The Vegan Jerk (vs. "Being a Nice Guy")

yo what up um I'm not a nice guy one of
the things that some people reacted to in a really extreme way when I was living in Southeast Asia I'm talking about Westerners who were also living Southeast Asia was my openly telling them I am NOT a nice guy do not depend on me to do the things that you expect a nice guy to do now the other Westerners who are living with me in Asia some were from Australia some were from England a few from Canada in the United States but you know like there are Australians who if they think of you as a nice guy they expect you to come out to the pub and play billiards with them on short notice you know there were British guys too who would think you know they'd meet me uh and I guess their impression of me would be of a kind of a know masculine guy I mean you know I'm not gay and you know they would think I was gonna show up and watch football with them at the pub sometime and you know they sound may sound like a small thing but it's really not I may be not what people expect for a bookish intellectual yeah I wish these were props in the background but I mean I had to communicate to people the life I'm living out here I'm not on vacation I'm not a nice guy I don't do any of the things you do with your time I don't make any other compromises you make with your time in terms of ethical compromises I've said before it's not a good thing to be an uncompromising character it means you're a jerk in terms of the other Westerners living in in Asia including great scholars men with PhD and so on a lot of those guys are going to brothels a lot of them were sleeping with prostitutes now again I did not want to be a complete jerk about it but those are compromises I was not willing to make so you know why would you advertise the fact that you're not a nice guy it's because you're living in a cultural context you understand what being a nice guy means and you understand that you're not going to live up those expectations and you know that can really just be someone coming around and and knocking on your door and saying hey you know are you gonna come out and play billiards tonight and for them you know they really expect that would be normal for someone like you for who they expect you to be I say this in pro you'd uh I don't know there are there are all kinds of different people who get attracted to veganism and you know most of us are not nice guys I've said before there's a sort of Catholicism element to this there's a very moral overbearing element of ethical veganism and I like to think I'm less of a jerk about it because I'm really aware of it I'm aware of you know when I'm imposing on others and when I'm really behaving in a way that's wildly unexpected from a Western cultural perspective or an Eastern cultural perspective like when I was in Taiwan Taiwan has a very strong tradition of vegetarian and V vegetarianism and veganism but it's attached to religions that I'm not a part of and you know I'd meet people who would look at me with like pity when they found out I was vegan they'd be like oh you you poor thing you're a victim of one of these ridiculous cults and you you know you believe in your your grandparents haunting you as ghosts or something which people do I mean I've met people who really believe in hidden ghosts in that emotionally immediate way where you know ghosts are no joke where ghosts are a part of their daily lives in rituals and in their beliefs and in their interpretation of their dreams and where they actually go and speak to you know a specialist to deal with hauntings and you know they perceive themselves as living in a world where ghosts are real whether that's under the heading of Buddhism or Taoism or some other religion and of course veganism what makes this especially strange is that there are so many people declaring veganism is all about compassion it's all about being a nice person and a loving person and a good person in in a certain sense the kindly old cat lady the person who keeps pets and cuddles them and so on and of course there are different people playing different angles in terms of yoga I mean specifically selling yoga for weight loss I mean selling bicycles for weight loss and you know bicycle says but I mean the whole yoga contingent and the vague dotted lines connecting veganism exist today to a kind of watered-down westernized Hinduism that's that's very real I wouldn't I wouldn't underestimate the short-term or long-term implications of that I'm gonna be interested to see in the next 10 years I think a lot of the action in veganism worldwide is gonna come from Hindus Hindus and people who are culturally Hindu but who may not believe in any particular God or anything supernatural but who grow up with the idea that killing a cow is a significant act and who can then build on that pretty easily to a critique of the dairy industry critique of the meat industry I'm wondering what happens next and you know I've gotten fan mail from some people who are self-critical also because get my my opening point here is I'm aware of flaws in my character things that are socially perceived as bad as flaws things that make me a bit of an uncompromising character a bit of a jerk I have likewise received some email from people who are self-critical and who can recognize that they themselves really are a bit of a crazy old cat lady I would use pretty much those words they say well you know I am the kind of person who has cooped up in a house full of animals and people do perceive me as eccentric because I'm such an animal lover and this is how I came to veganism and so on but I can still perceive these are problems x y&z now under this heading the heading of me being a jerk I can really recognize why someone like durianrider gets on to his harden up kick harden the blank up I myself do not like excuses now likewise some of