Vegan Activism and/or/as Humanitarian Work
02 January 2019 [link youtube]
We start by questioning Vegan Activism in terms of "Career or Calling?" and proceed to question Vegan Activism period —and M. leans in with asking about the extent to which I sabotaged my own activism through "lack of diplomacy". ;-)
Youtube Automatic Transcription
we just did four and a half hours of
continuous conversation about history and politics myself and Muhammad Muhammad is on patreon as Muhammad Socrates is a screen name so conversation that covered China Japan the Middle East Europe history a large part of the world and you know Muhammad I have a lot in common we have a lot to talk about I think one of the differences between us really okay if will be for being all the way real all the way honest which I tend to be on this channel I'd say one of the differences is why we got involved with veganism in the first place and then our political attitude towards veganism now in 21st century now and it's got to change I've already my attitudes towards vegan activism are changing and are going to continue to change in the your head what I do and what I aspire to do with how I do it um I think it would be fair to say you got involved initially due to health bodybuilding I was just too ignorant about the industry and I think though it would also be fair to say that you like many vegans become radicalized and become politicized as soon as you see the struggle within your own family within your own City just to get vegan food just to eat right resume you know you mentioned various relatives you have one relative who's also vegan we have other relatives who kind of sort of adopt a part-time vegan diet but won't really commit to doing it all the time but I mean just just the struggle to to eat you know just destroyed a food it leads you to see more of a social dimension because you ask why is it so hard for me after that I started to consider I need to stay healthy and every question as soon as realize okay like health wise argument why would you say I think moving beyond the idea of veganism is something you do as an isolated individual to having more of a social and political aspirations to transform the people around you for me my daughter lives in France and goes to school in France and in theory all children in France are forced to meet at school so every parent in France gets politicized they get radicalized because they have to fight the school authorities on this one way or another and come to a compromise and either say they're a member of our religious group they have to get a kind of written exception so I just I think that these these kind of struggles and experiences for people who maybe start out as just a health based vegan I think this also kind of tends to snowball into nationwide and worldwide no but I understand I understand I mean I always have this like but if I had been born in another generation if you were in the middle of World War two fighting a war on a huge scale would these questions even occur to you I can say honestly for myself if I imagine myself living in those political conditions probably not and for a lot of people whether you're in Jordan or Syria or even Cambodia or something a lot of people are preoccupied with political conditions in war and peace that make veganism seem like a trivial question but yeah the the the hostility of the culture around you towards veganism you only know that after you become vegan after you start raising your own child vegan like you wouldn't know that like how hostile are French people toward a parent who wants to give their kid in all vegan diet you find out after right you don't you don't find out before like I'm considering becoming vegan I'm gonna do this you know you find that out through experience I think I mean a culture like Jordan I even saw in in Cambodia - apart from the religious dimensions and and just misconceptions about health you know this sense of if I have enough money to eat meat meat is social status meat a celebration meat as symbolizing generosity in hospitality or there can just be these these kinds of values so built into you know the culture of meaning if there's there's a lot of coercion and suasion on stuff so even in just fighting against that and resisting that you get you get politicized I think and it's inevitable you're someone who just cares a lot about politics so this is the main light motif of my channel in 2018 and I hope it's not in 2019 but yeah yeah so a got a question from a viewer you know read him I first reply to that and then you know open the floor you want to comment further Melissa do you want to come then I can swivel the camera was this here but she's off camera so you know my reply is already kind of trenchant and provocative enough that it kind of speaks for itself and gives you I talk about but I do actually have a couple notes further because the person who wrote to me asking for advice he did he did send me a further reply to this so I wrote um there is a major implicit problem in your email I'm starting here you're gonna figure out what is guidance in that there's a major implicit problem in your email one you say that you have no job no current career path or ambition that's fine that's not a problem in itself to you then talk about vegan activism 3 is the point implicitly that you want number 2 to become a substitute for number 1 do you want to try to make vegan activism your source of income in your primary and only career so there's a question being asked to me about being or becoming a vegan activist someone who dis claims that he currently has no job lives with his parents doesn't have much money to speak of and so on right so proceed many many times when I D humanitarian work people ask me for advice in a parallel manner but without really admitting the implicit premise of the thing without a minute what it is they're really asking they would say something like point zero zero hey you've lived in Cambodia Laos you know all about living and working there one I have no skills no job no career no money nothing I can offer nothing I did help anyone - therefore I should be able to move to Cambodia or Laos or some other poverty-stricken country and earn a good living that would provide me with the quality of life much higher than a rice farmer living in that same country so a higher quality of life than someone who owns farmland probably owned some farming equipment or machinery and with skills do that job even if those skills were learned for their grandparents not at college right the point being I'd say I can't even say this for Jordan the level of poverty in Jordan is probably quite moderate compared to get rid of Laos and Cambodia at that time he's really extreme poverty there but if you see the quality of life a landowner has and you're showing up with no job skills no qualifications and you think I'm gonna live a hierarchal I'm gonna live like I'm in California or something I'm gonna live like a Western middle-class person by doing charity work by doing humanitarian work there's a really deep contradiction in this so I'm saying there's a similar contradiction and talking about vegan activism this way in talking about activism at all as a career or even as part of your career even as a hobby there's a there's a real there's a real misconception here okay um if you are already a plumber you can go to a refugee camp and do plumbing really water and sanitation is a huge problem refugee camps most the time I actually did know one guy face-to-face who did exactly this he was a plumber and every vacation he had I forget he was a plumber somewhere in Europe he would go on vacation and do plumbing on refugee camps you can imagine so sometimes they were in the mid sometimes in Asia and so on yeah interesting role in life if you're already a dentist you can go to Laos or Cambodia to do dentistry but guess what you'll be making a financial sacrifice to do so and you'll live in terrible conditions with zero income or near zero income or possibly even the agency that employs you will want you to donate money to the agency just so you can have the opportunity to work where you are paying to work you're not being paid as an as an employee and when you think about it a lot of this is built into the basic premise of humanitarian work in a sort of unstated way I have an anecdote here I'm just gonna summarize it more briefly I knew this couple so they were an older retired couple and even though they had decades of experience living and working in Asia and they had a lot of experience connected to humanitarian charity work minute they had some experience I connected that kind of work they put themselves in this ridiculous position by setting up a volunteer position and assuming they'd actually pay for their retirement that they'd be partly they'd be earning a significant amount of money out of this and it was ridiculous you know you putting themselves into a situation where they had no skills they wanted to be English language editors and in Sri Lanka in a situation where there was no money for anyone to get paid for doing this kind of volunteer work and you know like one situation well did you think about what the word volunteer means you know you think about what helping people poorer than yourself means like did you if you just think about it you can't expect the poor people you're helping to be paying for you to retire it doesn't make sense and that it still doesn't make sense if you're a dentist or a