Kat Napiorkowska is against "vegan terrorists" & "black-and-white" morality.
02 December 2016 [link youtube]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
I know you guys may be expecting me to
make yet another video approaching one of my fellow vegans for being an idiot for one thing I can recognize when other vegans have their hearts in the right place that's my slogan yeah yeah yeah a lot of people are trying to do the right thing from their perspective even if I think they're wrong even if I think that what they have to say may be misleading or even harmful to the movement and I've mentioned that a lot of videos lately I also often do manage to criticize my fellow vegans without calling them idiots or I just reflect on the issues that have come up in their videos it's true I mean many of the things that are said in this particular video making response to or somewhat offensive to me I think are counterproductive for veganism and some of them are frankly idiotic if you're familiar with my channel you can probably make a list of them yourself but there's one idea that just comes up here in passing that I wanted to have a slow down and really pause to think on it's actually the kind of throwaway comment that these issues are not black and white that none of these issues are black and white that none of these moral questions are black and white now actually I think it's worth pausing to reflect that in veganism some issues are black and white my own channel is almost relentlessly focused on gray areas within veganism within questions of animal rights and activism etc etc because that's where I feel we need to you know push the dialogue forward within the movement questions about the future of the movement often we get into technical issues and gray areas I get fan mail from people where they really say wow I never even thought about that before etc um oh but to contrast a gray area to what I consider a truly black and white issue an issue that's so obvious we all see it every day we walk past it every day but you may ignore it um I do think that the question of the exploitation of animals in medical research is a gray area and I note even some abolitionist vegans like Gary francais ona himself they will confess that it's a gray area or that it's at least much more morally complex than other questions of meat-eating so Gary France aeona if you've been watching interviews he gives on television and radio he says almost exactly the same thing verbatim every time a journalist asked them about vivisection which is two animals being dissected or exploited for um you know to find the cure for cancer theoretically for some supposedly moral and scientific purpose he will always say well you know if you're going to ask me about that at least that's an interesting debate to have he'll say exploiting and killing animals simply for pleasure and convenience for food that's unnecessary and unhealthy that's not a debate that's not debatable but yes if you want to ask me about vivisection exploitation panels for scientific research at least that is a debate worth having he'll often vaguely allude to the position of people for the ethical treatment of animals and other other parties on this now I am sure that he would never step down from his formal position as an abolitionist vegan which is to say everything should be abolished it's not that new us it's not that hard to grasp I mean I realized that's where he's coming from her is going fine um but implicit in that whole approach which again I have heard him say verbatim too many different journalists it is actually acknowledging a gray area or at least something of greater moral complexity than meat itself but in as much as we acknowledge gray or is the concept becomes meaningless if everything is a gray area I think it's also really worthwhile to acknowledge what is a hard black and white issue within veganism I live in a society where everyone around me is wearing leather shoes why leather shoes are obsolete 500 years ago different situation today leather shoes do not in any way positively contribute to society there is no utility there's no justification they are as close to a pure evil as anything imaginable with most complex moral questions we're looking at a trade off people say they want to support human rights in Syria when they say support what they mean is engage in an aerial bombardment campaign well if your method of supporting human rights is dropping bombs on human being means I do understand the rationale I do understand the political goal I am but there's a trade-off there's they're obviously both advantages and disadvantages to aerial bombardment as a method of promoting human rights whether it's in Syria or in Laos or Cambodia and United States foreign policy has a very show is a mixed history of the use of the air force as a method of promoting foreign rights pardon me as a method of promoting Human Rights abroad different different debate but when we're looking at something as simple and ubiquitous as leather shoes we see we see leather shoes around us every day we're looking at something that people primarily by because its associated with wealth with privilege I mean love you I can remember from my childhood well okay keeping all the way real when I was a child one of the objects in our household that fascinated me was a little box that contained all the tools that people needed to polish leather boots you know there's a brush and there were these chemicals and the chemicals had this toxic smell and you know it was this sort of complex fascinating world and you want to ask my parents about they said yeah in the past people used to does a job you know the people would actually shine shoes for a living this used to be something really important in Western culture people used to put in a lot of time and effort to shining their shoes sort of all this cultural baggage around polishing and shining and maintaining boots leather boots leather shoes and you know as you guys probably know because this is the internet there are people who are fascinated with these things sexually in terms of their sense of image and importance and you know [Music] when it comes right down to it you're torturing animals to death you're exploiting them you're making your having animals being born and living the whole lives in a in a shed in a concrete on a concrete floor in a steel cage under a steel sky to produce an object that has zero utility right and while Gary Francie only even Gary Francine even the the holier than thou completely pious a bushing what he's admitting is that in vivisection the medical chances actually you're talking about killing animals for some utility and if you want a very clear example of that there's the exploitation of animals