Heroism & Heroic Morality: Unnatural Vegan vs. That Vegan Teacher

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racist or speciesist rhetoric in order to put guilt on people for something their ancestors did or that society has done is just it's just so wrong you are about to hear one vegan youtuber being quoted presenting the argument that if you merely stop eating meat yourself that's not going to change anything that's not going to save the world that's not going to save the animals you have to do more than just passively remove yourself from the social system you're morally opposed to if you want to change it nothing surprising about that really kind of a self-evident truth in most circumstances right then you're going to hear a counter argument from a natural vegan that that's racist as beneficiaries of 10 000 plus years of human supremacy and of continuing violence against animals both in captivity and the wild we are all in this position we are beneficiaries of a violent conspiracy our homes our gadgets our streets and yes even our vegan food are products of violence against animals and simply attempting to remove ourselves when we continue to benefit from the system of violence falls far short of our moral duty so yes participation and violence is shameful and unethical but so too is inaction in the face of violence so too is veganism without action this is essentially the same racist argument that extremist social justice advocates make that like all white people have to be actively vocal as anti-racist activists otherwise they're racist and bad people we inherit the sins of our fathers and we have to atone we have racial guilt by vice of our skin color or our heritage demanding anti-racist activism from white people to like atone for the genetic sin of whiteness pretty racist demanding animal rights activism from people due to the genetic sin of being human pretty speciesist nothing is going to change unless you change it nothing is going to change unless you get uncomfortable and actively take risks actively make sacrifices to change the world there's nothing racist there's nothing racist whatsoever in recognizing the enormity of that challenge let's suppose the year is 1981 and you're living in a communist country could be russia could be china could be a member of the eastern bloc you're living in a communist system and you just take up the attitude that hey you personally are morally opposed to communism you think it's a bad political system you're gonna have a boycott or you're gonna say well well you know i personally refuse to take a position of authority within the communist party where i'm like really benefiting from this system you know maybe there are certain uh events you refuse to go to well i'm not gonna go to that concert i'm not gonna stand in the crowd cheering when the government has a parade for the military showing off our nuclear missiles i personally am not going to clap and cheer for the communist party because you know i just want to i just feel morally superior to this whole system that surrounds me and that in innumerable ways every day i still benefit from it still paves my roads it still provides me with electricity and drinking water i'm still paying taxes into it probably you still participate in that system in a million ways that you have no control over you have no ability to refuse or you have no ability to refuse without terrible consequences and you may be called in to be a witness against one of your fellow citizens that one of your fellow citizens has dared to criticize the communist party and then they call you in and say now look we're going to interrogate you and either you're going to cooperate with us or you're going to be the one who goes to jail instead of your friend you start making tough choices but one thing is certain you personally choosing to boycott the communist system is not going to change anything things won't change unless you and people like you actively take risks actively make sacrifices and fight to change the system right and guess what the odds are you're not going to win the odds are if you fight you're going to ruin your own life you're going to ruin other people's lives and you're going to die you're going to die in failure it's very easy to tell the history of slavery just in terms of the successful slave rebellions just in terms of the revolutions the uprisings the political lobbying that actually did succeed in liberating slaves do you want to stop to imagine how many slaves rose up in rebellion and tried to take their freedom and failed and were killed and were tortured to death and what if you were a white person living in a slave society would you just take the passive attitude oh well i personally don't want to own slaves well i personally am not going to attend this event or that event and clap and applaud i'm not going to go to this ball in a ballroom where they have slaves serving drinks because i'm i'm opposed to that i'm too morally pure to buy this particular product this basket that's hand woven by slaves on a slave camp i'm going to choose to buy a different basket that's made by white people is that is that going to end slavery is that going to change the system and recognize the risks you take the commitment you make may result in your death and you may die without achieving your objectives or without advancing your society in the slightest way imaginable towards the abolition of slavery the end of communism right whichever example you want to choose do you ever hear about this thing the nazi party do you ever hear about this in the history of germany huh do you think if you were living in nancy germany it would be a viable strategy for you or for your society as a whole to just sit back and do what a natural vegan says you should do just passively refuse to buy refuse to believe in refuse to actively benefit from that system when the reality is of course you do benefit if you you sit back so that you personally wouldn't go to a hitler rally you personally wouldn't go and cheer for the nazi party as they take over your country as they rule your country as they start you know engaging in eugenics in slaughter in murder of various gods is it even enough you just say that you personally wouldn't join the army to fight for adolf hitler when your whole society is in a state of war or do you make the commitment to join the resistance to actually fight against adolf hitler and again yeah in a sense right eventually the resistance won eventually you know hitler was defeated in many places around the world eventually of course you know slavery was defeated but within your lifetime for you and your circle of friends or colleagues right you may fight you may lose you may die and you may die not knowing that victory was later to come you may die with all your efforts being in vain having joined the resistance it takes real commitment it takes real self-sacrifice