medical surgeon even they can't demand this or expect this they have to be doing this a sacrifice so what about you we're coming back to vegan activism it's it's an allegory people it's an allegory that comes really close all right so I say in brief I actually have known many people face-to-face with their lives were really badly damaged by this kind of misconception their involvement in humanitarian and nonprofit work despite the fact that they had some level of intelligence and experience in that same area of work so we return to your question about vegan activism even if you were writing to me as a medical doctor and a fully qualified heart surgery how positive could the advice that I give you possibly be what if I know someone who's a surgeon already and they say yeah I wanted you thinking activism I'm probably gonna be mostly giving them burly negative warning advice so I say your quote yeah well if you quit your practice as a surgeon to be a full time vegan activist that's gonna be a disaster close quote sure you hear about a small number of heart surgeons who become prominent as vegan advocates and activists how many of them actually pay for their rent from their income as vegan activists the answer may be zero just pause here this isn't in the letter but we know a lot of the lot of the vegan activists have criticized people like James ass be James ass P only started accepting donations on patreon very recently in his life story he seems to have been born wealthy and to be using his own money I'm not criticizing that but it would be really false to look at James ass P as a vegan activist and say oh you can make money and go on vacation and swim in the beach and Bali this this is not a business model and not even for the heart surgeon it's not even for the people who are dietitians and surgeons and we know that dietician I won't say her name she was trying very hard to earn a living as a vegan vegan activist dietitian fully qualified dietician it's a it's a struggle it's it's fundamentally very hard to justify earning money out of charity of any kind you know that's that's what I'm getting at here okay um a continuum a letter and you are not a heart surgeon and you're not a dentist and you're not a plumber veganism is much much worse than louse if you fly to louse and just join in a lot of people will be happy to have your company if you have zero skills and just start learning the lotion language I can say that you might have 10 good years just trying to help out in Laos even if you can't do anything more useful than helping to repaint a barn why people are just generally positive cheery and cooperative there guess what vegans are not if I had spent the last five years contributing to lotion and 'san ecology so it's an area allows any sand on two sides of a border know what this ground if I had spent the last five years contributing to ecology their meaning rice farming etc how many friends and colleagues do you think I don't have admittedly most of those friendships would require me to drink alcohol and eat meat things I refused to do but trust me Lao speaking ecology lotions begin ecology is a really warm and open scene including ecotourism etc where you with zero skills could have a good life in the next five to ten years vegan activism is not not even if you're a heart surgeon not even if you're an architect that's the end the letter I then say look this is not a mic drop ending to the conversation if you have something else to say back to challenge me or disagree if you want to talk about it from a perspective you know you can you can go ahead and you know maybe something unexpected is gonna come from there to the conclusion and now also I hope with this to the floor so Melissa you have you have some you're already familiar with where this was going but yeah to diplomatic outreach to other vegans I always felt that yeah all right I mean III think that's that's not really right on topic with this with this message but I think you might just be choosing not to mention the extent to which the alienation is mutual right so you know because you're right sure sure right okay but look it's not the case that I wanted to spend my time at an animal sanctuary cleaning up poo from horses she okay I don't want to so and you know I never even applied for that and both in terms of fundraising and the number of hours that go into vegan activism that's probably the dominant discourse Indian Act ISM is doing fundraising for animal sanctuaries and then spending your time and money having enough sanctuaries hoping hoping animals so it's not the case that I criticize that and then regretted their roading the basis for me a participant right there's only one other thing I'm going to use maybe two or three examples you okay it's not the case that I wanted to stand silently on the street wearing a mask holding a sign but that I lost my opportunity to do that because I came on YouTube and just and criticize that not good ideas right so again the point is I did not want to be part of a movement based on animal rescue and sanctuaries and I explained that explain the reasons why which by the way includes cost it's very expensive to keep one horse or to keep one pig you'd be amazed there are other reasons to ethically I'm gonna do this video but I really don't believe in basically keeping animals on farm in captivity it's no different from petting zoo to me ethically it doesn't make sense what they're trying to do with these these so-called sanctuaries so it's it's not the case that this was something I desired but that I was only needed from due to a lack of diplomacy this is something I rejected and that is really integral to my knee my involved with V ISM and that I would have rejected whether or not open whatever jected that would have been alienated from so in a sense that's just saying it's not a communication problem it's a real genuine problems are real genuine alienation and now you know is that true of of everything in the movement well the few but I think that comes back to exactly we're talking about here in this in this letter right like I'm not a surgeon I'm not a dentist I don't have any of the qualifications that would make it possible for me to cooperate with peace around or that would make them interested in collaborating so there there's elitism there that in a sense I respect and will just accept it I respect it like okay so PCRM is a foundation buy-in for medical professionals I'm not a medical doctor so I can't really be involved with that so yeah that's I think that's exactly the the other side of it which is again parallel to what I was saying in this letter but if you don't have really specific skills to offer then you know what are your expectations of what what your days of what you can do for the movement and also what the movement can do for you they have to be they have to be downwardly adjusted yeah well optimistic and expectations prepared to now away so when I started the YouTube channel the YouTube channels name is Chinese and it's hey Jin Jung Joo right so the still the URL for the channel is YouTube / hey ginger right so I wanted to do a an Asian politics that was the original plan for a balance yell for this YouTube channel I didn't want to do vegan activism at all and I just relocated from Taiwan and I planned it for it I'd moved back from Taiwan to British Columbia and enrolled in an Asian Studies program to do politics of Asia I never met one other person who was interested in politics of Asia so it was really a disappointment of my contemporaries now I did meet I did at least one of their vegan activist I know other vegan activist veganism became the channel was never supposed to be a veganism channel supposed to channel of my life and it's very peculiar that vegan activism took over the content of the channel to such a large extent but you know this still - I just did a bunch of videos talking about my relationship with my girlfriend and dating advice and it still is a channel about my life I didn't I didn't videos talking with job at patient's job interviews that I was doing that videos about joining the army back when I applied to join the army so you know that's that's still probably true so yeah it's totally fair question but I mean that the really honest answer was that this wasn't a plan to wash myself into into the activism and okay was that optimistic was that mr. bean activism I think we should be able to do a fundraiser to illustrate and publish the story Buckeye Road which is vegan propaganda as well to start off and it is it's artful but it is ultimately to support Venus that I want to be optimistic about that should both you know belong that I mean you know am i optimistic about look there was another channel a competitor of mine who was on patreon doing fundraising and he said for every five dollars you donate I will convert one person to veganism you know am i optimistic like that like like if people donate $500 to me I can I can no I mean in that sense know what was never around the mystic was optimistic about creating a new foundation in Canada that would really be durable or something like that you know you know I've said this in the past the future of veganism is not going to be one foundation like one PC around it's going to be two three five many PC RS 200 PC arms we need a lot of specialized small organizations just to deal with specific issues like leather you know we can look at one shoe even if leather the leather industry polluting rivers