Debating the "I Don't Care" Mentality (Vegan Gains vs. Bearing)
30 March 2017 [link youtube]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
in some ways there are important
parallels between the situation for veganism right now in 2017 and the situation for gay rights many many decades ago the situation for gay rights when it was at the stage of millions of people sitting down at millions of dinner tables with their own parents with their own grandparents and saying look there's something I have to tell you and fundamentally people at that early stage had to explain the concept of gayness itself to a public who in large part heated feared failed to understand and fail to understand why it would ever be made public why wouldn't this be secret why wouldn't this be something totally private that you'd never even mentioned right and that too had to be explained that had to be articulated and many people may look back on the history of gay rights and imagined the most important part of the story you know was this or that Street protests people holding signs in the streets I don't think so I think there was a profound and really kind of philosophical engagement of you know people with their own parents people with their employers people with their co-workers saying look this is who I really am and you may not understand that and this is why you need to know this is why it needs to be public why it can't just be private I can't just be a secret so step one of bearings argument in this epoch-making debate between vegan gains and bearing over the ethics of veganism itself the core the core issue of veganism step one of his argument actually is that morality is a totally personal private and subjective matter many people felt that way about sexuality 50 years ago even 20 years ago many of you remember those debates in Canadian politics there were people who just said your sexuality is your private business so I'm not going to judge you and you're not and as long as you don't judge me we don't have a problem we don't have a cough life doesn't work that way it was not sufficient to simply tell homosexuals to stay in the closet and keep their private lives private and allow the world to roll on why well you'd have a situation where a schoolteacher is employed by a conservative school board maybe the Catholic school board and the school teacher is fired when somebody finds out that the schoolteacher has a same-sex relationship it's a man with a boyfriend or a woman with a girlfriend or whatever it is okay his problems are the gay teacher say it's a gay man his problem isn't just a legal battle with a school board his problem is that he stands alone if you live in a closeted society if you live in a society where your sexual morality simply consists of mutual ignorant and mutual indifference you can never make that progress that we have made in Canada in the last 50 years the situation for homosexuals is completely transformed completely and there are openly gay school teachers in Canadian school boards who know they will not be fired for their sexuality for having a boyfriend I mean a girlfriend whatever their case may be and if they are they know that they will not stand alone they probably know within the same school other openly gay professionals they know within the same city other openly gay professionals right and that's that's crucial right so bearings perspective starts by saying that morality is a totally personally totally part private totally subjective matter and that he's not gonna judge vegans harshly and vegans shouldn't judge him and that's it and the truth is morality is precisely the opposite morality is intensely public and intensely political and is a never ending open-ended struggle to transform the world and transform yourself step 2 of bearings argument is in three words I don't care and I'm gonna tell you in this video how I deal with that argument face to face when people say it to me sincerely because this happens sometimes rarely sometimes I'm talking to someone and they're not just being a jerk but their their response to the general question of ecology animal rights veganism future of how humans and animals are going to share the planet and even the health of the diet all the time if they say to me sincerely I don't care I say I understand but somebody has to and here's where I take it you don't care about sewage treatment somebody has to it's crucially important in every major city in the world there's a minority of people no matter how small who are really scrutinizing where the sewage goes and where your drinking water comes from it's crucially important that there's a passionate minority of people focus on the question of sewage treatment anytime you have several million people sharing a sewage system and sharing one drinking water source you don't care you have the luxury of not caring somebody else is fighting that struggle for you and you should be able to recognize that you benefit from it all ecology works like that who cares about river pollution who cares about air pollution maybe not you maybe not you baron maybe your indifference is completely sincere and maybe you really believe that this life of mutual ignorance and mutual indifference is virtuous but my response to that is simply to point out to you that on the contrary if we live in a crowded society we live in a society not of isolated individuals but of millions in fact we depend on one another I don't care in a practical sense I can't care I'm too busy about nuclear waste treatment and management I different points in my life I actually have done some research on it I've done some reading I've taken interests different points in my life I have but that's not an issue I'm gonna lobby City Hall and that's not a sham looking into and there are extreme and fascinating case studies of this again I've done some reading over the years in England I read this fantastic and hilarious case today force in Japan we had this example that blew up in our faces and the whole world stood there astonished at just how high-stakes the question of nuclear safety can be in energy production you know there's one a test site she's an ecologic 'old is a stir in the north western states I did some reading about it Wow fascinating fascinating ok now I I would not say that I don't care I do care I do care I just don't have enough time and energy to to work on every important issue in the world ok but if someone says to me that they don't care I can say to them isn't it a good thing that somebody does