Drug addiction IS A CHOICE, indigenous or not, we're each responsible for ourselves.

madness yen I think vegans in general
blame the demand side of the equation we blame the fact that there is a demand for meat we tend not to blame the middlemen producing meat we tend not to blame the slaughterhouse workers because we know as long as people are wanting to buy meat other people are gonna want to trade in meat produce meat slaughter meat etc so by the same token I don't buy the depiction of drug addicts as passive victims who have no agency there is that word agency again that I open this video talking about and only drug dealers as having agencies or drug drug dealers is having moral responsibility for the situation we can say the opposite as long as people are going to pay for cocaine somebody's going to be growing it and somebody is gonna be dealing it quote I lived in Vancouver for five years and spent time with people on the Lower East Side many are victims of racism and quite a large number our First Nations people close quote really so let's talk about agency and let's talk about personal moral responsibility if a white person becomes a drug addict that's their choice that's their responsibility they are morally culpable for the consequences of their actions but you're telling me that someone who is a victim of racism is not your your dehumanizing that is a racist perspective I know you may think maude vegan that your perspective is anti-racist but it's not your perspective is actually racist in a recent debate between vegan gains and Matt Dillahunty vegan gains said very casually as a throwaway line that he thought it was morally acceptable for indigenous people to engage in hunting for survival I said in the present tense he didn't say 2,000 years ago in the year 2018 I think it is really false to talk about indigenous people as if they are living in a museum devoted to their own ancient past they're not they're living in the same world that you and I are living in here and now with many of the same choices not all the same opportunities many disadvantages in terms opportunities but the same choices with the same world consequences I do sympathise the fact that many indigenous people just like white people grow up ignorant of where their food comes from this isn't a difference between white people and indigenous people can it's something they have in common I mean also alcoholism you think that's a difference between like people in dishes people ganna go out to the rural white community small white towns that are adjacent to the the First Nations reservations those towns also have really high rates of alcoholism often high rates of drug use certain drugs are very popular right now in the Canadian wilderness as Canadians small towns you know there's a lot of painkiller addiction same thing in small towns in the northern United States right now but hey drug and alcohol problems are enormous in both white small towns and First Nations small towns there's something they have in common the choice you make the decision you make is one you are responsible for and nothing about the color of your skin changes that nothing about the racism of your society changes that okay the racism of the society you live in may really make it impossible or make it much more difficult for you to become a dentist you may be lacking opportunities but I absolutely refuse to believe this kind of in really profoundly racist but ostensibly anti-racist perspective that somehow the color of your skin or the racism of the society around you absolves you from the moral agency and ethical responsibility to make the decision of what you eat what goes in your mouth and down your throat when you go to the grocery store or what kind of drugs you smoke or snort or inject into your arm adventists Yin a lot of left-wing people like to use this vague term agency the sense of human agency and it's an important concept even if I don't particularly dig the jargon I'm gonna be responding in this video to yet another comment from my former patreon supporter mod vegan apparently she just quit my my patreon in a ray due to my comments about the death penalty for drug addicts a video that's already uploaded on this channel um but in this video I think I'm mostly dealing with the question of indigenous peoples First Nations peoples agency and responsibility for your own actions although another issue dealt with here is indeed drug addiction and what I see as one of the most important problems for our generation the proliferation of drug use drug use of all kinds but of course it's especially troubling when we're talking about hard drug use drugs like heroin and cocaine that have such compulsive power over people um I have said in many videos in many different contexts how much I care about the survival of indigenous peoples languages I have many many videos you're advocating for the government and the education system in Canada taking a much more active role in supporting the use of those languages for example just yesterday I went up to a bank machine you know a computerized teller where you punch in the numbers and withdraw your money a bank machine here in Canada and that bank machine I think had four foreign languages it had Spanish Portuguese Chinese and I'm sorry had two it had both Taiwanese Chinese and mainland Chinese so two forms of the Chinese language plus are two official languages in Canada French and English so when you first log into the bank machine that's showing you quite a few languages for you to choose between on screen but not a single one of them is indigenous to Canada English is not a Canadian language it's a European language French is not a