100% Vanilla VEGAN ACTIVISM Q&A.

I get email especially often from people
that want advice about vegan activism I'm more than 1,000 videos deep on this YouTube channel I'm gonna recommend an hour-long video that I recorded more than three years ago you see little image of it here with Adrian Adrian who I still know to this day who I'm meeting with in Toronto within the next few days and obviously for her three years three years must feel like a longer time for her at her age then who felt from me at my age but nevertheless she's one of the many people who've written into me and spoken to me by Skype asking for advice wanting to discuss or debate what is effective activism what should we do as activists and I'm gonna respond to this message from patreon supporter named Lance who's asking many of the same questions that I've answered before but I've gotten older as the years have gone by and my answer is a little bit different from before my fundamental guidance for Lance is to say when you look at activism you have to look at the fundamental process and the fundamental product as being who you are the cultivation of your own character so Lance writes in saying hello I am a new patreon supporter and decided to become one in hopes of improving my activism I already do a variety of different types of activism such as tabling at different events doing free vegan food giveaways trying to get into giving speeches and I'm also an AV organizer although we may disagree on this type of action just to pause for one second if you don't know the term tbling if you're not used to seeing the word table as a verb instead of as a noun that is a bit of a term of art in politics I guess where people set up a table there may be buttons and cupcakes and pamphlets and posters and scarves on the table there may be selling hats but we're fundamentally they stand behind a table and let people who are interested approach them and ask for more information as opposed to going out and confronting people so yeah that is many many different political movements and even religious movements to tabeling and tabling it's often a very effective method of fundraising people will come up and donate money to a table I see this with taking care of stray dogs organizations they do a lot of tabling where they put up a poster saying they help stray dogs and then they just stand there and people walk up and give them money I mean that case it's mostly not even educational average so interesting tabling works for some types of causes and not for others but it is much less confrontational than what we're accustomed to under the name of vegan activism all right so he continues I am very interested in trying to find new ways of being an effective activist and looking for any suggestions you may have or even some book recommendations from a steer me in the right direction I am in each D mechanic at a Mills this is some kind of mechanic I don't think about it so I don't really have a trade that translates well to Pekin activism but I'm fairly knowledgeable in nutrition fitness and a very practice intubating veganism but a very little knowledge of politics or philosophy he lives in a smaller city in Canada but he does have a group of ten to twelve people as an activist ooh okay now before I get to your question Lance before I lay into this in any depth I'm gonna read another comment I received from a viewer oh here's a viewer writing in from Madrid Spain who says your green party experience resonates with me here in Madrid vegans are probably most visible during animal issue street marches you could say they have a uniform many are either a New Age vagabond attire beautiful beautiful choice of words New Age vagabond that captures the image perfectly New Age vagabond attire or in anarchist punk black clothing piercings and tattoos people who appear quote-unquote normal appear to be in a minority in some of these marches some of the vegan groups here go on about yoga and pseudo-scientific alternative treatments the vegans here who are politically active and who have some sense in them are indeed a minority within a minority one must navigate through a lot of hippies so look guys it's worthwhile to have a laugh but I don't think observations of this kind or a laughing matter I think fundamentally we all have to recognize the greatest threat to the future of the vegan movement is the present of the vegan movement the greatest obstacle to organizing activists is the reality of who those activists are today who are the early adopters in this movement as opposed to the people eventually we want to reach the people whose talent we want to harness and I think for anyone including Lance running into me from patreon I think one of the most honest things I could say would be that you're gonna spend a large part of your time avoiding other vegans you're gonna spend a lot of your time shutting down other vegans you're gonna spend a lot of time blocking other vegans on Facebook we've all done it come on you're gonna spend a lot of your time you know if you go to these events whether they're conferences with even academic conferences on university campuses or street protests you're gonna stand there and look at these people and say the future of the movement is not you these are not the people I should be putting my time and effort into as I've said recently if anything these