Solutions: Vegan activism in my life and yours, right now. [Ep. 007]
10 April 2017 [link youtube]
ADVICE NOBODY WANTS TO HEAR [Ep. 007]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
back when this channel first got started
believe it or not the main complaint I heard in relation to the actual political theory the real hard political science content that I'm presenting here was that I was dividing the community and this is I mean it's an interesting perception of what I'm doing in and the consequences I do actually agree to some extent because whenever we switch from a discussion of political problems to political solutions things get divisive quick in fact I would go so far as to say that in principle in the context of organization activism running a movement problems unify people whereas solutions divide them paradoxical as it may seem that's how it is give you an example you could form a political movement simply based around protesting against coal power and you'd unify all kinds of people from all kinds of different political perspectives and the only thing they have to have in common is the idea that coal power is bad and they want to get it on the streets and get on the TV news use whatever means are available to them to see public perception of coal power as a problem and to raise coal power as a as a political priority right the idea that we should reduce or eliminate reliance on coal burning power plants ok second unify all kinds of people but you're only basing your movement on the declaration of the problem think about how profoundly different the whole process is and who the people are who will join how they relate to each other and who will donate money and who won't think about a profoundly different as if instead from day one your foundation is defined as promoting nuclear power to replace coal power that coal power should be phased out and replace the nuclear power plants divisive when you just base your movement on declaring the problem on complaining about the problem basically that unites people and when you build your movement around a solution it divides people solutions are divisive all right and I would say this is even true I'm gonna pick now I think the least politically divisive example I can think of and yet it still is in this fundamental way divisive let's say I moved back to Canada I'm living in Victoria BC and I decide you know what I think it's really important for me as a vegan to start a small foundation small charity and for us to have four vegan hotdog stands so that there's a vegan option at four crucial points in the city at the bus station downtown at the Harbor you know what I mean the few places Victoria doesn't have a subway system you know what I really want to get this together and we're gonna employ some university students to be part time selling these vegan hotdogs or vegan hamburgers though they are this is what the foundation is gonna do okay and that's not controversial that's not like taking a stand on vivisection or taking a stand on feeding cats cat food or even leather shoes or fur coats this is the least the least divisive example I can think of but from day one that will divide people and it will in effect discipline your whole organization who gets engaged how they get engaged and so on right so they're all gonna be some people they're gonna tell you to your face angrily they're gonna say hey this isn't real vegan activism they're gonna say I don't support this this isn't my idea of activism they're people gonna say you know their idea of vegan activism is going to Parliament and screaming holding a placard or taking off their clothes being naked in a public square and putting fake blood all over themselves and pretending to be a slaughtered animal you know they're gonna they're gonna tell you that's that's the culture I come from Canadians are not know see about that kind of thing people are gonna tell you to your face this isn't legit activism and if you do it as a foundation if you're incorporated as a non-profit of some kind as a charity there are people are going to tell you they don't think that's a legitimate charity they don't think that selling vegan hotdogs to promote veganism is a legitimate thing to do anybody people are gonna tell you you are gonna hear it right but this is a solution however humble we are starting off by saying look one reason why people aren't vegan or why vegans struggle them maintain their veganism is exactly that they don't have a vegan option when they get off the bus at the bus station eight and a few other crucial points and there are hot dogs and pizza and everything but not nothing is vegan and of course also implicitly this is just promoting veganism itself you can sell these hot dogs or hamburgers and have a leaflet you know in the in the container with it or what have you and hey you know what it's the visit of in other ways I mean you know probably some vegans are gonna scream at you because you're selling hot dogs in disposable Styrofoam container they're gonna say hey this is not bad for ecology and they're gonna scream at you and tell you you're giving veganism venting so even this example which is the least political I can think of is divisive because it starts with a solution it's centered on a solution right and in this case it's a solution that we can we can put into practice the day after tomorrow immediately it's not it's not very very far distance okay so I'm making this video partly response to two messages I just got from two patreon supporters thank you guys very much I'm happy to hear from you of course and they pay they pay for the privilege to have me read whatever email they're sending me here with in patreon so one is guy called Nicolas whom I have replied to many times before and Nicolas is writing to me about how depressing it is to try to organize real and meaningful vegan activism on a university campus I think there's a big misconception that somehow universities