Happiness is overrated, narcissism is overrated.
28 July 2016 [link youtube]
Vegan / vegans / veganism / ecology.
Youtube Automatic Transcription
for example we think that if we find a
boyfriend will feel love I think that you know we think that if we get this degree then we'll feel sort of accomplishment and fulfillment maybe but these things don't actually come from those fiscal things they have to be manifested internally so before you get to loving yourself and valuing yourself before you get there before you get to that dream body of yours you have to take that step you have to you know you have to get that emotion you have to follow that emotion before you can get those physical results that you desire and those physical results aren't going to equate to that emotion what we have to do is we have to chase these emotions we have to chase these instinctive natural urges to feel certain ways that's what we need to chase you are you so don't do what society tells everyone else to do because everyone else isn't you does that make sense just uh haha just live your life just be happy be healthy do the conventional safe thing for the sake of that do what's gonna make you happy I was having conversation you're with with my chinese teacher in in chinese she knows that I like to practice political and philosophical vocabulary so she asks me some sort of provocative questions about the meaning of life and how society is organized from tonight I'm answering in Chinese been struggling course to give a meaningful answer in Chinese and you know recently she was asked me a question on those lines and about how the younger generation she suggested that the younger generation today has has the wrong ideas and therefore is not pursuing social progress literally Chinese they have the right Ian I said to her I honestly do not think that the problem is that the younger generation has the wrong ideas I think they don't know how to implement ideas and this conversation went on again in very simple chinese and I said you know honestly it doesn't matter to me if we're talking about younger people or if we're talking about older people like my grandmother I really believe that anyone who is living for their own happiness is not living a life of duty or virtue or social responsibility um and you know very sort of harsh truth but she agreed about that and you know I talked a little bit about my grandmother and I talked about how hard it is to be a teenager also i can relate to both but you know it may sound tremendously tremendously harsh and judgmental but my problem is really the same whether we're talking about my grandmother or we're talking about young people be on permanent vacation my problem is not just with the permanent vacation i really do see the idea of living for your own happiness short term and long term as a fundamentally distorting and myopic approach to life on Earth as something that cuts you off from any form of meaningful social engagement or even adopting meaningful responsibility and in a profession you know I don't really think you can become a surgeon in pursuit of this idea of self-love and your own happiness or if you do I think you're going to be a lousy surgeon I think there's a tremendous difference been someone who becomes a schoolteacher just for money or just to make themselves feel good short-term or long-term or and someone who becomes a schoolteacher who has a deep sense of commitment and obligation to that neighborhood where they're the chosen to be a schoolteacher to the children in that neighborhood maybe to the disadvantaged children maybe as to all the children I don't know or even a commitment to building that school as an institution where they feel that school is a special institution and they care about the future of that institution as something important above and beyond individual students individual teachers such as themselves above and beyond the paycheck and there have been many social science studies on that question on how all those differences in personal motivation end up producing measurable differences in outcomes short-term self-interest of individuals does not build great institutions does not deliver great medical services to people who need them and does not deliver great education to the next generation either I feel like a jerk saying this stuff you know I do just now in the lineup for me to get my vegan food one of the other students here he said to me a friendly way said hey what's up because he knows he knows i like to use the phrase what's up i said hey and he said all right so you're still pretending to be a jerk aren't you what do you what do you mean pretending I thought I really was a jerk what are you talking about and you know he was of the opinion that really am a nice guy and I pretend to be a jerk to keep my distance of the other students here yeah well some truth to that but on some level I think I'm a real jerk also I think you've got to be a jerk when i was a child i looked at my grandmother in her retirement and i saw someone who was playing tennis you know going on vacation living a life of self-indulgence and I saw my own grandmother as someone who had totally abdicated any sense of social responsibility any engagement with the problems in her own society in Canada let alone global or ecological or what have you and I saw her as someone who had given up any sense of responsibility even for me she really wasn't a grandmother to me she wasn't concerned about my education or my future helping me in any way she wasn't concerned about the very real problems in my own my own family my own nuclear family and in a very real sense I think she was a bad person um she did memorably donate money to Greenpeace if you don't know Greenpeace you could google them they're on ecological charity their environmental activist is some sort and you know if ever the subject of ecology came up you know around the