people discredit me these people discredit the movement these are exactly the people I can't work with shouldn't work with these are exactly the people I need to avoid so you know now by contrast you can try going to a meeting of the conservative party you can try going to meeting the Liberal Party or the Labour Party or the Democrat Party depending on where you're living and you can look around there and you can see just how many quote-unquote normal people there are you could be in some political movements in some political context where you feel the greatest obstacle to you changing the world and accomplishing your goals is precisely the normalcy of the normal people but in the vegan movement we're at the opposite extreme where the problem is the paucity of that normality and just gonna say this really briefly it's very easy to think of yourself as someone who's too sophisticated to care about what's normal it's easy to think that you look down your nose at your normality okay being normal is an effort being normal is a struggle every family who lives in a white picket fence in the suburbs who dis simulates or emulates that kind of normalcy people who live up to social standards and mores of what's normal they work hard to be normal it's not the default okay to use a simile that is not too mysterious it's like vanilla ice cream you may think of vanilla ice cream as the default flavor making vanilla ice cream is just as hard it's just as much work it's just as much of an art as making strawberry ice cream or banana ice cream or chocolate ice cream all right vanilla ice cream ain't easy it's just different and I completely recognize that styling your hair into a mohawk everyday wearing the heavy metal clanking outfit of punk-rock attire every day that's also hard work I'm sure dressing up what growing out dreadlocks must be a lot of work all the accoutrement eh vagabond must also be hard work normalcy is hard work okay so we turn our attention back to Lance and his question here all right Lance writes in and asks what should he do what could he do with vegan activism I've already disclosed we're now more than a thousand videos deep on this patreon channel we've had many discussions shooting at the earlier one with Adrian but you can click through I have a whole playlist called the brass tacks playlist there's a lot of advice there from different angles and in some cases debates it's also a book reviews playlist he asked there any books I recommend I think every single book review is naked but there there is some actually in-depth discussion of some of the most important authors in vegan activism as a movement probably the most positive is the hour-long discussion of the intellectual legacy of Garry Franchione a that is a book review and discussion the content but there were others too and some of that also has guidance implications for what works and what doesn't in terms of activism but here's the moral of the story that you won't find in any of those books whatever what you have to think about is what kind of person are you what kind of person do you aspire to become you have to look at your activism past present and future in question how is this gonna change me because it is gonna change you alright standing out on the sidewalk every day and having confrontations with people maybe angrily arguing with strangers about veganism it changes you it doesn't just change the way people perceive you doesn't just change your social values in this it changes how you feel how you see the world who you are critics what about actually going to the going to the slaughterhouses spending time inside slaughterhouses spending time inside SeaWorld or spending time on fishing boats spending time going to circuses or going to the places where they kill puppies or whatever these are all various custom you know a terrible example terrible example spending all your time taking care of rescue chickens shout-out to my one viewer who will know exactly ones have I have one view or talks to me her whole life is now consumed with cleaning up the poo and the blood of chickens doing you know horrible veterinary care for these chickens they rescue these chickens and then the chickens spend the rest of the lives on a farm run by a vegan and there's all these other things that she can't be doing it changes how you feel it changes how you see the world as the years go by it changes who you are and each one of those people even someone as successful as James Aspie whatever form of activism they chose they have to live with the awareness of the opportunity cost what they sacrifice because they could have been doing something else they could have been doing something better so the woman is spending all of her time on a chicken farm a chicken sanctuary taking care of chickens she could be getting a PhD okay James Ashby could be getting a PhD there are people who sign up and go to culinary school and become a pastry chef running a vegan bakery or a vegan restaurant trying to promote the cause and now every day they're in the back of that restaurant rolling out pastry dough doing repetitive manual labor and they may have all kinds of frustration they know they could have gotten a PhD Oh getting a pitched he's not the only option each one of these contrasts James ASPI could have gotten involved in mainstream politics he could have honed his ability to