even in a sense takes some heroism and it's it's bizarre to me that all these things are unthinkable to a natural vegan as she so cynically and so stupidly tries to construe this argument as inherently racist now what i'm about to do is in some ways the most important part of this video of all and that is to argue against my own position and thus to feel out the limits of its validity a natural vegan never does this incredibly few youtubers do it you should cultivate it as a habit of mind not just in terms of public oratory but in terms of your own thinking because the odds are no matter how valid and morally self-righteous your position may seem like at this moment of this video it may seem like oh boy this guy in the yellow shirt he's got a water tight argument no holes in it right gee there's a difference between just passively boycotting something especially when it's a social system that you actually contribute to and benefit from every day like you're still paying your taxes to the communist party or you're still you know you're still working in a factory that produces the guns that adolf hitler's army is using even if you refuse to be a member of the nazi party refuse to march the army you're part of that social system in the middle of the war in a war economy gee okay that's a point you can't just have a boycott and expect a system to change you can't even live in a muslim majority country like saudi arabia or egypt and just say that you personally are going to be an atheist well i personally i'm going to stop going to the temple i'm going to stop going to church i'm going to stop going to the mosque i personally am going to boycott religion and then expect society to change no saudi arabia is not going to change until you and people like you start taking risks start doing something actively to change it it can't come about for this past boycott okay so if i i can hear put down the microphone and just grandstand about how intellectually morally spirit i am to a natural vegan okay but there are limits to this argument i've presented to you i'm aware not of its invalidity but of its limited validity and i can argue against my own point you know what it's really dangerous to present these things as if they're self-evident universally valid truths okay prostitution it's not enough for you personally to just walk past prostitutes on the street and not have sex with them right nothing is going to change unless you change it nothing is going to change unless you become an activist against and opposed to your society or maybe just your neighborhood being dominated by prostitution you see how this starts to become dangerous you see the difficulty pornography it's not enough for you personally to be morally opposed to pornography to refuse to participate in it and then to allow others to participate and be part of a say abortion it's not enough for you personally to choose not to have abortions do you see where this can lead do you see the problem and my point here isn't that uh everyone should be pro-abortion or everyone should be anti-abortion or everyone should be pro-prostitution or everyone should be anti-prostitution what we get into is the question of democracy right if you have a moral objection to prostitution if you have a moral objection to pornography or abortion right do you have the option of trying to pursue social change you desire you imagine through democratic means democratic means doesn't just doesn't narrowly focus on or only include going to city hall going to parliament standing up giving a deposition right one of the most democratic ways to pursue cultural change of all is through the arts because of course if you like today if we go to parliament we stand up and make a proposal to force the world to become vegan make a pass a law making cheese illegal or you'll be laughed out of parliament you won't even get one you know vote supporting you we engage in filmmaking we publish children's story books we make cartoons like we start to change the culture start to raise awareness of the issue and it's implications right and maybe in the passage of a century it doesn't seem so ridiculous anymore to actually make cheese illegal right there was a time when just the suggestion that male circumcision be made illegal was not merely laughable not merely scoff worthy but was presumed to be racist it was presumed that the only reason anyone would be opposed to circumcision cutting off part of an infant baby's penis the only reason anyone could be opposed to this would be racism anti-semitism islamophobia right and within my lifetime i've seen step by step people get made aware no no no as a matter of scientific fact as a matter of ethics this is a real issue now can you can you pursue this kind of social change democratically can you do it even culturally as i say in north korea right now you can't right in north korea there's no democracy there's no freedom of speech there's no way a filmmaker in north korea can produce an expose or critique of his society right in saudi arabia right now can you do it democratically even in egypt even in some of the so-called moderate muslim countries you'd be amazed when it comes to these when it comes to issues that really matter just how little freedom you've got just how little democracy there is where it counts so what is the line we draw between becoming a partisan fighting against the nazis in germany risking your life risking everything to oppose mao zedong lenin or stalin in a situation of outright dictatorship the means and ways we have at our disposal now as vegans so no being a vegan animal rights activist is not the moral baseline um being vegan is not the moral baseline either like we can we can all always do better and just as an aside again like maybe we can stop denigrating vegetarians we're all on this road together we're all making mistakes we're all moral monsters so you know let's let's be nice reach out a hand instead of a stick not everyone is a monster not everyone in germany was a nazi not everyone in germany was a collaborator and not everyone just passively participated in the nazi social system while complaining amongst friends that they thought it was immoral and evil and wrong and you know in these minor ways refusing to attend rallies refusing to cheer maybe personally commenting that they felt minecamp was a terrible book or something no we're not all monsters we're not all the same we're not all equal we make ourselves extraordinary we make ourselves heroic precisely by taking those steps by taking those risks by making those commitments to actively make the world a better place not just passively sneer at the moral inferiority of our fellow human beings who continue to support the nazi party or continue to support joseph stalin just because it's convenient for them or the people who continue to eat bacon chicken eggs cheese in our society today maybe we can we can practice