imagine just how dangerous this situation would be if nobody cared and now what is your attitude gonna be towards someone else when you when you meet a person who has that passion who has that concern and who has those expertise because they care why are you telling them that you don't care instead of thank you for caring because I can't you can't do everything barring and I can't either I've got to make choices if I'm studying Cambodia and human rights issues in Cambodia I'm not studying farm conditions in Texas I can't do both I did spend a couple years study in Cambodia that's why I choose that that example ok the fundamental question is of what kind of a person you want to be and that's why I never engage these issues in terms of shallow crass logical fallacies I don't think that vegan gains vegan gains take it in the direction he took in a real life situation face to face I don't think that he could have won and there's another channel called ask yourself who took it even further in that direction ask yourself tries to make this into a bait debate about how how precisely how logically do you define a human being as different from an animal in order to justify balance against animals as different from human beings you know we we have a we have a saying in political science well I don't know the definition of pornography but I know it when I see it most people this argument goes nowhere what exactly is the difference the definition of a human being what exact trait does a human being have that an animal acts that justifies the move yeah well they may not know how to define a human being but they know it when they see it if you can engage someone on the meaningful question what kind of a person do you want to be what kind of society do you want to be a part of and what direction you on this a way that's great and if you encounter somebody who can't can't engage in that discussion that level with you there's no point in you having a deep discussion while they're having a shot at one stupidity is real stupidity was a huge factor in this debate one side was manifestly much much stupider than the other so there were limits to where this conversation would go but when I encountered that attitude of I don't care I don't challenge them on the fact that they don't care I don't say you should care what I challenge them on is why are you proud that you don't care why are you being self-righteous about it because there's a sense in which I don't care and I can't care about nuclear safety there's a sense in which I very very few people can care and get involved with sewage treatment or other ecological problems that that impact your life directly drinking water quality can I trust the tap water when I turn the tap okay everywhere I go I try to research that I tried to research that here in China and Victoria in Cambodia on and on everywhere I've lived I try to take it as far as I can okay not everybody can care but that doesn't mean that you should feel proud of yourself because you don't care it sure doesn't mean you should be self-righteous in your ignorant and your indifference you should feel some sense of appreciation and some sense of gratitude towards the tiny minority of people who have the passion who had the engagement and who developed the expertise because they really are making the world a better place for all of us
parallels between the situation for veganism right now in 2017 and the situation for gay rights many many decades ago the situation for gay rights when it was at the stage of millions of people sitting down at millions of dinner tables with their own parents with their own grandparents and saying look there's something I have to tell you and fundamentally people at that early stage had to explain the concept of gayness itself to a public who in large part heated feared failed to understand and fail to understand why it would ever be made public why wouldn't this be secret why wouldn't this be something totally private that you'd never even mentioned right and that too had to be explained that had to be articulated and many people may look back on the history of gay rights and imagined the most important part of the story you know was this or that Street protests people holding signs in the streets I don't think so I think there was a profound and really kind of philosophical engagement of you know people with their own parents people with their employers people with their co-workers saying look this is who I really am and you may not understand that and this is why you need to know this is why it needs to be public why it can't just be private I can't just be a secret so step one of bearings argument in this epoch-making debate between vegan gains and bearing over the ethics of veganism itself the core the core issue of veganism step one of his argument actually is that morality is a totally personal private and subjective matter many people felt that way about sexuality 50 years ago even 20 years ago many of you remember those debates in Canadian politics there were people who just said your sexuality is your private business so I'm not going to judge you and you're not and as long as you don't judge me we don't have a problem we don't have a cough life doesn't work that way it was not sufficient to simply tell homosexuals to stay in the closet and keep their private lives private and allow the world to roll on why well you'd have a situation where a schoolteacher is employed by a conservative school board maybe the Catholic school board and the school teacher is fired when somebody finds out that the schoolteacher has a same-sex relationship it's a man with a boyfriend or a woman with a girlfriend or whatever it is okay his problems are the gay teacher say it's a gay man his problem isn't just a legal battle with a school board his problem is that he stands alone if you live in a closeted society if you live in a society where your sexual morality simply consists of mutual ignorant and mutual indifference you can never make that progress that we have made in Canada in the last 50 years the situation for homosexuals is completely transformed completely and there are openly gay school teachers in Canadian school boards who know they will not be fired for their sexuality for having a boyfriend I mean a girlfriend whatever their case may be and if they are they know that they will not stand alone they probably know within the same school other openly gay professionals they know within the same city other openly gay professionals right and that's