dealing with these specific issues from a be in perspective in a thrown away yeah sure yeah I was optimistic that I could meet and cooperate with five to 15 other people and create specialized agencies ultimately for political lobbying public outrage and education yes that I was and even this expedition has not realized no you just want to relate this answer to the answer your other question how do you beat those 15 people whether it's five and fifty you how do you beat that small number of people I do not believe I could meet them but coming on YouTube and bullshitting and pretending to be a bimbo and be like oh wow this is great everything going on abhi is really the type of person I wanted to meet was exactly the person you'd meet by coming on and said hey look this is what direct action everywhere is doing it's not good enough here's why this is what's going on on animal sanctuaries it's not good enough it's a waste of your time and money here's what you know and that through that I could meet and connect with again I'm not I'm not even talking about one percent of people Daigo five or fifty people on total other people are really serious say yeah you know what let's table rounds let's have this specialized group that just lobbies the government on public education for school children why are we promoting eggs and dairy in schools why are we telling children that cheese is healthy then we know cheese is announcing you know why isn't that illegal it's illegal to tell the children to smoke cigarettes so why do you have a propaganda in schools telling them to eat cheese there's on your eggs for that matter again those are specialized forms of advocacy and yeah I want to be super cynical but look for people who want to want to get organized and do that by living a lie you know so I you know I don't I don't is a totally valid question you ask is the problem lack of diplomacy but I don't think that's the problem and again there's another rich person question of who do you compare me to comparative vegan games who has who is less diplomacy near being games compare me to Gary fritzy oh man who has less diplomacy compare me to Gary Yourofsky who has less diplomacy suddenly when you actually start comparing the other again kind of aspiring leaders in the movement oh she actually seemed to be way more diplomatic nice people and I was dealing with much more serious and contentious issues which includes like you know three you may not remember so long with the dog castration issue fifty percent of my audience quit rearranged because I'm opposed to castrate and dogs that was in me amazingly controversial that I'm vegan and I'm not gonna lie to you and say castrating dogs is nonviolent and not harmful and the dogs are happy at their balls chopped off it's ridiculous that was that was controversial to an unbelievable extent yeah this is the reality because so you know would it be diplomatic to pretend that dog castration is okay the fact that sound petting zoos are okay Animal Center is okay to pretend that you support terms of activism that you think are a joke to pretend that James ASPI is intelligent to pretend that James asked these Chinese tattoo makes sense and is it this horribly carbon book you know would it be more what anymore didn't matter it might be but I mean it I don't think it would it would serve my purpose one of the things they used to say on YouTube a lot but now haven't said fur for a long time is what made what made past tense vegan youtube so fractious and contentious made it so dramatic was the fact that different people were playing different games by different rules and they were always looking at each other with the expectation you're gonna play my game by my rules right you know that's right something you have one field and some people are going baseball and some people are playing soccer no no you can kick the ball you know and yeah for sure I mean some people were like Gary Yourofsky some people were advocating five months some people were advocating terrorism gary yourofsky's position was that the a LF the animal a brave fight that the al f was not violent enough that was his position and when I started being involved in activism that was the main thing I was opposing was the glorification and glamorization of violence als you have this spectrum then freelee the banana girl selling you you know youth and beauty and weight loss and so on there are all these different different approaches you think this is a function and a trinsic like factor so we went to a magazine shop yesterday here in Germany and on the Shelf of the magazine shutter shop there were five vegan magazines it filled a whole show and they all have really boring names one is vegan world vegan I could get the photograph though the details there were five different full-color glossy vegan magazines and they're all boring they have nothing to say it's exactly the most boring crap so I'm answering the question you know does veganism have to be internecine and fractious and fragmentary and have this internal conflict know the majority of veganism is a boring corporate for-profit part of consumer culture it's producing new snacks and new recipes and new diets and new yoga advice he is just as boring as any although none of them had anything political none other than anything ethical and they all body-snatching right yeah right well no I'm not saying that shouldn't exist but it's a contrast like it's a connotation you're saying I'm totally willfully you're talking about it as a self-evident fact that veganism is really contentious and internally divided right right right right right no no no but but I mean the the other the other reality being it reflects which part of veganism you're looking at cuz you're not looking at these bits um on that store shelf you're not looking at the corporate for-profit you know boring mainstream element what it's not even like United there's nothing to unite you know I mean it's so and and of course I mean in both cases money is a huge motivating factor the the aspect of veganism that's a poor fragmented and mutually critical motivated by money if once you take on that course you've got that horse in that pig on that animal sanctuary and you're spending all your time getting on the phone and sending out mails and clinical Tebowing sitting on tables are fundraising and doing auctions and charity fundraisers all you're trying to do is make your targets so that you can pay the veterinary bills to keep that horse alive so that horse can stand there in a wooden shack the same as any other farm but you call it essentially I think the sickest part is they don't they don't admit that there's you just are going to Omaha yeah I mean I think you're starting completely right that direct so DFC direct action everywhere they transformed there and their fundraising and everything ultimately because they saw what Gotham had minds what Gotham donations and they change the whole I thought they threw out everything they swore they'd have occupied forever you know for money that's my that's my purse they will never say that well and I mean the exceptions only prove the rule I pointed this out Gary Yourofsky his whole career you can follow the money it's not hard to Google around and see who pay for what even though that's donation driven it's still economic there's still an economy of donations sure but look when I was involved in Buddhism as a Buddhist intellectual were there five ten or fifteen Buddhist intellectuals who could be my equal be my contemporary no and there are similar kinds of boundaries here like admitting to yourself that the animal sanctuary thing is a scam right like that's hard to admit yourself especially you do if you committed the time and money to shoveling that poo and keeping that course alive you know passes but if you put that in to stop and take a step back and say what we're doing here is for man this is the same as a farm in every way except there's no slaughterhouse like you know we just and ultimately you still have to kill the animals sewer later you know the course has to be put down and you tell yourself it's not you're not the same as another farmer you're the same as a petting zoo whatever you know petting zoos also Chili's enough no one's there's no wilderness no sorry really ruthless nothing Russians you got a horse so you have an old horse an old nag is gradually dying then it breaks a leg you shouldn't have or what will you sit there and look at the bill you think it's even possible do you think there even is of that who's going to like okay we can amputate the leg give this horse a prosthetic leg is a huge amount of money that every day you need to take the physiotherapy try to get the one a horse of the broken leg is dead horse you know and all these animals they constantly have parasites in the Orangemen and they live in captivity they live many many years past the maximum lifespan of the wild so inevitably you know they are put down right what do you do with a rifle or with poison but it was just the kids you stopped working and you know what there are no kill shelters that commit to paying for surgery every time the animals get cancer and that's a joke too so you can see all that see how that story plays out you know with your cats you had to make that decision sooner or later when do we stop with humans you have to but it's a little bit different humans get to make the decisions for the devil yeah yeah sure this was this is an aggression I was just with