Eisel Mazard vs Flemface: Ethical Questions WITHIN Veganism.

hey guys we are live streaming with the
phlegm face aka aka Ellie Fleming apologies the sound quality some you guys hate the fact that I normally am holding this glowing white sphere or my microphone we are right now in Seattle and I came here with just one tiny backpack with enough clothes for ten days so well we're recording all this stuff without my usual microphone equipment now that we're settling in Canada we may be able to invest some more money in better or lighting better because that's why people come to this channel right that's why you come nobody gives a [ __ ] about open e anyway so with that would that apology aside hit me le you were just saying that this issue of pet ownership is still a big deal and I assume you mean it's a big deal with in and amongst being an activist yeah yeah we're talking about it you know especially the BDDs because it really separates the vegans and I'm someone who not on the fence but you see a lot of people but then you see the vegans drawing the line further and saying you know any use is exploitation any use of slavery well you know one of the lessons I took out of all the different areas of philosophy of dealt with because you know there was political philosophy but also Buddhist philosophy is that you have to be really leery of you have to be really concerned about people treating problems as methodologically sophisticated and abstruse when they're not and you know some of my own videos about this may be a little bit convoluted or intellectually intense there are people to follow but you know there is one aspect of this that I think is childishly simple and we shouldn't allow to become abstruse or complex my approach is not an animal-rights approach it's an approach based on doing the best you can and I think a great example of that that contrasts to and informs this question about pet ownership is what we do about rats and rat infestation and don't pretend that rat infestation is a question like what would you do on a desert island if you're everything it's not that rare you know fifty percent of humanity or more many of us have dealt with it already in the past if you live in an apartment building almost anywhere in the world even in the Arctic you can have rat infestation amazingly you know you know sometimes your candy you think well it's so cold out here but at least I don't have to deal with rats and cockroaches let me tell you you have no natural predators there so I'm just gonna sit with West Coast - it's one of those cold rainy environments sorry cold compared to Cambodia be like in Cambodia we have snakes that eat the rats you don't have pythons crawling around your staircase and you could try you could try to revive the the foxes or you know falcons some of those birds of prey they'll swoop down and eat a rat when they have a chance to but they're they're a lot better at killing rabbits than they were killing rats but yeah look you know so if my ethic is based on doing the best you can and when you look at example like that right away you're into these kinds of questions you know what is the best we can do much you mean most traps as you know a large part of is just trying to design the building you're living in to keep rats out stop them coming inside in the first place there are some things you can do but yeah the bottom line is I don't believe animals have souls you know my unlike the animal rights model my approach is not based on the notion of never killing an animal you know I'd like to avoid or minimize killing animals obviously on the my diet obviously I would never purchase leather but how do you actually manage rats it's it's a difficult question and I think anyone being honest themselves is gonna come to very a very imperfect set of answers what do you do in the world starting in the year 2018 not starting from a blank piece of paper about the situation with with domesticated animals there are some things we can clearly abolish I mean a lot of vegans like this word abolish why the hell should we have racetracks with horses you know things like that which almost always are supported by by governments by taxpayers dollars you know they had a huge collapse in the number of horses in Spain after the 2008 crisis I remember I was reading with that and some people were worried about specific breeds of Spanish horse you know domesticated breeds going extinct these are human created breeds but they'd been an important part of Spanish history and European history you know in various medieval war or sort have you because nobody was maintaining these horses anymore the government money had disappeared and private sector money a disappeared and so on there are some things you can talk about abolishing but it's it's not easy to just get out this this word with a capital letter a and wave it in front of the you know the baleful reality of living in a society that's made out of meat with this huge pet industry and say abolish abolish abolish but on the other hand yeah it's really really weird oh look we talked about this in terms of dating all the time like the amazing thing isn't just that I found a vegan woman who loves me is that I found a vegan woman who doesn't own any dogs or cats or whatever Jay was right right she seemed kind of approach to ecology he seemed kind of I think of as rational and logical approach to topeka activism but you know Jay was joking the other day Jay costly he said in his heart of hearts he really doesn't