dinner table myself a Kraft mother she could invoke this oh yeah I'm doing my part for the environment you know I tone eight money to Greenpeace and there are a lot of people who eat meat every day for shade meet everything her generation you know for whom that kind of thing is the the moral fig leaf is you know I I gave money at the office but for me you know I don't especially stigmatize teenagers I don't especially stigmatize the people who are wearing a bikini on the internet turn a living more than i do someone who's a dentist or a doctor or works at starbucks does any other kind of job it's true that on a deep level i just do not believe in personal happiness as the meaning of life and I I think that is you know dangerous narcissism whereas someone who seems self-confident and collected in talking about something they have every reason to be self-confident and collected and talking about I don't see that as indicating narcissism at all what we have to do is we have to chase these emotions we have to chase these instinctive natural urges to feel certain ways that's what we need a chase and it's harder than I mean easier said than done obviously like for example how do you start to just just love yourself how do you start to just valet yourself you know just it's hard but it's a daily practice the accusation of narcissism gets thrown around a lot on the internet and it's interesting to me because some of the reasons why people accuse me of being a narcissist or from my perspective not indications of narcissism they're actually indications of the exact opposite they indicate a pragmatic down-to-earth attitude being willing to talk about yourself in the first person having the self-confidence talk about yourself talk about what you want your concerns does not in and of itself indicate narcissism and on the contrary refusal to be honest of the first person who you are about the role you yourself play in the equation you're portraying can can conceal narcissism thanks manifests itself in different ways for everyone for different people you know for me loving myself means being easy on myself gonna read here a comment from YouTube public comments Sophie Sophie I commented I did not care for you or your channel when I first came across it because you struck me as being extremely narcissistic that's the question what does that mean but you've definitely grown on me and I've subscribed well I don't agree with everything you say in your videos the content is interesting educational thought-provoking and in general quality content so thank you for that so here's my response obviously many people just sent me narcissism as an insult without any turn around reflection on here's the response i wrote to be honest i think that you and many members of our generation need to re-examine what they mean by narcissistic the fact that my self-confidence may make you feel weak neither means that i'm narcissistic nor does it invalidate my opinions or the value of my content in any way judging someone as worthless or just disregarding them because they have a lot of self-confidence is deeply flawed for the same reasons that disregarding someone because they lack self-confidence would be in fact it's even worse because it is natural and normal for people to have self-confidence when they talk about something they know about are passionate about and when they feel they have something valuable to offer you and by the way on an infinite number of topics I'm aware that I have no knowledge no passion and nothing to offer thus EG i don't make youtube videos about the politics of Africa or the Caribbean all that often uh so what I'm suggesting here is that seeing self-confidence and treating it as narcissism is a mistake especially what I'm the one choosing the topic of the conversation I'm simply not choosing to talk about topics that I'm deeply uncomfortable discussing or that I lack confidence to sometimes I do on this channel sometimes to challenge myself I intentionally choose things where I'm kind of pushing my own limits where I'm getting a little bit uncomfortable on camera and I'm choosing topics that I'm not that comfortable speaking about that also reflects my back hurt in the theater anyone if you're in theater even doing stand-up comedy or something often you really want to push that limit rather than just speak on topics where you're a hundred percent confident and comfortable but confidence i think is unrelated to what's really problematic about narcissism because narcissism is not a useless concept it's not a meaningless insult I see many many vegans on the internet who lack self-confidence but whose entire content is premise on the implicit assumption that their personal happiness is everything in this world and that to me is really the malignant and dangerous element of narcissism loving myself means show yourself some empathy being easy on myself you know and just listening to myself so yeah what I'm trying to say is that when you pay your happiness and any kind of like mental state to a physical reality you're just never going to be happy why do I see so many young women and young men speaking as if their love for themselves where their primary political problem philosophical problem their primary mission in life that feeling good about themselves that loving themselves is their main objective or their only objective to me that really communicates the malignant aspects of narcissism even if they have no self-confidence even if they don't consider themselves beautiful or intelligent or powerful or influential even if they lack self discipline even if there are no topics on which they are as comfortable speaking as I am comfortable speaking about Laos or Cambodia or something you know again if I'm talking about the politics of the Caribbean I'm a lot less confident because I've done this much reading on it in contrast to other parts of the world we've done