Critique: Earthling Ed's Political Philosophy. [TBT]

there's an old quote from Marcus
Aurelius I may be misusing the quote I may be overusing the quote but I'm using it um Marcus Aurelius says that when we're engaged in debates about philosophy we are not competing for a prize of an ordinary kind we're competing for whether we are to be sane or insane and I do think it's meaningful to engage in debates of a political philosophy within veganism in part because we're really questioning whether or not our beliefs whether or not the systems of thought were espousing whether or not the lines of reasoning we're presenting people with make us appear to be insane or insane in terms how others perceive us and also frankly whether or not were presenting a system of values within which we might drive ourselves insane are we advancing arguments that are so incoherent so self contradictory that we might if we're really being honest be driving ourselves crazy with them and both in private and in public those are questions a lot of vegans ask themselves especially if they dig in deeply to any one particular issue and the thing is you've got to remember that black people and women used to be oppressed like we oppress animals today they used to be viewed as less than and that's exactly how we view animals we view them is less than humans like we used to be black people as less than white people or women less than men it's the same idea and it's very very convenient to be the oppressor and to judge those who is speaking on behalf of the victims because you're the oppressor and you like the position you're in you're in the position of privilege in the position of power so when people try and take that away for you by saying hang on maybe not as important as you first thought you were I think the most fundamental part of earthling edge approach is what he says second not first year where he suggests that the objectives of veganism are to eliminate any barrier of more than versus less than in the relations of human versus animals and I actually object to that I I don't accept his assumptions here I don't accept the logic of his argument I don't think this is a meaningful way to present veganism to outsiders I don't think it's a meaningful way to practice veganism life if you really say that you want to eliminate the distinction of better than and less than that separates humans from animals what does that mean for the cockroaches in your life what does that mean for the bedbugs that may invest your apartment what does that mean for bees and mosquitoes guys what does it mean for chickens whether you're talking about chickens that are on a farm or chickens that are in a sanctuary or chickens that are actually living in the wilderness in the wild what I want for chickens cows and pigs whether they're currently in cages currently in sanctuaries or actually living in the wild talking about pigs as wild boars if they've actually living that quality of life living a life with dignity and a death with dignity out in the wilderness not as human pets not as human playthings but its independent from human beings I can describe that in terms of their independence from people and I can also describe it in terms of their dependence upon us because whether animals on a farm in a sanctuary or in the wilderness the reality is they rely on human beings whether it's the human beings that are literally feeding them you know on a sanctuary feeding them providing them with veterinary care and so on or if it's just the human beings who organize and manage the wildlife preservation area the National Park whatever it might be where these animals are living it's fundamentally absurd and incoherent for earthling yet to describe the objectives of the vegan movement in terms of eliminating any barrier of less than that's his his word that's not my objective in the vegan moment my objectives are attainable my objectives are neither equal rights for animals nor equal opportunity freezing this in terms of privilege and power eliminating unequal privilege and power are you really claiming that there's going to come a day in the future when human beings do not have privilege / cockroaches when human beings do not have privilege and power over bears in the wild or pigs in any of those three phases pigs on a farm pigs in a sanctuary pigs in the wilderness you really think you can eliminate the distinction of privilege and power between a human being and a wild boar or air or a human being and a pig that you may have rescued from a farm but is now dependent on human care in a sanctuary to live out its last days because some of the Yun's manage to take it away from a slaughterhouse which happens really you think the objective of what we're doing here this whole movement or the particular people running that sanctuary or the people who are working and managing and operating a National Park Conservation Area you think any of them are working towards eliminating the human privilege human privilege no no this is about human beings making better use of the privilege and power that they have and a privilege and power that we are always going to have an absolute inequality and yes an absolute responsibility the human beings have towards animals and that I think human beings have towards ecosystems towards the wilderness as a concept that that's something we do in effect have to preserve and have to manage but ineluctably we're going to be managing those things for our own benefit even if we are also doing them in order to you know keep biodiversity alive so that animals can enjoy their own lives to some extent independently in the wild ultimately there are human values that we're imposing on animals it's not a question of the animals having any honorable equal rights that we have to just let them exercise if you let a pig out of the slaughterhouse what are the rights that Pig can exercise on its own the answer is none the pig goes from one situation of total dependency on human beings to another situation of total dependency on human beings the question is whether the human beings are using their power and privilege to exploit and kill that pig of profit or for some other better goal whether it's a wild boar in the forest or a pig being helped on a sanctuary recites poppy would you be interested in taking a flyer it's about your jacket because you may not be aware but it uses dog fur on the trim so the trim comes from a coyote which comes from a species of dog