"Dignity", beyond animal rights discourse, human rights discourse, etc.
11 February 2018 [link youtube]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
so I just got a question from Jay costly
and his youtube channel is still there Jay costly but you also have the cosplay channel which is called what cosplay with a conscience I forget cruelty free cosplay cruelty free that's it clearly free cause fine clothes for the conscience also good type okay he was just asking me about the role of dignity I guess in my own philosophy and in my own preaching within veganism now what what strikes me as interesting is you were just asking me this long question which is cool I'm not complaining a thing it's long but you asked me this question the first 90% you were talking about the difficulty of expressing to other people this concept of dignity as it applies to animals as applies to you know domesticated animals animals in zoos pets but I guess also farm animals right especially though because you've been talking to people who don't have your background working with animals hands-on so Jay I've done a bunch of videos with them and they're great the zoo the last video we did talking about zoos was really great I when I listen to it back it was better than I remembered it paying but you know well Jay has worked in zoos and he has a lot of hands-on experience with animals in a lot of strange situations including in zoos the inevitability of animals being executed and put down and executing animals being cared for when they're sick and all the strange and comfortable gray areas you get into and caring for animals in in captivity but you switched your direction your question in the end and you kind of start asking about dignity for humans and is so you ask kind of in the context of human beings is the problem that the concept of dignity is too abstract but I think before that what you were struggling with was how do you communicate to people who don't have the hands-on experience with animals what what dignity means and these things yeah so you want to talk about both or would you want to clip okay cool so I'm not gonna draw with it so for animals this is my snappy but sincere answer you know if you take an elephant and you cut its tusks off have you deprived it of its dignity if you take an elephant and you cut its tail off have you deprived it of its dignity if you take an elephant and he cut its trunk off you thought cut its nose off have you the privates dignity all these things really happen there's not hypothetical example sit in places like Laos and Cambodia these things really happen to happen for various reasons and it's a real question whether or not you just kill this animal or what after various stages of this kind of injury or indignity or aren't you I ask a fundamentally different question I ask when you've cut an animal off from the wilderness have you deprived of its dignity and what I really insist on is that I'm not talking about an idealized wilderness I'm just talking about the actual wilderness which includes you know being torn apart by wolves and dying of dysentery and all that stuff I'm not talking about I'm not talking about an idealized I'm not only but in Arcadia I'm not talking about a guard obediently eaten I'm talking about the brutal grim reality of being in the wilderness or as I talked about in an earlier video today even animals living feral were you talking about you know rabbits that are feral living in a city we just saw that you're in Victoria you know now I can get into more detail I don't mean right now I'm talking to the converted but you were talking with a difficulty when you deal with people who haven't who haven't thought this through and don't this kind of experience for me you know little tactile examples like when I question for people you know when you pet your dog on the head do you think that in the wild dogs pet one another on the head and they have to stop like no so this gesture petting it you know what you've never seen a dog take its paw and pet another dog on that you never seen a wolf do that in the wild right that's not so meaningful now why do I use that kind of example it's not just to make someone feel like a jerk it's because for me part of what's being cut off here before we get to cutting off the tail or cutting off the trunk or cutting off the cutting off one leg or what have you what you're cutting this animal off from is it's socialization within its own species and a weird sense that's even true of solitary predators right obviously cutting it off from reproducing with its own species cutting it off from competing with its own species socializing this mosby but even some of that a little example like that I think it really does emblem at eyes are tokenized what's really a deeper problem here of what it is I mean bye-bye dignity because you know I talk about a life of dignity I talk about death dating like for this dog or for this wolf whatever dignity it's gonna seek out is gonna be competing in its own kind right it's not a dignity I can confer by patting it on the head and saying good dog and the reason why this is a challenge you have to talk about with people is that their intention is there their mentality is 180 degrees the opposite they think the dignity of animals is something that human beings provide to animals the same way we provide them with a bowl of food or a roof over their head or shelter or what-have-you in the same way a human being competitive