sit down at the table with more of those normal people try to get himself into Parliament try to get himself into City Hall try to influence you know the political mainstream in some way not just by wearing veganism on his sleeve or I should say not by just wearing a sleeveless t-shirt and promoting veganism but whether you're spending your time doing the mindless labor of baking rolling out dough in a bakery or the mindless labor of doing physical training work and maybe you're thinking I could have become a fully qualified nutrition and dietetics expert which is a very hard scientific degree to get you actually up to study chemistry organic chemistry nutritional chemistry and that's quite boring but you could have done that instead here you are being a trainer helping people lose weight they have today alright and to put a human face on it you've got most of you guys know the YouTube channel ask yourself isaac brown's channel that guy I feel he's ruined his life I feel he's ruined his character he came here on the internet and I'm sure it was intoxicating and exciting at first his form of activism is having debates with mentally disabled political extremists over the Internet again and again and again and just over the last three years I mean I've known him well enough I've watched him you know at a distance but thought I'd seen enough I've seen the way that's changed his character I've seen the way that's changed who he really is not just how he acts you know how he feels give it three years give it five years having these these stupid discussions skinned again it will change who you are and it will change who you are whether you experience your form of activism as denigrating humiliating or if you experience as an ego trip because I mean I am sure Isaac asked yourself I'm sure he's on the world's greatest ego trip evil is the best thing in the world for him to sit down and exercise his intellectual superiority over somebody with autism spectrum disorder who's a communist extremists making excuses for Joseph Stalin and in the past he was doing he used to hold all these discussions with neo-nazis coming on and he gets to sit there and feel that he's the most intelligent narrative person the world as is not a formula for intellectual growth I'm sure at least for the first couple of years James asked me must have been on the world's greatest ego trip you know that he gets to fly around the world and give interviews with respectable journalists and here he is appearing in the newspaper and at some point for both of those men I hope at some point the vacuous nests and the wholeness of the form of activism they've they've embarked on really becomes evident to them everyone I've talked to every single person I've talked to you who did Street activism they said to me at some point they just realized doing this again and again it's a waste of their time it's turning them into an embittered you know wreck of a man or hollow shell of a woman they saw the damage it was doing to themselves to who they are uh-huh every single one now you know given my youtube you might say well gee I know you're talking to a peculiar subset of vegan activist yeah I am I talk to vegan activist who know what they're [ __ ] talking about I talk to the vegan activists who are not crazy and who are willing to engage in critique of what's going on in the movement and we're willing to engage in self-examination self-criticism to try to learn from those no you're right I don't talk to stereotypical vegans I don't talk to the people of who are dressed like New Age vagabonds with tattoos and the dreadlocks and the extensive beards and what have you it's not who I'm talking to I'm talking to people who are interested in changing the world okay but my warning in this video is if you are seriously committed to changing the world what you have to examine first and foremost at every stage of this process is how you are changing yourself because the process of being an activist fundamentally transforms you and your life and if you have a circle of 10 or 12 people tendril people other activists just take the time as a thought experiment able just your imagine the central group and imagine where were they gonna be five years from now who are they gonna be how are they gonna change this activism we're engaged in now you know is it gonna and bitter them is it gonna kind of destroy them is it gonna make them into ego maniacs or if they're gonna be chuffed with their successes they're gonna be are they're gonna go mad with their little little bit of authority they've gained in the movement or diving because plenty of examples of that we've talked about on this channel too where it's the ego trip take selves motivation and and then when you look at yourself because you're the one person you have the most control over you got to think okay what kind of person do I want to become what is it I'm trying to cultivate in myself and then how am I going to design a program activism that lets me become that person where I'm training myself I'm becoming a better person to activism I'm not merely looking at activism as a form of self-sacrificing public service because it's not it's not self advocating alright but I'm looking at this as part of my own education I'm looking at this and becoming a better person in the process of trying to make the world a better place [Music]