a little thing so I was only here the person is actually right so he's mentioning this thank you it's hard to admit to yourself this is a waste of money or just to admit yourself this is never one to accomplish the goals of the vegan movement this is not moving us closer to our goals right and in other cases it's admitting this is not moving us forward effectively you know putting people in prison doing illegal activities is not effective it's also immoral I'm against for the reason you live in a democracy don't go to jail for symbolic acts of protests ridiculous and I'm sorry but various groups endorse the kind of illegal activity so admitting that yourself that what you've been doing many Saudis is hard likewise in Buddhism there are these kinds of hard limits how many intellectuals are there in Buddhism we've done the researcher you've done the reading who had the level of commitment to the religion or culture or area of study to really know their stuff but have been still addicted themselves you know what meditation it's no better than prayer it's not all of this science about meditation is believed you know what in Christianity and Judaism they have held in Buddhism we also have heaven in hell there were a little difference you know what the specific types of torture used are different but it's not better like if we criticize the Christians and Muslims for believing in Hell then we that criticism applies to us also right I can get into the technical differences with the Buddhist version of hell enough the Christian version ability in Buddhist hell you're tortured by giant trees with enormous needles some other things you don't happen in Christian of yourself but it's all torture there are still demons torturing you by the way and NL equal it's not that some other point is is that you know it's not that there are no intelligent people in veganism or no intelligent people and Buddhism but these lines that alienating from the other stuff going on the scene yeah I mean they're meaningful to me I think the exclusion is mutual right let the people within Buddhism really believe in and really preach when people go into a cancer award and try to teach people dying of cancer how to do meditation you know it's no different from teaching people prayer you know when they really they go in and tell them who know this meditation they may tell them it heals them it may tell them it just and your pain better but you know they may actually be promising the miracles that goes on and again you get into these kind of fine moral differences where where do you draw a line politically where does it become impossible for me to cooperate something else and obviously what we've all been seeing in last five years is how fine the line is where other people won't cooperate with me but these same people they will cooperate with durianrider they will cooperate with vegan gains they will cooperate with Gary France aione and Gary Yourofsky they will walk with people who are actually way more offensive and politically noxious than I am some of them will cooperate with ask yourself you know yeah by just say so you see this is almost an affirmation that the lines are drawing they are there are pretty important communications but I mean a question for you is do you think with this current state of vegan activism do you think we need more activists it kind of seems like you know I've read a couple articles lately that just say you know if you want to hear convincing arguments for veganism you can look up earthly good you can look up James a skier you know do we need more people doing this kind of activism what we do need and I've been in are people like like you say that are motivated to get the dairy and egg propagated out of school you know out of the school more people that are this way but in that case if we need more people involved doing this kind of work who who are those kind of people and who is able to do this as a job you know in your in your message you mentioned a couple that wanted to move their retirement couple and so part of my first reaction is to say oh we need more people who are in retirement age people who don't need to depend on this for their living because what money is in it it's just a charity if it's just people who are only donating because they care about a certain cause or a certain issue so yeah and and how what percentage of vegans are actually at that age I think it's mostly a younger generation yeah it cares about this you know well that's also a difference with gay rights by the way so when the gay rights movement came out even though it may be that the most visible people who were on the covers of magazines were young and attractive there were always elderly gay people that Miami is photogenic but it was say homosexuals statistically there's a single number of them in every generation so there was a public there was a constituency for gay rights evenly distributed at all levels of income rich and poor evenly distributed from elderly young even though opposite under ones would be more in the closet and whatever so that's very very different from veganism where it's not just the tendency to focus on people who are young and attractive but where actually the numbers are disproportionately the young and not the old it's a big strategic difference you're noticing gay rights I've done a lot of kind of minority movements but look you know we need more of everything I mean you know this because of the unlike gay rights gay rights was to serve a minority of people who plan to I mean a small minority people I mean our plan is to become the majority and we really think about that you know and then you think about the people who won't reply to my emails you know I mean and including I mean I talked to this one Foundation recently who have a lot of money and they can't even get 300 views on a YouTube video and that's their meaning a form of activism and like you know some of there are YouTube videos 50 views like 30 views like really really really low and I wrote to them and I said look I was writing you asking for your help but I'm in a position to help you like you know I can give you I can give you 2,000 viewers and there's some of the most cynical best appears the stuff I you know whatever you know you think about it okay this is our plan is to expand and become become the majority and you know oh you know you know won't Gary Frenchy or himself you wouldn't return my emails I have talked to be just a couple message back for them Facebook back in the day but you know you know the level of cooperation the extent to which mutual hostility makes any kind of cooperation impossible it's laughable and the whole world is laughing us freely was laughable durian burger club even games still is laughable etc me on the kind of always Gary Yourofsky laughable I'm gonna be saying and yeah there's a sense in which word we're still legs up look the other question you ask to kind of rolled on from or which other one question was do we need more activist I already if you want to become the majority we need more we need more we even need more people like freely we need more bikini models you know we need more everything ready the the majority by the year 2100 or something you know then we need more of everything but then the second question is what kind of people do we need and the real answer is these people are gonna choose themselves right and that is both the triumph and the tragedy of it when I started doing humanitarian work at last I spoke to several well people who had this unbelievably positive view of white Europe and wait America unbelievably positive now allows the country that was destroyed by what people it was destroyed first but the French Empire and that by the American Empire to make long story short and so I taught them a bit why do they have this really positive opinion well it's because every single white person they ever known was like a surgeon who volunteered to come and help the poor and a small bunch of Laos or an agricultural technician who came to help them you know your deed afield and alleviate starvation in a valley they were these extraordinary humanitarian volunteer type people who personally made sacrifices to come to Laos try to stand positive to make the world a better place now those are the that was the site of what people are white Western culture civilization they knew they didn't know the type of American who flew a bomber aircraft and destroy their country or the type of American who voted for it and wanted it and made that decision and the political machinations behind that and the CIA and the White House that's not what they knew they knew this kind of unbelievably flattering side of white Western culture and civilization and the colony will they know that's that's what they thought we're all like that's who they think we are those that they probably met 30 or 40 people in there it's not not just a few that's the segment of our culture's daily those people choose themselves they elect themselves and sometimes the people who choose themselves are completely inadequate for the task they say no they completely lack the confidence they should have and you know I say that with no hesitation of Akane's ask I say that with no hesitation of of curiosity I think they're terrible representatives reviews terrible and sometimes it's someone who is an okay representative I mean you know dr. dr. mcdougal is not perfect or something but you know sure dr. mcdougal or yeah got positive bleeding sores some of these guys been a little bit eccentric all right wrap it up long story short you know my catchphrase this is not something that's for everybody but if not you the new