know what's worse having a girlfriend who's vegan and owns like six paths or having a girlfriend he's a meat-eater and not opposed to being and somebody doesn't own pets that would never own a pet so on that on that human level it's a huge stumbling block it's a huge issue we all gotta cope with one way or another yeah the horse-riding thing that's the issue with the whole breathing using them because and cheltenham is very famous for its racetrack you'd see after the big games the assault the assaulting but the point is when they come to town the excuse people use is the money that it brings it because if you see after the games suddenly buildings start getting built some of these things start happening within the town and refurbishments are made so there's always that argument of oh well the money so and that's my issue with the whole breeding and having animals this it's the money thing because we will always put the money before the animals and I think I think that the basic concept of politics lives and dies with the idea that the public interest what's in the public's interest is something separate from money you know and I really worry about that when we look at American politics it often seems like in the United States of America you have a political system that's totally based on short-term interest in money and no concept or a very weak concept of doing what's in the public interest you know as something apart from money but um you know anything can be justified this way including dealing cocaine dealing there's a lot of money you know right now we're legalizing marijuana in Canada it's a lot of money it's a lot of thing about and indeed you know even some of the experiments I remember I think it was one of the provinces of Germany not Germany as a whole that decided to legalize prostitution and they had all these arguments for it but then there was this enormous concentration of prostitution from all these surrounding areas coming there from nearby Luxembourg and so on you know and suddenly their whole society was transformed they were really loo they were not expecting this to be a Pandora's box but if it's just about money you know these are these are easy examples you know a counter example this is many decades ago when L is really a child that was fascinated by Singapore country of Singapore really because it's the opposite of Canada in so many ways Canada is enormous and Singapore is tiny Canada has a very low quality of government it is very inattentive kind of absent-minded government and Singapore has under kind of dictatorial micromanaging control where the government is really paying attention to everything you know it was famously in Singapore it's a crime to to chew gum in public in this kind of thing they're really really tightly controlled but you know Singapore they made the decision I forget when this was but many decades ago to kick out the car industry they had a car industry that's money that's money in your economy but when they did the analysis they said look we've got limited land limited resources limited tolerance for pollution and yes the car industry employs some people and generate some money but if we kick them out we'll have more space for things like computer chips and actually weapons manufacturing they were also into into the gun industry there and some other things that were better that were more in the public interest and didn't massively pollute there they're in water and so on and they made that decision they made the decision the public enters to kick out the car industry that went to South Korea and elsewhere you know instead so no you know I think almost by definition politics the public sphere almost any conversation we're going to have whether it's about cigarettes or alcohol or cocaine or the automotive industry or you know resources we've got to have a concept of something other than money otherwise what we're talking about is is not politics it's just business and business can be painfully short short-sighted Kenickie can be such a short short-term thing so yeah yeah a lot of this I suppose is where we decide as a community to draw the line and that that brings on to another topic that yeah my group you're talking about currently and we could probably even make a separate video about this and it's the someone brought up insect-eating yeah and it's like where do we where are we going to in the future collectively draw the line you know I've also I've also lived in societies where people really eat insects most obviously Cambodia you know they really they really eat insects they're they put up special special lamps a night yeah I assume you never look at this you know yes well sorry you know flat face you may not have done sorry to call you from sorry would salt you by calling this wasn't was gonna make but my girlfriend mentioned he studies good intelligence some of the most thoroughly studied animals for their intelligence are sea slugs se a sea slugs and they're in the European Union laws on animal rights so this is bizarre I've read the original text of those laws the EU laws because the EU laws were started with this concept of well animal rights should be in proportion of their intelligence and then they had to go through the existing corpus of academic research now my theory as to why there is so much scientific evidence about the intelligence of sea slugs is that the research is really cheap to do you know if you want do research on elephants that's expensive you know you need a huge enclosure