Why I Am Not Left Wing.
19 January 2017 [link youtube]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
I like to be honest in my videos I also
like to be honest about what my motivations are for making a video this video I'm making now kind of two big reasons why I'm making it people used to ask me about this all the time for one thing people used to ask me to make a video on this topic but you know especially women in my life women were starting sexual relationships with me romantic relations with me very often one of their first questions for me is basically why are you not left-wing or they struggle to understand where I am on the political spectrum even though they've read my essays even though sometimes they've read a lot of research have done a lot of intellectual work I've done in writing and sometimes they've watched a hundred of my YouTube videos so even though they have a sense of my character and my interests and my political views on particular issues very very often the women in my life for the women just coming into my life women getting to know me and getting you know thinking about what another gonna commit to me romantically very often what they want to know is why are you not left-wing second big reason is you know for a long time now I've been thinking about doing a video talking about the poisonous dangerous counterproductive ignorant and self-righteous attitudes that I see many left-wingers exhibiting here on YouTube left-wing people within veganism vegans who describe themselves as anti-capitalist and so on but you know if I make a video that approaches that in a sort of schematic way if I make a video that approaches those issues from the top down like talking about the principles of economics history of economic theory that message is never gonna reach the audience that needs to hear it it's very easy for me to make a video criticizing anti capitalists or criticising communists that will be received positively by other people who already understand what's wrong with anti capitalists and communists its money there's the audience that wants to hear it and there's the audience that needs to hear it those are two very different audiences so it occurred to me I could just make a video talking about my life subjectively and my reasons for why I am NOT left-wing I grew up in a context in Toronto Canada where absolutely everyone around me was left-wing the political spectrum of the people surrounding me where I grew up in Toronto Canada went from moderate socialist to extreme communist it went from the left to the left of center to the extreme left I never met anyone close to the center growing up I never met any conservatives I mean I remember one conversation on a bus with the guy who was conservative but it's amazing and you know what a few other points in my life have been in the kind of situation when me and my wife I'm divorced now but me and my wife later max wife I remember when we were together in Cambridge England just blew my mind I had been living in two different communist countries I've lived in Laos I've lived in China two different genuinely communist countries and then I'm living in England I'm surrounded by Communists and surrounded by communists who are way more extreme and way more zhijun and way more naive than anyone you meet in China who's a member of the Communist Party in China you can meet very down-to-earth very cynical communists who have real world experience and you know and then you go back to a place like England or a place like Toronto and you meet these fanatical left-wingers fanatical um it's a such a strange contrast me too I've lived in Cambodia Cambodia is a former or communist country home to one of the greatest disasters in the history of communism I grew up uh Turley lacking the contrast between right wing and left wing or even between moderate conservative and moderate left-wing and it's always kind of burdened me I mean just now in the last couple of years and I was at University of Victoria I thought it was hilarious that some of my professors some of my professors regarded me as conservative I mean look at my youtube channel I'm there is nothing conservative about any of my values I'm a former scholar of Buddhism chose to live my life in Asia chose to live my life pursuing a combination of humanitarian work and research interests trying to make the world a better place in terms of ecology but also in terms of human rights in terms of so many issues I was engaged with in Southeast Asia in terms of you know human trafficking and poverty and the progress of medicine in these third-world countries developing countries the transition from communism to capitalism and countries like Laos and Cambodia post-war ruination have been engaged in so many different ethical issues and I mean there's so many ways in which you can tell my values as a person even my values just as a vegan cannot be described as conservative in many ways you could say I'm a radical because the kind of change I want to see in the world is so fundamental is such a fundamental status if part of me is such a fundamental challenge to the status quo and of course beyond that I'm a nihilistic atheist I describe myself as an historical nihilist I don't believe in religion I don't believe in conservatism and I don't believe in liberalism I don't believe in anything so in so many ways it's obvious that I'm not a conservative and yet I go back to Canada I mean this University in Victoria and again