are laboratories of ideas where veganism is easier and more effective and that there are natural but you know the reality is that in many ways activism on a campus is is uniquely bleak depressing and dead-ended partly because you're working with people who only going to be there for two years they're gone right there's no sense of permanent commitment to that place the vast majority of students they finish maybe they get interested in veganism in their second or third year and then they finish the diploma and then they're gone so it's it's quite an unnatural institutional context and it's also the case that you're not really living in a real city or real town or even a real business you're living in an artificial pseudo city created by the university itself which is a for-profit machine controlled by corporate interests so I mean you know he's talking about how the Nicholas is writing to me talking about how depressing it is to hand out pamphlets and hold short discussions trying to promote a meatless Monday campaign which is backed by Chartwells Chartwells as a for-profit corporation does a contract for the university to exclusively provide food and he says telling students eat more from this one place in the Campus Center with mediocre meatless options only on Mondays in the hope that Chartwells will notice that there's money in healthy food is quite depressing and half-assed as you can imagine close quote anyway I may I may have to make another video we're spawning - - Nicholas's concerns but Nick I mean you know he ends this by saying I really appreciate you communicating with me because I see myself as reaching around in the dark yeah I mean III hear you and I feel you man you know these questions that I talk about on my channel some of you watching this may think that this is political theory for the sake of theory it's not this stuff is not very far removed from our real lives and quite you know practical decisions that people like Nicholas have to make and almost every idea I've talked about on this channel that started maybe with a theoretical discussion now is a real part of my life as an aspiring being political activist right like you know the idea of doing a vegan children's story book was talked about a couple years ago I forget more than a year ago on this channel and now it's a real part of my life I've written this story I have an illustrator it's been translated into many languages so as one form of vegan activism this compact with my circumstances writing and illustrating and publishing a children's storybook sorry I'm not the illustrator but I'm I've written a contract with you know with a professional illustrator so we're pursuing that as a project this is not this is not pie in the sky unattainable ideology we're talking about here and even an example like running a hotdog stand I was really talking to my girlfriend about that you know we're saying look in the future choosing we're gonna live you know this city versus that city ideas like that about actually being in food services those are still a meaningful part of my life and we talk about them as things we may really try to do in the future so you know and my own education situation be a long conversation but I've looked at everything and when I say I looked at I've gotten on the phone with university directors your heads of departments and I've looked at applying for everything from entering culinary college to become a vegan chef or learn how to run and manage a restaurant you know as a form of activism for the for the cause for the movement over - you know Dietetics and nutrition getting a diploma in that becoming a formally registered dietician you know but just a couple weeks ago my girlfriend I was talking with that in depth you know and I mean now one outstanding option for me would be getting a degree in something like public administration public administration means bureaucracy but if you actually want to run a foundation a non-profit link to veganism ecology etc having that kind of expertise could be very valuable so all these things for me they're not theoretical discussions put it this way their theories that intersect with decisions I make in my real life in a very meaningful way and I think the main difference to me and most of my audience is just that during these few years when I've been on YouTube my own life has been so malleable and so rootless where I didn't know where I was going to be living six months in the future and I didn't know even what I was gonna be studying University so even though I was in the university already I was looking at okay I'm gonna change my major - this is gonna change my version of that so I've been at a crossroads over such a long period of time that again that's why this I think so much theoretical discussion on this channel and I mean again I do get questions people like Nicholas who are really asking for advice and guidance on how they can take these ideas and be more effective and do more meaningful activism in their own lives and I value that like you know it's wonderful to get that kind of email okay but on the other hand the vast driven audience never asked those questions because they already have a job they have a career or they're enrolled in a full-time program of Education and they know exactly how few options they've got like they know they're stuck living in Pittsburgh of a couple of I think I have three patreon supporters from Pittsburgh shout it's you guys oh they're living in Pittsburgh this is the job they do five days a week this is how much time they have these are the local organizations that exist and they can look at option A or option B and if they don't like them then there's a huge step up in commitment in time and energy to creating your own option C right so a lot of people feel very very limited and they they're already familiar with the options they've got so they're not asking me what their options are they already know right and