dog in the head it's a good dog or make the dog happy or play with the dog give it a treat and this is this is exactly what they think of as dignity treating an animal with dignity or giving it evening and I'm saying is know when you're cutting that dog off from the kind of approval it seeks or it would seek in the wild from its own kind or even in hunting play and all these things that is actually what's what's cutting our first evening now what's really interesting is then turn this around and say well gee I so how does your philosophy apply to human beings right I think it actually does apply pretty consistently because I think the reality is when you take a human being and put them in solitary confinement in prison even if they're treated well even if they're fed good food I think we correctly see this as depriving human being of their dignity now I'm not saying we should never put people in prison I'm not I'm pointing out that even if you approve of you look at someone's okay this person's a mass murder their danger to society we're going to take them and put them in solitary confinement I think that people are aware without being able to define it or put their finger on it something has happened here something that's more significant than just sitting in a room voluntarily tonight for example I may sit in front of the computer alone for many hours my girlfriend's in the background you can see I'm not completely alone but nevertheless if I choose to sit alone in my computer that is actually something very different from me being cut off from the Society of my own species and being cut off permanently that this there is something here being cut away and maybe it's not as obvious as your tail or your trunk or your tusks or your claws like animals being declawed but that there is something fundamental here that that you know tokens that be tokens that that Emmel notices what I'm what I'm getting at by dignity I don't just think there's dignity in life there's dignity and death and dignity and dying and I don't just think there's dignity and success you know you can talk about the dignity of the dignity of poverty the dignity of failure of saying look I started this business I ran it my way and I ran it into the ground and now I'm poor because my business isn't fair you know what I mean like I think that concept of dignity again unfortunately these words normal the negative connotation but I think dignity is in a sense linked to competition in that same sense that the wolf competes among wolves and the elephant competes among elephants and human beings compete among human beings often without knowing why you know back when I was a poly scholar you know I was a scholar of Buddhism but his philosophy Buddhist history etc I remember I had a really weird debate with another guy he was also a you know philosopher historian linguist working on ancient Buddhism the same stuff he described his engagement with Buddhism as altruistic and I said no for me it's not altruistic at all I would even describe it as egoistic why I'm involved and he was really shocked by that and I had to explain it was really the same philosophy I'm explaining here and now where I said no for me even just the fact that I want to go to a conference and I really want to present my views my research my discoveries to the other people at the and I want I want to disagree with them even I don't just want them to applaud I want to prove my case and I want I want that interaction zone that's not altruistic I think that's egoistic in the strictest sense I think when I go to that conference and I you know even if it's literally Buddhist philosophy it's like hey guys here's what I did in the last five years researching these ancient put his texts and now I'm gonna prove my case and you're welcome to disagree with me and debate with me we are a wolf pack you know tearing apart a corpse you know and we are a herd of elephants competing for who gets to mate or who gets to drink water from the the brook or competing without even knowing why I think elephants fight with other elephants just because of the instincts that are in them and the feelings that have Golda's fight with other wolves - without maybe knowing why I'd like to think I'm doing about something meaningful if I'm doing it about politics or philosophy or history or you know I don't want to compete with other people about just who has bigger muscles or who has a fancier car but nevertheless I've recognized that in other people the guys who are spending their time having big muscles in a fancy car I think for them that is precisely the pursuit of their dignity and not because it's something innate in the clothing or the car or the muscles but because of this competitive relationship with one's own species and in a world where the wilderness has almost been totally destroyed that may be one of the last feeders for the natural instincts to play themselves out that we have left and on some level I think we appreciate that even though the cars are meaningless and maybe even the conversations you may have are meaningless that there's really something interestingly profound were deprived of when we're put into solitary confinement and it doesn't take that much of a leap of inference for people to see that you're doing that and so much worse than so much more when you do that to a dog when you do that to a cat and you cut off at the cat's testicles and you cut off its claws you deprive it of its own species and yeah I don't think it's too much to say in the same sense you're depriving me of its dignity
