Mayim Bialik is NOT Vegan (A response to "Why I'm a Vegan")
17 November 2016 [link youtube]
Industrialization is not the problem, and abolishing the "economic efficiency" of modern capitalism is not the solution. You can see Mayim Bialik's original video, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofcUGuMhGGo
The catchphrase "the politics of the millennium" (in contrast to "the politics of the decade") is my own coinage, but, of course, google reveals that it has been used before, in some unrelated contexts).
Youtube Automatic Transcription
and this is not about placing human
rights on to the lives of animals because that's what crazy vegans do Avenue C n I'm making an argument that our obsession with what's most efficient is causing us to objectify other living beings and not just animals look how quickly our to ignore the rights of humans who work in the factories to produce the food that ends up on our plates when we compromise people's civil rights in order to maximize profit we start seeing our fellow human beings as objects to be used rather than partners in a respectful and dignified society but it doesn't have to be this way just like it didn't used to be this way just like it didn't used to be this way animals live symbiotically with humanity for most of human history when we cared for their needs gave them room to roam nutritionally appropriate food to eat so that when it came time to take their lives we monitored that life this is a response to a new video that just went up from me MV Alok Mayim Bialik is an actress retired actress I believe who is more famous than I'm ever gonna be she's an example of someone who was thrust into a leadership role at veganism whether or not she wants one and I say that with all due sympathy I've said that in the past about other people in veganism some of these people did not ask to take on a leadership role they're not prepared to take on a leadership role and we should not place on them unrealistic expectations just because their fame may be their success as an athlete their success as an actress or a singer or something puts them in the position of being a sort of spokesperson for veganism it's a position they never got elected to and they never ran for election to I think they didn't ask for this they with Mayim Bialik is vegan and she's put out a video that's just basically called why I'm a vegan and the sad fact is that this is actually an anti vegan argument it actually doesn't support veganism this if anything supports so-called animal welfare ISM and excuses for eating meat provided that the production of that meat is not industrialized factory farming so this is kryptonite to veganism this is the argument we dealing with and the most of us are very frustrated having heard from people again and again but it's your presented by Mayim Bialik as if it were a pro-v an argument as if it were her a reason for being vegan and it may be on a personal level now again to be fair Mayim Bialik is not the only problem here I just recently did a book review talking about a book published by a respected vegan animal rights activist with the PhD who's a university professor and even though it's ostensibly you know this is the voice of one of our leaders in the movement when you actually get into the nitty-gritty it's not really a Pro vegan argument in some important ways it's anti vegan he makes excuses for eating chicken eggs under some circumstances he makes excuses for a range of animal exploitation he has his own sort of philosophy of animals being members of our society and therefore human beings exploit them for the labor and we all live in a big happy animal exploiting commune and somebody's got to put their foot down and say this is not vegan this is not a Pro vegan argument this is not this is bad for the movement etc so those those types of things can come from people who are in legitimate leadership positions or de facto leadership positions all right so that's 2 minutes and 30 seconds explaining why the hell I'm gonna criticize Mayim Bialik and moving on um her heart may be in the right place Mayim Bialik does not front-load this argument she back loads it at the very end of the video she admits what her agenda is or what her thesis is and she says that her reason for being vegan is that currently meat is produced through this factory farming industrialized system she states that her real thesis at the end is that the pursuit of efficiency but which she means the pursuit of economic efficiency leads to the exploitation of animals and the exploitation of man by man the exploitation of human beings exploitation of labour and she says it doesn't have to be this way it wasn't always this way she alludes back to a glorified past to the bucolic days of yore when in ancient history human beings would kill animals one at a time with a knife or a hatchet and somehow that's so much morally superior to killing animals on a factory line if you're vegan you disagree with her argument root and branch although she kind of gradually it's only a six minute video I think but she kind of gradually draws you into what her argument is only admits at the end what our argument is which is not really an argument for veganism um it's an argument for return to a more primitive methods of farming which she uncritically adulate s-- as being morally