of course there are advantages and disadvantages to being in that kind of situation when you talk to somebody like a medical doctor you know who's vegan or supports veganism you might think wow you're a medical doctor you're in this fantastic position to really do something meaningful for veganism as an activist but then you hear from their perspective and they feel they have absolutely no scope to do anything there so pinned down by their job and by their other commitments in life they feel they have they have absolutely no scope to no scope to change the world noscoped even change no schedule so I also in response my earlier video I got this question from Olivia Olivia says she empathizes with what I'm saying what I'm saying in my critique of pamphlet hang and my critique of attention-seeking protests she understands what I'm saying about the importance of solution based activism versus problem based activism right however she complains that I was too vape ed and too fleeting in stating what I really believe this solution of the problem is ok if it is not protesting or pamphlet hang then what you have spoken about lobbying and working collaboratively with special interest groups of the past but instead of talking for the problems the movement today in the past five years care to elaborate elaborate specifically about the steps stages processes that need to be taken the future and why you believe these to be effective okay Olivia great question um look I have over 500 videos on this channel at more than 20 hours of discussion of exactly this issue so I can allude to that in brief but I'm not going to touch the question I am gonna give you a new answer now there are two scales thinking small and thinking big okay you're wrong when I say I didn't mention the solution I mention you the winners are the winners are PCRM and what a PCRM do lawsuits okay you may be watching this video in Sweden or Iceland or England or Japan I do have a couple viewers from Japan showed it to them why not why not do exactly what PCRM already did not in the same topic maybe your focus isn't dietary science maybe it isn't nutrition guidelines why can't you take the government to court why can't you have your own lawsuit why can't you put together a foundation that's successful that influential that respected that important you can you can sit down today and make a flowchart of the steps of exactly what you need to accomplish that over the next 20 years okay they ain't got nothing you ain't got it doesn't take a genius doesn't take millions of dollars it'll take a ton of hard work but for you in your lane you can be the next PCRM and of course what you do will be completely different maybe you're going to be the PCRM of leather it's mind-blowing how terrible leather is leather it's not just terrible in terms the cruelty to animals the environmental impacts even the human rights and human health impacts chromium hexane the impacts for the workers maybe you can put together a foundation that's just as good as PCRM and has the same methods launching lawsuits scientifically valid publications maybe you can be the equivalent to PCRM tackling the leather issue okay please somebody somebody now take that idea from me take it and rub we don't need one piece erm we need 220 PC RMS and we need a group like PCRM in Japan and in Iceland and in England and in Sweden right we got we need it in Canada ok so yes I did I did give positive examples like pcr MP CRM Physicians Committee for Responsible medicine right but are we thinking big or we thinking small I was talking to my girlfriend not too long ago but the possibility that she and I together could go back to University and become formally credited as dieticians and one of things I said in conclusion was long conversation but I said look you know what the problem is this is thinking small and the bottleneck is not that we don't have enough dieticians who support veganism on planet earth the problem is those dieticians need a charitable foundation or even a business that will go to bat for them and will enable them to do the kind of work they really aspire to do we have all these vegan dieticians but they're stuck in a dead-end job where they feel they have a conflict of interest where they work in a crummy hospital or a retirement home and they can't teach preach practice the kind of nutritional science that they both believe in ethically and they know they can back up with current science-based medical facts so you know the bottleneck is actually that those people need an employer they need they need basically an agency that can enable them to do the jobs they passionately want to do and so they can get out from under the thumb of you know the usual employers that control them so you're thinking big start that foundation ok if you want the way forward yes so these are two great examples I've had other examples think where did vegans go on vacation you know you absolutely need vegans working in tourism where do vegans retire in terms of retirement homes all the talking of done about cycle of life big ideas big scale long term and then the flip side of that is if we're talking small scale small amounts of money short amounts of time then that's exactly the stuff of already been talking about earlier in this video that can be a vegan hotdog stand that can be a vegan pancakes and that can be publishing a children's book right which is exactly the stuff I'm doing because of the limits in my own life okay so I do believe ok I do believe I've set out for you positive next steps for the movement on both the grandiose scale and on a small scale but here's the real benefit once you engage in that sort of political process you find out who you can work with and you find who you can't you build the friendships you build the connections that really are the basis for a movement and are gonna be the basis for meaningful relationships until the day you die and sadly you're also gonna probably