Q&A2 (Part 3) Ancient Philosophy in Modern Asia & Evolutionary Theories of Veganism
21 June 2016 [link youtube]
This is a Q&A from within my Patreon page (a social network that costs you $1 per month, and puts you in touch with myself and a few hundred other people with common interests): http://patreon.com/a_bas_le_ciel
Youtube Automatic Transcription
another two questions from my nearly
infinite number of questions here at the QA this is part three of the second Q&A session of done 2016 coming to you from the charming town of kunming yunnan china um of these two questions the second one is directly related to veganism the first one not so much so have a question here from laura d who asks about the profound differences between Asian and Western culture her interest is in Japan more than China I've done a lot of research on Japan last year too lately I'm just lately I'm doing China again and she is asking does it help to know particular philosophical works so written philosophy in understanding the the underpinnings of an Asian culture you know such as Japan or China now I'm in a position to speak on this both in terms of Buddhist philosophy and you know modern Western philosophy and political philosophy and the big problem you run into you here is really self deception on the part of the interpreter which is a huge huge problem it is incredibly easy for a modern interpreter to encounter something in society and convince himself or convince herself that they're seeing the influence of some idea in an ancient book you know whether it's a Taoist philosopher or a Confucian philosopher or Buddhist philosophy or what have you there's an oval there's a sort of self-hypnosis that goes on when Westerners start with a piece of ancient philosophical text and then go out looking for its affirmation in modern society I've seen this thousands of times in it's a peculiar sort of ego trip right because the the person doing that analysis they're really convincing themselves they know better than all the members of the culture surrounding them whether that's China or allow so what have you and this skips the hard work of looking at all the intermediary stages for how a philosophy becomes known or influential in a society in the real world so to give you an example when I leave in Laos Laos is both a Buddhist country and a communist country and I really did research into what was the living culture of both communism and Buddhism so to give you an example how does anyone in Laos know anything about Buddhist philosophy well I actually went to the College where the Buddhist monks are educated the elite Buddhist monks not all of the Buddhist monks go to college and that looked at the actual text books that were used to teach Buddhist monks there now at that time the main text book still being used to teach you know lotion monks what Buddhism was in Laos was written by a French man it was written by Louis fino so this isn't just Western influence this is Western influence at a quite a profound level and I note also that this was my theory at the time the the way the cover of the book and it was mostly again louses a really poor country it was them they were using photocopies of photocopies of this book not real printed copies and what they used for a cover Louis finos name was almost invisible and the name of the translator who was Lao was quite large and prominent so I think the vast majority people studying it they didn't realize the author was French they didn't realize this is Western influence so you know they're you're looking at a great example of how you know it might be easy to imagine though this philosophy from 2,500 years ago directly influences people know philosophy from 2500 years ago as reinterpreted by a Frenchman a hundred years ago as translated and adapted into Lao I don't know some number of years ago as photocopied as taught in the classroom in this in this government-run institution that's what influences people and even that's at an elite level and then you can look at folklore stories what's actually taught in school curriculum how people actually get to know this stuff of course you can look at things like TV and movies you know in a country like China the main way people here get familiar with Buddhist philosophy is probably through kung fu movies which is the same in New York City you know wu-tang the rap group their main contact with Buddhist philosophy plus two kung fu movie it's the same for a lot of people in the one were within within Asia you can't presume that people are directly influenced by them by some ancient fragment of text how you know how are people in England today influenced by Plato or Aristotle first of all if English is your first language you might say well not at all you know the influence of Plato whatever style is very tiny but then if you actually think about it you can dig into how are these things taught how do these ideas reach the public and maybe there still is some influence of Plato and Aristotle on British society that that we can detect or we can talk about but actually looking at all those intermediate stages is really difficult and in doing that work you gain a really rich and profound appreciation for how the whole society operates and the limited role that philosophy textual philosophy plays now to give another example k i'll stick with Laos um I knew a lot about communism before I ever went to Laos both in terms of study and otherwise umm in Laos the government system that the government education system does teach all the schoolchildren about communism but what they actually learn is very different from what you are I think communism is one of the first shocks so you know Karl Marx is one person Lenin is another person and a standard term in communism is marxist leninism that's a school of philosophy with in communism well this was so poorly translated into modern Lao that the vast majority of people I met in Laos they thought that Lenin Marx was one person because they hyphenated it Lenin Marx as one they thought that was one man's name and even out of the history of their own country there were other examples of that where there were two different two different Communist rebel leaders on kale and comedy and they thought that was one guy that thought that was one long name for one person it was two