Plutarch vs. Jordan Peterson (vegans have philosophers, too)

because an ever-growing number of people
would like to extend the idea of animal rights much further will kim laka a professor of philosophy at queen's university has even claimed quote that some animals should be seen as forming sovereign communities and that others should be seen as full citizens of the polity he means citizens like you and me the Australian philosopher Peter singer singers started it all in 1975 with his book Animal Liberation what leads such minds to embrace philosophical notions so alien to the Western traditions of individualism and responsibility thinkers such as Kim liquor philosophy solely on the grounds of pity singer denounces speciesism and claims that we should show equal respect to the lives of human beings and animals all three refused to distinguish between the claim that we have responsibility to animals and the claim that animals have rights ah that new Yin in some ways the topic of this video is a little bit philosophic dancing difficult I'm going to drop a few names you may not have heard of before names of authors political leaders who are significant in veganism in the 21st century and in some ways what we're dealing with here is really so simple as to be fascinating part of what makes the progress of veganism as a movement unpredictable is that vegans aren't just alienated from politics ongoing in the mainstream media ting discourse to a remarkable extent vegans are alienated from the natural sources of leadership that might give the movement its direction these things are obvious to vegans so obvious that sometimes we forget about them and chuckle at them and we're reminded of them but they are bizarre surreal and unexpected to people who are looking at the vegan movement from the outside the vast majority of vegans hate the Humane Society of the United States he did it's ridiculous it's surreal meters don't get that for media so what do you mean the an animal welfare group they're trying to help animals they seem to represent the same things you do no no intense bitter hatred you can hear that on go vegan radio some of the podcasts they really lay into the humane society this you know pent up anguish and resentment from decades of conflict between especially older vegans in the movement and the humane society nowadays even if we just stuck with that one example it really is a great kind of cautionary tale or red flag it's an instructive example of why someone like Jordan Peterson passing judgment from the outside looking in really wouldn't know what he was seeing wouldn't know how to evaluate it and really just wouldn't know what direction the vegan movement is moving the vast majority of vegans I think in 2017 hate petaa People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals PE ta petaa um I feel it's safe to say right now that the vast majority of informed vegans begin to care about politics despise the legacy of Peter Singer and one of the reasons I think it's easy to say that is that the few vegans who still really support Peter singers positions normally have caveat saying look I know this is unpopular but they normally set it up and explain themselves quite carefully because they're aware of again this alienation not just separating begins from mainstream politics but separating vegans from the people whom you might call the natural leaders the vegan movement but they're not from inside veganism it's obvious to us why Peter Singer is not a natural leader why is not in a leadership position or why any claims if fpm having moral authority would be challenged shouted down or even just laughed at it's a little bit harder to deal with the extent to which a figure like Gary Franzi owning is hated of all the names I've just mentioned if you haven't read their work Gary France Iona his views are the most fashionable and the most widely accepted in 2017 whereas Peter Singer is not fashionable and it's not widely accepted but nevertheless someone like Gary francium me he is still very widely hated within veganism I wouldn't say the majority but there are really a lot of voices across the board and again I mean it's indicative I was reading a formal academic book dealing with currency and politics and it did support the position of Gary Francie on a the abolitionist approach as he calls it but I noticed that it preface it by saying look even though many people hate this guy and here are the reasons why they hate him and there's a lot of controversy so the fact that had those caveats and those excuses showed again that there was an awareness that at least a significant percentage of people really just so that makes veganism fractious fragmentary difficult precise Outsiders understand and really unpredictable unpredictable intellectually unpredictable ideologically the very people institutions that Outsiders would assume to be our natural leaders we are alienated from they're not our leaders and broadly speaking we reject their leadership even if we have nothing better to replace it with right so now I'm going to digress because in some ways things are a lot simpler than this kind of theoretical discussion make them seem 300 years from now 300 years into the future do you think human beings are still going to be wearing leather shoes do you think human beings are still going to raise cows in captivity kill them take the skin off them put the skin through a chemical tanning process and create a material out of the misery of these animals a material that is an ecological disaster every single stage of its production and the material that believes or not also poisons the people who wear it there's a great video from Maude vegan I'll add a link in the description which is a long video discussing actually the completely non vegan reasons why people should stop wearing leather vegans already know but they want to avoid wearing leather but even if you're not vegan it turns out there are toxic chemicals involved like chromium same and their impacts are not just on the rivers next to the factories where the leather is tanned and produced and what have you believe it or not the toxic chemicals used in producing leather some of them have really negative health impacts on people themselves so leather is an obsolete material now in 2007 already today it's obsolete already you'll notice that the US military is not using leather boots as combat boots anymore they used to in the past and now they're using non leather materials high-tech rubber and plastics and other other materials like that that work better and don't need to be constantly polished given that leather is already obsolete given that it is an ecological disaster given that there are issues of toxicity given that it is bad for your health just like meat and dairy leather is in fact that your health believe it or not their sides affected back that up it's releasing chromium hexane you're breathing in and so on strange but true sometimes truth is given these facts