The Fundamental Flaw with Vegan Abolitionism (or "Abolitionist Vegans").

every video I make is the first video
that somebody somewhere watches on this channel so I just say as a disclaimer before I get into the core topic of this video that I have made videos in the past talking about the concept of abolitionism and talking about my specific objections to the approach of cari Francie ohne and of the abolitionist definition of veganism as a political movement and I have not talked about this in a shallow way I'll also just say that if you watch those earlier videos you will find that I do I'd not only sympathize with the moral instincts with the motivations people have for using the concept of fie of abolitionists veganism but in some contexts I do describe myself as an abolitionist and I talked about abolition I talked about the abolition of factory farming as a goal that vegans desire so this is not a shallow reaction to the word or the idea of evolutionism but I thought I'd make a video now which is not redundant with my earlier videos talking about what I think is the most fundamental flaw in the abolitionist approach to veganism at its heart I feel that the abolitionist approach refuses to admit of a distinction between descriptive and prescriptive ethics these are fancy philosophical terms what does that mean we can make analytical statements about good and evil I vote good and bad about better and worse that admit of complex shades of grey' nuances contradictions we can make those analytical statements and they exist really in a completely separate category from prescriptive statements about the decisions we make or the decisions we ought to make an abolitionist vegan I just take my jacket off for spelling an abolitionist vegan will find it deeply problematic to hear someone say in a welfarist mode that a chicken with free-range the ability to flap its wings he is better off than a chicken that's in a cage they want to create a simple binary contrast between good and evil and they want us all to come to the conclusion that the whole factory farming the whole apparatus of this industry must be abolished the problem is those two things exist in two completely separate categories if you're asking me for my recommendation if you're asking me what decision you should make as an individual I can prescribe I can make the prescriptive statement you ought to become vegan you should become vegan this is the correct decision for you to make and completely separately I can engage in an analytical discussion of good and evil of degrees of difference of shades of gray that admits that you know what even though I believe theoretically that it would be a wonderful thing if everyone stopped eating chicken meat and therefore this industry could disappear nevertheless I can recognize that the welfarist s-- also have a point that there are meaningful differences between one form of farming and another that there's meaningful difference between a bird and the forest that not only gets to flap its wings but gets to explore the wilderness that gets to live a natural life that gets to mate and reproduce with its own species a bird that lives a wild and free life until one day a hunter shoots out of the sky I can see a difference between that and a hen that lives its whole life in a steel cage that never sees the sky for whom its whole world is nothing but steel and concrete waiting in captivity one day to die I can admit of those differences and why not the abolitionist approach in refusing to separate descriptive from prescriptive refusing to separate analytical evaluations of things from the advice given on what decision you should make what you can do as an individual or we should do as a society or political decisions etc they're in the position of someone who is refusing to admit that you can for example compare degrees of difference when looking at two different genocides in the history of the world or two different programs of ethnic cleansing now I understand why you would not want to allow that kind of discussion if I were a history teacher in a high school I would not allow my students to debate that because it's so sensitive it's so offensive and high school students probably don't know what they're talking about and probably will play very fast and loose with topics that include the deaths of millions of people crimes against humanity etc etc nevertheless I mean in my own research in the last couple of years I remember looking at real questions of ethnic cleansing of forced assimilation of genocide within the Communist world and not only would I think comparatively about how is this similar to and how is this different from genocides in history of fascism but I would also look at how compared to the history of Canada you know how did Russia force its indigenous ethnic minorities its tribal peoples its native peoples to assimilate into Russian culture to start using the Russian language there are many striking parallels to the decisions that the Canadian government made in forcing the native people of Canada to speak English to abandon their traditional religion the traditional culture etc and we've now had trials in Canada we've had real questions though either use of the word genocide to describe that part of our history I'd say it's a major political issue still today in Canada but has been over the last 50 years dealing with the legacy of that in comparing those things in admitting that there are gray areas and that there are degrees of difference in how evil something is it's not simply the case that everything we call genocide is equally as terrible as the Nazis the Nazis being the the symbol of you know inestimable evil in human history you know it may be that we could admit that you know there are other forms of genocide that are terrible in their own way and in an analytical sense we can look at those gray areas and evaluate and appreciate those degrees of difference and that does not in any way destroy the moral basis we have when speaking about prescriptive ethics when we're making a statement but what one should do what one ought to do what you as an individual ought to do or we as a society ought to do or politically what the government ought to do if we actually had a conference bringing together experts experts let's