and whatever but sea slugs I think you can have a pretty small tank of saltwater and but it's been incredibly thoroughly proven the level of intelligence and suffering and feeling of pain that some of these in oceanic invertebrates have so that is that is interesting in and of itself I think the the the main go to example people who disagree with me my opponents would use is actually of oysters and I did believe it or not read about oyster biology an oyster intelligence back in about 1997 when I was university student was some research I did before I started using the word or vegan but you know that would that aside my approach isn't based on any drawing a line as you put it it's not based on drawing the line as to where sentience starts or where intelligence starts or where feeling and respond to pain starts my approach is based on doing the best you can and that's why for me there's really no conflict about oysters or insects or honey you know I would readily admit honey is not morally rubber bit --iv in the same way that the flesh of a cow is you know what I mean it is like you know that the taste and the smell of it and so on isn't revolting the way cheese is or something I mean oh that's basically just sugar in a jar and it's the end product of this bizarre form of exploitation of insects which I am morally opposed to by the way but you know when vegans do question well some vegans do question would honey be over the line or not would Easter's be over the line nada wouldn't sex be Oakland or not my question is why are you even drawing the line because my approach is based on doing the best you can which again sounds childishly simple but it's not I'm just not making this more methodological a sophisticated that needs to be it's doing the best you can with a tragic awareness a tragical awareness that inevitably I'm gonna have to kill rats inevitably I'm gonna have to kill cockroaches indefinitely gonna have to kill some highly intelligent animals like birds you know Ravens are astoundingly intelligent the intelligent Ravens are amazing I don't want to if you're gonna run an airport you got to kill birds this is this is a sad fact in life there were all kinds of tragic situations in which I am gonna exterminate animals however there are many situations that are within my sphere of influence like I may not have a choice about killing the rats I'm gonna have a choice about killing the cockroaches or the the birds in some circumstances but again if I'm not on a desert island just given that I'm doing the best I can why would I be eating oysters why would I be eating insects why would I be eating honey but yes in a situation of absolute scarcity I remember seeing wild honey growing on one of the last remaining jungle trees in northern Laos it's a beautiful thing in its way it would be terrifying that the shimmy up a tree in the jungle and try to hack out you know the honey Ravens do that falcons do that turn over Ravens but you know there are birds of prey that go up to those those jungle hives and dig their claws in and take the honey out and the bees are all stinging the claw and trying to sting the bird through its feather it's very dramatic sight you know okay if I'm starving to death in the jungle would you rather eat honey or oysters or insects or kill a deer okay we can do that as a thought experiment but I see no point in joining the line because my ethic is based on doing the best you can which is not again it's not heroic it's tragic it's a it's a tragic situation of knowing look how many slaughter how many animals were slaughtered today this is for me is based on a tragical worldview a you know we can talk about saving the planet or saving the world's ecology or not you know and it's amazing how much the world has changed in two years we were just in Detroit we went to [ __ ] shitty suburban a scarf and barf roadside a you know big box grocery stores and they have like three fridges dedicated to vegan stuff you know vegan vegan ground beef substitute eat this because it is amazing how far we go and just seeing the word vegan in those contexts where I go up to a pastry case full of different doughnuts and cupcakes and like six of them have the word vegan on the label so people have never heard of veganism before gonna see that again and again every day they go into a donut store they go into a coffee shop and they see the word vegan that's way more effective messaging for us than most forms of protest on the street Oh like they'll just ask oh what's vegan vegan is a type of muffin what does that mean oh okay some people are like oh this really matters to some people that this muffin doesn't contain chicken eggs you know it's not just as though the world has changed but this is totally tragic roaming this is not celebratory you know it's in that of course I know you're but I once answered this on my blog before I had a YouTube channel I had a vegan blog and I answered questions from both meat-eaters who were hostile and sometimes from vegans who disagree with me and one of them was about this issue of the of the oyster now I do not believe the argument the oyster is not sentient oysters are motile they do move they move to from a bad spot to a good spot which most people don't realize most people think oysters stay in the same spot forever this has been scientifically proven oysters do respond to stimuli when a bird flies overhead creating a shadow they have light receptors you know she could call I is their very crude eyes but they can