even if there were no ethical argument for veganism we can ask ourselves would humanity be wearing leather shoes 300 years from now and I think the answer is no and once you have that answer once you think to yourself that the answer is no then you start to ask yourself well when is the change going to happen and where is it going to start vegans are the people answer the change is got to start now and it starts with me I am going to take responsibility to the small extent that I can or maybe if you're a powerful an influential person maybe do a larger set you can really take on a leadership role you can start a foundation you can engage in activism lobbying public education outreach maybe you can do more than just changing your diet and consumer habits but at a minimum you say it starts with me the change starts here and now looking ahead to that change 300 years in the future okay now veganism as an idea is so simple that any child could arrive at it out of thin air and in every civilization where we have a well-documented history of philosophy we have the idea of vegetarianism or veganism something along those lines popping up more or less spontaneously I know of one example within the Muslim world there may be a couple others but generally whenever you have a highly literate society that leaves us written records we will get records of intellectuals who came up with this idea more or less on their own and you know we have some big names in this European philosophy we got Plutarch even if Jordan V Peters have 100% right in heaping scorn on you know these figures who he mentions even if we're all going to agree that some day like Peter Singer is to be laughed at and scorned I do agree I actually would go much further than then Jordan Peterson in his critique of Peter Singer even if we agree that a figure will chemica should be scoring I agree and go further well but also have figures like Plutarch we have some of the most influential philosophers thinkers and authors in the history of Western civilization and I would go so far and claim in praising Plutarch as a specific example I'll give you a link below the video to his work also um a few different websites have from the history of vegetarianism history of veganism and center you know Plutarch's essay and use various mentions couple couple times is writing about vegetarian or veganism I think it's really striking that the arguments he presents for why people should not eat meat I think they're more coherent and more substantive than any argument I could offer you from the history of Buddhism in Asia I've been through the extent literature of Buddhism Asia but yes also in Asia different Eastern religions have come to this incredibly simple conclusion that basically human beings should do the best that they can and doing the best that you can involves not eating meat not killing animals for no particularly good reason etc so Plutarch came to their conclusion a lot of different voices within Buddhist East Asia that conclusion where there were cultural and religious factors that perhaps favorited it's not hard for people to come to that conclusion in any particular period of history so it's really regrettable to hear someone like Jordan V Peterson trying to fetishize the voices of just a few people in his case just Peter Singer and we'll chemica to authors whom I despise a news organization of a deeply flawed as if they invented it okay as a preparatory nor you note here as a caveat we have to say in history of philosophy it is tremendously common for people to arrive at a meaningful conclusion from a meaningless premise people can come to a true conclusion from a false set of premises from false reasoning happens all the time history of philosophy so let me be clear veganism can still be right if Peter Singer is wrong and vegans insiders know that because we got all kinds of different thinkers most of whom disagree with Peter Singer veganism can still be right if Plutarch is wrong but hey we'll be real here somebody like Plutarch Trump's Peter Singer many many centuries earlier as an author and many times more famous and many times more influential many times more important so we can't pretend that Peter Singer embedded these things here fundamentally the argument that Peter Singer invented veganism is about as stupid as claiming that the beastie boys invented hip hop randomly or not so randomly Peter Singer ended up being the guy to appear on the nightly news and for a lot of us growing up the Beastie Boys were one of the first big stories to get on the mainstream nightly news talking about rap music talking about hip office Your Honor of music for a lot of people if they were watching mainstream white American TV news or the TV news in England Beastie Boys were huge in England they might really have this delusion that the Beastie Boys are much more important than they were that the Beastie Boys were the first rap group but for an insider for someone who cares about that your honor of music for someone who cares about that subculture it's completely laughable and completely like that in the same way the emphasis that's placed here on Peter Singer is completely laughable and there's no explanation for why so much emphasis is put on real chemica now my channel at sir sir-sir in Carter s to Plutarch why would will kim laka who's heard of vocalic on I have on my channel I've done a book review of his work I had two videos very harshly condemning his book one more politely one more harshly and honestly condemning it I can give those links below this video to why would will chemica be more important in this discussion than Pluto even if we're just using that one name of one major famous ancient figure who presented a sustained and coherent argument for the innocent because Plutarch gets into if you actually read you know whose arcs si from morali on the morality of a vegetarian or vegan diet he gets into many of the same arguments and examples that we still use that we still hear in discussions about veganism today he points out that human beings don't have fangs or claws or beaks he points out that if a human being thinks that it's really natural for the human diet to include beef then why can't human beings with their own teeth throttle the neck of a cow why can't human beings eat the meat of a cow raw the way that wolves and lions do all those arguments are there so it's amazing approximately 2,000 years ago not quite 2,000 years going to you know these same discussions these same debates we're ongoing and again they're simple enough their fundamental enough that they can arise in a vacuum they can arise in the middle of Europe where there isn't a major religion like Buddhism to foster these debates anyone can come to these conclusions by looking around at the reality of the meatpacking industry the reality of a slaughterhouse the reality of a human diet and reality of human even human biology and say hey I'm going to question this I'm going to come to some new