Canadian language it's a European language I feel very passionately about that and I hope one day in the future I will walk up to a bank machine and put in my card and there will be a language there like cream or a jib way or mohawk there will be an actual Canadian language and if you say that a language like Cree is very marginal that it's not speaking by a spoken by a large number of people in Canada I ask you back how many people in Canada speak Portuguese Portugese was on that menu and how important is the Portuguese language for the president future of Canada because there are other countries that already support the Portuguese language such as Portugal such as Brazil so the future of the Portuguese language is in many ways assured by government policy and education policy in Portugal and Brazil the nation of Portugal does not need us as Canadians and taxpayers to support their language in their culture they're supporting it themselves but if we do not support the future of the Korean language the Ghibli language the mohawk language the Inuit language if we don't do it here those languages will die here and now so that's an issue I'm very passionate about and I've spoken about in many many videos from many different angles but I've just gotten this this message from my vegan I hope I still have it on screen here in which she is offended and again apparently she's raged quit out of my out of my patreon she's no longer a patreon supporter she says quote 2000 is the figure advertised by the Chinese government it likely represents a small fraction of the actual number well I don't know Marvin I don't think you've done research on social statistics for China but also the sushis claiming the number 2000 is a small financial number I can say the opposite I don't know what percentage of the 2000 people executed have anything to do with with drug dealing or drug offenses and in China I should mention it is not a drug it's not a death penalty defense to be a drug addict or drug user it's for drug trafficking for drug dealing drug smuggling those are definitely but it's not being a drug addict you will find if you just google a little bit they do have rehabilitation programs for people who are drug addicts trying to recover some of them amazingly even linked to religion I was just reading an article about that now I happen to google and find it or they even have Christian missionaries trying to save people's souls who are or drug addicts so you know they have the usual mixed policy that relies on what I think is a convenient moral illusion that somehow drug dealers rb2 are the ones to blame that they're the ones making an ethical choice and that drug users drug consumers are not now as a vegan especially that's a very very strange perspective I think vegans in general blame the demand side of the equation we blame the fact that there is a demand for meat we tend not to blame the middlemen produce meet we tend not to blame the slaughterhouse workers because we know as long as people are wanting to buy meat other people are gonna want to trade in meat produce meat slaughter meat etc so we tend to say look we have to take a demand centred approach to this we're trying to eliminate the demand for meat and not trying to be overly punitive to people who happen to be employees of a slaughterhouse or happen to be middlemen in that so by the same token I don't buy the depiction of drug addicts as passive victims who have no agency there is that word agency again that I open this video talking about and only drug dealers as having agencies or drug drug dealers is having moral responsibility for the situation we can say the opposite as long as people are willing to pay for cocaine somebody's going to be growing it and somebody is gonna be dealing it but nevertheless of course there's more responsibility on both sides people make a choice to be a drug dealer but people also make a morally significant choice in being a drug user and don't take that away from them don't dehumanize drug addicts don't treat them as something superhuman or something subhuman which also insights I say again again in other context about treatment of indigenous peoples this comes up as her as her comment continues quote I lived in Vancouver for five years and spent time with people on the Lower East Side many are victims of racism and quite a large number our First Nations people close quote really so let's talk about agency and let's talk about personal moral responsibility if a white person becomes a drug addict that's their choice that's their responsibility they are morally culpable for the consequences of their actions but you're telling me that someone who is a victim of racism is not your your dehumanizing that is a racist perspective I know you may think Maude vegan that your perspective is anti-racist but it's not your perspective is actually racist you're actually treating these people as subhuman you're treating them as less responsible for the choices they make for the consequences of their actions and that is from my perspective evil now if a black person chooses to become a drug addict is that choice different from a white person making the choice making the decision if a kree person or in a Jif way person makes that choice is it different from a white person making that choice is it in what way I mean it is very easy for me to say for example my grandmother this is going back long time a grandmother's deceased now my grandmother actually did have to face organized institutional systemic racism against her because she was a Jew who wanted to become a dentist it was formerly overtly written in the institutions they had anti-jewish policies I'm not joke so