that's crucial right so bearings perspective starts by saying that morality is a totally personally totally part private totally subjective matter and that he's not gonna judge vegans harshly and vegans shouldn't judge him and that's it and the truth is morality is precisely the opposite morality is intensely public and intensely political and is a never ending open-ended struggle to transform the world and transform yourself step 2 of bearings argument is in three words I don't care and I'm gonna tell you in this video how I deal with that argument face to face when people say it to me sincerely because this happens sometimes rarely sometimes I'm talking to someone and they're not just being a jerk but their their response to the general question of ecology animal rights veganism future of how humans and animals are going to share the planet and even the health of the diet all the time if they say to me sincerely I don't care I say I understand but somebody has to and here's where I take it you don't care about sewage treatment somebody has to it's crucially important in every major city in the world there's a minority of people no matter how small who are really scrutinizing where the sewage goes and where your drinking water comes from it's crucially important that there's a passionate minority of people focus on the question of sewage treatment anytime you have several million people sharing a sewage system and sharing one drinking water source you don't care you have the luxury of not caring somebody else is fighting that struggle for you and you should be able to recognize that you benefit from it all ecology works like that who cares about river pollution who cares about air pollution maybe not you maybe not you baron maybe your indifference is completely sincere and maybe you really believe that this life of mutual ignorance and mutual indifference is virtuous but my response to that is simply to point out to you that on the contrary if we live in a crowded society we live in a society not of isolated individuals but of millions in fact we depend on one another I don't care in a practical sense I can't care I'm too busy about nuclear waste treatment and management I different points in my life I actually have done some research on it I've done some reading I've taken interests different points in my life I have but that's not an issue I'm gonna lobby City Hall and that's not a sham looking into and there are extreme and fascinating case studies of this again I've done some reading over the years in England I read this fantastic and hilarious case today force in Japan we had this example that blew up in our faces and the whole world stood there astonished at just how high-stakes the question of nuclear safety can be in energy production you know there's one a test site she's an ecologic 'old is a stir in the north western states I did some reading about it Wow fascinating fascinating ok now I I would not say that I don't care I do care I do care I just don't have enough time and energy to to work on every important issue in the world ok but if someone says to me that they don't care I can say to them isn't it a good thing that somebody does imagine just how dangerous this situation would be if nobody cared and now what is your attitude gonna be towards someone else when you when you meet a person who has that passion who has that concern and who has those expertise because they care why are you telling them that you don't care instead of thank you for caring because I can't you can't do everything barring and I can't either I've got to make choices if I'm studying Cambodia and human rights issues in Cambodia I'm not studying farm conditions in Texas I can't do both I did spend a couple years study in Cambodia that's why I choose that that example ok the fundamental question is of what kind of a person you want to be and that's why I never engage these issues in terms of shallow crass logical fallacies I don't think that vegan gains vegan gains take it in the direction he took in a real life situation face to face I don't think that he could have won and there's another channel called ask yourself who took it even further in that direction ask yourself tries to make this into a bait debate about how how precisely how logically do you define a human being as different from an animal in order to justify balance against animals as different from human beings you know we we have a we have a saying in political science well I don't know the definition of pornography but I know it when I see it most people this argument goes nowhere what exactly is the difference the definition of a human being what exact trait does a human being have that an animal acts that justifies the move yeah well they may not know how to define a human being but they know it when they see it if you can engage someone on the meaningful question what kind of a person do you want to be what kind of society do you want to be a part of and what direction you on this a way that's great and if you encounter somebody who can't can't engage in that discussion that level with you there's no point in you having a deep discussion while they're having a shot at one stupidity is real stupidity was a huge factor in this debate one side was manifestly much much stupider than the other so there were limits to where this conversation would go but when I encountered that attitude of I don't care I don't challenge them on the fact that they don't care I don't say you should care what I challenge them on is why are you proud that you don't care why are you being self-righteous about it because there's a sense in which I don't care and I can't care about nuclear safety there's a sense in which I very very few people can care and get involved with sewage treatment or other ecological problems that that impact your life directly drinking water quality can I trust the tap water when I turn the tap okay everywhere I go I try to research that I tried to research that here in China and Victoria in Cambodia on and on everywhere I've lived I try to take it as far as I can okay not everybody can care but that doesn't mean that you should feel proud of yourself because you don't care it sure doesn't mean you should be self-righteous in your ignorant and your indifference you should feel some sense of appreciation and some sense of gratitude towards the tiny minority of people who have the passion who had the engagement and who developed the expertise because they really are making the world a better place for all of us