it's one of those situations where the political context goes from left-wing to communist everyone is either a socialist or a communist there is so far left that they perceive me as conservative and to some extent that's gonna happen within veganism people are gonna perceive me as conservative just because I'm a pragmatic down-to-earth person look it's very humbling to approach the world without any ideology whether that's because you're a nihilist like me or just because you are pragmatist who can put aside your own feelings your own commitment to certain ideas to look at the world pragmatically and ask yourself how can I make this situation better okay it's very humbling Saudi Arabia terrible political situation what can you do to make it better Cambodia terrible political situation what can you do to make it better Canada I cared deeply about I was really committed to political issues involving our native people the Cree and the edge of a especially we say First Nations American Indians okay terrible political situation what can I do to make it better you just start with that question and proceed empirically and humbly to try to figure out what you can do as one man or what is one woman to make the world a better place whether it's in urban Cambodia or rural Canada you're never going to come to this conclusion that all of the left wingers start from that all the anti capitalists are from that the system is evil the system can never produce absolute human equality therefore the most constructive thing you can do with your time is to work to destroy the system itself is to work to destroy capitalism and that's never gonna be true for you as one individual and it's never gonna be true for you and your circle of five friends ten friends 50 friends the small circle of people you can possibly organize to make the world a better place what I see within the vegan movement is self-styled anti capitalists self-styled crypto communists really that's what they are people who are communists that why I met their confidence claiming that the problem with veganism is that veganism works within the system and isn't a fundamental challenge the existence of the system itself and when they say the system they mean capitalism and then they will add on to this the idea that capitalism is designed to fail capitalism is inherently oppressive inherently evil that it is ineluctably unstable exploitative that capitalism relies on economic assumptions such as infinite growth that mean it's doomed to some terrible catastrophe etc you know this is an attitude that starts by disregarding empirical experience and really gets worse from there I'm not here to tell you that capitalism is wonderful I'm really not I'm here to tell you that if you sit down with yourself with all due humility and all due honesty and think about how you can make the world a better place it's not through destroying capitalism whether that's with all due humility that you want to go to Cambodia and do humanitarian work in Cambodia or Saudi Arabia or right now maybe you want to go to Lebanon or the border areas of Turkey and help refugees from Syria the idea that destroying capitalism is a positive moral cause is a poisonous and dangerous distorting optic to allow into your life whether you're left-wing right-wing or centrist and it becomes ultimately a kind of silly self-fulfilling prophecy in the minds of people who believe in it all right if somebody asks you what's the problem with Cambodia today in 2017 you've got to sit down and do research you've got to sit down and do analysis let's figure out what really are the problems in Cambodia today and within that category which problems can we hope to change it's fundamentally a lazy fatuous attitude to say no no these specific problems the fruit of this specific analysis doesn't matter because the problem he's capitalism itself there's a hell of a lot of lazy thinking like that on the left I think I've mentioned this before I went to a conference on ecology in Canada and this guy stood up and gave a lecture that began by saying he was a communist that the problems they were discussing - this particular seminar really they were a joke because to talk about changing power consumption and power generation and ecologic Olympics power generation really that doesn't matter because we all know that the fundamental problem with electricity generation will never be solved until there is a bloody revolution in which the workers rise up and destroy the ruling class and a bunch of people in the crowd all murmured their agreement with this because again downtown Toronto a lot of people are left-wing he said ok but with that having been said now I'm gonna say a few words about the problem with how electricity generation is organized in Canada Oh in a subtle and profound way this type of revolutionary conceit poisons and vitiates and invalid invalidates everything you do as a researcher everything you do as a humanitarian worker everything you can do as a vegan activist and I know that problem is invisible to the people who are already inside the left-wing mindset or the anti-capitalist mindset okay why am I personally not a left-winger I grew up around left-wing people who said they were anti-war the truth was they weren't anti-war they were pro war they just wanted to fight wars that they could win they weren't anti-war they just supported the wars Russia was fighting and opposed the wars America was funny it was all a lie I grew