The Product of Your Ethical Decisions is YOU.
25 November 2018 [link youtube]
You don't choose outcomes: you choose who you want to be, what kind of person you aspire to become (despite your very real powerlessness over the more remote consequences of those decisions). You could describe this as a response to both, "The appeal to futility fallacy", and its opposite, "The overly optimistic consumer boycott will indirectly save animals' lives fallacy"… with special reference to palm oil (everyone's favorite example!).
This is part of one of the longest-running playlists on the channel, "Vegan Mind Tricks". https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZEkgohG7k7o-xDppIDvXLZziqoNILs5m
Youtube Automatic Transcription
let's start down in the dirt here before
we work our way up the Beanstalk that matters a greater profundity got a question and I've already posted this on Twitter somebody wrote in to ask me you will have been asked questions like this yourself also if you've been thinking for any length of time quote what difference does it make whether you buy or avoid a non vegan bread from the supermarket if you don't buy the bread someone else will buy it and if not it will end up as waste it will go into the garbage correct me if I'm wrong but I think supermarket managers don't decide to lower the amount of bread they get based on a single loaf of bread you didn't buy so his point is what's the point what use is it what's the outcome what is the meaning of refusing to buy a non-vegan loaf of bread and insisting on only buying vegan bread and of course by implication what's the point of being vegan what's the point of maintaining a vegan diet um before I read the answer that I sent to this guy in text form let me just say rhetoric gets a bad name sophistry sounds even worse a problem like this is in part just a problem of rhetoric how are we going to express ourselves clearly how we're gonna prepare ourselves mentally in discussing this sort of problem which is going to come up the question is not illegitimate it's a question we as vegans should be able to answer can you and this guy Gary France aione definitely one of the most influential vegan thinkers and political leaders the last hundred years Gary France I own a also put a lot of emphasis on this word approach he summarizes his contribution to the history of veganism as the abolitionist approach well what we're avoiding there is a more odious term like ideology we're a hit or belief system but the word approach is indeed interesting and somewhat useful I think how do we approach these issues your approach to the issue unlike your ad ology might not exclude other approaches you might be able to say to other vegans we'll look that may be how you answer this question but here's how I answer it here's my approach but not necessarily a difference in the factual underpinnings of our a cancer a difference in a rhetoric in part but obviously the approach it's gonna have implications gonna have knock-on effects for how we think and feel how we live the rest of our lives so a little bit more than just rhetoric but a little bit less than etiology a difference of approach I think it's fair to say at this point I have my own practice approach to answering this kind of question so I wrote back if you've been a longtime viewer this channel this won't surprise you I wrote back to this person quote you do the right thing because it's the right thing to do and because this is the kind of person you want to be or this is the kind of person you want to become and for no other reason than that if there's a line of cocaine on a nightclub table I'm not going to inhale it and I'm not going to regret that it may go to waste in quotation marks go to waste let it go into the garbage it belongs in the garbage it is garbage same with meat same with milk same with eggs quote what difference does it make you ask the difference is you the difference is what kind of person you want to be I want to be the kind of person who never uses cocaine not even if it's free of charge not even if it goes into the garbage can period end of my reply I'll leave it unstated obviously the point is I want to be the kind of person who never eats meat or who never eats dairy products even if I can in some sense get away with it even if it's otherwise free of charge it's been given to me for free even if this is the situation is the particular circumstances if I don't eat it somebody else will eat it or if I don't eat it somebody else will put it into a garbage can and it will unquote go to waste right so that's an approach there's nothing in particular here I believe or propounding that makes me different from other vegans but it is very very different if you approach veganism by telling people rabbits are cute bunnies are cute newly hatched baby chicks are cute baby chickens how can you possibly tolerate the fact that we live in a world where these cute rabbits or tortured in laboratory experiments or where these cute baby chicks are killed and ground up in factories factories that mass-produce eggs these terrible things that approach millions of people are using that approach I can't I can't say it's broken I can't say in an absolute sense it doesn't work but of course I can point out and I have done on this channel in over 1,000 videos I can point out the advantages and disadvantages and you know if that's your approach is hey cute bunnies cute chickens try to do the right thing your people well what about animals