul Bashir and Isaac talking about Ian fighting within the vegan movement and really what they meant by infighting was one vegan denouncing another one vegan defaming another and the negative impacts this disaster moment and it was striking to me that is open with both of them expressing pity for Gary Yourofsky Gary Yourofsky is a famous and infamous activist in in veganism and I had to ask the question I just said it a text message to Isaac's tonight and asked the question has anyone ever threatened to kill Gary Yourofsky have had vegans threatened to have him beaten up and dragged to a courthouse dragged to a police station where they would present evidence they allegedly had of of serious crimes you know sexual crimes that they said he was guilty of on the Internet as he had people threatening to beat him up in the streets drag him to a police station and convict him with false evidence of made-up evidence as he had people accuse him of being a pedophile of being a sexual predator of raping underage girls because I had all of that and more as Gary Yourofsky had people accuse him of being a wife-beater of committing financial fraud of carrying out fraud in the scam the Internet is the same fundraising for the core case has he had all these things presented as fact and and people falsely claiming they had evidence to back it up because I faced all of that and more within the vegan movement and at every stage idiots complete idiots would dismiss my side of the story and try to vindicate the other side of the story by claiming that I was only motivated by money now this is despair the fact like on patreon I was making maybe two hundred dollars a month at the time you know it changed a little bit but the amounts of money involved were very very small it was like you really think and and the amount of money I was spending on airplane tickets was huge it was like whoa come on you know I had a job I just moved to China how could you possibly imagine that my side of it it's motive money and but you know two horrible terrible lies about my personal life about my mother about for some reason was always my mother not my father but whatever but about my ex-wife about my daughter about my family life but and above all else obviously the element that went to court the allegation that I was a pedophile and a sexual predator these were really unbelievably you know harsh forms of defamation and I don't think Gary Yourofsky ever injured anything like that I'm aware I'm aware of the kind of controversy that that's surrounding him I followed his career through its last several years and then he gave up and quit guess what I didn't give up and and by the way if you guys don't know the story of course you can see the story when I was accused I offered to go to the police station I said ok if you you say you have evidence giimpse against me you say you have charges against me you say you're gonna beat me up and dragged me to the police station I wrote back to the person make the accusations ok let's meet at the police station I'll meet you there I knew these were lies I knew this was defamation I knew these were false claims being made and of course for some mysterious reason what I was told back in reply was no no no they didn't want to go to the police station they just wanted to meet me and beat me up so I've faced this kind of violence I've seen the war stupidity of the vegan community and again when I heard Paul Bashir and and Isaac talking about this I don't know you know it's great that you have compassion for Gary Yourofsky but what I went through was much much worse and it shows the danger the real danger of getting involved with this kind of activism especially once the money motive is involved especially once you open yourself up to this kind of criticism because you're generating revenue through donations or through patreon now in numerous other ways there are movements being torn apart by allegations and questions about where does the money go I just read out a comment from a viewer the other day asking about Paul Bashir's organization cube of truth anonymous for the voiceless asking but where does the money go there questions are hounding Wayne Young over a direct action everywhere about where does the money go there to what extent are these organizations motivated by money and simply to what extent are they accountable for the money in some cases those questions are going to be reasonable and in some cases they're going to be unreasonable but you better be prepared to answer those questions in my case it was dirt simple I got these donations I handed over the donations to the lawyer to the law firm there's nothing else to be accounted for much more complex than meat I mean this did all my donations were for a single a single purchase a single to pay for a single court case a single event in one lump sum so this was really very easy for me to clear my name but still I got this question from closed at plant-based news and closed you yourself were dead wrong in this you defame me on your new show you subscribe to the stupidest hypothesis possible which was that the whole court case the whole conflict was a sham motivated by money as if I would participate in denouncing myself on the internet i'ma I'm a divorced parent I have a five-year-old daughter as if I would put these horrible rumors and accusations on the internet against myself just to generate like $200 it's it's insane and clothes you bought it plant-based news you took that story forward to tens of thousands of viewers and you defamed me further you were that stupid he wasn't the only one sir I know here so you know in addition to German writer vegan cheetah Charles Marlow Joe vegan all these other channels got into this act of recycling these incredibly stupid rumors trying to defame me and discredit me and engaging me pardon pardon me they defame me and they discredited me again and again on the basis that whatever I was saying was motivated by money