superior to our modern economically efficient systems of farming and slaughtering and what-have-you now I think our hearts in the right place I think she's speaking out of total ignorance but what she's saying nevertheless I have to come on camera and tell you is bad and misleading and stupid and wrong I have been on traditional farms completely inefficient non-industrialized farms using ancient methods from the Western tradition and have been on farms in Asia using traditional unchanged methods from Southeast Asian traditions um I'm not gonna get in the details as to why that is in terms of my own research interests where I've lived in the type of work I do let me tell you something taking a chicken and chopping its head off is exactly the same especially from the chickens perspective I recently got a very passionate moving email from a young woman who herself grew up on a traditional farm a non factory farm and being shown how to gently take a chicken and stroked its head and lay its body down on a towel and lovingly prepare it to be slaughtered they would Lowell the chicken into a relaxed state and then you know throttle it and chop its head off and she learned this in her childhood and she learned the compassionate way to kill a chicken and took her many years to develop intellectually and realize no this is bad and it's wrong and she grew up in a subculture that basically created an ethical veneer over what is fundamentally an unethical and exploitative activity now again you can see that in Cambodia and you see that in Canada you can go and witness the reality of traditional farming you know what you'll figure out this isn't a problem with modern industrial factory farming methods this isn't a problem that started in the year 1986 or the year 1996 this is a problem that goes back to the dawn of human civilization and you can read ancient Greek philosophers who on good moral grounds refused to accept this back in ancient Greece or back in ancient Rome if you prefer Latin who looked at the reality of what animal exploitation and meat production was before there were any factory farms before there was any electricity so this is bad and wrong and immoral and we can do better we could live without this in this civilization and 2,000 years ago that was a very hot tough call to make you know to live without wool in a cold climate in an ancient civilization was very hard to live without leather in an ancient civilization was very hard today we have plastic my watch has a plastic watch strap I don't got to think about leather for a minute I don't got to think about wool you know the availability of cotton remember there was a time when cotton was an exotic foreign import in Europe when Europeans did not have cotton and they encountered it as this exotic and wonderful material produced in India of course over the centuries Europeans learned how to make cotton from India from Egypt from other climates and other civilizations that had it but there was a time when refusing to wear wool or refusing to wear leather but you're almost meant you had to you could only wear flax you could only wear a few materials that ancient Europeans has there was a time when the stakes were very very high to refuse to engage in an animal exploitation and today the stakes are lower and lower it's easier and easier to be vegan but either you can see the problem as a matter of principle or you can't and no offense Mayim Bialik can't our whole argument here really is much closer to an anti-capitalist argument or what she's claiming is that the essential problem is exploitation exploitation and the pursuit of economic efficiency she's blaming modernity she's blaming industrialized factory methods she is she is not using the word capitalism but she is really blaming capitalism and the progress of science is that no and my position is the exact opposite before I got involved with veganism you guys probably know I was a scholar of Buddhism so I've seen the debates over vegetarianism going back centuries and centuries within Buddhism I read just as a university student a lot of ancient Greek in ancient Roman philosophy you can see those debates going back there and that again centuries and centuries going back in European philosophical tradition I view this not as the politics of the decade I view this problem in terms of the politics of the millennium goes back millennia and it's going to go forward millennia also and Mayim Bialik in her conclusion she very clearly says her objection is only to these modern factory farming methods and that we can do better but until then until we do better she's vegan so she even presents vigilant veganism is only provisional commitment in her life until such time as she can buy happy meat produced by these ancient methods the cheaper zooms are so much more ethical so this becomes an argument for free-range happy chickens happily having their throats slit happily running around in a garden before they're killed instead of being in a being in a cage made out of metal and concrete etc now I do not think Mayim Bialik supports her argument anyway it's convincing so I don't think I've to say anything more about it I think there actually is a much more interesting argument if you talk about eating wild animals hunting and eating wild animals I think there there's a very significant ethical contrast but the contrast between traditional pre-modern farming methods and industrialize permits I could say if your objection is only to the in-depth to the industrialized slaughter of animals and is not to the slaughter of animals in principle then simply put you are not vegan a virus yen
