College student refuses to let vegan activist force their morality | DEBATE A VEGAN

if a dog walks past now and i decide to stomp that dog to death you would not stop me it's not my dog to be honest i grew up in a country where stray dogs are everywhere so you know people hunt those dogs like it's nothing you know it's like they're like rats on the streets like would you stomp a rat i would stomp around yeah hi seth my name's ed yeah it's really nice to meet you as well um as you're well aware today we're at usc um and i have a banner with just a very simple question why aren't you vegan yet you've been waiting and you've kindly sat down what is your response to that question so there's a lot of reasons i would just like to say right off the bat like i was vegan for a year yeah and i just didn't enjoy the experience too much and you know just from my own personal morality and my feeling towards animals and towards life that wasn't really the reason why i went vegan i didn't go for the morality reason i went for more of the health kind of reason and to just see what it was about and you know see what the kind of craze was about regarding that yeah um okay so you use the word uh your morality there i'm more common to kind of like what you were saying about the enjoyment and kind of that you don't think it's that bad uh but you said it it wasn't really it wasn't really um kind of like impeding on your morality when it comes to animals uh what is your view about the moral concerning consideration that should be granted to animals uh well i heard that before you were talking about exploitation so i just think like exploitation is a net loss and like like since i don't believe in god personally and like biologically i believe that is in our inherent belief like in our like it's our nat it's our goal to improve the longevity of our species so so in terms of animals like as long as we can sustainably uh harvest them without creating that net loss i think that that's uh that's like the fine point of eating them you know but every day we engage in exploitation so it's very hard because i think a lot of people don't understand that sustainability is a very complicated concept that we as humans we are like born to exploit it's just our nature it's our nature with every every living being i mean of course you know historically speaking we've relied on the exploitation of others to survive as do all wild animals in some degree or another but of course we're different now aren't we we have the moral agency we're able to rationalize decisions and whilst we may agree that we will never read all exploitation in the world surely the aspiration should be to reduce exploitation where we possibly can yeah that's your preference to reduce exfoliation in the in the form of consumption of meat but for a lot of people meat is a luxury you know my brother and i we grew up in a third world country and me is like you you know you have the rice which is the the bulk of the meal and then you have that meat which is the luxury which is kind of something that you know a lot of people don't get to enjoy so you know as people become more and more privileged it's like they call it an inferior good where as your income increases you uh opt to consume less of that product yeah but yeah i think that about you and i then in this privileged situation that we're in obviously we you know you spoke about um you know the foods you used to consume but what about in la where you have uh the privilege to make decisions that maybe you weren't able to make before in the past well yeah i make decisions every single day and i try to you know be sustainable in other areas but at the end of the day we're exploiting every single second of our life you know like you're you know holding a microphone but if you consider where that those materials have come from like if you've ever been to a steel mine or if you've ever been to a brick factory those are all exploitations happening every single day and there is a net negative going on so it's this kind of pick and choosing thing if it makes you feel better at the end of the day sure go ahead with it but you know you're exploiting i'm exploiting everyone here is exploiting every human on earth is exploiting even animals are exploiting that's but it's an appeal to futility isn't it the idea that well everything is exploitation or we live in an inherently imperfect world um the sourcing of materials is inherently imperfect so therefore where we have options and choices we shouldn't do that because we have a futile in our attempts to be perfect of course right everything is exploitation now let's say that i have two microphones i can choose from now one microphone comes from no exploitation and is a fantastically moral product and the other isn't and i opt to go for the one that isn't even though i have that choice side by side we probably question that choice now with the food that we consume that's the choice that we have we're going to a supermarket we go into a restaurant and it's not that we don't have one or the other it's that we have both side by side and we opt to choose one that causes more exploitation over one that doesn't and that becomes a moral concern surely but see both cause exploitation at the end there is no such thing as something that cannot cause exploitation reducing that you could say reduce exploitation but the utility that you get out of it or the the benefit that you get out of it may be more so if you choose to maybe go with a better quality microphone that maybe uses uh less of a more harmful or conflict mineral than the other one but it makes it produces better sound you know you can go with that one because at the end of the day if you understand that we are exploiting that you shouldn't worry about those things as much like obviously if something is extremely uh exploitative that it will harm your well-being in your current life in your current lifetime then i could see that being a problem but such as the sustainability impact of meat consumption perhaps we'll see i think meat consumption can be sustainable well i don't want to say sustainable because nothing really is in my opinion is sustainable is just like minimizing that gap minimizing that net loss yeah so it's like let's look at um borneo okay they're chopping down tons of rain for us to plant palm for palm oil yeah so that's a huge exploitative industry they're you know killing the whole biodiversity in that land and they're reducing the entire environment for the orangutan to live they see this appeal to futility again we're never going to live in a world without exploitation that obviously isn't going to happen and