Veganism will not make you happy, being vegan may make you even more miserable.

the role of honesty in politics is
complex you know um start off by saying the exact opposite of what I'm gonna say most this video sometimes I feel like my fellow vegans on the Internet are too honest that they're talking about elements of their lives or even elements to their political beliefs that I feel they just shouldn't mention or should should tone down a bit you know what I mean um it was a clip of vegan gains talking about buying guns his plans to to buy and own guns sounds bad whether it's I'm sure he's doing in completely legal way I'm sure he's done all the paperwork I'm sure he's completely entitled to uh to own those guns I don't know go to a firing range and train with them okay I tell you it sounds bad any hearing that clip from him I thought you shouldn't have mentioned that it simply as a good politician you know you're not running for the Republican Party you're not running for the Republican Party in Texas you know if your career in life is being a kind of influential opinion maker and veganism you can buy guns you can own guns you can enjoy your constitutional rights and privileges I in whatever country I assume he's doing it in the US I don't know but maybe you maybe you shouldn't mention it maybe you should keep it yourself on the other hand as you know on this channel I'm always talking about keeping it real and being honest and telling the truth and some of this reflects my experience in straightforward politics whether to you know politics is in political science history of wars revolutions governments etc etc some of it reflects my experience in the world of education having spent so many years in universities etc etc some reflects my experience in small party politics like the Green Party are going to City Hall direct advocacy political activism that kind of thing but you know some of it reflects my experience and Buddhism in Buddhism we have a huge problem with people basically being converted through lies and half-truths people misrepresent Buddhism as being the religion of gender equity of being a pro feminist religion and bring people in and then what happens when those people figure out that it's really not true that the status of women in Buddhism is problematic status of women in Buddhism is better than Islam it's better than the status of women in Judaism or Christianity yes but it's still problematic Buddhism is not the great religion gender equity it's just just not the case and at some point they get interested in what the ancient texts say and they find this fissure between the religion they were sold and the religion they actually bought religion they actually bought into uh so many slavery sects meditation anything that's bought and sold or promised the meditation but one of the obvious ones though is hell I met huge numbers of people both white people and Asian people who were sold a scientific version of Buddhism where there's no afterlife and nobody goes to hell if they're something that was like a major thing because these people used to be Christian they used to be members of some other religions like oh no unlike Christianity in Buddhism there is no hell and they're they're reassured of this by their Dharma master or meditation teacher or some horseshit yeah well then you buy a plane ticket to Thailand and you go to any any Buddhist temple in Thailand they've got to have at least one painting of of hell maybe statues maybe a whole garden maybe whole diorama showing you just how terrible hell is after you die you know what then either it discredits the whole religion or discredit your particular Dharma master it discredits your particular sect of the religion either the person responds but getting more interest in the real history of the religion doing some independent research some independent reading or they just get turned off and walk away and say this is a scam it is it's a scam you know and it's it's painful me for this reason both my political background and these other things prepare me for seeing this in veganism it pains me to see it in veganism partly because the people doing it often have very very good intentions so use one short example things talk about the big issue of half you know I see many people including Claire Michelle shadow declare Michelle saying that you know when you eat meat you you magically absorb the misery of the animal now sometimes that it's that's expressed as the stress hormones of the animal sometimes it's more in terms of an idea of karma you know sometimes it's more magical so there's more scientific or scientistic in its in its clothing but the idea that you're actually becoming unhappy or stressed out because you're absorbing some magical substance and suffering the animal and I've met many meat-eaters who believe that - but they believe that that's only if the animal suffered while it died that you know that if the animal had a painless death and you won't get this contagious misery from the animal you know and so therefore the theory goes and I think Claire Michelle said there's tons of vegans say this you know that when you stop eating meat and animal products you know your your spirit becomes lighter and brighter or you become happier because you're no longer poisoning yourself with this magical invisible material from the corpses of of dead animals you know wouldn't it be convenient if we could all believe that huh wouldn't it be convenient if we could just I do not want to be part of a religion that's built on a lie I don't want that from Judaism I don't want it from Buddhism I don't want that from veganism I don't want that from the Republican Party I don't want that from the Liberal Party whatever the conservative party whatever the political party is in