up around left-wing people who talked seriously this is before 1989 before the fall of the Berlin Wall who talked seriously about their future and thus also about my future fighting in a revolutionary war that would tear the world apart that was how they saw the future but when I would ask them pragmatically what weapons training were they getting what military training were they getting to prepare for this war for this revolution that they thought is the future this is classic Marxist ideology Marxism Marxism absolutely believes that the progress progress social progress of any kind relies on violence relies on basically a type of civil war okay communism is a violent ideology and believes that it's that social progress is exclusively achieved through violence and this is very employed on the whole left wing when I ask these people oh what military training are you under to take you to actually prepare for that they would look at me blankly okay I grew up around left-wing people who talked about helping the poor but they did nothing to help the poor they had no sincere pragmatic engagement with helping the poor whereas the right-wing Christians the conservative Christians across the street really weren't helping the poor and none of nobody on the left was nobody around me nobody in the world I lived in okay this is the obviously some left-wing people actually do humanitarian work okay it's not that my values were conservative okay I was interested in taking left-wing values out of the realm of ideology out of the realm of excuse making and implementing them in a pragmatic humble down-to-earth way in the real world in a way that would actually make a difference and that is why I am NOT left-wing even though I'm not Christian and I don't believe in Christianity my thought process is much more like a Christian who's looking at humanitarian work who whether it's helping the poor in Canada or trying to build a more positive future in Cambodia who's looking at how can I make a positive difference now and although left-wing people anti-capitalist people communes people although they invoke the name of poverty although they invoke the idea of helping the poor they're only invoking that as a pretext and as an excuse for violence they're only invoking that as an excuse for their ideology of a holy war that will create a utopia they call it class war and one of the most fundamental delusions is simply about the meaning of that term and of the refusal of people on the left to face up to the violent and frankly terrifying reality historically of what class war really means class war is about people going door-to-door and slaughtering their own neighbors class war is about the poor killing the rich class war is about putting people on trial murdering them and murdering their children in the crib because of their class status read the history of Russia read the history of China read the reality of what the Edo ideology of class war was anywhere that it was put into action and the people who come on my channel and make excuses for mass murder under communism have to understand that you are making excuses for an ideology and a political movement that's killed billions of people and that has included genocide that is included acts of genocide not exclusively or primarily but yes for example the D Cossack ization campaign in Russia starting already in 1917 there were genocide all aspects to communism of exterminating ethnic groups it's part of it's part of the history the short and snappy answer of why I am NOT left-wing is because I actually want to make the world a better place I refuse to be part of a political movement that is based on the lie that they already are making the world a better place I refused to part of a good political movement that's justifying violence past present or future violence that is glorifying a violent revolution past present or future that's glorifying mass murder I refuse to fight a political move that is glorifying violence in the name of making the world a better place and that's why we see this bizarre contrast between veganism and the conventional left-wing that's why it makes left-wingers so uncomfortable to look at veganism and recognize veganism is a movement that really can deliver on its promises veganism is a movement that's based on attainable goals not an unattainable utopia not an impossible set of ideals veganism can make a real difference in ecology veganism can in a sense save the planet veganism can change all of our lives the better as individuals it can be such a fundamental change in our society and yet what it can't do is justify the class war what it can't do is serve as an ideological plank in their fantasy their violent fantasy that the workers will rise up and destroy the ruling class okay and that's what we have to defend against the left-wing extremists within veganism and the left-wing extremists may even be the majority right now as veganism becomes more mainstream we're going to get more moderates we're gonna get more centrist we're gonna get more reasonable people we're gonna get more pragmatic voices who just want to make a positive difference but right now that is a discussion that needs to happen veganism is not revolutionary veganism is not violent veganism does not promise you an absolute equality between the factory worker and the factory owner it's irrelevant to veganism okay veganism is not about tearing down the society we already live in but what veganism is about is making a positive difference in this world without killing anyone
