Nihilism: "If animals don't have animal rights, why do humans have human rights?"

17 September 2017 [link youtube]


Please turn on the SUBTITLES (字幕) for this one: the sound quality is poor, but I prefer to share this video than to record another, less-spontaneous version ("take two").



Thanks to Theo for typing out the subtitles. You can check out his (vegan-politics-and-youtube-related) website, here:

activistjourneys.wordpress.com/eisel-mazard



From my perspective, this video discusses an important set of issues within veganism, and clearly shows the contrast between ideological and nihilistic thinking, the contrast between utopian and empirical thinking, and so on, with conclusions that link my current perspective on vegan politics to my past work on Buddhist politics and Communism (HINT: I'm Anti-Communist).


Youtube Automatic Transcription

veganism, vegan politics, animal rights, human
in vegan politics, but it's also with the and reactions to my recent video saying that of them may or may not have gotten the message a day or two later, I also clarified in the rights, if we’re talking as a matter of in, doesn't mean the concept is completely counter examples in that self-same video explaining everyday questions of how we organize vegan saying more or less, this is a paraphrase, rights, why would animals not have rights?” perhaps guilty of speciesism or what have here is not that human rights don't exist, would not claim that poetry doesn't exist. we're talking about something creative and couched in cultural and aesthetic considerations. I can show you a poem translated from medieval you may ask yourself; Is this poetry? into English and you may wonder; Is this poetry? century poetry written in English in California this poetry? or not you can recognize it as poetry, whether gets into a lot of tricky questions that are belief, right? write poems for or about animals, we may project of art, we may you know depict them in a poetic within human culture, but this is so to speak human beings have created. rights, partly what we're talking about is in an earlier video, do you or do you not park, in some countries you do and some you England and Canada, you know do you or do these circumstances, those circumstances, legal issue, but we all know to a large extent, the reason why people get so passionate about realm of aesthetic, poetic and indeed ultimately become so animated about rights and why some the case for veganism in terms of animal rights this this is an extension of the anti-slavery that comes to mind. Hobbes says laconically things like human rights, he is not, human his lifetime, but these barriers that define to the danger, though not the difficulty of rights, animal rights, or what have you. the shadow of war and discourse within polite and backed up by the threat of violence, it's human rights become so important. to a local city park and prevent someone from well if you have the law, either the people a civil right, it's a human right, or that down to matters of enforcement. question this way; do animals “have” animal don't because animals cannot enforce animal to imagine and project these values, project enforce these rights against one another. many people including Tobias Leonardo in his on, maybe talk to Tobias also, invite them it - these are issues that other people in recognize also, that this is fundamentally of slaves, where we can ask the slaves themselves of perpetual dependency, perpetual inequality, are equal to humans, which some vegans want their rights are in fact our rights projected by human beings and human values. comes up, from by watching a new video from to imagine that if only we had a society in which everyone either believed or recited a profoundly more compassionate society, a here is, I do not believe in animal rights, some of the people who support and propound believe them and yet they believe that the would be a better society if only everyone pretend they believed in these principles. society, less and less of violence of man and so on. specifically as historical nihilism, I'm really and what that means to me is different than some time studying the historical reality looking at medieval Sri Lanka or medieval that are many ways more appealing than a medieval it is no doubt true that in many, many ways, would be more pleasant than living in medieval France, right? society, in a traditional Theravada Buddhist the words of non-violence and compassion, these principles and believing in these principles and bedrock of the religion, public religion, state. torture, torture of human beings, exploitation very different from the history of slavery slavery is slavery, and involved also the compassion to such a remarkable extent and were delighted by watching someone being tortured a human being riding on an elephant, you know tearing the person apart and so on, this was again profoundly Buddhist society and yet of men killing each other in public, martial would show up and cheer, and the parents of know public martial arts displays, seeing the whole society ate meat, including the of non-violence and compassion, so I do not in human rights, I do not believe in the efficacy of nihilism in my perspective is the critique and I think we can learn a lot from looking at the real differences between historical had communist societies that piously preached, human rights, I mean has there ever been another and espousal of human rights than the Soviet block. society? and more fanatically obsessed with the rights the Soviet Union workers had no rights, especially have those rights in communist China, even and there around the world okay. that's directly applicable to vegan politics for us to learn about belief itself and ideology.