that I was somehow engaging in fraud or a scam that was really important to the illusion that they were weaving in their own minds after the public was that you know even though what I was saying I thought it was obviously more credible than what turn writer was saying sir I mean it covered so many things including just the stamps in my passport there were lies about a million different things involved and it was very easy for me to show the stamps in my passport was very easy for me to show documentary proof and evidence of what was really going on but the notion that um I was I was fabricating this evidence for the money motive that was a powerful distortion powerful bias in those events as they unfolded okay that went on and on and that involved over a hundred thousand people you can pretend this was a small thing a blip in history the vegan movement I hope so I hope so guys because let me tell you something I don't in my life it's not gonna be forgotten it's still a problem when I apply for jobs it's still a problem when I first met my girlfriend's parents you know when I make new friends or you know again like my girlfriend's relatives new people come into my life what they see on the Internet are these ugly allegations against me scam artist wife beater or cult leader sexual predator that's on the internet forever it was backed up by you clothes it was backed up by plant-based news you bought it hook line and sinker and it's not plausible but you thought that whole story was quote unquote a scam for money through your words so there's the ultimate warning about when we mix money with politics I mean all charity involves money all charity is donation driven but there are real dangers and most people will be well advised not to take the risks that I take not even and stepping forward and trying to do something as wholesome and positive as getting a children's storybook illustration okay guys let's come back to first principles and then call this a wrap when you reach out to people in real world activism you've got to do it from a place of love whether you're doing that on the street with a complete stranger at the office with a co-worker with your own mother or what have you but I say again it is a very cold love because it is a type of love that involves to be blunt moral superiority and moral inferiority exactly what you are explained to them is why one set of choices is morally inferior morally irresponsible and another one is morally superior morally responsible but you've got to discipline yourself to engage in that discourse out of love for that person themselves the person who's receiving the message you're not in that moment in that act in that moment of activism outreach education engagement you're not doing it for the animals you can't do it with range or outrage or sorrow thinking about a cow bleeding into a trough or even holding up that picture or what have you shock value I've had separate videos talking with us I think what we're doing here it's not in any way shocked is a is a short-term solution and for the purpose of this video it's a distraction from the theme I I want to talk about a real politics well if you're asking what is the difference between real and fake it's not the difference between asking for donations and not asking for donations it's not the difference between a purely philosophical or ideal pursuit of politics akin to a purely philosophical or ideal pursuit of architecture and something that involves money the free market consumer satisfaction and real-world outcomes and it's also not simply the difference between the thing itself the criticism appreciation discussion of the thing and people engaging in debates about what the future of the thing ought to be again whether it's architecture veganism politics or even a religion like Buddhism or or what-have-you these things are all inextricably bound up in one another I really think the criterion of the real the difference between what's real and what's fake is exactly that hard to touch quality of love cold love you've got a struggle you've got to discipline yourself to keep that love in the game I may be sitting on this microphone right now because I'm paid to be sitting here right but the message I'm delivering to you I've got to believe I've got a feel that it's genuinely for your benefit that that I'm delivering this that this is something that's making your life better and that's not reaching out for you the microphone this is recorded on some people used to complain about my quality this cost over $200 this was paid for by donations from patrons like you I have a new video camera arriving I think in the next 10 days I think again over $200 paid for by donations from patrons like you there is a real sense in which this video right now and even the next video I do on Aristotle it's not X trickable it's not separable from money because we've opened this door to having advertising donations and so on the possibility of this being a pure art form is closed but we've got to think about especially with activism with politics but even with political philosophy talking about Aristotle is different from talking about street activism I know but in some ways it's it's similar exactly the meaning of the word real when I say keeping it real is that struggle to keep it rooted in a sense of love for the recipient for the beneficiary for the target audience and when you can't do that that's when you need to take yourself off the street that's we need to take yourself out of the demonstration or take yourself off camera and you need to re-examine the tactics the message you're delivering who you're delivering it to and how because when you're really honest with yourself when you're examining what it is you're doing if it's not motivated by love from my perspective it doesn't matter whether or not it's motivated by money some other set of motives what you're doing is not real politics or by my standards it's not real enough