your country you know I want everything to be real real real and you know within the arts there's a kind of reality there's a kind of realness in a rap song where every single word is a lie where it's all fiction and yet it's depicting something that to me is real that to me is is moving and meaningful and for sure we get into those types of riddles in in politics and the the practical politics of veganism but look you know so the big the big question will veganism make you happy is it a good idea to sell veganism as something that makes you happy obviously Oh God watch my one-hour video with zoria zoria the the agony of activism you can if you don't know spells re you can search for the agony of activism and you'll find that that video you can also get it as a podcast listen to it while you walk around and workout at the gym or whatever there's a lot of misery and there are a lot of ways in which I can say if you're unhappy before you become vegan you may just be more unhappy you know there's no reason why an awareness of the the pervasive and pernicious evil of industrialized agriculture would make you happy even if you're doing your small part to separate yourself from that to repudiate it to refuse to be a part of it IIIi can't imagine what kind of person would be on an ego trip just because they stopped eating yogurt to feel great to feel wonderful when they wake up in the morning and sit down next to in between two people both of them are eating yogurt I don't feel great I feel terrible I feel revolted when I see that yogurt I see behind it all of those invisible stages of animal exploitation and along with them you know the unfathomable damage to the Earth's atmosphere the Earth's water just the land the waste of human talent the waste of energy the waste of food and everything else I mean the food you know being given to the animals to produce you know the food for humans and so on and you know ultimately of course the the image of animals living the whole lives surrounded by concrete and steel etc I yeah I'm not eating yogurt and everyone else is and I don't I don't get an ego boost from that I don't feel good I don't feel happy you know my refusal to acquiesce in that most of the time is is merely symbolic I know you know the impact I make is is so tiny as one person that it's impossible to anyway some other type of person maybe feels tremendously happy with that but it's very hard to come on the internet and try to sell that in the same sense we talk about selling Buddhism selling a politically oh it's very hard to come on the internet and try to sell that as a life long vigil as a life of grim dutiful misery of a life of witnessing you know with horror and anxiety the destruction of the world's environment for the sake of stupidity self-indulgence cruelty and just you know meaningless cultural expectations the meaningless cultural fetish for leather boots as opposed to vegan boots for a wool sweater instead of a cotton sweater because how many animals have to die so we can play out that cultural ideal fetish for wool as opposed to other materials that are actually more effective you know yeah it's horrifying and the for me the sense of horror never goes away it never washes off i eyelid i never get out of the shower feeling great about myself because i'm vegan I don't I'm confronted by the sight of chicken feet of the feet hacked off of chickens every day and it never feels okay I saw I saw on the street here the other day a pet vendor and he had kittens in cages in glass translucent glass cages and next to them he had pet alligators I'm sorry I don't know if they were alligators or crocodiles I can't tell he had baby alligators the kittens that would have been miserable anyway being you know waiting to be bought as pets were obviously terrified and couldn't do anything to escape the fact that they were millimeters away from from another animal that obviously they must regard as a threat or as a as a predator I don't know wouldn't it wouldn't it be convenient to be inviting people to veganism with the promise that this will make you happier and of course as you guys know some vegans on the internet take a step further and say veganism will cure your depression veganism will cure even serious mental disorders like schizophrenia but I mean it's much more common to hear a vague sense of it curing your depression of it you happy of it of it making you less unhappy and you know I I can't I can't buy into that partly because I think you're you're absolutely setting people up for that sense of disappointment that I described in Buddhism that results in it would result in discrediting veganism and I think it results in discrediting you personally it destroys the trust between you and the person you you made those promises to and depending on where you're living I mean you know everywhere you go it's a struggle being being vegan and Saskatchewan did not make me happy oh my god it was misery to be vegan and Saskatchewan just just in terms of getting enough to eat every day you know and the attitudes the people around you and here in China I know some of you think think yone on Kunming China is is is vegan paradise it's not and and the way people some people are to you but some people are friendly about it and they still sell you meat I went to a bout to Deanna a shop selling you know buns and I went and talked to them for ages and there were four people on staff and they were very friendly and very bright and smiling at me and enthusiastic and I talked to you are you sure this doesn't have pork fat it sure doesn't have any meat at all and vegan did all in Chinese talking soon they're all really happy to help me really happy and helpful and supportive and they sell me as you know for buns I walk away from the stand I tear the buns open