different historical figures so that you know this is me as an outsider I'm doing research into the history communes in this country and including communist ideology and also the effects communism had on Buddhism because the government regulates the religion there and right away I'm learning things that the vast majority of people in that country are not learning in school and then you can look at an elite level what about the tiny minority people in allows who do go through you know university education and communism and how do they influence a site or not you can look at the newspapers what do the newspapers say about communism or the radio programs within a country like that and how do people actually relate to this philosophy communism is not as ancient as Aristotle it's not as ancient as Plato it's not as ancient as Buddhism or Confucianism or have you but still you know the connection between philosophy and culture is so distant and so thin and so weak that you you just can't let yourself get into that ego trip of wandering around a country with a book of ancient philosophy in your hand and out of your own imagination identifying things that you feel resonate in the modern world with the ancient philosophy now I've seen that go very far wrong in China and also in Cambodia and elsewhere sometimes like in Buddhism we know that a certain idea only became influential after 1875 you know some particular year in the 19th century when new translations and new publications selected an idea from the ancient world and made it popular and influential again and it hadn't been before that and you know you get Europeans talking about the stuff as if there was an ancient continuity that Buddhist philosophy had never changed the nation that's not true I'm it's true I be like with even with Christian philosophy how is Christianity different today from 1950 from 1850 from 1750 actually if you're going to do the research there are tremendous differences philosophically politically and otherwise some of them explicitly articulated is philosophy and some of them implicit and unexamined so there's there's a really subtle sort of ego trip that tends to warp the way people perceive the significance of philosophy in the modern world and it's a even in politics that significance can be very slippery very hard to to grasp very hard to define and you have to look at all the intermediate stages of how that gets redefined and and shared and understood in in society as it actually exists um end of answer to that question I guess um I have another interesting question or comment from Virginia are so Virginia is commenting on a question about something that's been brought up a few different times in my patron group it's been mentioned on this YouTube channel not too long ago the weakness of arguments from evolution evolution anthropology claiming the human beings are naturally evolved to be vegan based on the shape of our jaw of our teeth the nature of our digestive tract and what have you now uh so I agree with Virginia or Virginia was writing and agreeing with me uh that these are weak arguments for veganism however there's a difference between week and evil uh you know in my earlier video I think the one showing you film footage should be walking through the streets of couldn't hang on top of the stuff you know you gotta remember this doesn't discredit veganism it's okay to play around with these ideas it's okay to discuss them with your friends if you have friends who find them interesting you know in talking about vegans you can talk about it I would not make it part of the constitution of a vegan party I would not make it part of my platform I'm trying to convince the public of I mean I even feel that way about the cancer statistics I would never say like the strong you know the strong argument for veganism is based on a certain percentage difference in the rate of cancer but it's interesting and it's fine to play with it's fine to discuss your friends so I think you know the weakness of the argument is worth thinking about i mean i just mentioned within the within the mammal kingdom why do pigs have such tremendously powerful jaws they're quite it's quite frightening how powerful a pig's jaws in the wild the wild pig a wild boar well for one thing it's because they don't have any hands to use too many pure light things they have to be able to crack open crack open a coconut crack open you know both animal and vegetable matter with their jaw alone without being able to use hands or tools or what have you and you can see that that kind of massive powerful jaw with some other animals human beings are an extreme example where we can use our hands and we can use tools to break food into pieces to accomplish other tasks then we rely less on the sheer power of our jaw to do um so as a broad pattern you know some anthropologists argue that the the withering away of the human jaw in relatively recent evolutionary time reflects the fact that in comparison to some of our most ancient ancestors we rely less on cracking things open with our teeth so is this really an argument for veganism or does this just reflect you know the type of jaw we have does it just reflect the type of hand we have and the overall sort of synergy that exists within within evolution and anthropological adaptation or what have you um the difference though is this doesn't discredit veganism this idea if you find it interesting to talk about anthropology and evolution if you're in a circle of people who find this interesting rewarding to reflect on fine do it if you're in a circle of people who are really interested in cancer research I'd say fine do it you know you want to talk about veganism can I can imagine someone having a whole youtube channel just devoted to the latest cancer research i can imagine someone having that as a hobby or courses the profession if they're a medical doctor there's nothing wrong with that but you know I would never have a street protest I would never march down the street holding a poster saying don't you realize this is the anatomy of your jaw you know like this is the structure of the bones in your jaw therefore you should be vegan to me that's not the basis for a public protest or for a political movement it's just not strong enough for that and likewise the stuff with cancer