and his youtube channel is still there Jay costly but you also have the cosplay channel which is called what cosplay with a conscience I forget cruelty free cosplay cruelty free that's it clearly free cause fine clothes for the conscience also good type okay he was just asking me about the role of dignity I guess in my own philosophy and in my own preaching within veganism now what what strikes me as interesting is you were just asking me this long question which is cool I'm not complaining a thing it's long but you asked me this question the first 90% you were talking about the difficulty of expressing to other people this concept of dignity as it applies to animals as applies to you know domesticated animals animals in zoos pets but I guess also farm animals right especially though because you've been talking to people who don't have your background working with animals hands-on so Jay I've done a bunch of videos with them and they're great the zoo the last video we did talking about zoos was really great I when I listen to it back it was better than I remembered it paying but you know well Jay has worked in zoos and he has a lot of hands-on experience with animals in a lot of strange situations including in zoos the inevitability of animals being executed and put down and executing animals being cared for when they're sick and all the strange and comfortable gray areas you get into and caring for animals in in captivity but you switched your direction your question in the end and you kind of start asking about dignity for humans and is so you ask kind of in the context of human beings is the problem that the concept of dignity is too abstract but I think before that what you were struggling with was how do you communicate to people who don't have the hands-on experience with animals what what dignity means and these things yeah so you want to talk about both or would you want to clip okay cool so I'm not gonna draw with it so for animals this is my snappy but sincere answer you know if you take an elephant and you cut its tusks off have you deprived it of its dignity if you take an elephant and you cut its tail off have you deprived it of its dignity if you take an elephant and he cut its trunk off you thought cut its nose off have you the privates dignity all these things really happen there's not hypothetical example sit in places like Laos and Cambodia these things really happen to happen for various reasons and it's a real question whether or not you just kill this animal or what after various stages of this kind of injury or indignity or aren't you I ask a fundamentally different question I ask when you've cut an animal off from the wilderness have you deprived of its dignity and what I really insist on is that I'm not talking about an idealized wilderness I'm just talking about the actual wilderness which includes you know being torn apart by wolves and dying of dysentery and all that stuff I'm not talking about I'm not talking about an idealized I'm not only but in Arcadia I'm not talking about a guard obediently eaten I'm talking about the brutal grim reality of being in the wilderness or as I talked about in an earlier video today even animals living feral were you talking about you know rabbits that are feral living in a city we just saw that you're in Victoria you know now I can get into more detail I don't mean right now I'm talking to the converted but you were talking with a difficulty when you deal with people who haven't who haven't thought this through and don't this kind of experience for me you know little tactile examples like when I question for people you know when you pet your dog on the head do you think that in the wild dogs pet one another on the head and they have to stop like no so this gesture petting it you know what you've never seen a dog take its paw and pet another dog on that you never seen a wolf do that in the wild right that's not so meaningful now why do I use that kind of example it's not just to make someone feel like a jerk it's because for me part of what's being cut off here before we get to cutting off the tail or cutting off the trunk or cutting off the cutting off one leg or what have you what you're cutting this animal off from is it's socialization within its own species and a weird sense that's even true of solitary predators right obviously cutting it off from reproducing with its own species cutting it off from competing with its own species socializing this mosby but even some of that a little example like that I think it really does emblem at eyes are tokenized what's really a deeper problem here of what it is I mean bye-bye dignity because you know I talk about a life of dignity I talk about death dating like for this dog or for this wolf whatever dignity it's gonna seek out is gonna be competing in its own kind right it's not a dignity I can confer by patting it on the head and saying good dog and the reason why this is a challenge you have to talk about with people is that their intention is there their mentality is 180 degrees the opposite they think the dignity of animals is something that human beings provide to animals the same way we provide them with a bowl of food or a roof over their head or shelter or what-have-you in the same way a human being competitive dog in the head it's a good dog or make the dog happy or play with the dog give it a treat and