it wasn't like a crit attitude or hidden you know they had like a quota and so on for how many Jews did they let in his ins what have you there were openly newspapers used to be like that - I remember they used to have only a certain number of Jewish reporters one have you okay that's a certain context for becoming a dentist today I can say for sure if you meet someone who has successfully become a dentist and they are Creon a jib way or mohawk you can talk to them about the types of racism mostly informal not formally written that way that they had to come to dis advantages they don't come absolutely that's a very meaningful and very important you know context talk but if you talk to the same person if you talk to a career chip a person who success became a dentist and you have this kind of attitude that somehow First Nations people are not really responsible for their own moral decisions in the same way that a white person would be the same way that a black person would be god damn you that's evil that is a form of prejudice and racism no less evil than the opposite it is based on dehumanizing these people disregarding their agency disregarding their responsibility for their own moral choices and actions and for their consequences okay becoming an alcoholic becoming a addict to say a soft drug like marijuana becoming an actor to heroin there's a series of choices there but unless you're talking about extreme situations where somebody is a captive and somebody else is injecting the heroin into them I have actually random occasions like that I've done some disturbing research in my life with a few very very straight few exceptions where people's agency is taken away from them they are the ones making this series of moral decision and think about how insulting it is to all the Cree people and all the entryway people who choose sobriety the Cree people choose whether or not they become dentists whether or not they have successful careers or have an education Rafi I've met those people and a lot of them I've met many Korean achieve a people who had a period of drug addiction or maybe whether it was alcohol or drugs are both usually both and then they cleaned up and went back to school they made that decision after having that experience they made that commitment to sobriety they made that choice you really think it's different from a white person doing real things different black person really and you have to learn to talk about indigenous people as people period period not superhuman not subhuman they're people they're responsible for their actions in the same way that we are do they have the same opportunities that we do not always know as I said for my grandmother it was difficult to become a dentist but she did it for like you know I'm just thinking of Han Karina g-way people I knew personally like there was many of them were in university when I knew them in Toronto and in Saskatchewan you sure I think incredibly difficult for them because not impossible but sure if I think about for them starting off at you know Lac La Ronge Reservation to get the science education they need and go through the process to become a dentist not easy definitely definitely very difficult but yeah becoming a becoming a drug addict is easy and they're responsible for their own choices they don't have the same opportunities that a white person born in Toronto has it would have been much easier for me to become a dentist then for that one dentist partly because I already had a grandmother's and dentists but it is you you you can't treat that lack of opportunity as if it is some kind of psychological difference that would make them pass victims in of drug addiction rather than people with agency making those moral choices themselves okay she says quote I don't think that threatening people with death to make the problems of poverty racism and mental mental illness more palatable is a genuine solution was I talking about solving poverty was I talking about solving racism was I talking about solving mental illness that's it that's a completely insincere completely unfair argument Maude and you know it okay I was not talking about the death penalty to solve poverty racism or mental illness you're completely misrepresenting my argument in every way I think you know that's an unfair and dishonest response from you she says a continued quote I'm definitely opposed to authoritarianism so if that makes me a liberal whatever okay fair enough mmm something else Maude vegan said to me just a couple of days ago I really wanted to record a response to and I'll state it now because from my perspective it is linked or it is parallel in a recent debate between vegan gains and Matt Dillahunty vegan gains said very casually as a throwaway line that he thought it was morally acceptable for indigenous people to engage in hunting for survival I said in the present tense he didn't say 2,000 years ago now I know vegan gains were saying this very spontaneous on a debate I'm not holding him to this or something as his official position he said it in passing it is very interesting to me to see the extent to which veganism in 2018 has matured to the point of being in that sense soft on hunting there's an opposite point of view that also exists in Venus minimum rights that each animal basically has a soul so in a murder an animal in hunting it doesn't matter if the person is an indigenous person it doesn't matter if the hunter is an indigenous person living in the jungle or if the hunter hunter is a white person who's a millionaire on vacation that fundamentally this is an act of murder because the animal soul that is a different perspective that's also represented in veganism