Veganism is not a philosophy; vegans are not a community.

hey what's up one of the things I'm
known for within the circle of people who really care about debating and taking action for the future of veganism right now is that I have openly said in the past that veganism is not a community and the people who take this more seriously respond to it more positively and on the other hand a lot of people respond to that statement in a really kind of shallow way by getting angry and complaining that I'm being negative now it's not a negative statement if you've heard what I've said in earlier videos on this in discussing the extent to which veganism is not a community I'm engaging the viewer in thinking about what it means to be a community and even some very small and powerless ethnic minorities within the United States and Canada actually have composed real communities Iranian Americans are a very small minority United States many of them arrived as refugees not all some of them arrived you know is really poverty stricken refugees from Iran but not only they have a real community that exists and has you know community centers as places you can go as offices and lawyers and meetings and you know they do the things community do they also have groups that lobby Congress and they try to influence the American government now I mean maybe the ultimate example of this historically is the Cuban exile community in the United States I mean nobody could say that Cuban Americans are not a community there are several communities and you know the different communities don't necessarily get along you know there are Cubans in Miami and elsewhere and you know they have real political organizations they have real community centers I think they have a couple of museums as I recall like telling the history of their experiences Cuban Americans and again many of them arrived as poor refugees and exiles and they built a real community now I realize it's slightly provocative but I'm not being negative in putting forward the idea of challenging vegan civil look do you know anywhere in the world that vegans exist as a community and in part and parcel a discussion I was drawing out the conch between the pretensions that vegans have you no pretensions aren't evil but you know we all got our pretensions to being a community and movement and then looking at well what about veganism with in Taiwan what about veganism within India veganism in places where cultural history and religion actually do bring in some aspects of community and that's very problematic and challenging for Western vegans to think about so look people who took that line of thought seriously tended to respond to a positively they understood what I had to say and say okay all right now we have to think about what it means to be a community in 21st century but there are other people who maybe didn't listen to what I had to say all the way through who responded very negatively he said this guy is being negative this were thinking about what it means to be negative if I was doing movie reviews being negative means that i'm giving a movie and a bad review maybe for no good reason i'm being negative just to get attention just to say really outrageous things what a terrible movie this is without really sincerely engaging with material this is the sense of being negative nishat I really think if you watch the videos on this channel in many ways I'm recklessly optimistic in many ways the message i'm sharing with you is positive and insanity for example veganism is not a community you know and there are many videos in this channel talking about it saying look I would love to be part of a V community I would love to feel like a member cami I would love it that what what is a community if I die who's going to be at my funeral the two examples happen views if you're an iranian-american who's really part of an Iranian exile community in the United States you know you know there's probably a funeral parlor as a specific funeral home in graveyard associate with your community and you know members of the community are going to be there not everybody but especially leaders the community if you're a cuban-american who's really part of that expatriate exile community in Miami or somewhere else you know oh they have their own churches they have their own funeral parlors and so on or they have a you know maybe it's a Catholic Church other people use but they're a special associated with who's going to be at your funeral who's going to be at your wedding I'm unemployed who's going to help me find a job i mean if i were really a member of the Jewish community here I would be able to go to the rabbi and say you know I'm looking for work she's in Judaism it's also a way to find a husband or wife you know we could people could openly say to the rabbi well you know I joined this temple because I was hoping to meet a young woman and my old temple I used to remember out there's no word there you know birth death marriage career yeah community is meaningful me is a meaningful part of all these things and Facebook groups where people give each other the thumbs up and the check mark is a meaningful part a meaningful part of none of these things and having the money and organization to put together a legal challenge to lobby government to bring a court case about a particular set of apes that are the property of a particular University that are being tortured death what have you having that depth and that mutual trust in the cooperation that comes out of community and again my message is really positive in talking about that as a goal in an aspiration worth having worth thinking about especially if you live somewhere where there's a significant number of vegans but it's also really important to recognize that's not the situation we're in now so this is not a shallow insult to people who are on vacation in Thailand who hang out for two weeks with other stoned yoga bums and compare tattoos and go swimming in the river pie that they're not members of a community you think that's a community you think next week there isn't a different bunch of hippies with dreadlocks who check into that same hotel and Swift in that same river it's not a community homeboy it's not not even compared to the really low standard of you know again Cuban exiles in my earlier video I talked about in Toronto the Sikh community the Sikhs are a tiny ethnic minority in Canada but they are really organized and they have representation within the Labor Party and the Conservative Party and they they pull weight at City Hall and they have lawyers and so on again measured as a population even of this measured as a percentage of population even the city Toronto there nobody but they have a real community so there's somebody right what about vegans we're nobody and we're nobody and we're nobody and we want to come on the internet in front like we're really somebody well as potential there I hope to see in the future but so this brings me the Soviet to this video which is that I also do not believe that veganism is a philosophy and it's in this same positive sense that I'm stating this this critique and pointing this out to you the original definition of veganism which was amended in its wording a little bit but still on the British vegan society in its preamble it says veganism is a philosophy that and what Foles after that statement is you know a very pragmatic approach of seeing people who eliminate the use of animal products exploitation of animals so the greatest extent possible and practical but it does begin with the statement veganism is a philosophy that and a pretty unenlightened crowd of guys I was talking to you last night they were all vegan were quite upset and offended when I made a very simple and blossom of the no I do not believe that veganism is a philosophy I don't believe it exists as a philosophy today in the future it could things could change things to move in that direction and I mean obviously their reaction to that was they felt I was taking something away from vegans that was making it something smaller and weaker than it really is by saying openly this is not a philosophy and I'm not i mean we're discussing the way