Cannibals when Convenient: Edwin's Generation & Unnatural Vegan.

hey guys we just did the least lit
livestream ever from Mancha Airport and our live streaming audience bullied us into watching the latest video from a natural vegan which is a response to Evelyn's generation which is a response to the fact that this guy calls himself vegan but he does eat meat once in a while so maybe he is in fact a freegan or a reduced area or what-have-you right well it's a good jump in at any time I have very very little to say about this matter as always I'm really kind of just disappointed in the intellectual caliber of what a natural beacon has to say about this she behaves as if there's some kind of theoretically sophisticated point to be made here and I just don't feel that there is whenever we get into I think shades of grey territory with veganism one of the useful rhetorical devices is to compare this to what questions would you be asking about cannibalism no I mean that sincerely I don't mean that in like a caddy shallow down-to-earth way here's a really good here's a really good parallel to bring animals paraben totally not comparable in any way but we can call it a parallelism you know mod vegan was asking me by email showed it to Margaret mod vegan under the youtuber she emailed me asking my position on flesh created in a laboratory like you know that through modern brand new biotechnology saying this on live stream the other day my aunts sent me a link to Memphis meats right and she said Melissa check this out you can eat meat again right I was just like well no like yeah at some point in the future you'll be able to wait she never won is just disgusting health-wise you know what you but yours my boy in terms of a quick way to deal with this in terms of rhetoric this is rhetoric as opposed to philosophy how we talk about these things well if you could create human flesh in a laboratory into that would you engage in cannibalism so that would be victimless cannibalism yeah you know now I agree if you have created human flesh in a laboratory through this kind of technology cloning technology or biotechnology uh what are the actual cultured meat this kind of thing I certainly agree ethically it's completely different from murdering someone to make unanimity eat them you know it is different but on another on the other night of course still cannibalism so I think it is in exactly that way I think it's useful to you know we'll bring to the schematics I don't have a total moral opposition to people eating cows sorry fake cow meat created in a vat in a laboratory through biotech you know I understand that is something very different however I would never do it and I can't imagine any compelling argument why I should do it you know there's in terms of human health and in terms of so many things and also you know I don't know why people are so contentious to this issue of finding something disgusting I think in many cases we find things disgusting for a reason not maybe not all cases but if I say to you would you eat a human arm that was produced in a laboratory a human arm with fingernails and bone and everything is pulled out of a vat its cultured meat it was never part of a living person this person wasn't born and they weren't died they might say oh that's disgusting well we can examine that why do they find disgusting is it for absolutely no reason is this something completely irrational or is the argument to the contrary rational but sure I mean obviously it's going to be progress for the vegan movement when we can detach the production of meat from the slaughter of animals that's going to be an unbelievable change in human civilization and of course I welcome it but on the other hand if you talk about my personal ethics and my personal identity one of the reasons why I don't eat meat is because I don't want to be the kind of person to eat its meat I'm gonna gonna come back to that just a minute here one of the reasons why I don't engage in cannibalism because I don't want to be a cannibal you know this actually has some significance even if it's a victimless crime even if you're you're eating human flesh she didn't kill someone or even if the person gave their consent to be eaten after their death and they then died of natural causes which actually there is a legal precedent for I remember reading about a case going through the courts where a person agreed to be eaten you know the way they explicitly arranged I'm sorry this is life on Earth in 21st century if you google it I'm sure you can find a bunch obvious probably not unique probably there have been several courses cases in the in the court that way right so I think there still is something significant about refusing to be a cannibal unless you're in one of those desert island scenarios unless your airplane is crashed in the Hebrides and we all know there are those bizarre scenarios where it's cannibalism or death but even then we probably have to ask ourselves whether or not cannibalism is a fate worse than death so look I just say in general I think the comparison of cannibalism is often a useful way to frame the discussion if and when you get into an apparent gray area about veganism so in this case there's I think a fake gray area created about veganism defined in terms of whether or not you pay for the food now I do think that paying for food is significant significant economically and morally and personally I do feel very differently about it I mean the other day we ate dinner with some of my bosses and my employers and co-workers and they were paying for their own food and they paid for me I would feel very differently about it if I were the one paying for that meal like a croute meal of people I would refuse to buy meat for other people and I have been put in that position where people expect you to you know and it's it's it's rough there's a big it's not nice it's not great to tell your boss no I'm not gonna pay for your meal you know sir this isn't China but it could be similar in Western culture no I'm not gonna buy it's actually I think it's immoral for me because you ordered meat you know so you know those are those articles you read so I'm not gonna say that the question of paying for something or not paying for something is of trivial significant so that it's irrelevant it is of some significance but again in the same way that I think this question