rights on to the lives of animals because that's what crazy vegans do Avenue C n I'm making an argument that our obsession with what's most efficient is causing us to objectify other living beings and not just animals look how quickly our to ignore the rights of humans who work in the factories to produce the food that ends up on our plates when we compromise people's civil rights in order to maximize profit we start seeing our fellow human beings as objects to be used rather than partners in a respectful and dignified society but it doesn't have to be this way just like it didn't used to be this way just like it didn't used to be this way animals live symbiotically with humanity for most of human history when we cared for their needs gave them room to roam nutritionally appropriate food to eat so that when it came time to take their lives we monitored that life this is a response to a new video that just went up from me MV Alok Mayim Bialik is an actress retired actress I believe who is more famous than I'm ever gonna be she's an example of someone who was thrust into a leadership role at veganism whether or not she wants one and I say that with all due sympathy I've said that in the past about other people in veganism some of these people did not ask to take on a leadership role they're not prepared to take on a leadership role and we should not place on them unrealistic expectations just because their fame may be their success as an athlete their success as an actress or a singer or something puts them in the position of being a sort of spokesperson for veganism it's a position they never got elected to and they never ran for election to I think they didn't ask for this they with Mayim Bialik is vegan and she's put out a video that's just basically called why I'm a vegan and the sad fact is that this is actually an anti vegan argument it actually doesn't support veganism this if anything supports so-called animal welfare ISM and excuses for eating meat provided that the production of that meat is not industrialized factory farming so this is kryptonite to veganism this is the argument we dealing with and the most of us are very frustrated having heard from people again and again but it's your presented by Mayim Bialik as if it were a pro-v an argument as if it were her a reason for being vegan and it may be on a personal level now again to be fair Mayim Bialik is not the only problem here I just recently did a book review talking about a book published by a respected vegan animal rights activist with the PhD who's a university professor and even though it's ostensibly you know this is the voice of one of our leaders in the movement when you actually get into the nitty-gritty it's not really a Pro vegan argument in some important ways it's anti vegan he makes excuses for eating chicken eggs under some circumstances he makes excuses for a range of animal exploitation he has his own sort of philosophy of animals being members of our society and therefore human beings exploit them for the labor and we all live in a big happy animal exploiting commune and somebody's got to put their foot down and say this is not vegan this is not a Pro vegan argument this is not this is bad for the movement etc so those those types of things can come from people who are in legitimate leadership positions or de facto leadership positions all right so that's 2 minutes and 30 seconds explaining why the hell I'm gonna criticize Mayim Bialik and moving on um her heart may be in the right place Mayim Bialik does not front-load this argument she back loads it at the very end of the video she admits what her agenda is or what her thesis is and she says that her reason for being vegan is that currently meat is produced through this factory farming industrialized system she states that her real thesis at the end is that the pursuit of efficiency but which she means the pursuit of economic efficiency leads to the exploitation of animals and the exploitation of man by man the exploitation of human beings exploitation of labour and she says it doesn't have to be this way it wasn't always this way she alludes back to a glorified past to the bucolic days of yore when in ancient history human beings would kill animals one at a time with a knife or a hatchet and somehow that's so much morally superior to killing animals on a factory line if you're vegan you disagree with her argument root and branch although she kind of gradually it's only a six minute video I think but she kind of gradually draws you into what her argument is only admits at the end what our argument is which is not really an argument for veganism um it's an argument for return to a more primitive methods of farming which she uncritically adulate s-- as being morally superior to our modern economically efficient systems of farming and slaughtering and what-have-you now I think our hearts in the right place I think she's speaking out of total ignorance but what she's saying nevertheless I have to come on camera and tell you is bad and misleading and stupid and