Veganism Must Change, Here's Why.
17 May 2018 [link youtube]
#PoliticsInPyjamas
Youtube Automatic Transcription
veganism has to change and insured
here's why can you remember the first time somebody told you that cigarettes were bad for your health or the first time someone told you there's hard scientific evidence that cigarettes cause cancer depending on how old you are it's quite possible you can't it's quite possible you heard that when you were a very young child that it was part of your part of your grade for education that it's such an early memory you can't remember the first time you learned that you can't remember a time of your life when you thought cigarettes we're good for your health but for many people depending on which generation they're from depend on when they went through this process many people grew up surrounded by propaganda and advertising that either just implicitly represented cigarette smoking as something luxurious enjoyable healthy normal and fun or they actually even grew up with propaganda actively claiming that cigarettes were healthy I can remember that advertisements that made me laugh out loud from Lucky Strike claiming that because they were toasted because it's toasted they were they were good for your health obviously this is decades and decades ago this is the step of advertise would be illegal today the first time the first time people learn that cigarettes cause cancer the cigarettes are bad for the health it may make a huge impact it may or may not motivate them to quit smoking personally it may lead them to regard their own life in a in a different way I knew one fellow he must be over 50 years old now I don't know I remember him saying passionately and he grew up in Ireland I not the stereotype the Irish but um I remember him him saying to me with real emotion that um when he really found out what cigarettes had done to him that he felt cheated that he felt robbed and that in large party he felt robbed of you know life itself because when he found out he was hospitalised he was in a hospital bed and he was coughing up you know unbelievable black I think black tar from his long I forget the medical details now he did he did get out of that hospital bed he had three or four different health conditions and two or three of them he managed to recover from and you know he is he did quit smoking and his his life went on but the impact of learning for the first time the cigarettes are terrible for you it didn't have that impact the second time the third time the fifth time the tenth time it can't possibly it becomes normal it ceases to be new it ceases to be shocking it loses its ability to to shock it lose its ability to change human behavior it goes from being a sudden clash of drums that gets your attention to being part of the regular drumbeat of our daily lives I could say something similar about purely ethical concerns can you remember the first time you found out that the United States was using torture to extract information from enemy combatants or people they seemed to pick out almost at random from their their wars around the world can you remember your first time learning with that for some of us again it might be great for it might be childhood for some of us it might have been in our teenage years in college or even after we joined the workforce when you really found out the details of routinized state sanctioned torture can you remember when it was a sudden crash and then can you remember the second time the fifth time the tenth time how this just became part of the familiar drumbeat of daily life veganism has to change because the information that we've relied on getting people's attention and getting people's motivation at this point is very much like that short-term shock and when I look at groups like direct action everywhere I think what they're really trying to do is arrest the movement in that moment of horror that moment of realization they want people to not let go of that necessarily fleeting feeling that you've been lied to that you've been cheated your whole life you were told this was something wholesome and not only is it bad for your health it comes from an unbelievably unethical factory farming process right and for many people you know maybe you watching this video but maybe you also remember the first time you explained this to your own parents or to your boyfriends or girlfriends to somebody in your life you've probably been around somebody and you observe them the first time they really figured out where milk comes from the first time they really figured out where where meat comes from but guess what just like learning that cigarette smoking is bad for you the fifth time the 10th time the 100th time you've heard it it loses its ability to shock it loses its stunning effect of being of a cymbal crash whatever you want to say and it becomes part of the drumbeat of daily life veganism in some ways has really had kind of a free ride especially I'd say in the last five years because of this medium right here because of YouTube because of video sharing on the internet it's true I mean I can remember back when I was in high school people would there were still photographs of factory farm conditions and that did there was you know there was some momentum given to veganism I don't know 1997 I can't remember what what things were like back then mmm but it's true there's nothing else quite like I mean the stereotypical experience is the first time somebody watched earthling so the first time they watched from farm to fridge any of these documentaries that collects together documentary film footage from inside factory farms from