perceive light and they close to defend themselves against birds and predators it's more famous the very unbeaten example but something that happens often enough that many people observed it dogs on the beach try to eat oysters and then the oyster closes on the dog's tongue and the tongue is drowned to death when the tide comes in so this is something that's happened enough in history that it's been observed several dozen times or something you can imagine you know stray dog or something trying to eat an oyster and the oyster responds to the shadow and closest to defend itself so I just mentioned so in terms of the definition of sentience I don't actually think there's a legitimate debate with ledges but I remember of someone challenging me on this so there was some vegan who took the view that only creatures that have a centralized brain and not merely ganglia of nerves of neurons yeah so they did they were using they were drawing the line as you say and I point out response to that how contra do this is it okay so this is an oyster and here's a Paris that leaves on the oyster so it's a type of parasite that's a little bit famous in history it uses its tongue to slowly drill through the oyster shell and then used to eat the oyster and it's actually famous because in history it used to make its evolution baby millions of years of evolution but yeah it's it's a it's a it's a smaller you know sea creature that fastens onto oysters and that slowly kills them and eats them and it does have a brain of someone it does meet these other these other criteria and this this particular parasite is famous because it has a type of purple dye in it so in ancient times humans killed it for its dye and that was actually the purple robes worn in ancient Rome and the use of purple associated with royalty was actually this type of parasite which was farmed you know in the Thames the River Thames in front of London so this was this was collected it's an interesting part of the history of Europe going all the way back to the Roman Empire the tree parasite but anyway I wrote back saying isn't it absurdly contradictory therefore that as a vegan you would refuse to eat oysters because by killing oysters you're killing the parasites that live on their back that the parrot like from your perspective if you're drawing the line this way the parasites that live on the shell of an oyster have more animal rights than the oyster does therefore you refuse to eat oysters like I'm sorry are you [ __ ] kidding me but again I think that animal rights as an approach is deeply flawed it leads to impossible contradictions of this kind and this is someone who's okay I was gonna say this is someone who's well intentioned I don't even believe that I don't think it is well in tension I think what's well in tension is doing the best you can even when you know it's hopeless even when I know the Sun is gonna rise tomorrow and these these these factories are gonna kill millions of animals I think the ultimate reason to not be vegan and not eat meat is that sense of helplessness is that whether or not you eat your little hamburger there's still gonna be millions of millions of cows killed which is which is very sad but you know come on son you're you're telling me your justification for eating oysters they don't meet this scientific standard when even the the parasite on the oysters back does that that's not well attention to me that that to me is yeah that's where drawing the line comes into play because my argument then is okay well isn't it response to stimuli but it doesn't have a subjective experience I've got to go with a pop culture reference on this from my generation that was different because of one TV show that was really popular and was in reruns all the time before the internet before the internet started handling video so at that time the internet just barely existed but Star Trek The Next Generation it had a character called Commander data who was a human robot and Android and Android the robot that resembled a person and that show for like 30 hours like every episode is one hour long and I think more than 30 episodes dealt with this question of sentience and it was very much in the context of at what point is a computer so sophisticated that it becomes sentient so my little generation again even if you were not a fan of that show back then they're kind of there was no internet there was no YouTube there was no video on the internet and like that show was in reruns all it was like filler for so biggie you know broadcast TV stations I think every in that generation got really familiar with the debate around sentience and every were asking my father about it and my father was kind of correcting my impression from the show I thought you had to reach quite a high level of sophistication to be sentient that my father was like no no no like you know bivalves are sentient like all these animals are said it the question is whether or not a computer actually has a response to stimuli that reaches this threshold as being as being sentient as being feeling not thinking you know or you know suffering is that is the normal criteria used by vegans so there are debates around that and I mean some of the debates are very science fiction and you know some of the debates are for example there used to be I think this is out of style and that used to be a lot of debates ago - at what point can you kill someone who's on life-support and I dealt with that just kind of hope in real life in politics but also