continuous conversation about history and politics myself and Muhammad Muhammad is on patreon as Muhammad Socrates is a screen name so conversation that covered China Japan the Middle East Europe history a large part of the world and you know Muhammad I have a lot in common we have a lot to talk about I think one of the differences between us really okay if will be for being all the way real all the way honest which I tend to be on this channel I'd say one of the differences is why we got involved with veganism in the first place and then our political attitude towards veganism now in 21st century now and it's got to change I've already my attitudes towards vegan activism are changing and are going to continue to change in the your head what I do and what I aspire to do with how I do it um I think it would be fair to say you got involved initially due to health bodybuilding I was just too ignorant about the industry and I think though it would also be fair to say that you like many vegans become radicalized and become politicized as soon as you see the struggle within your own family within your own City just to get vegan food just to eat right resume you know you mentioned various relatives you have one relative who's also vegan we have other relatives who kind of sort of adopt a part-time vegan diet but won't really commit to doing it all the time but I mean just just the struggle to to eat you know just destroyed a food it leads you to see more of a social dimension because you ask why is it so hard for me after that I started to consider I need to stay healthy and every question as soon as realize okay like health wise argument why would you say I think moving beyond the idea of veganism is something you do as an isolated individual to having more of a social and political aspirations to transform the people around you for me my daughter lives in France and goes to school in France and in theory all children in France are forced to meet at school so every parent in France gets politicized they get radicalized because they have to fight the school authorities on this one way or another and come to a compromise and either say they're a member of our religious group they have to get a kind of written exception so I just I think that these these kind of struggles and experiences for people who maybe start out as just a health based vegan I think this also kind of tends to snowball into nationwide and worldwide no but I understand I understand I mean I always have this like but if I had been born in another generation if you were in the middle of World War two fighting a war on a huge scale would these questions even occur to you I can say honestly for myself if I imagine myself living in those political conditions probably not and for a lot of people whether you're in Jordan or Syria or even Cambodia or something a lot of people are preoccupied with political conditions in war and peace that make veganism seem like a trivial question but yeah the the the hostility of the culture around you towards veganism you only know that after you become vegan after you start raising your own child vegan like you wouldn't know that like how hostile are French people toward a parent who wants to give their kid in all vegan diet you find out after right you don't you don't find out before like I'm considering becoming vegan I'm gonna do this you know you find that out through experience I think I mean a culture like Jordan I even saw in in Cambodia - apart from the religious dimensions and and just misconceptions about health you know this sense of if I have enough money to eat meat meat is social status meat a celebration meat as symbolizing generosity in hospitality or there can just be these these kinds of values so built into you know the culture of meaning if there's there's a lot of coercion and suasion on stuff so even in just fighting against that and resisting that you get you get politicized I think and it's inevitable you're someone who just cares a lot about politics so this is the main light motif of my channel in 2018 and I hope it's not in 2019 but yeah yeah so a got a question from a viewer you know read him I first reply to that and then you know open the floor you want to comment further Melissa do you want to come then I can swivel the camera was this here but she's off camera so you know my reply is already kind of trenchant and provocative enough that it kind of speaks for itself and gives you I talk about but I do actually have a couple notes further because the person who wrote to me asking for advice he did he did send me a further reply to this so I wrote um there is a major implicit problem in your email I'm starting here you're gonna figure out what is guidance in that there's a major implicit problem in your email one you say that you have no job no current career path or ambition that's fine that's not a problem in itself to you then talk about vegan activism 3 is the point implicitly that you want number 2 to become a substitute for number 1 do you want to try to make vegan activism your source of income in your primary and only career so there's a question being asked to me about being or becoming a vegan activist someone who dis claims that he currently has no job lives with his parents doesn't have much money to speak of and so on right so proceed many many times when I D humanitarian work people ask me for advice in a parallel manner but without really admitting the implicit premise of the thing without a minute what it is they're really asking they would say something like point zero zero hey you've lived in Cambodia Laos you know all about living and working there one I have no skills no job no career no money nothing I can offer nothing I did help anyone - therefore I should be able to move to Cambodia or Laos or some other poverty-stricken country and earn a good living that would provide me with the quality of life much higher than a rice farmer living in that same country so a higher quality of life than someone who owns farmland probably owned some farming equipment or machinery and with skills do that job even if those skills were learned for their grandparents not at college right the point being I'd say I can't even say this for Jordan the level of poverty in Jordan is probably quite moderate compared to get rid of Laos and Cambodia at that time he's really extreme poverty there but if you see the quality of life a landowner has and you're showing up with no job skills no qualifications and you think I'm gonna live a hierarchal I'm gonna live like I'm in California or something I'm gonna live like a Western middle-class person by doing charity work by doing humanitarian work there's a really deep contradiction in this so I'm saying there's a similar contradiction and talking about vegan activism this way in talking about activism at all as a career or even as part of your career even as a hobby there's a there's a real there's a real misconception here okay um if you are already a plumber you can go to a refugee camp and do plumbing really water and sanitation is a huge problem refugee camps most the time I actually did know one guy face-to-face who did exactly this he was a plumber and every vacation he had I forget he was a plumber somewhere in Europe he would go on vacation and do plumbing on refugee camps you can imagine so sometimes they were in the mid sometimes in Asia and so on yeah interesting role in life if you're already a dentist you can go to Laos or Cambodia to do dentistry but guess what you'll be making a financial sacrifice to do so and you'll live in terrible conditions with zero income or near zero income or possibly even the agency that employs you will want you to donate money to the agency just so you can have the opportunity to work where you are paying to work you're not being paid as an as an employee and when you think about it a lot of this is built into the basic premise of humanitarian work in a sort of unstated way I have an anecdote here I'm just gonna summarize it more briefly I knew this couple so they were an older retired couple and even though they had decades of experience living and working in Asia and they had a lot of experience connected to humanitarian charity work minute they had some experience I connected that kind of work they put themselves in this ridiculous position by setting up a volunteer position and assuming they'd actually pay for their retirement that they'd be partly they'd be earning a significant amount of money out of this and it was ridiculous you know you putting themselves into a situation where they had no skills they wanted to be English language editors and in Sri Lanka in a situation where there was no money for anyone to get paid for doing this kind of volunteer work and you know like one situation well did you think about what the word volunteer means you know you think about what helping people poorer than yourself means like did you if you just think about it you can't expect the poor people you're helping to be paying for you to retire it doesn't make sense and that it still doesn't make sense if you're a dentist or a medical surgeon even they can't demand this or expect this they have to be doing this a sacrifice so what about you we're coming back to vegan activism it's it's an allegory people it's an