of cannibalism is still of some significance even if the arm comes out of out of that you know um you know this question of eating meat one of the reasons why I don't eat meat is because I want to be the kind of person who refuse do you mean one of the reasons why I live my life in a kind of simple morally consistent way is because I don't want to be inconsistent and that's most of what they get into where they start to pretend this is something theoretically sophisticated is to get into these sorts of acquitted ease of well in this scenario would you do X or Y you're sitting at a dinner table with other people and they ordered meat and the meat will go to waste the meat will go into the garbage would you prefer to eat that meat rather than see it go to waste for the garbage this kind of thing well then you're a person who's making a bunch of complex excuses for what could be a very simple moral position you know I've said this a long time ago in a lot of context in real life cooperation and work with your your friends and colleagues what we mean by sanity is often very close to reliability with another person's reliable well not you can count on them you know that counts for a lot that matters a lot you know and it's very close to us on the saying being someone who's reliable and I don't even mean accountable but someone whose morality makes sense to the society around you it makes sense to yourself it's coherent it doesn't have these kinds of exceptions that's that's worth something to me you know so anyway sorry I from my perspective there is nothing complex about this I guess the illusion is that there's something immoral about rotten meat being put in a dumpster and I don't see it that way at all like to me that would be the same as justifying cannibalism by claiming there's something immoral but a human corpse being buried in the earth and thus going to waste as opposed to being eaten I don't see it as immoral to put expired cheese in the dumpster put expired cheese in the dumpster that's where it belongs yeah I don't think you're doing something morally positive by rescuing that cheese from the dumpster or by rescuing meat from going into the dumpster in the same sense I don't think you're doing so morally positive by rescuing a corpse in the burial ground and engaging in cannibalism although that also could be justified as having some kind of positive ecological benefit as avoiding food waste as avoiding greenhouse gas emissions and all these other things that people have kind of thrown in to complicate the matter yeah I know our natural vegan made the point that Edwin's generation it should be praised because I want to eat decides not to most of the time and I don't see that you know this comparison is useful like what if somebody wanted to eat human flesh but because they know what's wrong they decide not to should we be praising them should we really really yeah I mean you know obviously comparisons are odious but that was an especially bizarre part of her her statement and you know I said well what about the comparison to rape which many vegans make you know well you think someone is more praiseworthy because they want to commit crimes whether it's rape or murder or cannibalism what-have-you and they either hold back from it or only engage in it when it's in this sense facilitated for them by someone else's unethical behavior because the fundamental situation here is you're sitting at a table in the other somebody else commits an unethical Act which again could be comforting someone killing someone so they can engage in cannibalism or whatever comparison you want to make and then you are free right in on their own ethical action you're taking advantage of your opportunity taking advantage of their unethical act and you're considering that to be morally neutral on your own part or unnatural vegan says morally praiseworthy because this is something you really desire to do but you oppress that desire more than other it's bizarre it's completely bizarre to me yeah and you also made the point that unnatural vegan says that we shouldn't be shaming these people why not why shouldn't you just what what are you going to be ashamed of in this life if not cannibalism what are you gonna be ashamed of in this life if not you know eating meat and I said to you you you made a comparison to quitting smoking but I mean very simply I don't see it as shameful in the same way you know if someone is trying to quit smoking and they fail you know they smoke cigarettes well ultimately you know nobody quits smoking in order to save the lives of the tobacco plants you know ultimately the tobacco plants aren't suffering here and so on and there aren't the same ecological example so what if you what if you saw a cigarette on the ground great would it be wrong for it to go in the landfill even better even better okay so you're sitting around a table and somebody does half a line of cocaine and then they get up and leave I know they leave half a line of cocaine so are you gonna take the argument okay well it's gonna go to a souther wise if you get up from the table that person laughs then that half line of cocaine snow is one of the reasons not to do that is because you don't want to be the kind of person who uses cocaine not even once in a while I want to be the kind of person who never uses cocaine who I want to be you know the opportunity of anyone you're you know right even when you didn't make the purchase to the moral choice well you didn't make the economic choice you didn't buy it you didn't pay for it but this still is support lis a statement a decision about Who I am what kind of person would be I don't see that in terms of virtue ethics in the strict sense I see that as aspirational what kind of person do I aspire to be I aspired the kind of person who doesn't compromise who never uses cocaine etc and I want to be the kind of person who never eats meat and it's a totally those are two totally attainable goals as long as you don't get into making these kinds of these kinds of excuses for yourself yeah alright so that's it eleven minutes of me saying I I think this video should have been two minutes long I don't get it I mean talk about making a mountain out of a molehill talk about baking cake without any flour I think that this is just making a controversy out of something where you know there's no controversy to be a