inside slaughterhouses or maybe they just saw some the Internet that with no gore with nothing no explicit imagery in a diagrammatic way explain to you where milk comes from or why free-range chicken eggs you really aren't so free at all you know but all of that now coming to an end lightning doesn't strike twice the sense of shock and horror and short-term motivation that people took from this first encounter with the truth that was concealed by shiny packaging and you know to some extent yes industry propaganda to some extent just the human capacity to hope that things will turn out for the best just wishful thinking just straight-up wishful thinking that you'd like to imagine milk is produced from some happy cartoon farm or the cows are frolicking in the fields you know I think that's also part of what you're up against here is just human optimism right veganism has to change you may disagree with me about the way forward but I hope just from this short video you can recognize the way forward is not the way back we can't possibly do what direct action everywhere is trying to do and try to hold ourselves by the throat and grab others by the throat with these emotive Appeals with breaking down weeping in a restaurant and screaming it's not food it's violence with pretending that that moment of initial shock and horror is gonna shake people out of their indifference as perhaps you feel it shaped us out of ours okay that's a fleeting moment both in each person's life on their progress towards veganism and when you scale it up for society as a whole there is simply put a point of diminishing returns to the shock caused by factory farm footage and for that same reason there is a point of diminishing returns to the whole political methodology of disruption and of confrontation one of the most praised methods of activism right now is the so called cube of truth I don't why they don't call it the square of truth because it's two-dimensional but of confronting strangers on the street with videotape footage of what's going on in factory farms maybe you can remember how you felt the first time you saw that kind of footage but the second time the fifth time the tenth time think about it if we want long-term to be a society that smokes zero cigarettes we can't go around with this kind of emotive language trying to drag people back to that feeling of shock and horror when they first realized cigarettes cause lung cancer showing them horrifying images of the esophagus and lungs of people who've been impaired by this disease who are dying a slow painful death it becomes part of the regular drumbeat of life it becomes something everybody knows and that not everybody but the majority accepts if we aspire to become a society in which nobody smokes cigarettes to become a society in which nobody eats meat that's the road ahead but it's not gonna be based on short-term shock aw and anguish
here's why can you remember the first time somebody told you that cigarettes were bad for your health or the first time someone told you there's hard scientific evidence that cigarettes cause cancer depending on how old you are it's quite possible you can't it's quite possible you heard that when you were a very young child that it was part of your part of your grade for education that it's such an early memory you can't remember the first time you learned that you can't remember a time of your life when you thought cigarettes we're good for your health but for many people depending on which generation they're from depend on when they went through this process many people grew up surrounded by propaganda and advertising that either just implicitly represented cigarette smoking as something luxurious enjoyable healthy normal and fun or they actually even grew up with propaganda actively claiming that cigarettes were healthy I can remember that advertisements that made me laugh out loud from Lucky Strike claiming that because they were toasted because it's toasted they were they were good for your health obviously this is decades and decades ago this is the step of advertise would be illegal today the first time the first time people learn that cigarettes cause cancer the cigarettes are bad for the health it may make a huge impact it may or may not motivate them to quit smoking personally it may lead them to regard their own life in a in a different way I knew one fellow he must be over 50 years old now I don't know I remember him saying passionately and he grew up in Ireland I not the stereotype the Irish but um I remember him him saying to me with real emotion that um when he really found out what cigarettes had done to him that he felt cheated that he felt robbed and that in large party he felt robbed of you know life itself because when he found out he was hospitalised he was in a hospital bed and he was coughing up you know unbelievable black I think black tar from his long I forget the medical details now he did he did get out of that hospital bed he had three or four different health conditions and two or three of them he managed to recover from and you know he is he did quit smoking and his his life went on but the impact of learning for the first time the cigarettes are terrible for you it didn't have that impact the second time the third time the fifth time the tenth time it can't possibly it becomes normal it ceases to be new it ceases to be shocking it loses its ability to to shock it lose its ability to change human behavior it goes from being a sudden clash of drums that gets your attention to being part of the regular drumbeat of our daily lives I could say something similar about purely ethical concerns can you