that are not so cute you know how do you answer a question about cockroaches and indeed it's it's still a valid question how would you answer this person's question what is the sense what is the meaning in refusing to buy non vegan bread bread that has some kind of trace amount of non vegan ingredient now why do I make this video now I got a question a series of questions from Augusto so I'm just using his first name I assume is his real name Augusto I think has been watching and supporting the channel for years mmm sorry if it's only one year or something it feels like a long time I remember you you go way back supporting me on patreon and Washington Channel he wrote to me on patreon supporting the channel thanks to everyone he does sends him one dollar a month to support the creation of new content and it was striking to me that Augusto still doesn't know this fundamental aspect of my approach and again I'm not gonna get into it such depth or length here but I can also recognize my own upper it has disadvantages as well as advantages it's an approach not ideology Augusto wrote hey there ISIL so I know you make the argument that if palm oil wasn't grown where it is in the particular forests particular patch of land particularly farmland if it's not grown where it is some other crop would be farmed there instead however there is still this importance in terms of diverse diversity biodiversity and the survival of the orangutans so how do you think it's okay to buy products with palm oil given that you don't believe it's okay to buy vegan processing so look this question reasonable question but it's not elicited it's not there's no obvious reason for this to come up when your approach to veganism is what I've just set out my approach to veganism is do it because it's the right thing to do ultimate product is not a bag of bread on the Shelf it's not a patch of forest Indonesia the ultimate product is you this is about what kind of person you want to be this is aspirational this is about outcomes and consequences you can control consequence being what kind of person you are so it's reasonably asked me this but this is something outside of and someone's challenging approach anyway I don't accept this idea I don't accept the idea that you're gonna save the lives of orangutans by refusing to buy palm oil it'll see whole series of videos on that the most recent one vegan gains responded to a lot of people watcher responded to it and was a new perspective for many people on that issue now with all that haven't set aside the other thing I've had to live with all my life is walking the tightrope between what's abstract and what's real and as I've said in recent videos an abstraction necessarily has less information than something concrete and it's very easy for people to kind of fetishize and glorify abstract and philosophical knowledge as if it's something more something greater than real in particular experience real facts empirical reality in the real world and it's not it's something less so people can very easily get ideologically attached to the idea that refusing to buy palm oil actually saves the lives of orangutans now likewise I don't think any vegans should be attached the idea that just refusing to buy beef saves the lives of cows these things are pretty parallel so this is what I wrote back to him I said look in response to my recent video dealing with palm oil on my hands I got one message just one from somebody actually working in those forests he said the same thing I said but even more harshly this consumer boycott is complete [ __ ] if you want to help orangutans you have to actually help orangutans they're dying either you go there and start tranquilizing trapping and relocating them or else they die and the death and destruction is very much ongoing right now I'm asking you to move past the question of is it okay to buy this thing in a supermarket beyond the vague categories of ecology and habitat conservation that we're talking about and to contrast it to direct interventions there's pause if you get a ladder and climb up a tree and rescue a cat from a tree you're saving the life of a cat right if you fly to Indonesia and you actually go to where the force are being cut down and you save the life of an orangutan you provide it with habitat somewhere or you even relocate it to a zoo if that's the best you can do you save the life of anything nothing else is actually saving the life of an orangutan nothing else is actually saving the life of a kitten that's something real and the sort of justification people engage in for these [Music] boycotts consumer boycotts shopping mall activism really slacktivism I think it's misleading and really slightly crazy to try to drape them in the flag of directly saving the lives of animals I think it's misleading I think it's false but hey it's a different approach I do not approach the ISM that way but ultimately you know veganism is a praxis in search of a philosophy it's not a philosophy that produces the practice so different people can come up with different philosophies to justify and propound what it is they're doing as vegans that's okay we got philosophical diversity and without unity on matters of praxis principled ethics ecology so on and so forth that's okay that's a pretty strong position for for veganism to be in so I continue saying buying a product with a pom well free label does nothing to help the orangutan if you buy a bottle of oil that says kitten free it doesn't do