wrong I have been on traditional farms completely inefficient non-industrialized farms using ancient methods from the Western tradition and have been on farms in Asia using traditional unchanged methods from Southeast Asian traditions um I'm not gonna get in the details as to why that is in terms of my own research interests where I've lived in the type of work I do let me tell you something taking a chicken and chopping its head off is exactly the same especially from the chickens perspective I recently got a very passionate moving email from a young woman who herself grew up on a traditional farm a non factory farm and being shown how to gently take a chicken and stroked its head and lay its body down on a towel and lovingly prepare it to be slaughtered they would Lowell the chicken into a relaxed state and then you know throttle it and chop its head off and she learned this in her childhood and she learned the compassionate way to kill a chicken and took her many years to develop intellectually and realize no this is bad and it's wrong and she grew up in a subculture that basically created an ethical veneer over what is fundamentally an unethical and exploitative activity now again you can see that in Cambodia and you see that in Canada you can go and witness the reality of traditional farming you know what you'll figure out this isn't a problem with modern industrial factory farming methods this isn't a problem that started in the year 1986 or the year 1996 this is a problem that goes back to the dawn of human civilization and you can read ancient Greek philosophers who on good moral grounds refused to accept this back in ancient Greece or back in ancient Rome if you prefer Latin who looked at the reality of what animal exploitation and meat production was before there were any factory farms before there was any electricity so this is bad and wrong and immoral and we can do better we could live without this in this civilization and 2,000 years ago that was a very hot tough call to make you know to live without wool in a cold climate in an ancient civilization was very hard to live without leather in an ancient civilization was very hard today we have plastic my watch has a plastic watch strap I don't got to think about leather for a minute I don't got to think about wool you know the availability of cotton remember there was a time when cotton was an exotic foreign import in Europe when Europeans did not have cotton and they encountered it as this exotic and wonderful material produced in India of course over the centuries Europeans learned how to make cotton from India from Egypt from other climates and other civilizations that had it but there was a time when refusing to wear wool or refusing to wear leather but you're almost meant you had to you could only wear flax you could only wear a few materials that ancient Europeans has there was a time when the stakes were very very high to refuse to engage in an animal exploitation and today the stakes are lower and lower it's easier and easier to be vegan but either you can see the problem as a matter of principle or you can't and no offense Mayim Bialik can't our whole argument here really is much closer to an anti-capitalist argument or what she's claiming is that the essential problem is exploitation exploitation and the pursuit of economic efficiency she's blaming modernity she's blaming industrialized factory methods she is she is not using the word capitalism but she is really blaming capitalism and the progress of science is that no and my position is the exact opposite before I got involved with veganism you guys probably know I was a scholar of Buddhism so I've seen the debates over vegetarianism going back centuries and centuries within Buddhism I read just as a university student a lot of ancient Greek in ancient Roman philosophy you can see those debates going back there and that again centuries and centuries going back in European philosophical tradition I view this not as the politics of the decade I view this problem in terms of the politics of the millennium goes back millennia and it's going to go forward millennia also and Mayim Bialik in her conclusion she very clearly says her objection is only to these modern factory farming methods and that we can do better but until then until we do better she's vegan so she even presents vigilant veganism is only provisional commitment in her life until such time as she can buy happy meat produced by these ancient methods the cheaper zooms are so much more ethical so this becomes an argument for free-range happy chickens happily having their throats slit happily running around in a garden before they're killed instead of being in a being in a cage made out of metal and concrete etc now I do not think Mayim Bialik supports her argument anyway it's convincing so I don't think I've to say anything more about it I think there actually is a much more interesting argument if you talk about eating wild animals hunting and eating wild animals I think there there's a very significant ethical contrast but the contrast between traditional pre-modern farming methods and industrialize permits I could say if your objection is only to the in-depth to the industrialized slaughter of animals and is not to the slaughter of animals in principle then simply put you are not vegan a virus yen