within Buddhism when I was a practice practice I'm worth Xterra by the bush that was a big question within within tera vaada but isn't one point can you you know take someone off life support or actively kill them like give them a dose of painkillers that will kill them in terms of the progress of their disease or them being partly brain dead or you know all these bizarre sore neck injuries that have cut off the brain from the body there are all these different conditions that deal with so there also there was a kind of set viable sentience debate you know what I mean so yeah that for my generation those were really the issues around around sentience not oysters are not not veganism and I just said I think those are legitimate questions that's from those perspective if you are a Buddhist monk providing palliative care in hospitals I see why that comes up if you're in science fiction imaginary robots a zoo but I for the vegan diet I don't see why it comes up and I mean Jesus this is a movement we just did the [ __ ] March they in Vancouver Vancouver just said the March to close all slaughterhouses and what are the [ __ ] slogans for this movement Meat Is Murder speciesism is the root of all oppression it's such a laughable slogan speciesism is the root of all oppression you know think about how that sounds is someone who's never wait and rather than being about doing the best you can do because look if all if killing animals is murder I'm Pro murder right I've already said killing rats killing cockroaches right so I'm on the murder side so now I'm a vegan but you know it's at me because I because I'm willing to admit that we have to kill rats as vegans I don't know any vegans who really claim we can live without ever killing rats you know we've even thought it through just a thought experiment okay so now I'm on them I'm on now I'm Pro murder if you call that murder and in this fight I can I can call murder I'm not messed up about the word but you know as you know also I don't think the world can exist without warfare I think it's inevitable gonna have some more like that as little as possible I would rather not have meaningless Wars and endless wars but war is involved killing human beings for sure not gonna pretend that they don't there's a certain inevitability to some of these these forms of violence she doesn't mean I recklessly embrace them you know the standard image of the fact that driving a car down the road means you're inevitably going to kill some insects and once in a while you might kill a rabbit or a deer this is true but that doesn't mean you recklessly drive down the road and hit as many deer as you can or something you know you wanting to minimize you know violence is different from believing you can you can eliminate it but anyway this is my point on this issue of messaging do you really think we're gonna switch to a message which is yeah yeah Meat Is Murder assuming the victim of the murderer passes this technical definition of sentient Mena's murder unless it's a lobster or no come on you know speciesism is the root of all oppression and here's our definition of intelligence or something to me it's laughable to me to me it's a joke and to me it's it is also taking something very simple and making it methodological sophisticated complex for no reason where there's there's nothing to be gained it's quite difficult because that's real but that's sincere when people are appealing they may they may not be just [ __ ] with you they may really sincerely feel Bronson and he appealed to leti over and over again he was basically saying that oil and Google Hangouts and you know over and over again because I used over and over again he was so that's that's that specific delusion I'm spoken on delusion but it's often very sincere I'm spoken at many times specifically response to Jake Eames I miss Jake Eames he used to have some really good YouTube content you did a really good video about calcium in the vegan diet and inhuman diets generally Jake Eames met me in person more talent but he's gone now he quit you know no such a team's with a skinny guy and durianrider threatened to beat him up when we were Thailand together so he was part of that controversy at that time yes talking about talking to a man that was that was him sorry I'm sorry - I'm not shouting him out for being a skinny guy I just mentioned it's ironic that the same time during Robert was refusing to meet with me he was threatening to kick Jake's ass so what a tough guy durianrider is only picking on people smaller than himself that's their inner biker style and then running to the cops and lying to the cops about it that's three writers though there are this is the intellectual caliber of political leaders we have in veganism today yeah um so look that that specific issue on appeal to fertility and so on with Jake Eames I one of the things I really tried to get across to him in several videos in several podcasts was that his mentality was of seeing the human being as a dot in the middle of the map with a sphere around that human of how much damage how much harm the person is doing to the environment to the world socially etc and he was only thinking of activism in terms of reducing that sphere so that you know to close the circle down around around the dot and I was saying no that's that's not my approach and that's not how I want you to think of political activism I want you to think of it the positive impact you can have and maximizing that expanding it you know like I am