anything to save the life of a kitten up a tree doesn't it also doesn't do anything to harm the kitten but it doesn't so keep it straight it's this difference between something and nothing the University that employed me in Cambodia had all of its doors and wooden furniture made of Indonesian wood those doors made of wood could have killed more orangutans than a thousand bottles of palm oil even so will it make a difference if I now in Cambodia refused to open the door I was literally true by the way I saw the doors being installed and they all had stickers and I'm saying product of Indonesia so goes to roll back and he said he's a fan of the channel but he didn't mince his words he said I will say that's a bit hippie it's a bit hypocritical of you it's a bit hypocritical of you to say that it doesn't matter if it's palm oil free being that you insist on everything you eat and by being vegan yet here you say it doesn't have an impact well how come you're so adamant about things being vegan because of course they have an impact I would argue that refusing to consume things with palm oil has an impact as well and perilous so you see now we're several steps down the road if I had started out with that approach the first question from another viewer that was asked and that I answered if I had answered that person by saying oh yes yes yes you must piously believe that every loaf of bread you buy invisibly and indirectly has this kind of positive outcome saving the lives of animals then now I'd be trapped with that implication but I didn't I rejected that premise at step one and I'm still rejecting it here at step 10 that's not part of my approach and that doesn't mean it's bad and evil and wrong of other people do it other people some people just base their veganism on the fact that they had a pet dog as a kid and they think dogs are cute and they don't want to hurt pigs and cows for the same reason they don't wonder dogs works for them I mean I don't think it's really philosophically or politically sophisticated but works for them so there's more than one approach to this kind of thing so I wrote back and just reiterated look I've made many videos explaining this maybe you've seen some of them maybe you haven't it isn't hypocritical for me to say this at all because there are different criteria for the two statements that you're contrasting if you believe that refusing to eat meat and dairy being vegan is a necessary precondition for lobbying for ethical and ecological change that is true there are two completely different statements the premise of the two claims is completely different so the contrast is between the premise that refusing to eat palm oil will save the lives of orangutans again to me this is ridiculous as if I tell you buying this container of soy milk will save the life of a kitten that's up a tree it doesn't buying the soy milk doesn't save the life of a cow it doesn't save the life of kittens of a tree it's the right thing to do buy soy milk instead of cow's milk don't get me wrong but if you want to save the lives of kittens you've got to get out there and climb the tree yourself if you want to save the lives of orangutans you or your humanitarian agency actually has to intervene as to do that a label or product at the supermarket never have those Oh comes so this is the one premise is consumer boycott saving animal lives and the second premise which is my premise implicitly explicitly is simply that being vegan refusing to eat dairy is a necessary precondition for the ethical and ecological position you want to be in in pressing for political change and also cultural change right if you are trying to abolish slavery can you continue owning slaves could you employ slaves in the evolution of slavery that alone is a necessary precondition for taking the next steps in veganism that already is a sufficient reason to be vegan and already in this video point of view the other fundamental reason that I think I come to next just in the next two senses zero of my reply okay um I think you'd be a hypocrite if you tried to be an ecological leader for example an activist in the green party while eating meat most vegans feel the same way that I do nevertheless I notice the leader of the Green Party of Canada eats meat and supports the beef and dairy industry um I also think you'd be a bad person if you used cocaine while trying to be an ecological leader even though these things are totally unrelated keeping all the way real many of you in the audience I think you believe that also you don't want to elect a crack head you don't want to be part of a political movement led by crack head even though there's no direct ethical connection between using cocaine and whatever whatever the principles are that the Green Party may be running for office I'm okay I am a vegan for political reasons those reasons are ecological ethical and health-related but nevertheless it's a political cause and I'm vegan for political purposes long story short it's a political identity likewise I refuse to use cocaine because I don't want to be the kind of person who uses cocaine however if you want to save the lives of wearing attends or if you want to have an impact on deforestation policy in Southeast Asia you have to actually intervene in either saving the orangutans government policy deforestation have their conservation national parks etc in Southeast Asia key rice veganism one solution and then a whole lot of philosophical debate and discussion affect how we should convince other people to get involved join our movement participate in that solution it's one praxis with many philosophies many different philosophies many different political ideals fighting over who is going to control the future or the vegan movement and with all the humility recognizing its advantages and disadvantages that in one relatively short video is my approach