and what happens they get caught in these leg-hold traps and sometimes they're in there for about 72 hours before the hunter comes to get them but a lot of these coyotes and mothers so what happens is their cubs are left alone at home and they either get killed by predators or they starve to death okay are you aware that the fur trimmer your coats real dog fur did you ask that permission of the coyote if you could kill it tell me about what can what about the animal why do you tell her where I can where know what I can't none of your what about the animal though is it the basis of the animal are we advancing arguments that are so incoherent that we might if we're really being honest be driving ourselves crazy with them look at for example the abolitionist arguments against single issue causes so in this video I'm debating with a guy named earthling ed and he's aware of the critique of his position come from the abolitionists the abolitionists claim that it's really in particular try to encourage people to stop wearing fur coats and they have this very complex into my mind somewhat incoherent and a rational argument as to why addressing any single issue cause such as fur actually it's very negative for veganism as a movement on the whole and I've I should have seen Ed's response to that and I think Ed's response is quite meaningful and you know uh well in tension I think he does address that quite well among other things ed just says that actually protesting against fur it's related to veganism but it's not the same as veganism and you have to evaluate in a separate way I think it's a very intelligent set of reasons he sets out for why he personally engages in protests against fur while also being a part of the vegan movement but that position the abolitionist position that opposes all single-issue causes I've made videos really raising the question what if we we believe this if we really espouse this and we really live by it is this singing or insane why would it be vegan to oppose saving a particular species of dolphins in a particular River that's a single issue cause the abolitionists if they really believe what they're preaching they would have to say no no no you're assuming that dolphins are cute and therefore they ought to have more rights or more attention for human beings this is a form of implicit speciesism and you're only affirming oppression blah blah blah the abolitionists the same way they oppose anti-fur protests would oppose a positive ecological charity organization trying to save a particular species of dolphin in a particular River trying to save them from extinction because they're opposed to all single issue causes and that is to my mind crazy and broadly speaking this is one of the reasons why I engage in critique of this kind meaningful discussion of political philosophy within veganism for one thing in general steel sharpens steel we all become sharper by engaging in these kinds of examinations of what we believe why we believe it etc and also I think there really is this meaningful question of have we let incoherent and contradictory assumptions creep into our line of thinking that might in fact bring us closer to insanity than sanity even though we are all supporting and pursuing this good cause that everyone watching this video probably agrees is a good cause veganism as an end goal the vegan society a vegan world how everyone to think of it or just a handful of individuals becoming vegan one at a time and supporting positive political and social change and yet it's so easy it's so easy it's so easy for a popular term like social justice to creep its way into the discourse and actually really distort how we think about veganism how we present veganism how we pursue and prepare veganism so earthling ed has a video in which he addresses the misconception that vegans are forcing their beliefs on others whether or not it's a misconception is defeatable hey guys so I just wanted to a quick video today discussing the idea of forcing beliefs as vegans were always talked about pushing our beliefs onto others and I'm not really sure if it's a criticism at all and I think a good place to start with this is to view social justice movements in the past if we look at the black rights movement they force their beliefs of equality onto racists and if we look at the suffragettes movement on the feminist movement they force their views of gender equality on misogynists so to claim that it's negative to force your beliefs onto others is incredibly misguided because if social justice movements did not do this if they didn't make their needs heard or their beliefs heard then they would never achieve their goals it's by forcing your views on others that real social change can be enacted because if you didn't do so then nothing would ever change right off the bat earthling ed is assuming that veganism is a social justice movement I have a video that is simply titled veganism is not a social justice movement so that is not an assumption I share with him I would challenge that assumption and I have challenged in the past but on the basis of this assumption edie then answers the objection that vegans force their beliefs and others by claiming that vegans only do so in the same sense in which any and every social justice movement must do so and he gives what he thinks are flattering examples of the struggle for black rights ie equal rights for black people really meaning African American in the United States and at least talking about South Africa maybe is but this sounds like he's alluding to the history of United States of America and equal rights for women women's equality now already we have as you a very fundamental problem here which is the failure to recognize the meaning of the term social justice social justice means distributive justice and actually the history of the struggle for black rights United States did not aim at distributive justice or redistribute it did not name at social justice and it also did not achieve social justice this video would be even longer than it already is if I dealt more deeply with the definition of social justice it is true that social justice is more specific than distributive justice or redistribute justice most people complain that the term is still not specific enough however if you had a social movement that was for example aimed at taking away a land from men and giving it to women redistributing land ownership that might be described as a social