allegory that comes really close all right so I say in brief I actually have known many people face-to-face with their lives were really badly damaged by this kind of misconception their involvement in humanitarian and nonprofit work despite the fact that they had some level of intelligence and experience in that same area of work so we return to your question about vegan activism even if you were writing to me as a medical doctor and a fully qualified heart surgery how positive could the advice that I give you possibly be what if I know someone who's a surgeon already and they say yeah I wanted you thinking activism I'm probably gonna be mostly giving them burly negative warning advice so I say your quote yeah well if you quit your practice as a surgeon to be a full time vegan activist that's gonna be a disaster close quote sure you hear about a small number of heart surgeons who become prominent as vegan advocates and activists how many of them actually pay for their rent from their income as vegan activists the answer may be zero just pause here this isn't in the letter but we know a lot of the lot of the vegan activists have criticized people like James ass be James ass P only started accepting donations on patreon very recently in his life story he seems to have been born wealthy and to be using his own money I'm not criticizing that but it would be really false to look at James ass P as a vegan activist and say oh you can make money and go on vacation and swim in the beach and Bali this this is not a business model and not even for the heart surgeon it's not even for the people who are dietitians and surgeons and we know that dietician I won't say her name she was trying very hard to earn a living as a vegan vegan activist dietitian fully qualified dietician it's a it's a struggle it's it's fundamentally very hard to justify earning money out of charity of any kind you know that's that's what I'm getting at here okay um a continuum a letter and you are not a heart surgeon and you're not a dentist and you're not a plumber veganism is much much worse than louse if you fly to louse and just join in a lot of people will be happy to have your company if you have zero skills and just start learning the lotion language I can say that you might have 10 good years just trying to help out in Laos even if you can't do anything more useful than helping to repaint a barn why people are just generally positive cheery and cooperative there guess what vegans are not if I had spent the last five years contributing to lotion and 'san ecology so it's an area allows any sand on two sides of a border know what this ground if I had spent the last five years contributing to ecology their meaning rice farming etc how many friends and colleagues do you think I don't have admittedly most of those friendships would require me to drink alcohol and eat meat things I refused to do but trust me Lao speaking ecology lotions begin ecology is a really warm and open scene including ecotourism etc where you with zero skills could have a good life in the next five to ten years vegan activism is not not even if you're a heart surgeon not even if you're an architect that's the end the letter I then say look this is not a mic drop ending to the conversation if you have something else to say back to challenge me or disagree if you want to talk about it from a perspective you know you can you can go ahead and you know maybe something unexpected is gonna come from there to the conclusion and now also I hope with this to the floor so Melissa you have you have some you're already familiar with where this was going but yeah to diplomatic outreach to other vegans I always felt that yeah all right I mean III think that's that's not really right on topic with this with this message but I think you might just be choosing not to mention the extent to which the alienation is mutual right so you know because you're right sure sure right okay but look it's not the case that I wanted to spend my time at an animal sanctuary cleaning up poo from horses she okay I don't want to so and you know I never even applied for that and both in terms of fundraising and the number of hours that go into vegan activism that's probably the dominant discourse Indian Act ISM is doing fundraising for animal sanctuaries and then spending your time and money having enough sanctuaries hoping hoping animals so it's not the case that I criticize that and then regretted their roading the basis for me a participant right there's only one other thing I'm going to use maybe two or three examples you okay it's not the case that I wanted to stand silently on the street wearing a mask holding a sign but that I lost my opportunity to do that because I came on YouTube and just and criticize that not good ideas right so again the point is I did not want to be part of a movement based on animal rescue and sanctuaries and I explained that explain the reasons why which by the way includes cost it's very expensive to keep one horse or to keep one pig you'd be amazed there are other reasons to ethically I'm gonna do this video but I really don't believe in basically keeping animals on farm in captivity it's no different from petting zoo to me ethically it doesn't make sense what they're trying to do with these these so-called sanctuaries so it's it's not the case that this was something I desired but that I was only needed from due to a lack of diplomacy this is something I rejected and that is really integral to my knee my involved with V ISM and that I would have rejected whether or not open whatever jected that would have been alienated from so in a sense that's just saying it's not a communication problem it's a real genuine problems are real genuine alienation and now you know is that true of of everything in the movement well the few but I think that comes back to exactly we're talking about here in this in this letter right like I'm not a surgeon I'm not a dentist I don't have any of the qualifications that would make it possible for me to cooperate with peace around or that would make them interested in collaborating so there there's elitism there that in a sense I respect and will just accept it I respect it like okay so PCRM is a foundation buy-in for medical professionals I'm not a medical doctor so I can't really be involved with that so yeah that's I think that's exactly the the other side of it which is again parallel to what I was saying in this letter but if you don't have really specific skills to offer then you know what are your expectations of what what your days of what you can do for the movement and also what the movement can do for you they have to be they have to be downwardly adjusted yeah well optimistic and expectations prepared to now away so when I started the YouTube channel the YouTube channels name is Chinese and it's hey Jin Jung Joo right so the still the URL for the channel is YouTube / hey ginger right so I wanted to do a an Asian politics that was the original plan for a balance yell for this YouTube channel I didn't want to do vegan activism at all and I just relocated from Taiwan and I planned it for it I'd moved back from Taiwan to British Columbia and enrolled in an Asian Studies program to do politics of Asia I never met one other person who was interested in politics of Asia so it was really a disappointment of my contemporaries now I did meet I did at least one of their vegan activist I know other vegan activist veganism became the channel was never supposed to be a veganism channel supposed to channel of my life and it's very peculiar that vegan activism took over the content of the channel to such a large extent but you know this still - I just did a bunch of videos talking about my relationship with my girlfriend and dating advice and it still is a channel about my life I didn't I didn't videos talking with job at patient's job interviews that I was doing that videos about joining the army back when I applied to join the army so you know that's that's still probably true so yeah it's totally fair question but I mean that the really honest answer was that this wasn't a plan to wash myself into into the activism and okay was that optimistic was that mr. bean activism I think we should be able to do a fundraiser to illustrate and publish the story Buckeye Road which is vegan propaganda as well to start off and it is it's artful but it is ultimately to support Venus that I want to be optimistic about that should both you know belong that I mean you know am i optimistic about look there was another channel a competitor of mine who was on patreon doing fundraising and he said for every five dollars you donate I will convert one person to veganism you know am i optimistic like that like like if people donate $500 to me I can I can no I mean in that sense know what was never around the mystic was optimistic about creating a new foundation in Canada that would really be durable or something like that you know you know I've said this in the past the future of veganism is not going to be one foundation like one PC around it's going to be two three five many PC RS 200 PC arms we need a lot of specialized small organizations just to deal with specific issues like leather you know we can look at one shoe even if leather the leather industry polluting rivers dealing with these specific issues from a be in perspective in a thrown away yeah sure yeah I was optimistic that I could meet and cooperate with five to 15 other people and create specialized