things are and where things are going to go from here now what is a philosophy it doesn't make veganism stronger if it's a philosophy there are many many philosophies in the world that exists on paper but are hopelessly searching to have any kind of practice any kind of effect in the real world it's much better to be a practice in search of a philosophy than it is to be a philosophy in search of a praxis all right so this is not really a bad thing for vegans as I've said in many of my videos on politics when you just have a practical meth of social change that's really strong because then you can unite people who are left-wing right-wing centrists people who are feminists people who don't really care about feminism part of the strength of veganism is the diversity of people can bring together in that sense many times we've talked about this with like real politicians in Canada of compared to the anti-nuclear movement back in the 1980s in the 1980s people with really different political views and values were united briefly because they wanted to reduce nuclear arms and they were concerned about nuclear waste and related issues now it didn't last obviously after the Soviet Union collapsed this alliance dissipated but while it lasted you had people who are interested in ecology people are dressed in human rights people are interests speak were anti-nuclear because they supported Russia but you also had right-wing people who did not sympathize with Russia but he thought this was an important issue they want to engage with they were really worried about you know the environment in the future of mankind and nuclear weapons policy what have you so yeah you can add the people think that a single issue cause people think that it praxis that that that a diet that veganism is only a diet that that makes it weaker that it'll reach fewer people and be smaller and the opposite is true if it's just a diet everyone can get into it if it's just a lifestyle everyone can get into it if it's an ethical commitment that we can talk about in isolation then it's an ethical commitment a Christian can make a Jew a Muslim of Buddhist the Hindu a complete atheist a nihilist if it's an ethical decision we can make in any philosophy in any philosophical framework that's stronger than being tied to a particular philosophical framework I'm going to bring this back to something wise my father said to me when I was a kid I was a really small kid and you know when I was a kid for whatever reason people used to always have these debates came out of the newspapers in the days of this is not art every so often the newspapers would have a photograph of some piece of modern art that the government had paid millions of dollars for and there would be outraged and people would complain this is not art and I remember my father said to me very simply they're having the wrong debate the question is whether or not this is great art whether or not this is good art but the fact that it exists that it's in a gallery and people are willing to pay a million dollars for it means the other debate is over we're not having the debate of whether or not this is art because it's in a gallery some people like it some people will depend therefore it's art whether or not you like it whether or not it's great art what its historical significance is those things we can debate but this is art or this is not that's not we're debating anymore okay so with philosophy likewise one of things I have to say to you is we're past the point of debating whether or not something is a philosophy when it's in a book and it's in a university there are courses taught on it it's in the Department of Philosophy it's on that philosophy shelf okay Hagel I don't like them I think he's allows the author I think it's a lousy philosophy I think it's a bad philosophy I think it should not be influential in the 21st century but am I going to debate with you whether or not it is a philosophy no it's a real philosophy that debate is over Karl Marx Marxism it's a philosophy I disagree with it I've read I've read tons of this stuff but I'm very well read in European philosophy lost years of my life doing that you could say but um I've read all these guys marks and Hegel and what have you but we're not debating whether or not Marxism is a philosophy it's obvious anyone and it the book is on the shelf the courses are taught in the university okay with veganism this is not true and it's not even remotely debatable or conceivable that it's true it does not exist in this form and it never has which is interesting now the idea of veganism has appeared in a number of different unrelated philosophies including ancient Greek philosophies if you look into it the ancient Greeks had some really interesting debates about vegetarianism and killing animals they're much more interesting than what came up under Christianity at Fir for many centuries so yes the idea has been debated in a philosophical context but no veganism is not a philosophy and in the definition of veganism to save veganism is a philosophy that dot dot is really misleading because that suggests that veganism existed first as a philosophy and then this just happens to be its practice this just happens to be the way people implement that philosophy and the opposite is true this was a practice this is the thing people did because they felt it was important and various people can add on a philosophy or attach it to a philosophy afterwards I've said before the single biggest example this is happening right now when the Hindus really get a hold of veganism it's going to blow up Hinduism historically has not been vegan it's been vegetarian and is regarded milking cows is okay under certain idealized conditions of the cows being treated well blah blah blah but it's very obvious that in terms of the broadest and vaguest definition just cultural Hinduism people who are culturally Hindu and background can obviously respond to the ethics and the message of veganism in a big way and then it will take off in any up so some philosophy or maybe several competing philosophies within India will get attached to veganism but still I think it's unlikely that veganism is really going to be a philosophy and it's not a bad thing the message i'm sharing with you now is not negative local coming up on fifteen minutes i want to give a shout out to vegan cheetah i know most people on this channel already aware of both channels but in case you don't know his work or maybe you only remember him from like more than a year ago i'm gonna give a link to his latest video below this video he's doing real talk about issues that most people are not willing to talk about think of the things that a lot of people think about but they're not comfortable really talking about I really I mean he comes on camera like me he has no script he does it off the dome and I've got to say I think he brings a lot of thought provoking material to the net I've been really impressed with them you know especially lately and you know the funny thing is when I was watching this video we just put up where he's talking about veganism and education what he has to say about it is actually more rational than what I said about it I talked about a similar issue several months ago but what I had to say was actually based in emotion it was not terribly rational people think of my channels ultra rational but I was saying stuff like look I really feel bad for these people who are dropping out of college I feel bad these people were dropping into high school in response to this message of the vegans and I was really talking with my feelings and that I feel bad for you like I feel bad for these guys who are destroying their long-term future as part of a kind of diet fad run amok but actually what she just says here bring something pretty rational detach the picture so look yeah I've become infamous within a small circle of people being the one guy was going to say no veganism is not a community in this video I'm saying to you veganism is not a philosophy but if you think that's a negative message I've got to say you're really not listening because the reality of what I'm telling you is recklessly optimistic about the future