the as you said before simply being alive and needing things to survive and you know basic requirements is going to lead to exploitation some form or another but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try and reduce the exploitation where we can we should reduce the amount of palm oil that's been produced that i think that's a no-brainer but at the same time we shouldn't then use the fact that that is a system of exploitation to justify the exploitation that occurs in other systems of of agriculture you know animal agriculture that's still something we should address because we could do both they're not mutually exclusive you know we could do both simultaneously and that would be the preferable option yeah you just have to consider the opportunity cost because really with a growing population every single day we need to fulfill the needs of the people and you know there's people starving around the world so in these developing countries they make those decisions that they value the palm industry more than their biodiversity because they can feed their population but we're kind of often a tangent here because we're discussing palm oil and we're discussing the situations of people uh who economically may be depending on on that industry rather than our actions as individuals in the society where we live and you know i think we've kind of almost interchanged the word moral with sustainable we should probably separate those two words a little bit and kind of like maybe you know you know go back to that moral bit for a moment we can provide sustainability in a second perhaps but go back to that moral thing um in terms of like uh what we do to animals is there a moral justification or is there a morally i don't use the word righteous it sounds like not the best word but let's go for it anyway is there a morally righteous way to exploit and take the life of an animal in a situation where we don't have to okay so you're saying is there a morally just way barley just is the right phrasing well i think that based on my morality is just because i need to eat and that's my own morality it's like just from my own personal philosophy i believe that morality is relative to the individual but obviously as a culture and as a you know as a species we have a collective kind of morality that we've adopted uh with each other but then you have you know different societies having different versions of that morality but from my perspective like i've killed animals before yeah you know like like in the middle we sacrifice lamb you eat the whole lamb and i don't because i don't believe in a soul so i don't actually feel any uh you have no empathy for an animal because you don't have a religious belief yeah so you have empathy for humans in the absence of a religious belief in the absence of a soul well it's not it's not a it's not a moral belief it's that because as a society we have built it's like biologically you are less inclined to kill another human because your goal as species is to increase this longevity is to improve it's like it's like anything saying we're driven by some sort of biological determinism but we have moral agency do we not the moral legislation is all relative to the person and it's defined by our needs by you know our society as a collective but if we say that morality is subjective and you kind of alluded to the fact that obviously different cultures have different versions of morality does that mean that each culture's version of morality is justified simply because it is a cultural version of morality when you say justify that it's referring to your own morality so you're saying justified based on your own morality but since i believe that everyone's morality is relative i can't justify it i can't justify if they want to kill someone i can't justify it because that's it's i don't justify because based on my own morality that i think okay it's not really great to kill a person yeah but if you know people in china want to eat dogs like that's you know their source of consumption so what about people that want to kill humans you know obviously we're saying morality is subjective that's my version of morality does that mean that we should have a judicial system we should have prisons because you know the people that commit those crimes maybe don't think that they've done something that they feel is morally wrong yeah so as a collective as a collective society we have all come to the consensus that hey most of us probably everyone pretty much except for those few outliers agree that murder is wrong yeah but at the end of the day those people that killed don't believe that and so they go out and do that but see that's you know how we operate as a society since we have this collective we can uh implement these laws based on our collective morality okay but at the same time there's a difference there so you're saying that the morality is defined by the individual but when enough people believe in a certain thing then it becomes something that should have a punishment and a crime when people who whose own subjective version of morals contradicts the bandwagon effect well you're using the word should it should is based on what those people believe is that if we have that same collective idea that hey murder is wrong we will employ that you know we will employ that but it's like why if morality is subjective because those those people together collectively believe the same thing therefore they will they will use their power to to oppose that idea yeah so it's like if i'm living somewhere far alone i have my own power to employ my own morality my own decisions but as a collective if you do not comply with the moral agreements that society has dictated you are now considered an outsider you are now going to be basically struck by your people yes so morality is yeah so morality is subjective until enough people believe in it what about in a situation where something that we think to be uh immoral um such as uh you know uh homophobia or the persecution of people based on their sexuality in a culture where that is the bandwagon effect is the majority of people think that homosexuality is wrong should we then say well actually because the majority of people in that culture believe it therefore that's right and because the outlier is that being gay is okay gay people should be allowed to be persecuted because the bandwagon effect dictates that that's okay okay so that's a really good point and it kind of goes back to what i said so i grew up in a country where uh homo homophobes are sorry not homophobes uh homosexuals are outlawed and the thing is that they have that collective power as a group to