this is this is exactly what they think of as dignity treating an animal with dignity or giving it evening and I'm saying is know when you're cutting that dog off from the kind of approval it seeks or it would seek in the wild from its own kind or even in hunting play and all these things that is actually what's what's cutting our first evening now what's really interesting is then turn this around and say well gee I so how does your philosophy apply to human beings right I think it actually does apply pretty consistently because I think the reality is when you take a human being and put them in solitary confinement in prison even if they're treated well even if they're fed good food I think we correctly see this as depriving human being of their dignity now I'm not saying we should never put people in prison I'm not I'm pointing out that even if you approve of you look at someone's okay this person's a mass murder their danger to society we're going to take them and put them in solitary confinement I think that people are aware without being able to define it or put their finger on it something has happened here something that's more significant than just sitting in a room voluntarily tonight for example I may sit in front of the computer alone for many hours my girlfriend's in the background you can see I'm not completely alone but nevertheless if I choose to sit alone in my computer that is actually something very different from me being cut off from the Society of my own species and being cut off permanently that this there is something here being cut away and maybe it's not as obvious as your tail or your trunk or your tusks or your claws like animals being declawed but that there is something fundamental here that that you know tokens that be tokens that that Emmel notices what I'm what I'm getting at by dignity I don't just think there's dignity in life there's dignity and death and dignity and dying and I don't just think there's dignity and success you know you can talk about the dignity of the dignity of poverty the dignity of failure of saying look I started this business I ran it my way and I ran it into the ground and now I'm poor because my business isn't fair you know what I mean like I think that concept of dignity again unfortunately these words normal the negative connotation but I think dignity is in a sense linked to competition in that same sense that the wolf competes among wolves and the elephant competes among elephants and human beings compete among human beings often without knowing why you know back when I was a poly scholar you know I was a scholar of Buddhism but his philosophy Buddhist history etc I remember I had a really weird debate with another guy he was also a you know philosopher historian linguist working on ancient Buddhism the same stuff he described his engagement with Buddhism as altruistic and I said no for me it's not altruistic at all I would even describe it as egoistic why I'm involved and he was really shocked by that and I had to explain it was really the same philosophy I'm explaining here and now where I said no for me even just the fact that I want to go to a conference and I really want to present my views my research my discoveries to the other people at the and I want I want to disagree with them even I don't just want them to applaud I want to prove my case and I want I want that interaction zone that's not altruistic I think that's egoistic in the strictest sense I think when I go to that conference and I you know even if it's literally Buddhist philosophy it's like hey guys here's what I did in the last five years researching these ancient put his texts and now I'm gonna prove my case and you're welcome to disagree with me and debate with me we are a wolf pack you know tearing apart a corpse you know and we are a herd of elephants competing for who gets to mate or who gets to drink water from the the brook or competing without even knowing why I think elephants fight with other elephants just because of the instincts that are in them and the feelings that have Golda's fight with other wolves - without maybe knowing why I'd like to think I'm doing about something meaningful if I'm doing it about politics or philosophy or history or you know I don't want to compete with other people about just who has bigger muscles or who has a fancier car but nevertheless I've recognized that in other people the guys who are spending their time having big muscles in a fancy car I think for them that is precisely the pursuit of their dignity and not because it's something innate in the clothing or the car or the muscles but because of this competitive relationship with one's own species and in a world where the wilderness has almost been totally destroyed that may be one of the last feeders for the natural instincts to play themselves out that we have left and on some level I think we appreciate that even though the cars are meaningless and maybe even the conversations you may have are meaningless that there's really something interestingly profound were deprived of when we're put into solitary confinement and it doesn't take that much of a leap of inference for people to see that you're doing that and so much worse than so much more when you do that to a dog when you do that to a cat and you cut off at the cat's testicles and you cut off its claws you deprive it of its own species and yeah I don't think it's too much to say in the same sense you're depriving me of its dignity