agencies ultimately for political lobbying public outrage and education yes that I was and even this expedition has not realized no you just want to relate this answer to the answer your other question how do you beat those 15 people whether it's five and fifty you how do you beat that small number of people I do not believe I could meet them but coming on YouTube and bullshitting and pretending to be a bimbo and be like oh wow this is great everything going on abhi is really the type of person I wanted to meet was exactly the person you'd meet by coming on and said hey look this is what direct action everywhere is doing it's not good enough here's why this is what's going on on animal sanctuaries it's not good enough it's a waste of your time and money here's what you know and that through that I could meet and connect with again I'm not I'm not even talking about one percent of people Daigo five or fifty people on total other people are really serious say yeah you know what let's table rounds let's have this specialized group that just lobbies the government on public education for school children why are we promoting eggs and dairy in schools why are we telling children that cheese is healthy then we know cheese is announcing you know why isn't that illegal it's illegal to tell the children to smoke cigarettes so why do you have a propaganda in schools telling them to eat cheese there's on your eggs for that matter again those are specialized forms of advocacy and yeah I want to be super cynical but look for people who want to want to get organized and do that by living a lie you know so I you know I don't I don't is a totally valid question you ask is the problem lack of diplomacy but I don't think that's the problem and again there's another rich person question of who do you compare me to comparative vegan games who has who is less diplomacy near being games compare me to Gary fritzy oh man who has less diplomacy compare me to Gary Yourofsky who has less diplomacy suddenly when you actually start comparing the other again kind of aspiring leaders in the movement oh she actually seemed to be way more diplomatic nice people and I was dealing with much more serious and contentious issues which includes like you know three you may not remember so long with the dog castration issue fifty percent of my audience quit rearranged because I'm opposed to castrate and dogs that was in me amazingly controversial that I'm vegan and I'm not gonna lie to you and say castrating dogs is nonviolent and not harmful and the dogs are happy at their balls chopped off it's ridiculous that was that was controversial to an unbelievable extent yeah this is the reality because so you know would it be diplomatic to pretend that dog castration is okay the fact that sound petting zoos are okay Animal Center is okay to pretend that you support terms of activism that you think are a joke to pretend that James ASPI is intelligent to pretend that James asked these Chinese tattoo makes sense and is it this horribly carbon book you know would it be more what anymore didn't matter it might be but I mean it I don't think it would it would serve my purpose one of the things they used to say on YouTube a lot but now haven't said fur for a long time is what made what made past tense vegan youtube so fractious and contentious made it so dramatic was the fact that different people were playing different games by different rules and they were always looking at each other with the expectation you're gonna play my game by my rules right you know that's right something you have one field and some people are going baseball and some people are playing soccer no no you can kick the ball you know and yeah for sure I mean some people were like Gary Yourofsky some people were advocating five months some people were advocating terrorism gary yourofsky's position was that the a LF the animal a brave fight that the al f was not violent enough that was his position and when I started being involved in activism that was the main thing I was opposing was the glorification and glamorization of violence als you have this spectrum then freelee the banana girl selling you you know youth and beauty and weight loss and so on there are all these different different approaches you think this is a function and a trinsic like factor so we went to a magazine shop yesterday here in Germany and on the Shelf of the magazine shutter shop there were five vegan magazines it filled a whole show and they all have really boring names one is vegan world vegan I could get the photograph though the details there were five different full-color glossy vegan magazines and they're all boring they have nothing to say it's exactly the most boring crap so I'm answering the question you know does veganism have to be internecine and fractious and fragmentary and have this internal conflict know the majority of veganism is a boring corporate for-profit part of consumer culture it's producing new snacks and new recipes and new diets and new yoga advice he is just as boring as any although none of them had anything political none other than anything ethical and they all body-snatching right yeah right well no I'm not saying that shouldn't exist but it's a contrast like it's a connotation you're saying I'm totally willfully you're talking about it as a self-evident fact that veganism is really contentious and internally divided right right right right right no no no but but I mean the the other the other reality being it reflects which part of veganism you're looking at cuz you're not looking at these bits um on that store shelf you're not looking at the corporate for-profit you know boring mainstream element what it's not even like United there's nothing to unite you know I mean it's so and and of course I mean in both cases money is a huge motivating factor the the aspect of veganism that's a poor fragmented and mutually critical motivated by money if once you take on that course you've got that horse in that pig on that animal sanctuary and you're spending all your time getting on the phone and sending out mails and clinical Tebowing sitting on tables are fundraising and doing auctions and charity fundraisers all you're trying to do is make your targets so that you can pay the veterinary bills to keep that horse alive so that horse can stand there in a wooden shack the same as any other farm but you call it essentially I think the sickest part is they don't they don't admit that there's you just are going to Omaha yeah I mean I think you're starting completely right that direct so DFC direct action everywhere they transformed there and their fundraising and everything ultimately because they saw what Gotham had minds what Gotham donations and they change the whole I thought they threw out everything they swore they'd have occupied forever you know for money that's my that's my purse they will never say that well and I mean the exceptions only prove the rule I pointed this out Gary Yourofsky his whole career you can follow the money it's not hard to Google around and see who pay for what even though that's donation driven it's still economic there's still an economy of donations sure but look when I was involved in Buddhism as a Buddhist intellectual were there five ten or fifteen Buddhist intellectuals who could be my equal be my contemporary no and there are similar kinds of boundaries here like admitting to yourself that the animal sanctuary thing is a scam right like that's hard to admit yourself especially you do if you committed the time and money to shoveling that poo and keeping that course alive you know passes but if you put that in to stop and take a step back and say what we're doing here is for man this is the same as a farm in every way except there's no slaughterhouse like you know we just and ultimately you still have to kill the animals sewer later you know the course has to be put down and you tell yourself it's not you're not the same as another farmer you're the same as a petting zoo whatever you know petting zoos also Chili's enough no one's there's no wilderness no sorry really ruthless nothing Russians you got a horse so you have an old horse an old nag is gradually dying then it breaks a leg you shouldn't have or what will you sit there and look at the bill you think it's even possible do you think there even is of that who's going to like okay we can amputate the leg give this horse a prosthetic leg is a huge amount of money that every day you need to take the physiotherapy try to get the one a horse of the broken leg is dead horse you know and all these animals they constantly have parasites in the Orangemen and they live in captivity they live many many years past the maximum lifespan of the wild so inevitably you know they are put down right what do you do with a rifle or with poison but it was just the kids you stopped working and you know what there are no kill shelters that commit to paying for surgery every time the animals get cancer and that's a joke too so you can see all that see how that story plays out you know with your cats you had to make that decision sooner or later when do we stop with humans you have to but it's a little bit different humans get to make the decisions for the devil yeah yeah sure this was this is an aggression I was just with a little thing so I was only here the person is actually right so he's mentioning this thank you it's hard to admit to yourself this is a waste of money or just to admit yourself this is