employ that decision in your collective society you believe that that is something wrong but they believe that it's something right and at the end of the day it's survival of the fittest so if you wanna if you wanna put your power over them and get them to stop doing that like i'm not gonna say it's wrong or right because that it's not wrong if the majority of people believe in the homophobia in that culture you're not it's you're saying what i think is wrong and right because you're asking me what i think is wrong yeah i think so i think homosexuality is completely fine yeah you know i have gay relatives it's completely fine like i have no problems against it but that is what the society has dictated is wrong you would be fine with them being put in prison or being persecuted because they've gone into that culture see but i wouldn't because that's based on my morality but their morality determines them that it's okay to do that so that's that should be a challenge surely it's not a it's not it's not a bias because i think that when we talk about issues of morals of course when we think about it from a philosophical perspective we can say morality is subjective but we don't live by that principle you know in in in actuality because we do have a judicial system and we we do believe in things being right and wrong based on our collective morality sharp but collective morality changes now this culture has a uh a turbulent history with things that we now consider to be immoral and that's because we challenge those cultural norms we didn't just abide by them because of the bandwagon effect because you know a consensus at that time was this thing you know individuals said and became collective said well actually this is wrong regardless of the group mindset and the group think and i think you know even the morality yes when we when we take it down to this kind of deep philosophical tangent is subjective that's not the principle we live by the principle we live by is a reduction of unnecessary harm and suffering you know we don't stab people um because hopefully we recognize the stabbing of the person causes them to suffer causes harm is a non-consensual act that comes you know that creates a negative experience for the individual who's been stabbed and so for me when it comes to animals when i recognize that they too uh these individuals having these experiences in the absence of of the necessity causing them harm when i don't need to must therefore being immoralized by my moral code of reducing suffering in situations where i have the option to be able to let's see in the terms of my moral code i don't think it's wrong and i think that because we exploit so many different things in our world that meat for me is something that i don't think is of the greatest importance to give up okay in terms of other things you know i think there are so many other things that and that's based on my decision in life because at the end of the day everyone can explain what they want because everyone is exploiting every single second but in my own decision i think that because i don't believe this is my own morality that i think it is justified to you know if you were being exploited if you if you ended up in a situation where you were being enslaved and exploited would you accept that because people have the right to exploit who they want and how they want because of uh subjective kind of personal morality that we're talking about well i think it's a bit different because if you're looking at like i'm going to give you like a philosophical idea it's the allegory of the cave where you know these animals are born into this lifestyle that they are com they are born into this captivity so they do not understand something that is greater from my perspective from my idea that i have lived this life and then i get put into maybe shackles or whatever i would obviously oppose that because i've experienced something else okay but suffering is suffering and i i don't think let's think about have you heard of the fritzl family no okay a guy in germany i had children he kept them locked in the basement they never knew that there was an outside world he would systematically uh rape them and do terrible things to them they they never knew anything else this was the only existence they knew but the suffering caused to them by the sexual exploitation the rape and the violence wasn't diminished because they didn't know that they could come to la and enjoy sunshine all year round just because they didn't have the aspiration of something different didn't diminish the experience of suffering they were enduring at least they were eventually but not only because he was found out and uh he went to prison thankfully yeah and then you so you see the other side of things once you release these animals they realize that they have been you know imprisoned their entire but they're suffering these the girls who were suffering at the hands of joseph fritzel their suffering wasn't diminished because they didn't have an experience of freedom hey it's ed sorry to interject but i just wanted to briefly clarify a couple of details about the fritzl case firstly it happened in austria and not germany and secondly he kidnapped his daughter when she was 18. so whilst she had experienced freedom outside of the basement three of her children that were born out of the abuse inflicted by her father were born in the basement and had never experienced freedom themselves so the point still remains the experience of suffering isn't diminished simply because suffering is all someone has ever known well yeah that is also human life as well you have to keep that in mind that we value human life because we are a collective species and we want to increase the longevity of our people no no i'm talking about the individual their experience of suffering the rape wasn't less of a rape to them because they didn't know that they could exist in a world where someone didn't rape them that rape was still horrifying and still caused them suffering an animal a pig in a in a farm may not know that there are pigs in the world to enjoy a life where they're not being exploited but that doesn't make the exploitation suffering that they endure the mutilation the slaughter that doesn't make it less severe for them just because they don't have an awareness of a life without that suffering but see they are being fed they are on a farm like that's because you're defining it as exploitation but these you know these animals are growing they are mating with each other in these environments like that's you're defining it as exploitation but in my mind i've been artificially bred but just because we