a lot of reading you know you want to talk to me about how difficult it is studying a language like chinese or kre-o heart or Japanese or you know my experience with language education what have you sure you're going to get a relaxed self-confident opinion that to me does not suggest narcissism or not the dangerous from but malignant aspects of narcissism there's a real difference between saying this is what I want this is who I am these are my concerns and saying this is real veganism this is fake veganism if you don't agree with me your fake vegan if you watch my video on community in that video on community I say again again this is what I want this is what I'm concerned about for my future here's what I'm concerned about when my own grandparents go into a retirement home or when I go into a term home or when my daughter needs to go to school etc etc here's what I want in my life here's what I'm worried about is that an indication of narcissism yeah I want a real community yeah I want it all from cradle to the grave the lawyers to the political organization to having that foundation that's respected enough that when there's a controversy in government the newspaper is know who to call maybe there are several foundations than the call where there's a voice advocating for veganism in Parliament in the newspapers on the street yeah I want it and I'm going to recognize I don't have it that's real community and we're going to have to work real hard to get what if I had phrased all the same statements in that video is very intentional that I say this is what I want and the reason is that it's with all due humility that I'm aware this may not be what you want this may not be for everyone this is not something that defines all vegans not any means if you can imagine how different the whole video would sound if instead it proposed the same argument in terms of this is what veganism means right and if you don't believe in this if you're not pursuing or supporting this then you're not a real vegan you're a fake vegan quite a few people in the internet are playing that game I'm not satisfied with what you guys call cutie i'm not satisfied with a bunch of self-indulgent middle-aged people sitting around on facebook giving each other the thumbs up or you know i'm not satisfied with a bunch of teenagers on instagram photographing their asses in a bikini and saying they're changing the world none of that does it for me okay i want more can I have it today no can I have it next year no am I going to see it before I die maybe but for me you know I don't especially stigmatize teenagers I don't especially stigmatize the people who are wearing a bikini on the internet turn a living it's true that on a deep level I just do not believe in personal happiness as the meaning of life and I I think that is you know dangerous narcissism whereas someone who seems self-confident and collected in talking about something they have every reason to be self-confident and collected and talking about I don't see that as indicating narcissism at all
boyfriend will feel love I think that you know we think that if we get this degree then we'll feel sort of accomplishment and fulfillment maybe but these things don't actually come from those fiscal things they have to be manifested internally so before you get to loving yourself and valuing yourself before you get there before you get to that dream body of yours you have to take that step you have to you know you have to get that emotion you have to follow that emotion before you can get those physical results that you desire and those physical results aren't going to equate to that emotion what we have to do is we have to chase these emotions we have to chase these instinctive natural urges to feel certain ways that's what we need to chase you are you so don't do what society tells everyone else to do because everyone else isn't you does that make sense just uh haha just live your life just be happy be healthy do the conventional safe thing for the sake of that do what's gonna make you happy I was having conversation you're with with my chinese teacher in in chinese she knows that I like to practice political and philosophical vocabulary so she asks me some sort of provocative questions about the meaning of life and how society is organized from tonight I'm answering in Chinese been struggling course to give a meaningful answer in Chinese and you know recently she was asked me a question on those lines and about how the younger generation she suggested that the younger generation today has has the wrong ideas and therefore is not pursuing social progress literally Chinese they have the right Ian I said to her I honestly do not think that the problem is that the younger generation has the wrong ideas I think they don't know how to implement ideas and this conversation went on again in very simple chinese and I said you know honestly it doesn't matter to me if we're talking about younger people or if we're talking about older people like my grandmother I really believe that anyone who is living for their own happiness is not living a life of duty or virtue or social responsibility um and you know very sort of harsh truth but she agreed about that and you know I talked a little bit about my grandmother and I talked about how hard it is to be a teenager also i can relate to both but you know it may sound tremendously tremendously harsh and judgmental but my problem is really the same whether we're talking about my grandmother or we're talking about young people be on permanent vacation my problem is not just with the permanent vacation i really do see the idea of living for your own happiness short term and long term as a fundamentally distorting and myopic approach to life on Earth as something that cuts you off from any form of meaningful social engagement or even adopting meaningful responsibility and in a profession you know I don't