make some enemies and you're gonna work with some people and you figure out after a short period of time you can't work with this guy at all etc etc long boring videos have just been posted by Anna Scanlon Anna Scanlon has a lawsuit and she brought another person in to get involved with the lawsuit and then this person really ended up disrupting her lawsuit in a really negative way I'm not gonna tell the story details are not worth knowing ok now the moral of that story from my perspective this is Anna Scanlon bringing Renee into her lawsuit chance of having to kick her out of the lawsuit ok you know there's an old saying I think it's in French I think this is an old saying in French you know you never really know somebody until you have to share an inheritance with them if you're talking about a legal dispute if you're talking about the level of commitment and cooperation the any of these ideas big or small entail running a hot dog stand running a foundation like PCRM the level of try just reliance on others level of mutual respect that's involved is tremendously high and that's really much more important than the money right feeling that you're working with other people you respect and they respect you you're not wasting their time they're not you know that's the most precious thing of all and in the process whether it's whether the partner to do is tiny or huge that's where you find out who you really can work with and who you can't and in some ways you even find out who you really are what you're capable of what your limits are okay so that sense of proving yourself that's the one that's the one value here we can never really quantify and that I think that's why we need both small big steps and small that's why so many of my own hopes for the future veganism hang on these seemingly absurd examples because if you don't do that if you don't step away from you know that this self-defeating pattern of on the one hand grandiose and narcissistic YouTube videos on the other hand you know vengeful angry Facebook comments you know that's how most vegans that's what they consider activism you know what I mean education and outreach do you on the one hand lifestyle videos and the other hand the kind of perpetual war of worlds in this digital demo of credit that that will never have this process of where you prove who you are to others and others proof of their to you and you find out who you really can trust enough to co-sign on a lawsuit with in building a foundation ultimately you're building relationships with maybe five or ten people that's I mean that's the human resources element of it and that's the crucial next step we all need to take for veganism on a larger scale than before say again problems tend to unify people solutions tend to divide people when you switch to solution based organization activism etc you're gonna find out that everything is way more divisive than you thought it was but that divisiveness itself you can come to value as a positive thing because it disciplines your movement and our current organization gives it a clearer sense of purpose
believe it or not the main complaint I heard in relation to the actual political theory the real hard political science content that I'm presenting here was that I was dividing the community and this is I mean it's an interesting perception of what I'm doing in and the consequences I do actually agree to some extent because whenever we switch from a discussion of political problems to political solutions things get divisive quick in fact I would go so far as to say that in principle in the context of organization activism running a movement problems unify people whereas solutions divide them paradoxical as it may seem that's how it is give you an example you could form a political movement simply based around protesting against coal power and you'd unify all kinds of people from all kinds of different political perspectives and the only thing they have to have in common is the idea that coal power is bad and they want to get it on the streets and get on the TV news use whatever means are available to them to see public perception of coal power as a problem and to raise coal power as a as a political priority right the idea that we should reduce or eliminate reliance on coal burning power plants ok second unify all kinds of people but you're only basing your movement on the declaration of the problem think about how profoundly different the whole process is and who the people are who will join how they relate to each other and who will donate money and who won't think about a profoundly different as if instead from day one your foundation is defined as promoting nuclear power to replace coal power that coal power should be phased out and replace the nuclear power plants divisive when you just base your movement on declaring the problem on complaining about the problem basically that unites people and when you build your movement around a solution it divides people solutions are divisive all right and I would say this is even true I'm gonna pick now I think the least politically divisive example I can think of and yet it still is in this fundamental way divisive let's say I moved back to Canada I'm living in Victoria BC and I decide you know what I think it's really important for me as a vegan to start a small foundation small charity and for us to have four vegan hotdog stands so that there's a vegan option at four crucial points in the city at the bus station downtown at the Harbor you know what I mean the few places Victoria doesn't have a subway system you know what I really want to get this together and we're gonna employ some university students to be part time selling these vegan hotdogs or vegan hamburgers though they are this is what the foundation is gonna do okay and that's not controversial that's not like taking a stand on vivisection or taking a stand on feeding cats cat food or even leather shoes or fur coats this is the