like to be honest about what my motivations are for making a video this video I'm making now kind of two big reasons why I'm making it people used to ask me about this all the time for one thing people used to ask me to make a video on this topic but you know especially women in my life women were starting sexual relationships with me romantic relations with me very often one of their first questions for me is basically why are you not left-wing or they struggle to understand where I am on the political spectrum even though they've read my essays even though sometimes they've read a lot of research have done a lot of intellectual work I've done in writing and sometimes they've watched a hundred of my YouTube videos so even though they have a sense of my character and my interests and my political views on particular issues very very often the women in my life for the women just coming into my life women getting to know me and getting you know thinking about what another gonna commit to me romantically very often what they want to know is why are you not left-wing second big reason is you know for a long time now I've been thinking about doing a video talking about the poisonous dangerous counterproductive ignorant and self-righteous attitudes that I see many left-wingers exhibiting here on YouTube left-wing people within veganism vegans who describe themselves as anti-capitalist and so on but you know if I make a video that approaches that in a sort of schematic way if I make a video that approaches those issues from the top down like talking about the principles of economics history of economic theory that message is never gonna reach the audience that needs to hear it it's very easy for me to make a video criticizing anti capitalists or criticising communists that will be received positively by other people who already understand what's wrong with anti capitalists and communists its money there's the audience that wants to hear it and there's the audience that needs to hear it those are two very different audiences so it occurred to me I could just make a video talking about my life subjectively and my reasons for why I am NOT left-wing I grew up in a context in Toronto Canada where absolutely everyone around me was left-wing the political spectrum of the people surrounding me where I grew up in Toronto Canada went from moderate socialist to extreme communist it went from the left to the left of center to the extreme left I never met anyone close to the center growing up I never met any conservatives I mean I remember one conversation on a bus with the guy who was conservative but it's amazing and you know what a few other points in my life have been in the kind of situation when me and my wife I'm divorced now but me and my wife later max wife I remember when we were together in Cambridge England just blew my mind I had been living in two different communist countries I've lived in Laos I've lived in China two different genuinely communist countries and then I'm living in England I'm surrounded by Communists and surrounded by communists who are way more extreme and way more zhijun and way more naive than anyone you meet in China who's a member of the Communist Party in China you can meet very down-to-earth very cynical communists who have real world experience and you know and then you go back to a place like England or a place like Toronto and you meet these fanatical left-wingers fanatical um it's a such a strange contrast me too I've lived in Cambodia Cambodia is a former or communist country home to one of the greatest disasters in the history of communism I grew up uh Turley lacking the contrast between right wing and left wing or even between moderate conservative and moderate left-wing and it's always kind of burdened me I mean just now in the last couple of years and I was at University of Victoria I thought it was hilarious that some of my professors some of my professors regarded me as conservative I mean look at my youtube channel I'm there is nothing conservative about any of my values I'm a former scholar of Buddhism chose to live my life in Asia chose to live my life pursuing a combination of humanitarian work and research interests trying to make the world a better place in terms of ecology but also in terms of human rights in terms of so many issues I was engaged with in Southeast Asia in terms of you know human trafficking and poverty and the progress of medicine in these third-world countries developing countries the transition from communism to capitalism and countries like Laos and Cambodia post-war ruination have been engaged in so many different ethical issues and I mean there's so many ways in which you can tell my values as a person even my values just as a vegan cannot be described as conservative in many ways you could say I'm a radical because the kind of change I want to see in the world is so fundamental is such a fundamental status if part of me is such a fundamental challenge to the status quo and of course beyond that I'm a nihilistic atheist I describe myself as an historical nihilist I don't believe in religion I don't believe in conservatism and I don't believe in liberalism I don't believe in anything so in so many ways it's obvious that I'm not a conservative and yet I go back to Canada I mean this University in Victoria and again it's one of those situations where the political context goes from