the excuses people make for meat-eating really bother me of course I disagree with them rationally but my point here is in terms of the side of my character that's very uncompromising very moralizing and a bit of a jerk I also react emotionally I react irrationally in addition to my rationally held understanding of the world something I would compare that to living in Canada I am exposed to a lot of racism against First Nations people in Canada First Nations what we call our indigenous people equivalent to the term American Indians in America but believe it or not they don't come from India so anyway we say First Nations and now of course when I react to that when white people are making excuses for genocide when white people are making excuses for bad legal policies we've had in candid in the recent past or bad laws we still have currently the dire situation First Nations are often in I am partly reacting rationally because this is something I've studied this and I have cared about for a lot of my life it's something have an informed opinion on but I'm also partly reacting irrationally I'm partly reacting emotionally and I do not see any reason to mask that reaction I remember a guy who was vegetarian not vegan a Canadian guy who visited me in Taiwan strange situation maybe and you know he was responding with complete in comprehension to my being angry and being openly angry in response to what he said about First Nations I said to him do you think I would be ashamed to be angry when what you have said is pro genocide you know yes I'm angry yes what you're saying makes me angry and I could conceal that I'm quite capable of stifling that bathing another way but you're a guest in my house and I'm letting you know openly you know both that I disagree with you rationally and that this makes me angry as an adult these are the sort of social tight ropes we all walk on but I would like to think that one of the rather deep differences between myself and Harley aka durianrider is that I do not have this misconception that telling people to harden up will solve the problem it's really kind of similar to telling people to smarten up I'm just telling you to heart it up it presumes that you already understand what the problem is you already understand what the solution is and all that's lacking is for you to have the will to solve it for you to have the resolution to do what it takes to harden up smarten up is similar if I tell you to smarten up and solve a problem then nothing else needs to be explained to you you don't need to be convinced and there's also nothing lacking in terms of your ability it's a very peculiar example of that actually and the advice that durianrider gave to to Jo best and you know his advice didn't work you can tell Jo best to harden up ten times or 20 times you can tell them not to be weak you can tell them to think like a champion in that situation ultimately I've got more sympathy for Jo best because he's open about the fact that there are some things he can't do there's some things he struggles with psychologically compulsive eating there's some weaknesses he has and just telling him to harden up won't solve the problem won't help him be vegan won't help him lose weight or anything else but it's veganism that work we're debating here and there are a lot of people in that situation in Jo best case he has a long history he used to talk about of going to a sham and religious leaders in in India and so on and I'm sure many of them gave him equally bad advice of different kinds but no just telling people to harden up and do what they supposedly already know to do is is not going to solve that problem if I meet someone in Canada who is from my perspective racist but they do not perceive themselves as racist they do not perceive themselves as being Pro genocide or against First Nations it doesn't help anything for me to say to them hard it up smarten up you know be hard be resolute or what have you recently I went into a menswear shop a very large menswear shop selling you know suits and ties men's formalwear and it was out in the suburbs that's why was large it wasn't a shop downtown here and I just walked up to the guy in charge the manager and I said well look I'm vegan I know that 90% of what you've got here is wool so can you direct me to whatever you have in the shop that's made out of cotton or polyester or cotton polyester yeah you know I went in there expecting 90 percent or 95 percent of what they had to be made out of wool but in fact this guy revealed that 100 percent of what they had in the shop was made of wool that didn't make me angry what made me angry were the excuses he started to offer me after that as I say this explains part of why I am vegan but this is not really a redeeming side of my character it's not the fact of the situation if that this guy was going on to try to explain to me that it was not practical to make men's clothing out of cotton or polyester that there were supposedly laws of physics unknown to me that made wool a superior material in so many ways and that really you know human beings can't exist without using wool now I did not show my anger I felt angry but I remained cordial and relaxed I said to him well you know a lot of people say that but you you may not have noticed the military today they don't make anything out of wool you know what the Navy a hundred years ago everything was wool and today none of it is you know why do you why do you think that is if wool were really the super material you're describing if it was really the solution to so many problems you know US Marine Corps would be using wool and they're not and he laughed in my face and he said oh that's just because budget isn't high enough it's too expensive use wool now I did not respond to that angrily but that does anger me even though it may be a small thing he's making excuses for for me I