least the least divisive example I can think of but from day one that will divide people and it will in effect discipline your whole organization who gets engaged how they get engaged and so on right so they're all gonna be some people they're gonna tell you to your face angrily they're gonna say hey this isn't real vegan activism they're gonna say I don't support this this isn't my idea of activism they're people gonna say you know their idea of vegan activism is going to Parliament and screaming holding a placard or taking off their clothes being naked in a public square and putting fake blood all over themselves and pretending to be a slaughtered animal you know they're gonna they're gonna tell you that's that's the culture I come from Canadians are not know see about that kind of thing people are gonna tell you to your face this isn't legit activism and if you do it as a foundation if you're incorporated as a non-profit of some kind as a charity there are people are going to tell you they don't think that's a legitimate charity they don't think that selling vegan hotdogs to promote veganism is a legitimate thing to do anybody people are gonna tell you you are gonna hear it right but this is a solution however humble we are starting off by saying look one reason why people aren't vegan or why vegans struggle them maintain their veganism is exactly that they don't have a vegan option when they get off the bus at the bus station eight and a few other crucial points and there are hot dogs and pizza and everything but not nothing is vegan and of course also implicitly this is just promoting veganism itself you can sell these hot dogs or hamburgers and have a leaflet you know in the in the container with it or what have you and hey you know what it's the visit of in other ways I mean you know probably some vegans are gonna scream at you because you're selling hot dogs in disposable Styrofoam container they're gonna say hey this is not bad for ecology and they're gonna scream at you and tell you you're giving veganism venting so even this example which is the least political I can think of is divisive because it starts with a solution it's centered on a solution right and in this case it's a solution that we can we can put into practice the day after tomorrow immediately it's not it's not very very far distance okay so I'm making this video partly response to two messages I just got from two patreon supporters thank you guys very much I'm happy to hear from you of course and they pay they pay for the privilege to have me read whatever email they're sending me here with in patreon so one is guy called Nicolas whom I have replied to many times before and Nicolas is writing to me about how depressing it is to try to organize real and meaningful vegan activism on a university campus I think there's a big misconception that somehow universities are laboratories of ideas where veganism is easier and more effective and that there are natural but you know the reality is that in many ways activism on a campus is is uniquely bleak depressing and dead-ended partly because you're working with people who only going to be there for two years they're gone right there's no sense of permanent commitment to that place the vast majority of students they finish maybe they get interested in veganism in their second or third year and then they finish the diploma and then they're gone so it's it's quite an unnatural institutional context and it's also the case that you're not really living in a real city or real town or even a real business you're living in an artificial pseudo city created by the university itself which is a for-profit machine controlled by corporate interests so I mean you know he's talking about how the Nicholas is writing to me talking about how depressing it is to hand out pamphlets and hold short discussions trying to promote a meatless Monday campaign which is backed by Chartwells Chartwells as a for-profit corporation does a contract for the university to exclusively provide food and he says telling students eat more from this one place in the Campus Center with mediocre meatless options only on Mondays in the hope that Chartwells will notice that there's money in healthy food is quite depressing and half-assed as you can imagine close quote anyway I may I may have to make another video we're spawning - - Nicholas's concerns but Nick I mean you know he ends this by saying I really appreciate you communicating with me because I see myself as reaching around in the dark yeah I mean III hear you and I feel you man you know these questions that I talk about on my channel some of you watching this may think that this is political theory for the sake of theory it's not this stuff is not very far removed from our real lives and quite you know practical decisions that people like Nicholas have to make and almost every idea I've talked about on this channel that started maybe with a theoretical discussion now is a real part of my life as an aspiring being political activist right like you know the idea of doing a vegan children's story book was talked about a couple years ago I forget more than a year ago on this channel and now it's a real part of my life I've written this story I have an illustrator it's been translated into many languages so as one form of vegan activism this compact with my circumstances writing and illustrating and publishing a children's storybook sorry I'm not the illustrator but I'm I've written a contract with you know with a professional illustrator so we're pursuing that as a project this is not this is not pie in the sky unattainable ideology we're talking about here and even an example like running a hotdog stand I was really talking to my girlfriend about that you know we're saying look in the future choosing we're gonna live you know this city versus that city ideas like that about actually being in food services those are still a meaningful part of my life and we talk