we work our way up the Beanstalk that matters a greater profundity got a question and I've already posted this on Twitter somebody wrote in to ask me you will have been asked questions like this yourself also if you've been thinking for any length of time quote what difference does it make whether you buy or avoid a non vegan bread from the supermarket if you don't buy the bread someone else will buy it and if not it will end up as waste it will go into the garbage correct me if I'm wrong but I think supermarket managers don't decide to lower the amount of bread they get based on a single loaf of bread you didn't buy so his point is what's the point what use is it what's the outcome what is the meaning of refusing to buy a non-vegan loaf of bread and insisting on only buying vegan bread and of course by implication what's the point of being vegan what's the point of maintaining a vegan diet um before I read the answer that I sent to this guy in text form let me just say rhetoric gets a bad name sophistry sounds even worse a problem like this is in part just a problem of rhetoric how are we going to express ourselves clearly how we're gonna prepare ourselves mentally in discussing this sort of problem which is going to come up the question is not illegitimate it's a question we as vegans should be able to answer can you and this guy Gary France aione definitely one of the most influential vegan thinkers and political leaders the last hundred years Gary France I own a also put a lot of emphasis on this word approach he summarizes his contribution to the history of veganism as the abolitionist approach well what we're avoiding there is a more odious term like ideology we're a hit or belief system but the word approach is indeed interesting and somewhat useful I think how do we approach these issues your approach to the issue unlike your ad ology might not exclude other approaches you might be able to say to other vegans we'll look that may be how you answer this question but here's how I answer it here's my approach but not necessarily a difference in the factual underpinnings of our a cancer a difference in a rhetoric in part but obviously the approach it's gonna have implications gonna have knock-on effects for how we think and feel how we live the rest of our lives so a little bit more than just rhetoric but a little bit less than etiology a difference of approach I think it's fair to say at this point I have my own practice approach to answering this kind of question so I wrote back if you've been a longtime viewer this channel this won't surprise you I wrote back to this person quote you do the right thing because it's the right thing to do and because this is the kind of person you want to be or this is the kind of person you want to become and for no other reason than that if there's a line of cocaine on a nightclub table I'm not going to inhale it and I'm not going to regret that it may go to waste in quotation marks go to waste let it go into the garbage it belongs in the garbage it is garbage same with meat same with milk same with eggs quote what difference does it make you ask the difference is you the difference is what kind of person you want to be I want to be the kind of person who never uses cocaine not even if it's free of charge not even if it goes into the garbage can period end of my reply I'll leave it unstated obviously the point is I want to be the kind of person who never eats meat or who never eats dairy products even if I can in some sense get away with it even if it's otherwise free of charge it's been given to me for free even if this is the situation is the particular circumstances if I don't eat it somebody else will eat it or if I don't eat it somebody else will put it into a garbage can and it will unquote go to waste right so that's an approach there's nothing in particular here I believe or propounding that makes me different from other vegans but it is very very different if you approach veganism by telling people rabbits are cute bunnies are cute newly hatched baby chicks are cute baby chickens how can you possibly tolerate the fact that we live in a world where these cute rabbits or tortured in laboratory experiments or where these cute baby chicks are killed and ground up in factories factories that mass-produce eggs these terrible things that approach millions of people are using that approach I can't I can't say it's broken I can't say in an absolute sense it doesn't work but of course I can point out and I have done on this channel in over 1,000 videos I can point out the advantages and disadvantages and you know if that's your approach is hey cute bunnies cute chickens try to do the right thing your people well what about animals that are not so cute you know how do you answer a question about cockroaches and indeed it's it's still a valid question how would you answer this person's question what is the sense what is the meaning in refusing to buy non vegan bread bread that has some kind of trace amount of non vegan ingredient now why do I make this video now I got a question a series of questions from Augusto