really react negatively to hearing people make these kind of excuses justifications it's bad in itself and that whole tendency of mine leads to other really bad things now I felt like laughing in his face and saying to him you think the US Marine Corps lacks the budget to buy wool shop there are tons of cheap wool suits in this shop but I did not say that him I went on to say well you know luxury mountain climbing gear so this is a on the spot I only came of this half and second but what I said to him reacting meal it was luxury mountain climbing gear is no longer made at a wool it was a hundred years ago I think it was even twenty years ago when I was a kid but you know the stuff they sell them on clearance now none of it is wool because wool is not really a practical material for this sort of thing now I digress I did not say this at the time if you have ever taken wool and try to wash it with soap and water and then dry it that alone would convince you I mean in contrast to cotton and polyester and other conventional materials wool is incredibly fussy to maintain or keep working over any length of time especially if you have friction involved but just washing and drying it is a nightmare apart from the ethical perspective on this and I am NOT gonna splice it images of this but you can see both still photographs and video from the reality of wool production that will give you nightmares for years it is a horrifyingly brutal process and it includes things like skinning calves sorry skinning sheep alive which is something I have seen done in Europe always this mystique about the Orient where people imagine the treatment of animals is much more brutal in China you know if the fur industry is worse in Asia than it is in Norway yeah well you can watch the video and they're doing the same things to animals in Norway that they do in China and ye gods I've seen images from Spain and other parts of Europe and what they do to sheep and producing wool and related products the human mind cannot devise worse atrocities against animals neither and in Asia nor in Europe ok but look I know I'm not making the parallelism completely clear I walk into this shop I look at the wool hanging on the shelves hanging on the walls and to me it's just as bad as seeing the corpses of dead animals on the walls but to everyone else in the shop it's invisible they don't think they're doing any harm and you know wool doesn't smell bad it doesn't smell like a rotting animal corpse it's not like buying a lobster a lobster has eyes and legs and you can see the lobster used to be alive and now it's a dead animal with wool everything kind of evil and repugnant about it is invisible and the people who are participating in this culture it's not a subculture it's a mainstream culture again at the idea that wool is completely necessary for respectable men's wear even though it's totally impractical the only way to be a respectable businessman and go to the offices to wear a wool suit is a cultural delusion in no way functional to them the moral problem is invisible and it is completely impossible for me to say to them as durianrider would say harden up harden the [ __ ] up you know it would be completely useless because they don't see the problem be useless to me to say to them smarten up do the smart thing you're dealing with a level of voluntary ignorance and excuse making being very deeply trammeled into people and embraced by people I mean you know there they are embracing it it's very hard to negotiate very hard to cope with and as I say for me I have a rational reaction to it but I also have an emotional reaction to it and here in Canada I can tell you that is similar to when you talk to a white person and they say I see no reason why our tax dollars should spend more on indigenous people on First Nations than we do want white people we should all be equal we should just break all of the laws get rid of the treaty obligations you know like seriously you meet and talk to white people in Canada who believe that the laws are racist against white people that white people are a disadvantage compared to First Nations you know because in theory of First Nations person can get tuition free access to universities under certain circumstances meet anyone who's gone through the bureaucratic process to get that free tuition yeah it's basically like a special scholarship to say sorry sorry about what we did to you over the last 400 years you know those people these white people who say these things who have these justifications excuse about First Nations they do not perceive themselves as racist they do not perceive themselves as part of the problem they do not perceive themselves as doing something immoral and that is why it is completely useless to say to them harden up smarten up do better or do the right thing and it is even really pretty counterproductive most of the time to get angry at them and I can understand I can sympathize with the perspective they're coming from because I was raised in this culture too I was raised with delusions about wool and leather and First Nations people and the British Empire and the history of colonial colonialism and the glorious history of Canada is the country now Canada is supposedly so morally superior the United States you don't know we were raised with these delusions here in Canada and coming back to my very first point I can also recognize that what makes me different from these people my fellow Canadians my fellow wool wearing conservative voting Canadians who you know think there's nothing wrong with I don't know putting First Nations into a box or whatever I can recognize that what makes me different from them does not make me better than that a lot of the character traits that led me out of that delusion that led me to question those assumptions are exactly the character traits that to be blunt make me a jerk