NOT gonna spend my time focusing on never using a disposable pen right which is a real example I've known people like that no go go where they will never use a plastic disposable pen my question is what are you writing what are you using the pen for you know you can use that pen and change the world and you know the amount in terms of the human waste stream if you look at all the disposable pens were using they add up to a completely trivial impact on the landfills around the world in contrast to meat and the bones of the cows and the runoff from the meat industry and so on so you know that one thing is just the actual scale but the other side of it is go take your disposable pen and hold it like a totem like a religious icon and walk into any secondhand bookstore we were in a secondhand bookstore yesterday and look at the wall of books in front of you in a secondhand bookstore 98 percent of them are [ __ ] nobody ever wants to read and nobody should read that are a complete waste of time you know you can stand in front of one of these walls of novels depends which section you're in admittedly you know you're looking at this you think look at all this paper and look at all this ink and it all began with a pen it all began with this that the key to Pandora's box don't forget the pen maybe the problem here isn't the pen and it isn't the pen ending up in a garbage dump when you're done writing with maybe the problem is what you're writing maybe the problem is the positive difference you're trying to make in the world right so trying to say anyone using it doesn't know who she is the one who tosses she did a TED talk and she has an entire traction for four years in one single messenger and she think with her website she's using airplane tickets though taking an airplane is a huge huge a global impact right she influenced to zero waste lifestyle her life up I bet people like her if you use if you use it correctly you could have an overall positive impact and it's not you know the internet itself that's the issue it's you know where we're getting our energy source wrong well ISM veganism is to some extent a consumer movement so I understand how people slip into that mentality of just trying to reduce the sphere of their negative impact and they forget about maximizing the sphere of their positive impact and really thinking about what effect they're gonna have and how they're gonna how they're gonna impact it but you know look I'm now at printing up t-shirts for a ballast yell for my youtube channel I don't know it's kind of silly um you know people are gonna wear a t-shirt one way or another might as well I can send you one Ellie I said my logo on it how about slim face for mayor so it's even more confusing but look you know okay but let's use the mayor as an example if I'm running for mayor would I say to you no no no I can't possibly damage the environment by printing these t-shirts promoting my candidacy for mayor because this is you know this is wasteful I can't possibly print this piece of you know cardboard to try to win this election do you believe you've really got something to win here or not like if you don't think it's gonna make a big fundamental difference in the world if you win this election don't run in the election at all right that's the way to save experimental impact only do things that are meaningful in your life only do things that really matter have objectives you're pursuing that are worth putting the pen in the garbage that are worth printing the poster that are worth printing the t-shirt for and then you're not going to regret this impact but you know The Consumerist focus is in itself misleading life is not just about consumption life is also about production life is also about politics life is also about war and if I asked you hey do you want to fight this war whether it's the war in Syria or the war in Afghanistan the war in Vietnam do you want to use half as much gasoline cuz jet fuel adds up baby you burn a lot of gasoline in war you wouldn't believe you know all the supplies and provisions are being flown in and out so a lot how about we use half as much jet fuel and twice as many human casualties you know eventually it's probably gonna be four what if the whole war takes twice as long but we do with half as much jet fuel wouldn't that be great no you know people are trying to win wars as quickly as possible to have the maximum impact in a short period of time as possible and that is partly due to the impact on civilians by the way the situation in Yemen now with people starving to death though the longer a war goes on the more you get those dislocations for civilians where people are supposed to - wanted hunger and lack of medical care at starvation just due to the duration of the war so if you can use twice as much jet fuel and indeed maybe twice as much in your budget and so on wars are incredibly wasteful but you can win the war and in half as much time those are the types of really really hard decisions that people have to make so just say that that focus you know now veganism is not a war and veganism is not as politically straightforward as running for mayor and it's not and it doesn't exclude consumer choice activism consumerism is an aspect an important aspect of things you know though all these things are part of veganism and more but my point is it's really easy for people to slip into this solipsistic view I think it is truly so up says that where they're just looking at the the sphere of of how much they consume