justice movement for women as trying to achieve social justice women that women ought to own as much land as men it should be very obvious to you that equal opportunity for women the equal right to vote for women or equal access to education for men those things are not social justice issues by the strict definition of the term black rights the United States of America tried to achieve equal opportunity and of all the paradigms to compare to veganism Equal Opportunity is especially difficult to relate to the conditions of animals especially talking about factory farming so the main thing we're talking about here it's also completely meaningless to try to apply the concept of equal opportunity to animals living in the wild in a national park in a habitat conservation area what does equal opportunity mean to a bear in the forest or to a cow living in a concrete shed it means nothing it's completely meaningless and there are some people including a Friedrich von Hayek who would claim that social justice itself is a meaningless concept it's interesting debate to have I don't think it's meaningless I think we have to recognize its particular and specific meaning and in the same sense that equal opportunity it's just a concept that doesn't apply to animals in these cases in the same way we have to recognize that social justice doesn't apply to animals in these ways the people who support domesticated pets and who care a lot about legal rights for dogs and cats that's a movement within veganism we don't talk about that much of this channel it's called the citizenship approach so for example those people want to see laws passed so that if a poor family owns a dog or cat and they can't afford surgery then the government will in effect provide health care for this dog or pet so that they don't have to just kill the animal going to put it down they feel it's against the rights the animal to just be killed for the convenience of the family that owns the pet or to be killed because of the poverty of the family that owns the pet so it's a very straightforward concept but nevertheless we can't actually describe this in terms of equal opportunity or social justice it's not social justice for a dog or a cat that has had its testicles chopped off may have had its hapless sorry its claws pulled out of its palms may have had its teeth removed may have had all these surgical modifications made to its body so that it just lives like a toy for human entertainment there's no there's no sense of social justice and then providing that animal with yet more surgeries to extend the animal's life extend its status of perpetual dependency living on this family's carpet that's not equality that's not equal opportunity it's not social justice and it may nevertheless be a question worth asking if poor people own dogs and cats and then those dogs and cats need expensive surgeries legally what is the responsibility of the taxpayer you tell me so it is not so easy to invoke the name of black rights civil rights for African Americans and to say well they force their beliefs on others is exactly what earthling had claims here therefore it's okay for vegans to to force diplomas it's actually tremendously meaningful to recognize that the time of the nine States of America in the United States the government did not force these beliefs on others it remained your civil right in the United States to believe whatever you want to believe those movements did not seek to create uniformity of belief in America and they did not even seek to deprive for example a Christian preacher of the freedom to save racist things which they continued saying there are still to this day white churches in America that preach against black people and there are although more rarely you can see examples of racist black churches that preach against white people in America and preach that white people a devil they very much have freedom of expression to voice those opinions freedom of belief and even the freedom to organize those racist views into formal churches and political parties so again earthling ed is British he may not understand this he may not appreciate the significance of this but the civil rights movement black rights equal rights for African Americans never aimed at forcing their beliefs and others and the United States because their constitutional tradition it actually very much preserved the freedom of belief for people still to this day in the United States it is legal to have a whites-only church or a blacks only church and you can see that all over America and the things that the preachers are preaching inside those churches whether they're Christian or some other religion or they're a new-age cult or what-have-you may indeed be racist they have freedom of opinion which includes freedom of racism and freedom of belief okay so black rights did not try to change people's beliefs they tried to change government policy what are those policy changes aimed at they're aimed at equal opportunity so what really mattered for civil rights the United States for example yes there's an obvious question can black people actually vote and there were a number of hurdles and obstacles and changes that to be made because in many parts United States in theory black people had the right to vote vote but in practice they couldn't really make it happen there have been unfair obstacles created they're exercising that right but much trickier were things like looking at did black people and white people actually have an equal ability to get a bank loan in order to buy a house or to build a new house how do you legislate racism out of the banking system so that people truly have equal opportunity how do you legislate racism out of the hiring process at large institutions so that black people white peope truly of equal opportunity how do you amend and revise an education system which in the United States had been built on segregation had been built on elitism including openly a racist elitism how do you change that education system so that black people and white people have equal opportunity the results were imperfect but they were dramatically better in the 1990s than they were in the 1940s tremendous change not aimed at forcing beliefs is not about belief it was about equal opportunity and if you're really honest with yourself and you really care about being consistent just think open to the meaning of these words and what they would mean your own life if you believed in