really think you can become a surgeon in pursuit of this idea of self-love and your own happiness or if you do I think you're going to be a lousy surgeon I think there's a tremendous difference been someone who becomes a schoolteacher just for money or just to make themselves feel good short-term or long-term or and someone who becomes a schoolteacher who has a deep sense of commitment and obligation to that neighborhood where they're the chosen to be a schoolteacher to the children in that neighborhood maybe to the disadvantaged children maybe as to all the children I don't know or even a commitment to building that school as an institution where they feel that school is a special institution and they care about the future of that institution as something important above and beyond individual students individual teachers such as themselves above and beyond the paycheck and there have been many social science studies on that question on how all those differences in personal motivation end up producing measurable differences in outcomes short-term self-interest of individuals does not build great institutions does not deliver great medical services to people who need them and does not deliver great education to the next generation either I feel like a jerk saying this stuff you know I do just now in the lineup for me to get my vegan food one of the other students here he said to me a friendly way said hey what's up because he knows he knows i like to use the phrase what's up i said hey and he said all right so you're still pretending to be a jerk aren't you what do you what do you mean pretending I thought I really was a jerk what are you talking about and you know he was of the opinion that really am a nice guy and I pretend to be a jerk to keep my distance of the other students here yeah well some truth to that but on some level I think I'm a real jerk also I think you've got to be a jerk when i was a child i looked at my grandmother in her retirement and i saw someone who was playing tennis you know going on vacation living a life of self-indulgence and I saw my own grandmother as someone who had totally abdicated any sense of social responsibility any engagement with the problems in her own society in Canada let alone global or ecological or what have you and I saw her as someone who had given up any sense of responsibility even for me she really wasn't a grandmother to me she wasn't concerned about my education or my future helping me in any way she wasn't concerned about the very real problems in my own my own family my own nuclear family and in a very real sense I think she was a bad person um she did memorably donate money to Greenpeace if you don't know Greenpeace you could google them they're on ecological charity their environmental activist is some sort and you know if ever the subject of ecology came up you know around the dinner table myself a Kraft mother she could invoke this oh yeah I'm doing my part for the environment you know I tone eight money to Greenpeace and there are a lot of people who eat meat every day for shade meet everything her generation you know for whom that kind of thing is the the moral fig leaf is you know I I gave money at the office but for me you know I don't especially stigmatize teenagers I don't especially stigmatize the people who are wearing a bikini on the internet turn a living more than i do someone who's a dentist or a doctor or works at starbucks does any other kind of job it's true that on a deep level i just do not believe in personal happiness as the meaning of life and I I think that is you know dangerous narcissism whereas someone who seems self-confident and collected in talking about something they have every reason to be self-confident and collected and talking about I don't see that as indicating narcissism at all what we have to do is we have to chase these emotions we have to chase these instinctive natural urges to feel certain ways that's what we need a chase and it's harder than I mean easier said than done obviously like for example how do you start to just just love yourself how do you start to just valet yourself you know just it's hard but it's a daily practice the accusation of narcissism gets thrown around a lot on the internet and it's interesting to me because some of the reasons why people accuse me of being a narcissist or from my perspective not indications of narcissism they're actually indications of the exact opposite they indicate a pragmatic down-to-earth attitude being willing to talk about yourself in the first person having the self-confidence talk about yourself talk about what you want your concerns does not in and of itself indicate narcissism and on the contrary refusal to be honest of the first person who you are about the role you yourself play in the equation you're portraying can can conceal narcissism thanks manifests itself in different ways for everyone for different people you know for me loving myself means being easy on myself gonna read here a comment from YouTube public comments Sophie Sophie I commented I did not care for you or your channel when I first came across it because you struck me as being extremely narcissistic that's the question what does that mean but you've definitely grown on me and I've subscribed well I don't agree with everything you say in your videos the content is interesting educational thought-provoking and in general quality content so thank you for that so here's my response obviously many people just sent me narcissism as an insult without any turn around reflection on here's the response i wrote to be honest i think that you and many members of our generation need to re-examine what they mean by narcissistic the fact that my self-confidence may make you feel weak neither means that i'm narcissistic nor does it invalidate my opinions or the value of my content in any way judging someone as worthless or just disregarding