never one to accomplish the goals of the vegan movement this is not moving us closer to our goals right and in other cases it's admitting this is not moving us forward effectively you know putting people in prison doing illegal activities is not effective it's also immoral I'm against for the reason you live in a democracy don't go to jail for symbolic acts of protests ridiculous and I'm sorry but various groups endorse the kind of illegal activity so admitting that yourself that what you've been doing many Saudis is hard likewise in Buddhism there are these kinds of hard limits how many intellectuals are there in Buddhism we've done the researcher you've done the reading who had the level of commitment to the religion or culture or area of study to really know their stuff but have been still addicted themselves you know what meditation it's no better than prayer it's not all of this science about meditation is believed you know what in Christianity and Judaism they have held in Buddhism we also have heaven in hell there were a little difference you know what the specific types of torture used are different but it's not better like if we criticize the Christians and Muslims for believing in Hell then we that criticism applies to us also right I can get into the technical differences with the Buddhist version of hell enough the Christian version ability in Buddhist hell you're tortured by giant trees with enormous needles some other things you don't happen in Christian of yourself but it's all torture there are still demons torturing you by the way and NL equal it's not that some other point is is that you know it's not that there are no intelligent people in veganism or no intelligent people and Buddhism but these lines that alienating from the other stuff going on the scene yeah I mean they're meaningful to me I think the exclusion is mutual right let the people within Buddhism really believe in and really preach when people go into a cancer award and try to teach people dying of cancer how to do meditation you know it's no different from teaching people prayer you know when they really they go in and tell them who know this meditation they may tell them it heals them it may tell them it just and your pain better but you know they may actually be promising the miracles that goes on and again you get into these kind of fine moral differences where where do you draw a line politically where does it become impossible for me to cooperate something else and obviously what we've all been seeing in last five years is how fine the line is where other people won't cooperate with me but these same people they will cooperate with durianrider they will cooperate with vegan gains they will cooperate with Gary France aione and Gary Yourofsky they will walk with people who are actually way more offensive and politically noxious than I am some of them will cooperate with ask yourself you know yeah by just say so you see this is almost an affirmation that the lines are drawing they are there are pretty important communications but I mean a question for you is do you think with this current state of vegan activism do you think we need more activists it kind of seems like you know I've read a couple articles lately that just say you know if you want to hear convincing arguments for veganism you can look up earthly good you can look up James a skier you know do we need more people doing this kind of activism what we do need and I've been in are people like like you say that are motivated to get the dairy and egg propagated out of school you know out of the school more people that are this way but in that case if we need more people involved doing this kind of work who who are those kind of people and who is able to do this as a job you know in your in your message you mentioned a couple that wanted to move their retirement couple and so part of my first reaction is to say oh we need more people who are in retirement age people who don't need to depend on this for their living because what money is in it it's just a charity if it's just people who are only donating because they care about a certain cause or a certain issue so yeah and and how what percentage of vegans are actually at that age I think it's mostly a younger generation yeah it cares about this you know well that's also a difference with gay rights by the way so when the gay rights movement came out even though it may be that the most visible people who were on the covers of magazines were young and attractive there were always elderly gay people that Miami is photogenic but it was say homosexuals statistically there's a single number of them in every generation so there was a public there was a constituency for gay rights evenly distributed at all levels of income rich and poor evenly distributed from elderly young even though opposite under ones would be more in the closet and whatever so that's very very different from veganism where it's not just the tendency to focus on people who are young and attractive but where actually the numbers are disproportionately the young and not the old it's a big strategic difference you're noticing gay rights I've done a lot of kind of minority movements but look you know we need more of everything I mean you know this because of the unlike gay rights gay rights was to serve a minority of people who plan to I mean a small minority people I mean our plan is to become the majority and we really think about that you know and then you think about the people who won't reply to my emails you know I mean and including I mean I talked to this one Foundation recently who have a lot of money and they can't even get 300 views on a YouTube video and that's their meaning a form of activism and like you know some of there are YouTube videos 50 views like 30 views like really really really low and I wrote to them and I said look I was writing you asking for your help but I'm in a position to help you like you know I can give you I can give you 2,000 viewers and there's some of the most cynical best appears the stuff I you know whatever you know you think about it okay this is our plan is to expand and become become the majority and you know oh you know you know won't Gary Frenchy or himself you wouldn't return my emails I have talked to be just a couple message back for them Facebook back in the day but you know you know the level of cooperation the extent to which mutual hostility makes any kind of cooperation impossible it's laughable and the whole world is laughing us freely was laughable durian burger club even games still is laughable etc me on the kind of always Gary Yourofsky laughable I'm gonna be saying and yeah there's a sense in which word we're still legs up look the other question you ask to kind of rolled on from or which other one question was do we need more activist I already if you want to become the majority we need more we need more we even need more people like freely we need more bikini models you know we need more everything ready the the majority by the year 2100 or something you know then we need more of everything but then the second question is what kind of people do we need and the real answer is these people are gonna choose themselves right and that is both the triumph and the tragedy of it when I started doing humanitarian work at last I spoke to several well people who had this unbelievably positive view of white Europe and wait America unbelievably positive now allows the country that was destroyed by what people it was destroyed first but the French Empire and that by the American Empire to make long story short and so I taught them a bit why do they have this really positive opinion well it's because every single white person they ever known was like a surgeon who volunteered to come and help the poor and a small bunch of Laos or an agricultural technician who came to help them you know your deed afield and alleviate starvation in a valley they were these extraordinary humanitarian volunteer type people who personally made sacrifices to come to Laos try to stand positive to make the world a better place now those are the that was the site of what people are white Western culture civilization they knew they didn't know the type of American who flew a bomber aircraft and destroy their country or the type of American who voted for it and wanted it and made that decision and the political machinations behind that and the CIA and the White House that's not what they knew they knew this kind of unbelievably flattering side of white Western culture and civilization and the colony will they know that's that's what they thought we're all like that's who they think we are those that they probably met 30 or 40 people in there it's not not just a few that's the segment of our culture's daily those people choose themselves they elect themselves and sometimes the people who choose themselves are completely inadequate for the task they say no they completely lack the confidence they should have and you know I say that with no hesitation of Akane's ask I say that with no hesitation of of curiosity I think they're terrible representatives reviews terrible and sometimes it's someone who is an okay representative I mean you know dr. dr. mcdougal is not perfect or something but you know sure dr. mcdougal or yeah got positive bleeding sores some of these guys been a little bit eccentric all right wrap it up long story short you know my catchphrase this is not something that's for everybody but if not you the new