so I'm just using his first name I assume is his real name Augusto I think has been watching and supporting the channel for years mmm sorry if it's only one year or something it feels like a long time I remember you you go way back supporting me on patreon and Washington Channel he wrote to me on patreon supporting the channel thanks to everyone he does sends him one dollar a month to support the creation of new content and it was striking to me that Augusto still doesn't know this fundamental aspect of my approach and again I'm not gonna get into it such depth or length here but I can also recognize my own upper it has disadvantages as well as advantages it's an approach not ideology Augusto wrote hey there ISIL so I know you make the argument that if palm oil wasn't grown where it is in the particular forests particular patch of land particularly farmland if it's not grown where it is some other crop would be farmed there instead however there is still this importance in terms of diverse diversity biodiversity and the survival of the orangutans so how do you think it's okay to buy products with palm oil given that you don't believe it's okay to buy vegan processing so look this question reasonable question but it's not elicited it's not there's no obvious reason for this to come up when your approach to veganism is what I've just set out my approach to veganism is do it because it's the right thing to do ultimate product is not a bag of bread on the Shelf it's not a patch of forest Indonesia the ultimate product is you this is about what kind of person you want to be this is aspirational this is about outcomes and consequences you can control consequence being what kind of person you are so it's reasonably asked me this but this is something outside of and someone's challenging approach anyway I don't accept this idea I don't accept the idea that you're gonna save the lives of orangutans by refusing to buy palm oil it'll see whole series of videos on that the most recent one vegan gains responded to a lot of people watcher responded to it and was a new perspective for many people on that issue now with all that haven't set aside the other thing I've had to live with all my life is walking the tightrope between what's abstract and what's real and as I've said in recent videos an abstraction necessarily has less information than something concrete and it's very easy for people to kind of fetishize and glorify abstract and philosophical knowledge as if it's something more something greater than real in particular experience real facts empirical reality in the real world and it's not it's something less so people can very easily get ideologically attached to the idea that refusing to buy palm oil actually saves the lives of orangutans now likewise I don't think any vegans should be attached the idea that just refusing to buy beef saves the lives of cows these things are pretty parallel so this is what I wrote back to him I said look in response to my recent video dealing with palm oil on my hands I got one message just one from somebody actually working in those forests he said the same thing I said but even more harshly this consumer boycott is complete [ __ ] if you want to help orangutans you have to actually help orangutans they're dying either you go there and start tranquilizing trapping and relocating them or else they die and the death and destruction is very much ongoing right now I'm asking you to move past the question of is it okay to buy this thing in a supermarket beyond the vague categories of ecology and habitat conservation that we're talking about and to contrast it to direct interventions there's pause if you get a ladder and climb up a tree and rescue a cat from a tree you're saving the life of a cat right if you fly to Indonesia and you actually go to where the force are being cut down and you save the life of an orangutan you provide it with habitat somewhere or you even relocate it to a zoo if that's the best you can do you save the life of anything nothing else is actually saving the life of an orangutan nothing else is actually saving the life of a kitten that's something real and the sort of justification people engage in for these [Music] boycotts consumer boycotts shopping mall activism really slacktivism I think it's misleading and really slightly crazy to try to drape them in the flag of directly saving the lives of animals I think it's misleading I think it's false but hey it's a different approach I do not approach the ISM that way but ultimately you know veganism is a praxis in search of a philosophy it's not a philosophy that produces the practice so different people can come up with different philosophies to justify and propound what it is they're doing as vegans that's okay we got philosophical diversity and without unity on matters of praxis principled ethics ecology so on and so forth that's okay that's a pretty strong position for for veganism to be in so I continue saying buying a product with a pom well free label does nothing to help the orangutan if you buy a bottle of oil that says kitten free it doesn't do anything to save the life of a kitten up a tree doesn't it also doesn't do anything to harm the kitten but it doesn't so keep it straight it's this difference between something and nothing the University that employed me in Cambodia had all of its doors and wooden furniture made of Indonesian wood those doors made of wood could have killed more orangutans than a thousand bottles of palm