because I'm gonna look carefully I'm not just gonna bite into them there were whole chunks of beef it wasn't subtle it wasn't like invisible pork me you think they would be proud it wasn't ground meat either wasn't wasn't hamburger it was this was expensive pieces of dead cow in homeland and nicest people in the world you know and yeah other people are jerks to you about it I eat OC whatever Saskatchewan was hard in very different ways from China wherever you go it's a struggle but that is what I say to people when I talk to them about being vegan I don't tell them it's gonna make you happy it's gonna solve all your problems it's gonna I don't tell them it's gonna cure your depression I definitely don't tell them it's gonna cure your bipolar disorder or anything else you know if you're miserable now and you take on the responsibility to be vegan you take on the ethical commitment to be vegan that may only make you more unhappy because it's one more ethical commitment in your life if you're the type of person that gets a sense of satisfaction from doing your duty from doing your duty well then you may have that satisfaction but a lot of people are not that personality type a lot of people do not feel that way a lot of people I think just experience it as a burden and they experience the alienation for me everyday sitting down with the other students here it's it's an issue I'm alienated from the other students in my school you may be alienated from your co-workers being alienated from your friends and family etc etc etc but this is the sense in which I urge everyone to do it and I urge you to do it and I remind you of just how worthless is in contrast to any other endeavor okay another aspect of my experience with politics is in charity work it's not until you get out in the real world or start reading secret reports you know secret reports from from governments and charity organizations NGOs in international education most of what you see on TV has ethically simple intervention of human beings helping of human beings is tremendously complex and has terrible unforeseen consequences it is entirely possible to donate money to a project that is attempting to help starving people that ends up starving more of them to death it's entirely possible to donate money to a project that's supposed to improve agriculture in a third world country to alleviate starvation and instead it destroys agriculture in that province in that region in the area that they've targeted one of the most extreme reports I read was a project that resulted in the total depopulation of the villages that was supposed to be helping in other words the poverty-stricken people living in the villages being helped by a French government charity they were helped so much that they decided to abandon their homes and flee the air rather than live under the tyranny of that charity it's a fascinating case study and the charity did among the things that did it built a bridge and that is now a bridge that connects nowhere to nothing because the local inhabitants abandoned the area you can dig wells to try to provide water to people I've no drinking water and the wells are poisoned with arsenic and it has unbelievable unforeseen negative consequences etc etc the simplest imaginable projects you think you're doing something positive by building a school in a third-world country and it's a disaster most forms of intervention humanitarian intervention it's so hard to do something morally good that is only and purely morally good military intervention it's on another level I wouldn't you love to believe you could have a military intervention that's only and purely morally good but we all know people get killed on the way in people that killed on the way out military intervention is incredibly murky and yet you know the vicissitudes of political history are so extreme that when we look back on many of the world's greatest disasters the question we always ask ourselves is why didn't we intervene sooner and normally it's because at the time people were wary of intervention because the last time they did one it was a disaster maybe hundreds of thousands died maybe millions died and the outcomes were unclear you know we're not simply positive the reason why it's possible for me to propound veganism to encourage all of you watching this to be vegan to encourage my own grandmother to be vegan and my own granddaughter to be vegan why I can bring that to everyone I can't encourage Yuja to get involved with humanitarian work in Cambodia I can't encourage you to sign up and join the army and support our endless war effort in Syria Iraq etc I can't do that in good conscience I have no idea what the outcomes are going to be on a very specific base you look at a specific project at specific war who wants to sign up by the way to get involved in the the still ongoing war in the Ukraine tempted if you've got humanitarian instincts like I do on some level I am tempted you know any of those disasters they all appear to me they all appeal to me they all tug on my heartstrings all of them really veganism in my whole life is one of the only things where I can say to you honestly this is purely and wholly and totally morally good you're doing something good and you're not doing any harm you're doing something good with zero risk for yourself zero risk to others zero unforeseen and unforeseeable negative consequences this although it's a discipline that's gonna change your life everyday three meals a day all day it's gonna change your life every time you try to buy clothing suits shoes you name it it's gonna change your life in a million tiny ways and if you're miserable now you may be only more miserable afterwards but I've got to tell you this is one of the only things I know that is an unalloyed moral good