remember the first time you found out that the United States was using torture to extract information from enemy combatants or people they seemed to pick out almost at random from their their wars around the world can you remember your first time learning with that for some of us again it might be great for it might be childhood for some of us it might have been in our teenage years in college or even after we joined the workforce when you really found out the details of routinized state sanctioned torture can you remember when it was a sudden crash and then can you remember the second time the fifth time the tenth time how this just became part of the familiar drumbeat of daily life veganism has to change because the information that we've relied on getting people's attention and getting people's motivation at this point is very much like that short-term shock and when I look at groups like direct action everywhere I think what they're really trying to do is arrest the movement in that moment of horror that moment of realization they want people to not let go of that necessarily fleeting feeling that you've been lied to that you've been cheated your whole life you were told this was something wholesome and not only is it bad for your health it comes from an unbelievably unethical factory farming process right and for many people you know maybe you watching this video but maybe you also remember the first time you explained this to your own parents or to your boyfriends or girlfriends to somebody in your life you've probably been around somebody and you observe them the first time they really figured out where milk comes from the first time they really figured out where where meat comes from but guess what just like learning that cigarette smoking is bad for you the fifth time the 10th time the 100th time you've heard it it loses its ability to shock it loses its stunning effect of being of a cymbal crash whatever you want to say and it becomes part of the drumbeat of daily life veganism in some ways has really had kind of a free ride especially I'd say in the last five years because of this medium right here because of YouTube because of video sharing on the internet it's true I mean I can remember back when I was in high school people would there were still photographs of factory farm conditions and that did there was you know there was some momentum given to veganism I don't know 1997 I can't remember what what things were like back then mmm but it's true there's nothing else quite like I mean the stereotypical experience is the first time somebody watched earthling so the first time they watched from farm to fridge any of these documentaries that collects together documentary film footage from inside factory farms from inside slaughterhouses or maybe they just saw some the Internet that with no gore with nothing no explicit imagery in a diagrammatic way explain to you where milk comes from or why free-range chicken eggs you really aren't so free at all you know but all of that now coming to an end lightning doesn't strike twice the sense of shock and horror and short-term motivation that people took from this first encounter with the truth that was concealed by shiny packaging and you know to some extent yes industry propaganda to some extent just the human capacity to hope that things will turn out for the best just wishful thinking just straight-up wishful thinking that you'd like to imagine milk is produced from some happy cartoon farm or the cows are frolicking in the fields you know I think that's also part of what you're up against here is just human optimism right veganism has to change you may disagree with me about the way forward but I hope just from this short video you can recognize the way forward is not the way back we can't possibly do what direct action everywhere is trying to do and try to hold ourselves by the throat and grab others by the throat with these emotive Appeals with breaking down weeping in a restaurant and screaming it's not food it's violence with pretending that that moment of initial shock and horror is gonna shake people out of their indifference as perhaps you feel it shaped us out of ours okay that's a fleeting moment both in each person's life on their progress towards veganism and when you scale it up for society as a whole there is simply put a point of diminishing returns to the shock caused by factory farm footage and for that same reason there is a point of diminishing returns to the whole political methodology of disruption and of confrontation one of the most praised methods of activism right now is the so called cube of truth I don't why they don't call it the square of truth because it's two-dimensional but of confronting strangers on the street with videotape footage of what's going on in factory farms maybe you can remember how you felt the first time you saw that kind of footage but the second time the fifth time the tenth time think about it if we want long-term to be a society that smokes zero cigarettes we can't go around with this kind of emotive language trying to drag people back to that feeling of shock and horror when they first realized cigarettes cause lung cancer showing them horrifying images of the esophagus and lungs of people who've been impaired by this disease who are dying a slow painful death it becomes part of the regular drumbeat of life it becomes something everybody knows and that not everybody but the majority accepts if we aspire to become a society in which nobody smokes cigarettes to become a society in which nobody eats meat that's the road ahead but it's not gonna be based on short-term shock aw and anguish