conclusions and when you come to those conclusions you look from your fellow man and say what are you guys all crazy you guys regard this as normal but as soon as an outsider questions that assumes a freethinker questions that as soon as a real philosopher independently questions those norms they start to think hey maybe everyone including my own parents and grandparents is crazy because they regard meat-eating as normal but I don't I'm going to question the normalcy of it I'm going to challenge those norms I'm going to try to take my morality in a new direction okay right even if Peter Singer is wrong it doesn't mean that veganism is wrong and I have to emphasize that all the time I do meet vegans who are vegan for the wrong reasons who are vegan because they believe in something supernatural that I don't believe in you can see also my book review or my critique of will Tuttle's world peace diet I don't believe in will Tuttle's approach to veganism which is a mixed mishmash of kind of supernatural New Age hippie nonsense a lot of which I totally reject and I have a video talking about that so I reject someone like him I reject the reasoning of someone like will chemica I reject the reasoning of Peter Singer and like I say we're in this bizarre situation where the majority of vegans reject people the Ethical Treatment of Animals petaa they were jacked Humane Society the United States we are in a leaderless amorphous position we're looking around and we feel alienated from most of the would-be figureheads whether we're talking about individuals authors intellectuals institutions or activist organizations I got a couple more messages just this month from people who had signed up with DXE direct action everywhere another would be leadership group and they were writing and telling me that my warnings about that group were really true and they regretted one guy was time that he regretted he wasted years of his life with that vegan or organization and that he said that the warnings on my channel were really true and he wish he'd seen them before you wish you'd listened before he hadn't lost those years of his life so there's a huge sense of disappointment with quite a few different organizations and authors and intellectuals who have tried to be leaders of the vegan movement but still if I meet someone who is vegan for the wrong reasons let's say they're vegan just because believe in a supernatural theory of karma and that animals have magical souls totally supernatural view I can still respect their veganism even if I don't respect their reasons for being vegan and when I talk to meat eaters what I basically ask them is why can't you why can't you recognize the discipline itself why can't you recognize the diet itself why can't you recognize the ecological impacts and the health impacts as good in themselves why is it that you have to pin it to a perfectly coherent philosophical argument or otherwise dismiss it as nothing worth I can respect vegans for their veganism even if they've come to that conclusion for a series of reasons that are wrong or deeply flawed or that are from my perspective nonsensical right um somebody every so often people ask me what about this other personality on YouTube what about this other vegan leader the last couple of some particular example who is bad or deeply flawed Melissa but even though this person is flawed even though their arguments are wrong they've still led others to convert to veganism and I say back then yeah but you know what I've met people who became vegan because of a car crash it doesn't mean that car crashes are good you can become vegan because you witnessed a car crash you can become vegan because you saw an animal get hit by the side of the road or you saw a truck full of pigs that tipped over and the pigs are struggling to get free a lot of people have those shocking incidents on the side of the road sometimes dudes pull over at a gas station and there's a broken-down truck that was on its way to the slaughterhouse and had to stop and the animals are in the back in misery and they see that for the first time doesn't mean car crashes are good because car crashes convert people to veganism okay and a lot of the would-be intellectuals and would-be activists and would-be leaders on YouTube and even in the PhD wielding respectable academic literature a lot of those people are car crashes frankly and I know they convert vegan people to Vegas I know newbie people become vegan because those sources it doesn't mean they're good it doesn't mean they're right and conversely it doesn't mean I have to disrespect you as a vegan just because I may not agree with your reasons for being vegan or the context of questions and answers that led you to being vegan in the first place as I said recently I don't respect the line of reasoning the basically looks at pets dogs cats domesticate animals and then says well all animals should be treated this way all animals should be pampered etc and then seeks to construe veganism as really centered on the model of the human pet relationship of pampering and caring for domesticated animals I don't believe in that I believe in the model that instead looks at wildlife and the status of wild animals in a wildlife reserve says this is the normal relationship between humans and animals where we leave them to have independent dignified lives including dignified deaths that we fundamentally have as little to do it as possible where we don't castrate them domesticate them declawed them and at the same time give them a no shampoo and earrings and colored dye in their hair I see all that here in China we got we got purple dogs walking the streets here but I digress personally I am deeply opposed to the philosophy of both will Kym Luca and Peter Singer I am much more opposed ironically I am more opposed to these two examples will kill Luca and Peter Singer than Jordan Peterson is okay but still even if they are vegan for the wrong reasons I can respect their veganism as such if you are a meat-eater why can't you and still even if every single one of our leaders in veganism or as wrongheaded as will kill Luca and Peter Singer juárez detached from reality in my biased opinion you can see my earlier video discussing volcano mechanics philosophy I think you'll find it shocking still I can ask you simply 300 years from now in the future when you imagine a science fiction future with all the progress of Science and Technology 300 years from now in the future do you imagine that human beings are going to be wearing leather shoes and if not if you could admit in the Star Trek Star Wars fictional science fiction universe 300 years now if you can admit that there and then under those circumstances it doesn't make sense to have an animal with its whole life on a concrete floor under a steel shed sky to be born and live and suffer just to die to have its skin turned into a pair of shoes then when does the change start to happen because for us it starts now ah the new yen