I think it's important and it's interesting and again you can play with it it doesn't discredit veganism in any way but again I would not have a poster on the street saying don't you realize you can reduce your chances of getting cancer by this percentage than this many years it's just not that strong it's not it's not as strong as the ethical core or the ecological core of what we're doing here in veganism now the problem is so I'm still sick i'm still coughing i still look exhausted but that's cool many of the things that people have been presenting as the core v as many things people have been arguing for do discredit veganism and I've complained about that on this channel at great length so again if you're putting into categories their arguments for veganism that are strong and crucial and central and part of the core veganism the things that are not as central that are a bit weaker still interesting still fun to play with but there's a category of things that actually do discredit us that make us sound insane that our self contradictory that are hypocritical or that set up standards for us we can't possibly maintain like I've raised this issue you know I've been one of the only channels while you talking about Earth way about killing insects to say look killing insects killing rats I don't see any point in making the premise of veganism a kind of perfect moral purity of religious moral purity like the giant religion in India or you know some forms of Buddhism where you know I don't see any point in being in denial about the fact that modern agriculture including vegan agriculture raising raising food raising fruit raising grains that yeah that type of farming does kill insects it does kill many mammals to mammals like Gophers and groundhogs that yes although we're trying to minimize harm to animals we could have a down-to-earth pragmatic attitude towards the reality the harm we do we should appreciate the difference we can make and we should go honest with the difference of chemic so you know whether it's the lifestyle activism whether it's some of the you know bikini and bicycle activism whether it's the pseudoscience if you know trying to prevent the present veganism as a almost you know religious diet based on the belief that garlic contains a neurotoxin you know I myself am a caffeine avoider I'm against caffeine but I don't exaggerate the the negative impacts of caffeine I recognize that millions of people manage their caffeine in their lives but still I don't advise using caffeine I advise people not to use it you know pseudoscience fad diets extreme political views of different kinds there are so many things that do discredit veganism that we need to exclude in that third category but there's a there's a broad middle category of things that you know where i can say go ahead have fun with it you know if you personally find evolutionary theory fascinating okay and you may have a circle of friends you find it fascinating you may be at a school where there are other students who are really interested in theories of evolution and human adaptation where this gets results but no that's not what the protest march is going to be based on and if you're going to start a vegan foundation i do not think that's what the constitution of the foundation should be based on okay guys another two questions in under 20 minutes
infinite number of questions here at the QA this is part three of the second Q&A session of done 2016 coming to you from the charming town of kunming yunnan china um of these two questions the second one is directly related to veganism the first one not so much so have a question here from laura d who asks about the profound differences between Asian and Western culture her interest is in Japan more than China I've done a lot of research on Japan last year too lately I'm just lately I'm doing China again and she is asking does it help to know particular philosophical works so written philosophy in understanding the the underpinnings of an Asian culture you know such as Japan or China now I'm in a position to speak on this both in terms of Buddhist philosophy and you know modern Western philosophy and political philosophy and the big problem you run into you here is really self deception on the part of the interpreter which is a huge huge problem it is incredibly easy for a modern interpreter to encounter something in society and convince himself or convince herself that they're seeing the influence of some idea in an ancient book you know whether it's a Taoist philosopher or a Confucian philosopher or Buddhist philosophy or what have you there's an oval there's a sort of self-hypnosis that goes on when Westerners start with a piece of ancient philosophical text and then go out looking for its affirmation in modern society I've seen this thousands of times in it's a peculiar sort of ego trip right because the the person doing that analysis they're really convincing themselves they know better than all the members of the culture surrounding them whether that's China or allow so what have you and this skips the hard work of looking at all the intermediary stages for how a philosophy becomes known or influential in a society in the real world so to give you an example when I leave in Laos Laos is both a Buddhist country and a communist country and I really did research into what was the living culture of both communism and Buddhism so to give you an example how does anyone in Laos know anything about Buddhist philosophy well I actually went to the College where the Buddhist monks are educated the elite Buddhist monks not all of the Buddhist monks go to college and that looked at the actual text books that were used to teach Buddhist monks there now at that time the main text book still being used to teach you know lotion monks what Buddhism was in Laos was written by a French man it was written by Louis fino so this isn't just Western influence this is Western influence at a quite a profound level and I note also that this was my theory at the time the the way the cover of the book and it was mostly again louses a really poor country it was them they were using photocopies of photocopies of this book not real printed copies and what they used for a cover Louis finos name was almost invisible and the name of the translator who was Lao was