them because they have a lot of self-confidence is deeply flawed for the same reasons that disregarding someone because they lack self-confidence would be in fact it's even worse because it is natural and normal for people to have self-confidence when they talk about something they know about are passionate about and when they feel they have something valuable to offer you and by the way on an infinite number of topics I'm aware that I have no knowledge no passion and nothing to offer thus EG i don't make youtube videos about the politics of Africa or the Caribbean all that often uh so what I'm suggesting here is that seeing self-confidence and treating it as narcissism is a mistake especially what I'm the one choosing the topic of the conversation I'm simply not choosing to talk about topics that I'm deeply uncomfortable discussing or that I lack confidence to sometimes I do on this channel sometimes to challenge myself I intentionally choose things where I'm kind of pushing my own limits where I'm getting a little bit uncomfortable on camera and I'm choosing topics that I'm not that comfortable speaking about that also reflects my back hurt in the theater anyone if you're in theater even doing stand-up comedy or something often you really want to push that limit rather than just speak on topics where you're a hundred percent confident and comfortable but confidence i think is unrelated to what's really problematic about narcissism because narcissism is not a useless concept it's not a meaningless insult I see many many vegans on the internet who lack self-confidence but whose entire content is premise on the implicit assumption that their personal happiness is everything in this world and that to me is really the malignant and dangerous element of narcissism loving myself means show yourself some empathy being easy on myself you know and just listening to myself so yeah what I'm trying to say is that when you pay your happiness and any kind of like mental state to a physical reality you're just never going to be happy why do I see so many young women and young men speaking as if their love for themselves where their primary political problem philosophical problem their primary mission in life that feeling good about themselves that loving themselves is their main objective or their only objective to me that really communicates the malignant aspects of narcissism even if they have no self-confidence even if they don't consider themselves beautiful or intelligent or powerful or influential even if they lack self discipline even if there are no topics on which they are as comfortable speaking as I am comfortable speaking about Laos or Cambodia or something you know again if I'm talking about the politics of the Caribbean I'm a lot less confident because I've done this much reading on it in contrast to other parts of the world we've done a lot of reading you know you want to talk to me about how difficult it is studying a language like chinese or kre-o heart or Japanese or you know my experience with language education what have you sure you're going to get a relaxed self-confident opinion that to me does not suggest narcissism or not the dangerous from but malignant aspects of narcissism there's a real difference between saying this is what I want this is who I am these are my concerns and saying this is real veganism this is fake veganism if you don't agree with me your fake vegan if you watch my video on community in that video on community I say again again this is what I want this is what I'm concerned about for my future here's what I'm concerned about when my own grandparents go into a retirement home or when I go into a term home or when my daughter needs to go to school etc etc here's what I want in my life here's what I'm worried about is that an indication of narcissism yeah I want a real community yeah I want it all from cradle to the grave the lawyers to the political organization to having that foundation that's respected enough that when there's a controversy in government the newspaper is know who to call maybe there are several foundations than the call where there's a voice advocating for veganism in Parliament in the newspapers on the street yeah I want it and I'm going to recognize I don't have it that's real community and we're going to have to work real hard to get what if I had phrased all the same statements in that video is very intentional that I say this is what I want and the reason is that it's with all due humility that I'm aware this may not be what you want this may not be for everyone this is not something that defines all vegans not any means if you can imagine how different the whole video would sound if instead it proposed the same argument in terms of this is what veganism means right and if you don't believe in this if you're not pursuing or supporting this then you're not a real vegan you're a fake vegan quite a few people in the internet are playing that game I'm not satisfied with what you guys call cutie i'm not satisfied with a bunch of self-indulgent middle-aged people sitting around on facebook giving each other the thumbs up or you know i'm not satisfied with a bunch of teenagers on instagram photographing their asses in a bikini and saying they're changing the world none of that does it for me okay i want more can I have it today no can I have it next year no am I going to see it before I die maybe but for me you know I don't especially stigmatize teenagers I don't especially stigmatize the people who are wearing a bikini on the internet turn a living it's true that on a deep level I just do not believe in personal happiness as the meaning of life and I I think that is you know dangerous narcissism whereas someone who seems self-confident and collected in talking about something they have every reason to be self-confident and collected and talking about I don't see that as indicating narcissism at all