and laboratories not for research but where their fluids are being used to actually produce serums to produce medicine themselves I guess the easiest example is the use of snakes to produce anti-venom to save human lives right so there's utility it may be immoral if need be shocking would have you not everything can be a gray area right not everything is debatable and what's interesting to me about vegan politics it contrasts every other form of politics is that the most black and white issues are the ones staring us in the face every day what should American foreign policy be in Syria it's not a black-and-white issue right now what should American foreign policy be in the Ukraine it's not a black-and-white issue hey what should Canadian foreign policy be in Israel and Palestine I mean oh these issues some of them have been kicked around in the news for many years with no particular decisive outcome in a sense I mean I think growing up watching the modern Western news media trains us to regard every issue as having two sides to the story and a little five minute broadcast where they interview one person representing the Conservative Party and one person representing the Liberal Party at the end they say well we can all agree this is a complex issue in a gray area and it's not clear how we're going to move forward this is kind of part of the the bourgeois apparatus of postmodern life is this indecisive conclusion to the politely phrase news broadcast and then we change the channel and we all get on with their lives and we in a sense or reassured that there is no simple answer that it's a complex murky question that it's a gray area and why do we feel reassured because that means we don't have to do a goddamn thing about it somebody else somewhere as an expert somebody knows more about vivisection than you somebody knows more about Syria somebody is sitting in an office whether it's in the State Department or the sea I a or in Congress or in Parliament in your country somebody's making that decision so you don't have to think about it and in a sense the hardest political decisions of our time are made into a form of entertainment to distract you from the bottom of your bourgeois daily life and veganism is not like that veganism actually does deal with some very hard black and white issues veganism actually does involve a call to action that involves you not just as a consumer it involves you changing your life to change the world step by step involves you recognizing that yes actually if you choose to put on those leather shoes it means a whole lot more than just leather shoes you are capitulating in you are becoming complicit in an unbelievably evil and a necessary industry so leather shoes a black-and-white issue and I've realized that people like this think it is polite and self-effacing and friendly they say well it's all shades of grey everyone's got a different perspective there's more than one way to look at it blah blah blah because that's what we've all grown up seeing on the nightly news sometimes sometimes in politics yes we have to say this is black and white there's right and wrong and in some sense negotiations are over given these facts you've got to make a choice for what kind of person you're going to be and whether or not you're willing to get up off your ass and buy a new pair of shoes on point of moral principle really compared to getting off your ass and trying to do something for human rights in Syria it's not asking a lot
make yet another video approaching one of my fellow vegans for being an idiot for one thing I can recognize when other vegans have their hearts in the right place that's my slogan yeah yeah yeah a lot of people are trying to do the right thing from their perspective even if I think they're wrong even if I think that what they have to say may be misleading or even harmful to the movement and I've mentioned that a lot of videos lately I also often do manage to criticize my fellow vegans without calling them idiots or I just reflect on the issues that have come up in their videos it's true I mean many of the things that are said in this particular video making response to or somewhat offensive to me I think are counterproductive for veganism and some of them are frankly idiotic if you're familiar with my channel you can probably make a list of them yourself but there's one idea that just comes up here in passing that I wanted to have a slow down and really pause to think on it's actually the kind of throwaway comment that these issues are not black and white that none of these issues are black and white that none of these moral questions are black and white now actually I think it's worth pausing to reflect that in veganism some issues are black and white my own channel is almost relentlessly focused on gray areas within veganism within questions of animal rights and activism etc etc because that's where I feel we need to you know push the dialogue forward within the movement questions about the future of the movement often we get into technical issues and gray areas I get fan mail from people where they really say wow I never even thought about that before etc um oh but to contrast a gray area to what I consider a truly black and white issue an issue that's so obvious we all see it every day we walk past it every day but you may ignore it um I do think that the question of the exploitation of animals in medical research is a gray area and I note even some abolitionist vegans like Gary francais ona himself they will confess that it's a gray area or that it's at least much more morally complex than other questions of meat-eating so Gary France aeona if you've been watching interviews he gives on television and radio he says almost exactly the same thing verbatim every time a journalist asked them about vivisection which is two animals being dissected or exploited for um you know to find the cure for cancer theoretically for some supposedly moral and scientific purpose he will always say well you know if you're going to ask me about that at least that's an interesting debate to have he'll say exploiting and killing animals simply for pleasure and convenience for food that's unnecessary and unhealthy that's not a debate that's not debatable but yes if you want to ask me about vivisection exploitation panels for scientific research at least that is a debate worth having he'll often vaguely allude to the position of people for the ethical treatment of animals and other other parties on this now I am sure that he would never step down from his formal position as an abolitionist vegan which is to say everything should be abolished it's not that new us it's not that hard to grasp I mean I realized that's where he's coming from her is going fine um but implicit