quite large and prominent so I think the vast majority people studying it they didn't realize the author was French they didn't realize this is Western influence so you know they're you're looking at a great example of how you know it might be easy to imagine though this philosophy from 2,500 years ago directly influences people know philosophy from 2500 years ago as reinterpreted by a Frenchman a hundred years ago as translated and adapted into Lao I don't know some number of years ago as photocopied as taught in the classroom in this in this government-run institution that's what influences people and even that's at an elite level and then you can look at folklore stories what's actually taught in school curriculum how people actually get to know this stuff of course you can look at things like TV and movies you know in a country like China the main way people here get familiar with Buddhist philosophy is probably through kung fu movies which is the same in New York City you know wu-tang the rap group their main contact with Buddhist philosophy plus two kung fu movie it's the same for a lot of people in the one were within within Asia you can't presume that people are directly influenced by them by some ancient fragment of text how you know how are people in England today influenced by Plato or Aristotle first of all if English is your first language you might say well not at all you know the influence of Plato whatever style is very tiny but then if you actually think about it you can dig into how are these things taught how do these ideas reach the public and maybe there still is some influence of Plato and Aristotle on British society that that we can detect or we can talk about but actually looking at all those intermediate stages is really difficult and in doing that work you gain a really rich and profound appreciation for how the whole society operates and the limited role that philosophy textual philosophy plays now to give another example k i'll stick with Laos um I knew a lot about communism before I ever went to Laos both in terms of study and otherwise umm in Laos the government system that the government education system does teach all the schoolchildren about communism but what they actually learn is very different from what you are I think communism is one of the first shocks so you know Karl Marx is one person Lenin is another person and a standard term in communism is marxist leninism that's a school of philosophy with in communism well this was so poorly translated into modern Lao that the vast majority of people I met in Laos they thought that Lenin Marx was one person because they hyphenated it Lenin Marx as one they thought that was one man's name and even out of the history of their own country there were other examples of that where there were two different two different Communist rebel leaders on kale and comedy and they thought that was one guy that thought that was one long name for one person it was two different historical figures so that you know this is me as an outsider I'm doing research into the history communes in this country and including communist ideology and also the effects communism had on Buddhism because the government regulates the religion there and right away I'm learning things that the vast majority of people in that country are not learning in school and then you can look at an elite level what about the tiny minority people in allows who do go through you know university education and communism and how do they influence a site or not you can look at the newspapers what do the newspapers say about communism or the radio programs within a country like that and how do people actually relate to this philosophy communism is not as ancient as Aristotle it's not as ancient as Plato it's not as ancient as Buddhism or Confucianism or have you but still you know the connection between philosophy and culture is so distant and so thin and so weak that you you just can't let yourself get into that ego trip of wandering around a country with a book of ancient philosophy in your hand and out of your own imagination identifying things that you feel resonate in the modern world with the ancient philosophy now I've seen that go very far wrong in China and also in Cambodia and elsewhere sometimes like in Buddhism we know that a certain idea only became influential after 1875 you know some particular year in the 19th century when new translations and new publications selected an idea from the ancient world and made it popular and influential again and it hadn't been before that and you know you get Europeans talking about the stuff as if there was an ancient continuity that Buddhist philosophy had never changed the nation that's not true I'm it's true I be like with even with Christian philosophy how is Christianity different today from 1950 from 1850 from 1750 actually if you're going to do the research there are tremendous differences philosophically politically and otherwise some of them explicitly articulated is philosophy and some of them implicit and unexamined so there's there's a really subtle sort of ego trip that tends to warp the way people perceive the significance of philosophy in the modern world and it's a even in politics that significance can be very slippery very hard to to grasp very hard to define and you have to look at all the intermediate stages of how that gets redefined and and shared and understood in in society as it actually exists um end of answer to that question I guess um I have another interesting question or comment from Virginia are so Virginia is commenting on a question about something that's been brought up a few different times in my patron group it's been mentioned on this YouTube channel not too long ago the weakness of arguments from evolution evolution anthropology claiming the human beings are naturally evolved to be vegan based on the shape of our jaw of our teeth the nature of our digestive tract and what have you now uh so I agree with Virginia or Virginia was writing and agreeing with me uh that these are weak arguments for veganism however there's a difference between week and evil uh you know in my earlier video I think the one showing you film footage should be walking through the streets of couldn't hang on top of the stuff you know you gotta remember this doesn't