there are debates between those two people who regard animal rights as something intrinsic to the animal and people who take more of a socially relative view of it this way I would challenge you under the same heading just been talking about indigenous people and their responsibility for making their own choices about drugs and alcohol in the year 2018 I think it is really false to talk about indigenous people as if they are living in a museum devoted to their own ancient past they're not they're living in the same world that you and I are living in here and now with many of the same choices not all the same opportunities many disadvantages in terms of African opportunities but the same choices with the same world consequences in the same sense that a white person living in the suburbs makes serious sacrifices to be engaged in hunting as a hobby the native people I have known have had to make serious sacrifices to engage in hunting as a hobby okay now what do I mean a lot of time a lot of money a lot of hard work a lot of blood to clean up well if you've seen even fishing oh god it's gruesome the amount of blood that comes out of a large fish when they drag it off the truck and drag it up the driveway leaving a trail of blood is amazing to me just just from fish and fish or red blooded animals to God it's it's horrifying I've lived around that stuff there is no sense in which it is easy or cheap for a Cree person and a Jib way person a mohawk person to get a truck drive up to the woods you need a truck with a big bed kill an animal like a moose get the animal get the moose out of the forest onto the back of the truck drive it home prep the carcass cut off the skin remove the bones it's a ton of work just the number of hours the cost of the equipment the cost of the hunting trip now everyone knows that about white people most people will say hunting is an expensive hobby and there are poor white people who hunt there are poor people to do it right but for those poor people it's even more of a priority those are poor people who say who you know who choose not to spend money in other things to set that money aside and make that decision make that because it really matters them so there are poor white people who hunt there are poor Korean a Jib way people who hunt I remember talking to a guy who was a mine manager he was the manager for a mine in northern Canada and he really made an effort to employ First Nations people and he expressed his frustration to me that they would they were so enthusiastic about hunting moose they would stop everything to hang and devote many many hours daunting moose and he couldn't get any same enthusiasm for them to do some of the technical work on mites and he told me stories about you know the moose hunting trips these guys would organize from the mine site you know going out deeper into the woods and coming back it's a lot of work okay it's a moral choice it's an ethical choice that has the same consequences and the same significance for them or for us it is fundamentally racist and evil to treat people with brown skin as as if they're not they don't have this agency there's this word agency as if they don't have the responsibility of those choices if they don't have the understanding of it I made a video in Chinese I talked about it recently the videos for more than a year ago and in that video I say which is how I really feel about this um if you know that the meat packing industry if you know that the slaughterhouse industry if you know that it is evil as soon as you know that there's a moral obligation on you to change your life accordingly to make decisions that reflect that knowledge it is true we are all born ignorant okay I do sympathise the fact that many indigenous people just like white people grow up ignorant of where their food comes from this isn't a difference between white people and indigenous people can it's something they have in common I mean also alcoholism you think that's a difference between like people ambitious people ganna go out to the rural white community small white towns that are adjacent to the the First Nations reservations those towns also have really high rates of alcoholism often high rates of drug use certain drugs are very popular right now in the Canadian wilderness as Canadians small towns you know there's a lot of painkiller addiction same thing in small town in the northern United States right now but anyway drug and alcohol problems are enormous in both white small towns and First Nations small towns there's something they have in common right growing up ignorant about where your food comes from what it means to go to the grocery store and buy a piece of meat in a you know plastic wrapped container what that means what the ethical significance is what the ecological zoom is is we are all born ignorant but as soon as you know as soon as you find out the choice you make the decision you make is one you are responsible for and nothing about the color of your skin changes that nothing about the racism of your society changes that okay the racism of the society you live in may really make it impossible or make it much more difficult for you to become a dentist you may be lacking opportunities but I absolutely refuse to believe this kind of in really profoundly racist but ostensibly anti-racist perspective that somehow the color of your skin or the racism of the society around you absolves you from the moral agency and ethical responsibility to make the decision of what you eat what goes in your mouth and down your throat when you go to the grocery store or what kind of drugs you smoke or snort or inject into your arm ultimately that is on you [Music] evolution