left-wing to communist everyone is either a socialist or a communist there is so far left that they perceive me as conservative and to some extent that's gonna happen within veganism people are gonna perceive me as conservative just because I'm a pragmatic down-to-earth person look it's very humbling to approach the world without any ideology whether that's because you're a nihilist like me or just because you are pragmatist who can put aside your own feelings your own commitment to certain ideas to look at the world pragmatically and ask yourself how can I make this situation better okay it's very humbling Saudi Arabia terrible political situation what can you do to make it better Cambodia terrible political situation what can you do to make it better Canada I cared deeply about I was really committed to political issues involving our native people the Cree and the edge of a especially we say First Nations American Indians okay terrible political situation what can I do to make it better you just start with that question and proceed empirically and humbly to try to figure out what you can do as one man or what is one woman to make the world a better place whether it's in urban Cambodia or rural Canada you're never going to come to this conclusion that all of the left wingers start from that all the anti capitalists are from that the system is evil the system can never produce absolute human equality therefore the most constructive thing you can do with your time is to work to destroy the system itself is to work to destroy capitalism and that's never gonna be true for you as one individual and it's never gonna be true for you and your circle of five friends ten friends 50 friends the small circle of people you can possibly organize to make the world a better place what I see within the vegan movement is self-styled anti capitalists self-styled crypto communists really that's what they are people who are communists that why I met their confidence claiming that the problem with veganism is that veganism works within the system and isn't a fundamental challenge the existence of the system itself and when they say the system they mean capitalism and then they will add on to this the idea that capitalism is designed to fail capitalism is inherently oppressive inherently evil that it is ineluctably unstable exploitative that capitalism relies on economic assumptions such as infinite growth that mean it's doomed to some terrible catastrophe etc you know this is an attitude that starts by disregarding empirical experience and really gets worse from there I'm not here to tell you that capitalism is wonderful I'm really not I'm here to tell you that if you sit down with yourself with all due humility and all due honesty and think about how you can make the world a better place it's not through destroying capitalism whether that's with all due humility that you want to go to Cambodia and do humanitarian work in Cambodia or Saudi Arabia or right now maybe you want to go to Lebanon or the border areas of Turkey and help refugees from Syria the idea that destroying capitalism is a positive moral cause is a poisonous and dangerous distorting optic to allow into your life whether you're left-wing right-wing or centrist and it becomes ultimately a kind of silly self-fulfilling prophecy in the minds of people who believe in it all right if somebody asks you what's the problem with Cambodia today in 2017 you've got to sit down and do research you've got to sit down and do analysis let's figure out what really are the problems in Cambodia today and within that category which problems can we hope to change it's fundamentally a lazy fatuous attitude to say no no these specific problems the fruit of this specific analysis doesn't matter because the problem he's capitalism itself there's a hell of a lot of lazy thinking like that on the left I think I've mentioned this before I went to a conference on ecology in Canada and this guy stood up and gave a lecture that began by saying he was a communist that the problems they were discussing - this particular seminar really they were a joke because to talk about changing power consumption and power generation and ecologic Olympics power generation really that doesn't matter because we all know that the fundamental problem with electricity generation will never be solved until there is a bloody revolution in which the workers rise up and destroy the ruling class and a bunch of people in the crowd all murmured their agreement with this because again downtown Toronto a lot of people are left-wing he said ok but with that having been said now I'm gonna say a few words about the problem with how electricity generation is organized in Canada Oh in a subtle and profound way this type of revolutionary conceit poisons and vitiates and invalid invalidates everything you do as a researcher everything you do as a humanitarian worker everything you can do as a vegan activist and I know that problem is invisible to the people who are already inside the left-wing mindset or the anti-capitalist mindset okay why am I personally not a left-winger I grew up around left-wing people who said they were anti-war the truth was they weren't anti-war they were pro war they just wanted to fight wars that they could win they weren't anti-war they just supported the wars Russia was fighting and opposed the wars America was funny it was all a lie I grew up around left-wing people who talked seriously this is before 1989 before