oil even so will it make a difference if I now in Cambodia refused to open the door I was literally true by the way I saw the doors being installed and they all had stickers and I'm saying product of Indonesia so goes to roll back and he said he's a fan of the channel but he didn't mince his words he said I will say that's a bit hippie it's a bit hypocritical of you it's a bit hypocritical of you to say that it doesn't matter if it's palm oil free being that you insist on everything you eat and by being vegan yet here you say it doesn't have an impact well how come you're so adamant about things being vegan because of course they have an impact I would argue that refusing to consume things with palm oil has an impact as well and perilous so you see now we're several steps down the road if I had started out with that approach the first question from another viewer that was asked and that I answered if I had answered that person by saying oh yes yes yes you must piously believe that every loaf of bread you buy invisibly and indirectly has this kind of positive outcome saving the lives of animals then now I'd be trapped with that implication but I didn't I rejected that premise at step one and I'm still rejecting it here at step 10 that's not part of my approach and that doesn't mean it's bad and evil and wrong of other people do it other people some people just base their veganism on the fact that they had a pet dog as a kid and they think dogs are cute and they don't want to hurt pigs and cows for the same reason they don't wonder dogs works for them I mean I don't think it's really philosophically or politically sophisticated but works for them so there's more than one approach to this kind of thing so I wrote back and just reiterated look I've made many videos explaining this maybe you've seen some of them maybe you haven't it isn't hypocritical for me to say this at all because there are different criteria for the two statements that you're contrasting if you believe that refusing to eat meat and dairy being vegan is a necessary precondition for lobbying for ethical and ecological change that is true there are two completely different statements the premise of the two claims is completely different so the contrast is between the premise that refusing to eat palm oil will save the lives of orangutans again to me this is ridiculous as if I tell you buying this container of soy milk will save the life of a kitten that's up a tree it doesn't buying the soy milk doesn't save the life of a cow it doesn't save the life of kittens of a tree it's the right thing to do buy soy milk instead of cow's milk don't get me wrong but if you want to save the lives of kittens you've got to get out there and climb the tree yourself if you want to save the lives of orangutans you or your humanitarian agency actually has to intervene as to do that a label or product at the supermarket never have those Oh comes so this is the one premise is consumer boycott saving animal lives and the second premise which is my premise implicitly explicitly is simply that being vegan refusing to eat dairy is a necessary precondition for the ethical and ecological position you want to be in in pressing for political change and also cultural change right if you are trying to abolish slavery can you continue owning slaves could you employ slaves in the evolution of slavery that alone is a necessary precondition for taking the next steps in veganism that already is a sufficient reason to be vegan and already in this video point of view the other fundamental reason that I think I come to next just in the next two senses zero of my reply okay um I think you'd be a hypocrite if you tried to be an ecological leader for example an activist in the green party while eating meat most vegans feel the same way that I do nevertheless I notice the leader of the Green Party of Canada eats meat and supports the beef and dairy industry um I also think you'd be a bad person if you used cocaine while trying to be an ecological leader even though these things are totally unrelated keeping all the way real many of you in the audience I think you believe that also you don't want to elect a crack head you don't want to be part of a political movement led by crack head even though there's no direct ethical connection between using cocaine and whatever whatever the principles are that the Green Party may be running for office I'm okay I am a vegan for political reasons those reasons are ecological ethical and health-related but nevertheless it's a political cause and I'm vegan for political purposes long story short it's a political identity likewise I refuse to use cocaine because I don't want to be the kind of person who uses cocaine however if you want to save the lives of wearing attends or if you want to have an impact on deforestation policy in Southeast Asia you have to actually intervene in either saving the orangutans government policy deforestation have their conservation national parks etc in Southeast Asia key rice veganism one solution and then a whole lot of philosophical debate and discussion affect how we should convince other people to get involved join our movement participate in that solution it's one praxis with many philosophies many different philosophies many different political ideals fighting over who is going to control the future or the vegan movement and with all the humility recognizing its advantages and disadvantages that in one relatively short video is my approach