say on the history of North Korea communism in Korea and experts on the history of Iraq we might actually have a conference making comparative statements about despotism in these countries about government use of power about crimes against humanity and there might be a lot of gray areas discussed about better and worse and the position that a delicious abolitionists put themselves in is the position of people who would refuse to go to that conference who would refuse to talk in any welfarist terms about how to improve human rights in North Korea or how to improve human rights in Iraq or to engage in discussions of better mores because they feel that if they do they sacrifice the moral high-ground of calling for absolute abolition right so the abolition of animal agriculture in one case the abolition of dictatorship or you know governments that commit crimes against humanity and you know we get in effect a terrible narrowing of the mind on this basis if you were asked me why is there this tendency in abolitions veganism I would say entirely results from monotheism basically from Christianity may be to some extent Judaism but mostly you know American Christianity a way of thinking about ethics in the Christian tradition that it both shapes people who are actively you know believers in monotheism which carry Francey only definitely is he's a passionate believer in monotheism and you know also culturally I think it shapes the way people think about ethics who may identify as atheists but whom culturally have grown up with received Christian traditions I can say I've done an enormous mess Kolsch upon Buddhism I'm not a Buddhist religiously but I know a lot about Buddhism within a Buddhist culture it is impossible for me to imagine the misconceptions the ethical model of abolitionist veganism ever-evolving in a Buddhist context and this would be a much longer video if I start to explain to you why but culturally and in terms of the philosophy of ethics that people grow up with Buddhism would shape a very different set of preconceptions and different problems to believe me Buddhism has its disadvantages it's not entirely advantageous but I do think this this reflects a Christian cultural background this is not the only problem with evolutionism the way they talk about slavery and the history of the abolition of slavery in that states is extremely problematic it leads to recommendations that are counterproductive and a historical and I think they're misleading and immoral and wrong and dumb let's be blunt so you know there are many specific themes like that in terms of strategy and tactics and you know the supposed lessons learned from history where I think that the the abolitionists are on the wrong foot and our leading vegans down the wrong path and in my earlier videos I have talked about many of those things I think the way they misrepresent an historical figure like Gandhi Mohandas Gandhi some people go home Mahatma Gandhi I think that the you know cynical misrepresentation exploitation of historical figures like that is deeply problematic to some extent it's even implicitly racist to be honest with you they're not looking at Mohandas Gandhi with the same critical eye that they would look at a European political figure or you know they're not looking at the civil war with the United States frankly in a very so perfo way either so you know there are many specific issues and topics on which in the past I already have many videos criticizing them and there were more productive areas of critique for us to learn from moving forward as a movement again I do sympathise with the moral impulse that's driving these people forward and I do sympathise many of the objectives they wish to achieve although I think they never will achieve but yes it is deeply problematic to me that we have this tendency that would for example reject a vegan forever embracing a single-issue cause the demonization in a really Christian sense the demonization of all single-issue causes on the grounds that some single issue causes or immoral so if I am a vegan and I want to save the Dolphins because I know about a dolphin population and they need habitat conservation and a group of activists really can advocate for a small area of habitat to be conserved to save one population of dolphins in one place at one time now I'm not a real vegan know I'm a fake vegan because that's a single issue cause huh that this this is insane and why because we're supposed to piously believe in this crypto Christian idea that the dolphins are equal to the crickets and the crickets are equal to the Penguins and the Penguins are equal to the mosquitoes and the cockroaches and if you killed mosquitoes and cockroaches and rats then you're not a real vegan it all gets tied up in a bow in one great Catholic you know fantasy of moral purity which ultimately makes us impossible for us to practically form coalition's practically yes Lobby government on single issue causes practically engage in the advocacy for wild animals whether it's dolphins or bears or what have you to brush with it with any any specific issue because we're supposed to be beholden to this generalized abstraction this holy idea of all animals in their totality each being equal to all the others so this is massively called counterproductive way of thinking about the world yes some single issue causes our moral some are incompatible with veganism many are not there's absolutely nothing wrong with advocating for the dolphins I don't mean I don't mean dolphins out one specific population of dolphins trying to save some dolphins because those dolphins have needs that the crickets don't have doesn't mean you hate crickets maybe you do so what you can be vegan and hate crickets crickets make noise keep you up at night it can be a problem Real Talk but yeah your problem we say we'll look where I live we've got a bunch of dolphins and they're endangered and they're in trouble and they need somebody to advocate for them so that their habitat gets preserved so they don't go extinct and I want to be one of those people I want to do something positive in the world and that doesn't make me any less of a vegan and god damn you for trying to make me feel ashamed and try to say I'm a fake vegan because it's a single issue cause we'll talk