them and practice them consistently I think you have to admit to yourself that equal opportunity is completely meaningless in reference to a pig that's awaiting slaughter in a slaughterhouse if we rescue that Pig we can't grant an equal opportunity we can't grant granted equal rights the best thing we can probably do for that pig right now in 2017 is either put it in a sanctuary or try to rehabilitate it to some extent and introduce it back into the wild if that pig can to some extent it enjoy its life as a wild boar would if it can be rehabilitated trying to have some kind of positive life but no matter which way you look at it the pig that's eaten all its food out of a human hand is not in a position to exercise equal rights it's meaningless it's meaningless whether we're talking about the wilderness or we're talking about a farm or we're talking about pets living the whole lives in the rock there are plenty of positive things about earthling ed his approach to activism and his YouTube channel and above all else he does have the redeeming quality of keeping it real because he's honest with his audience he's honest about the shortcomings of his approach to activism he's honest developed when it goes wrong when it just doesn't accomplish much when he has these conversations with strangers don't really go anywhere I think we all can kind of learn from his experience and learn from his mistakes as they unfold on screen he has been doing this for about a year and a half his current approach to veganism and I think he probably will adapt and take on new methods new angles in the years ahead so for all that I kind of congratulate him and I appreciate him and I wish him the best and I think whether viewers are just looking at as entertainment or really looking at it and questioning in their own lives what they can do what is effective active doesn't mean to them a lot more good comes out of it than harm well that hadn't been said I really do find that watching his videos is yet another reminder how some of these simple assumptions can lead to false and counterproductive and even insane beliefs within veganism it may seem so simple and so appealing to argue that the objective of veganism is a crusade against privilege but it's not it does not make sense to present or pursue veganism as the abolition of human privilege that is simply insane human beings are now privileged when contrast to a bear in the wild I want us to use that privilege to have practices of wildlife habitat management conservation that respect the Bears their dignity in life and their dignity in death and prevent them from going extinct that manage their numbers when they get too low or and it gets you high over population under population if there's a plague that breaks out in the forest I do not see any sense in which I can imagine the future of this planet as one in which human beings have no privilege when they're compared to bears or no privilege when they're compared to cows or no privilege when they're compared to pigs let alone cockroaches mosquitoes and bedbugs that is simply crazy and thinking of our objectives that way thinking of our means that way and then offering it as a justification for the shortcomings in our approaches when people say well aren't you imposing your beliefs on others I don't think it's a meaningful or rational or fair comeback to say well we're a social justice movement and it's partly because I don't believe that we are if you sit down and really think in a meaningful way about what social justice means what it means for us and what it would mean for the animals and apart from that it's not really sincerely grappling with the issue Earthling ad choses flattering examples he says what about black rights civil rights women's rights well what about the history of the Catholic Church what about the history of Islam what about the history of forcing your beliefs on others conversion by the sword what about really examining what people mean when they talk about forcing your beliefs and others and why it is such a dangerous thing in human political history whether we're talking about communism or conservative Islam across the board why don't we take that seriously why don't we show us sincere interest in examining what's wrong in our own movements and learning from the history of other movements instead of dismissing it with this sort of cynical ploy of saying well what about women's rights what about black rights struggles that we are ourselves I think Edie we can say we are ourselves not experts in that we're not sincerely examining in terms of the very little bit they have in common with veganism and how much they don't have in common veganism ultimately emancipation of black people United States relied on a civil war and nobody in veganism is talking about how to sell war the differences are much more meaningful and of a great much greater magnitude than the similarities but a simple subtle idea of this kind social justice inserts itself early on into how we think about veganism and then it leads to conclusions that veganism is somehow an attempt to get rid of the distinctions of greater than and less than that it's a mission to abolish privilege and that human beings is Ed says himself he claims the humans feel guilty because they're in this position of power and privilege that must end and the power and privilege we have over animals is never gonna end and you and I as vegans are never gonna stop eating bread and beans vegetables that are produced if we're keeping it all the way real every day by killing animals Gophers groundhogs there's a huge array of insect and mammal life that we kill every day whether it's on a fruit farm on a wheat farm or on a bean farm or what have you if we really believe that the vegan movement was as you described it an attempt to abolish the privilege the superiority that human beings exercised of our animals I think we would be insane and on the contrary if we look at it as a more responsible use of that power of privilege of facing up to the moral responsibility that's incumbent on us to do the best we can with that privilege and to stop thinking in terms of short-term self gratification or just clinging on to really a bunch of cultural customs that are now obsolete then how we think about veganism how we practice it in our own lives changes how we present it to others changes and yeah I think in a really meaningful sense the future of the movement changes to the new Yin