about them as things we may really try to do in the future so you know and my own education situation be a long conversation but I've looked at everything and when I say I looked at I've gotten on the phone with university directors your heads of departments and I've looked at applying for everything from entering culinary college to become a vegan chef or learn how to run and manage a restaurant you know as a form of activism for the for the cause for the movement over - you know Dietetics and nutrition getting a diploma in that becoming a formally registered dietician you know but just a couple weeks ago my girlfriend I was talking with that in depth you know and I mean now one outstanding option for me would be getting a degree in something like public administration public administration means bureaucracy but if you actually want to run a foundation a non-profit link to veganism ecology etc having that kind of expertise could be very valuable so all these things for me they're not theoretical discussions put it this way their theories that intersect with decisions I make in my real life in a very meaningful way and I think the main difference to me and most of my audience is just that during these few years when I've been on YouTube my own life has been so malleable and so rootless where I didn't know where I was going to be living six months in the future and I didn't know even what I was gonna be studying University so even though I was in the university already I was looking at okay I'm gonna change my major - this is gonna change my version of that so I've been at a crossroads over such a long period of time that again that's why this I think so much theoretical discussion on this channel and I mean again I do get questions people like Nicholas who are really asking for advice and guidance on how they can take these ideas and be more effective and do more meaningful activism in their own lives and I value that like you know it's wonderful to get that kind of email okay but on the other hand the vast driven audience never asked those questions because they already have a job they have a career or they're enrolled in a full-time program of Education and they know exactly how few options they've got like they know they're stuck living in Pittsburgh of a couple of I think I have three patreon supporters from Pittsburgh shout it's you guys oh they're living in Pittsburgh this is the job they do five days a week this is how much time they have these are the local organizations that exist and they can look at option A or option B and if they don't like them then there's a huge step up in commitment in time and energy to creating your own option C right so a lot of people feel very very limited and they they're already familiar with the options they've got so they're not asking me what their options are they already know right and of course there are advantages and disadvantages to being in that kind of situation when you talk to somebody like a medical doctor you know who's vegan or supports veganism you might think wow you're a medical doctor you're in this fantastic position to really do something meaningful for veganism as an activist but then you hear from their perspective and they feel they have absolutely no scope to do anything there so pinned down by their job and by their other commitments in life they feel they have they have absolutely no scope to no scope to change the world noscoped even change no schedule so I also in response my earlier video I got this question from Olivia Olivia says she empathizes with what I'm saying what I'm saying in my critique of pamphlet hang and my critique of attention-seeking protests she understands what I'm saying about the importance of solution based activism versus problem based activism right however she complains that I was too vape ed and too fleeting in stating what I really believe this solution of the problem is ok if it is not protesting or pamphlet hang then what you have spoken about lobbying and working collaboratively with special interest groups of the past but instead of talking for the problems the movement today in the past five years care to elaborate elaborate specifically about the steps stages processes that need to be taken the future and why you believe these to be effective okay Olivia great question um look I have over 500 videos on this channel at more than 20 hours of discussion of exactly this issue so I can allude to that in brief but I'm not going to touch the question I am gonna give you a new answer now there are two scales thinking small and thinking big okay you're wrong when I say I didn't mention the solution I mention you the winners are the winners are PCRM and what a PCRM do lawsuits okay you may be watching this video in Sweden or Iceland or England or Japan I do have a couple viewers from Japan showed it to them why not why not do exactly what PCRM already did not in the same topic maybe your focus isn't dietary science maybe it isn't nutrition guidelines why can't you take the government to court why can't you have your own lawsuit why can't you put together a foundation that's successful that influential that respected that important you can you can sit down today and make a flowchart of the steps of exactly what you need to accomplish that over the next 20 years okay they ain't got nothing you ain't got it doesn't take a genius doesn't take millions of dollars it'll take a ton of hard work but for you in your lane you can be the next PCRM and of course what you do will be completely different maybe you're going to be the PCRM of leather it's mind-blowing how terrible leather is leather it's not just terrible in terms the cruelty to animals the environmental impacts even the human rights and human health impacts chromium hexane the impacts for the workers maybe you can put together a foundation that's just as good as PCRM and has the same methods launching lawsuits scientifically valid publications