in that whole approach which again I have heard him say verbatim too many different journalists it is actually acknowledging a gray area or at least something of greater moral complexity than meat itself but in as much as we acknowledge gray or is the concept becomes meaningless if everything is a gray area I think it's also really worthwhile to acknowledge what is a hard black and white issue within veganism I live in a society where everyone around me is wearing leather shoes why leather shoes are obsolete 500 years ago different situation today leather shoes do not in any way positively contribute to society there is no utility there's no justification they are as close to a pure evil as anything imaginable with most complex moral questions we're looking at a trade off people say they want to support human rights in Syria when they say support what they mean is engage in an aerial bombardment campaign well if your method of supporting human rights is dropping bombs on human being means I do understand the rationale I do understand the political goal I am but there's a trade-off there's they're obviously both advantages and disadvantages to aerial bombardment as a method of promoting human rights whether it's in Syria or in Laos or Cambodia and United States foreign policy has a very show is a mixed history of the use of the air force as a method of promoting foreign rights pardon me as a method of promoting Human Rights abroad different different debate but when we're looking at something as simple and ubiquitous as leather shoes we see we see leather shoes around us every day we're looking at something that people primarily by because its associated with wealth with privilege I mean love you I can remember from my childhood well okay keeping all the way real when I was a child one of the objects in our household that fascinated me was a little box that contained all the tools that people needed to polish leather boots you know there's a brush and there were these chemicals and the chemicals had this toxic smell and you know it was this sort of complex fascinating world and you want to ask my parents about they said yeah in the past people used to does a job you know the people would actually shine shoes for a living this used to be something really important in Western culture people used to put in a lot of time and effort to shining their shoes sort of all this cultural baggage around polishing and shining and maintaining boots leather boots leather shoes and you know as you guys probably know because this is the internet there are people who are fascinated with these things sexually in terms of their sense of image and importance and you know [Music] when it comes right down to it you're torturing animals to death you're exploiting them you're making your having animals being born and living the whole lives in a in a shed in a concrete on a concrete floor in a steel cage under a steel sky to produce an object that has zero utility right and while Gary Francie only even Gary Francine even the the holier than thou completely pious a bushing what he's admitting is that in vivisection the medical chances actually you're talking about killing animals for some utility and if you want a very clear example of that there's the exploitation of animals and laboratories not for research but where their fluids are being used to actually produce serums to produce medicine themselves I guess the easiest example is the use of snakes to produce anti-venom to save human lives right so there's utility it may be immoral if need be shocking would have you not everything can be a gray area right not everything is debatable and what's interesting to me about vegan politics it contrasts every other form of politics is that the most black and white issues are the ones staring us in the face every day what should American foreign policy be in Syria it's not a black-and-white issue right now what should American foreign policy be in the Ukraine it's not a black-and-white issue hey what should Canadian foreign policy be in Israel and Palestine I mean oh these issues some of them have been kicked around in the news for many years with no particular decisive outcome in a sense I mean I think growing up watching the modern Western news media trains us to regard every issue as having two sides to the story and a little five minute broadcast where they interview one person representing the Conservative Party and one person representing the Liberal Party at the end they say well we can all agree this is a complex issue in a gray area and it's not clear how we're going to move forward this is kind of part of the the bourgeois apparatus of postmodern life is this indecisive conclusion to the politely phrase news broadcast and then we change the channel and we all get on with their lives and we in a sense or reassured that there is no simple answer that it's a complex murky question that it's a gray area and why do we feel reassured because that means we don't have to do a goddamn thing about it somebody else somewhere as an expert somebody knows more about vivisection than you somebody knows more about Syria somebody is sitting in an office whether it's in the State Department or the sea I a or in Congress or in Parliament in your country somebody's making that decision so you don't have to think about it and in a sense the hardest political decisions of our time are made into a form of entertainment to distract you from the bottom of your bourgeois daily life and veganism is not like that veganism actually does deal with some very hard black and white issues veganism actually does involve a call to action that involves you not just as a consumer it involves you changing your life to change the world step by step involves you recognizing that yes actually if you choose to put on those leather shoes it means a whole lot more than just leather shoes you are capitulating in you are becoming complicit in an unbelievably evil and a necessary industry so leather shoes a black-and-white issue and I've realized that people like this think it is polite and self-effacing and friendly they say well it's all shades of grey everyone's got a different perspective there's more than one way to look at it blah blah blah because that's what we've all grown up seeing on the nightly news sometimes sometimes in politics yes we have to say this is black and white there's right and wrong and in some sense negotiations are over given these facts you've got to make a choice for what kind of person you're going to be and whether or not you're willing to get up off your ass and buy a new pair of shoes on point of moral principle really compared to getting off your ass and trying to do something for human rights in Syria it's not asking a lot