discredit veganism it's okay to play around with these ideas it's okay to discuss them with your friends if you have friends who find them interesting you know in talking about vegans you can talk about it I would not make it part of the constitution of a vegan party I would not make it part of my platform I'm trying to convince the public of I mean I even feel that way about the cancer statistics I would never say like the strong you know the strong argument for veganism is based on a certain percentage difference in the rate of cancer but it's interesting and it's fine to play with it's fine to discuss your friends so I think you know the weakness of the argument is worth thinking about i mean i just mentioned within the within the mammal kingdom why do pigs have such tremendously powerful jaws they're quite it's quite frightening how powerful a pig's jaws in the wild the wild pig a wild boar well for one thing it's because they don't have any hands to use too many pure light things they have to be able to crack open crack open a coconut crack open you know both animal and vegetable matter with their jaw alone without being able to use hands or tools or what have you and you can see that that kind of massive powerful jaw with some other animals human beings are an extreme example where we can use our hands and we can use tools to break food into pieces to accomplish other tasks then we rely less on the sheer power of our jaw to do um so as a broad pattern you know some anthropologists argue that the the withering away of the human jaw in relatively recent evolutionary time reflects the fact that in comparison to some of our most ancient ancestors we rely less on cracking things open with our teeth so is this really an argument for veganism or does this just reflect you know the type of jaw we have does it just reflect the type of hand we have and the overall sort of synergy that exists within within evolution and anthropological adaptation or what have you um the difference though is this doesn't discredit veganism this idea if you find it interesting to talk about anthropology and evolution if you're in a circle of people who find this interesting rewarding to reflect on fine do it if you're in a circle of people who are really interested in cancer research I'd say fine do it you know you want to talk about veganism can I can imagine someone having a whole youtube channel just devoted to the latest cancer research i can imagine someone having that as a hobby or courses the profession if they're a medical doctor there's nothing wrong with that but you know I would never have a street protest I would never march down the street holding a poster saying don't you realize this is the anatomy of your jaw you know like this is the structure of the bones in your jaw therefore you should be vegan to me that's not the basis for a public protest or for a political movement it's just not strong enough for that and likewise the stuff with cancer I think it's important and it's interesting and again you can play with it it doesn't discredit veganism in any way but again I would not have a poster on the street saying don't you realize you can reduce your chances of getting cancer by this percentage than this many years it's just not that strong it's not it's not as strong as the ethical core or the ecological core of what we're doing here in veganism now the problem is so I'm still sick i'm still coughing i still look exhausted but that's cool many of the things that people have been presenting as the core v as many things people have been arguing for do discredit veganism and I've complained about that on this channel at great length so again if you're putting into categories their arguments for veganism that are strong and crucial and central and part of the core veganism the things that are not as central that are a bit weaker still interesting still fun to play with but there's a category of things that actually do discredit us that make us sound insane that our self contradictory that are hypocritical or that set up standards for us we can't possibly maintain like I've raised this issue you know I've been one of the only channels while you talking about Earth way about killing insects to say look killing insects killing rats I don't see any point in making the premise of veganism a kind of perfect moral purity of religious moral purity like the giant religion in India or you know some forms of Buddhism where you know I don't see any point in being in denial about the fact that modern agriculture including vegan agriculture raising raising food raising fruit raising grains that yeah that type of farming does kill insects it does kill many mammals to mammals like Gophers and groundhogs that yes although we're trying to minimize harm to animals we could have a down-to-earth pragmatic attitude towards the reality the harm we do we should appreciate the difference we can make and we should go honest with the difference of chemic so you know whether it's the lifestyle activism whether it's some of the you know bikini and bicycle activism whether it's the pseudoscience if you know trying to prevent the present veganism as a almost you know religious diet based on the belief that garlic contains a neurotoxin you know I myself am a caffeine avoider I'm against caffeine but I don't exaggerate the the negative impacts of caffeine I recognize that millions of people manage their caffeine in their lives but still I don't advise using caffeine I advise people not to use it you know pseudoscience fad diets extreme political views of different kinds there are so many things that do discredit veganism that we need to exclude in that third category but there's a there's a broad middle category of things that you know where i can say go ahead have fun with it you know if you personally find evolutionary theory fascinating okay and you may have a circle of friends you find it fascinating you may be at a school where there are other students who are really interested in theories of evolution and human adaptation where this gets results but no that's not what the protest march is going to be based on and if you're going to start a vegan foundation i do not think that's what the constitution of the foundation should be based on okay guys another two questions in under 20 minutes