maybe you can be the equivalent to PCRM tackling the leather issue okay please somebody somebody now take that idea from me take it and rub we don't need one piece erm we need 220 PC RMS and we need a group like PCRM in Japan and in Iceland and in England and in Sweden right we got we need it in Canada ok so yes I did I did give positive examples like pcr MP CRM Physicians Committee for Responsible medicine right but are we thinking big or we thinking small I was talking to my girlfriend not too long ago but the possibility that she and I together could go back to University and become formally credited as dieticians and one of things I said in conclusion was long conversation but I said look you know what the problem is this is thinking small and the bottleneck is not that we don't have enough dieticians who support veganism on planet earth the problem is those dieticians need a charitable foundation or even a business that will go to bat for them and will enable them to do the kind of work they really aspire to do we have all these vegan dieticians but they're stuck in a dead-end job where they feel they have a conflict of interest where they work in a crummy hospital or a retirement home and they can't teach preach practice the kind of nutritional science that they both believe in ethically and they know they can back up with current science-based medical facts so you know the bottleneck is actually that those people need an employer they need they need basically an agency that can enable them to do the jobs they passionately want to do and so they can get out from under the thumb of you know the usual employers that control them so you're thinking big start that foundation ok if you want the way forward yes so these are two great examples I've had other examples think where did vegans go on vacation you know you absolutely need vegans working in tourism where do vegans retire in terms of retirement homes all the talking of done about cycle of life big ideas big scale long term and then the flip side of that is if we're talking small scale small amounts of money short amounts of time then that's exactly the stuff of already been talking about earlier in this video that can be a vegan hotdog stand that can be a vegan pancakes and that can be publishing a children's book right which is exactly the stuff I'm doing because of the limits in my own life okay so I do believe ok I do believe I've set out for you positive next steps for the movement on both the grandiose scale and on a small scale but here's the real benefit once you engage in that sort of political process you find out who you can work with and you find who you can't you build the friendships you build the connections that really are the basis for a movement and are gonna be the basis for meaningful relationships until the day you die and sadly you're also gonna probably make some enemies and you're gonna work with some people and you figure out after a short period of time you can't work with this guy at all etc etc long boring videos have just been posted by Anna Scanlon Anna Scanlon has a lawsuit and she brought another person in to get involved with the lawsuit and then this person really ended up disrupting her lawsuit in a really negative way I'm not gonna tell the story details are not worth knowing ok now the moral of that story from my perspective this is Anna Scanlon bringing Renee into her lawsuit chance of having to kick her out of the lawsuit ok you know there's an old saying I think it's in French I think this is an old saying in French you know you never really know somebody until you have to share an inheritance with them if you're talking about a legal dispute if you're talking about the level of commitment and cooperation the any of these ideas big or small entail running a hot dog stand running a foundation like PCRM the level of try just reliance on others level of mutual respect that's involved is tremendously high and that's really much more important than the money right feeling that you're working with other people you respect and they respect you you're not wasting their time they're not you know that's the most precious thing of all and in the process whether it's whether the partner to do is tiny or huge that's where you find out who you really can work with and who you can't and in some ways you even find out who you really are what you're capable of what your limits are okay so that sense of proving yourself that's the one that's the one value here we can never really quantify and that I think that's why we need both small big steps and small that's why so many of my own hopes for the future veganism hang on these seemingly absurd examples because if you don't do that if you don't step away from you know that this self-defeating pattern of on the one hand grandiose and narcissistic YouTube videos on the other hand you know vengeful angry Facebook comments you know that's how most vegans that's what they consider activism you know what I mean education and outreach do you on the one hand lifestyle videos and the other hand the kind of perpetual war of worlds in this digital demo of credit that that will never have this process of where you prove who you are to others and others proof of their to you and you find out who you really can trust enough to co-sign on a lawsuit with in building a foundation ultimately you're building relationships with maybe five or ten people that's I mean that's the human resources element of it and that's the crucial next step we all need to take for veganism on a larger scale than before say again problems tend to unify people solutions tend to divide people when you switch to solution based organization activism etc you're gonna find out that everything is way more divisive than you thought it was but that divisiveness itself you can come to value as a positive thing because it disciplines your movement and our current organization gives it a clearer sense of purpose