the fall of the Berlin Wall who talked seriously about their future and thus also about my future fighting in a revolutionary war that would tear the world apart that was how they saw the future but when I would ask them pragmatically what weapons training were they getting what military training were they getting to prepare for this war for this revolution that they thought is the future this is classic Marxist ideology Marxism Marxism absolutely believes that the progress progress social progress of any kind relies on violence relies on basically a type of civil war okay communism is a violent ideology and believes that it's that social progress is exclusively achieved through violence and this is very employed on the whole left wing when I ask these people oh what military training are you under to take you to actually prepare for that they would look at me blankly okay I grew up around left-wing people who talked about helping the poor but they did nothing to help the poor they had no sincere pragmatic engagement with helping the poor whereas the right-wing Christians the conservative Christians across the street really weren't helping the poor and none of nobody on the left was nobody around me nobody in the world I lived in okay this is the obviously some left-wing people actually do humanitarian work okay it's not that my values were conservative okay I was interested in taking left-wing values out of the realm of ideology out of the realm of excuse making and implementing them in a pragmatic humble down-to-earth way in the real world in a way that would actually make a difference and that is why I am NOT left-wing even though I'm not Christian and I don't believe in Christianity my thought process is much more like a Christian who's looking at humanitarian work who whether it's helping the poor in Canada or trying to build a more positive future in Cambodia who's looking at how can I make a positive difference now and although left-wing people anti-capitalist people communes people although they invoke the name of poverty although they invoke the idea of helping the poor they're only invoking that as a pretext and as an excuse for violence they're only invoking that as an excuse for their ideology of a holy war that will create a utopia they call it class war and one of the most fundamental delusions is simply about the meaning of that term and of the refusal of people on the left to face up to the violent and frankly terrifying reality historically of what class war really means class war is about people going door-to-door and slaughtering their own neighbors class war is about the poor killing the rich class war is about putting people on trial murdering them and murdering their children in the crib because of their class status read the history of Russia read the history of China read the reality of what the Edo ideology of class war was anywhere that it was put into action and the people who come on my channel and make excuses for mass murder under communism have to understand that you are making excuses for an ideology and a political movement that's killed billions of people and that has included genocide that is included acts of genocide not exclusively or primarily but yes for example the D Cossack ization campaign in Russia starting already in 1917 there were genocide all aspects to communism of exterminating ethnic groups it's part of it's part of the history the short and snappy answer of why I am NOT left-wing is because I actually want to make the world a better place I refuse to be part of a political movement that is based on the lie that they already are making the world a better place I refused to part of a good political movement that's justifying violence past present or future violence that is glorifying a violent revolution past present or future that's glorifying mass murder I refuse to fight a political move that is glorifying violence in the name of making the world a better place and that's why we see this bizarre contrast between veganism and the conventional left-wing that's why it makes left-wingers so uncomfortable to look at veganism and recognize veganism is a movement that really can deliver on its promises veganism is a movement that's based on attainable goals not an unattainable utopia not an impossible set of ideals veganism can make a real difference in ecology veganism can in a sense save the planet veganism can change all of our lives the better as individuals it can be such a fundamental change in our society and yet what it can't do is justify the class war what it can't do is serve as an ideological plank in their fantasy their violent fantasy that the workers will rise up and destroy the ruling class okay and that's what we have to defend against the left-wing extremists within veganism and the left-wing extremists may even be the majority right now as veganism becomes more mainstream we're going to get more moderates we're gonna get more centrist we're gonna get more reasonable people we're gonna get more pragmatic voices who just want to make a positive difference but right now that is a discussion that needs to happen veganism is not revolutionary veganism is not violent veganism does not promise you an absolute equality between the factory worker and the factory owner it's irrelevant to veganism okay veganism is not about tearing down the society we already live in but what veganism is about is making a positive difference in this world without killing anyone