feed an animal just because we provide an animal the requirements that they need to survive water and food doesn't mean it's not exploitation joseph fritzel gave his uh the daughters that he had who he exploited he gave them water and food because he wanted to exploit them for the purposes he did we don't it's not a benevolent or a non-exploitative thing just because we give animals what they require to grow yeah but see you're looking at exploitation from a moral sense i'm looking at more from an economic sense that there is a net loss because that's how i see it i don't see it from a moral since i really don't so you know care for the life of these animals so if if animals don't deserve morality or don't deserve moral consideration then that does that mean that we can do anything we want to animals or you can give them to any species you can apply morality to anything you can apply it to trees you can apply it to your love for maybe a building you can apply it to anything if you love something so much you can you know have that moral affection for it so i don't have that particular moral affection for those animals so we can do anything we want to animal if a dog walks past now and i decide to stomp that dog to death you would not stop me it's not my dog to be honest like that's just how it like that's like obviously like if it was like because like that's also a different thing i grew up in a country where stray dogs are everywhere so you know people hunt those dogs like it's nothing you know it's like they're like rats on the streets like would you stomp a rat i would stomp a rat yeah i wouldn't stomp around why would i because they are pests and they actually exploit things that i'm taking advantage of so it's like they make our streets dirtier they spread diseases so that is exploiting us in a sense of course we can uh get around that in different ways it doesn't necessarily mean stomping them to death but the point i was making is in the absence of any moral consideration for animals if an animal has to walk past a dog a cat any animal i would be entitled to stomp and kill them in any manner that i wish caused them any amount of suffering that i so desired because they don't deserve moral consideration and you wouldn't stop me from doing so well if you're not doing it for the reason of consumption then i just see it as not being you know productive at all but if you're if you're going to consume that animal i completely understand so unnecessarily harming them or harming them for a reason outside of consumption so so as long as as long as i consume them that's fine but if i do anything to an animal without consumption at the end then it's wrong well yeah just from my own morality if you're not consuming it then you're just you know making it go to waste so animals do deserve moral consideration that's not just what i said i said that it the moral consideration is that you would use it okay but if i even if i don't moral even if i don't want to use it why is it therefore wrong for me to do those things to an animal even if i don't consume that to consume them at the end of it why does that become wrong when we talk about morality there is nothing wrong to an animal because animals don't deserve moral consideration yeah so if that is your own morality and you choose to kill that animal that's your decision but if i disagree with you i can either choose to you know turn a blind eye or i can choose to rebel against that and maybe stop that it depends how much i care and so why does the consumption then change the morality of what's happened to the individual animal because to them again the experience that they've endured is no different if i consume them at the end so why does me eating their flesh after they have died and gone through that experience make it moral what happens before because from my own moral belief by consuming them you are you are being more sustainable in terms of the actual consumption the sustainability when it comes morality are two different things from a morality perspective we're viewing that from the action of the victim and so from the victims perspective what i do to them is not changed because it's more sustainable for me to eat their flesh at the end of it but why are you looking at it from their experience because they're the victim in that experience but it's your world you're living in you are the one with the consciousness they have consciousness it's their world as well yeah but this is your morality this is your decision you should not consider you know you don't need to consider how they are feeling about this particular action if your morality determines that it's okay to kill them that's okay so this and this is the problem we have now is we're justifying anything that we could possibly want to as long as the individual inflicting the suffering and harm believes themselves that it's fine ted bundy kill all those women do those things but as long as ted bundy doesn't think that it's morally wrong then therefore he shouldn't then therefore it's fine it's morally wrong to the society because as a collective our moral compass has been aligned so that we think murder is wrong but in his own mind he thinks murder is okay but the problem is okay so but then we don't allow that to be the case because we don't allow individual beliefs around you know specific instances of morality to in you know to change the fact that there should be some things that are objectively wrong within society but see as a society not everyone agrees that the lives of these animals are of importance and they think that morally it is okay to consume these animals and kill them sure but that doesn't mean that it is okay there's a difference because some youth people used to think that it was acceptable to own slaves but that doesn't mean that owning slaves is acceptable so some people might say well i don't think it's morally wrong but that doesn't mean that it isn't morally wrong because it's because of the morals that we we do live by in society we've already decided that not inflicting harm is a morally preferable choice it's morally wrong from our perspective and our point in time but if you were in that time period and you were raised in those standards if you were like raising you know a situation where there's slaves in your mind you would probably think it's okay to have slaves but that doesn't mean that it's wrong it's our particular point in time no no okay because you're thinking there's a you're thinking there's a morality and like a moral code in the universe that there are wrongs and rights but i'm telling you that it is relative so in that point in time when you were raised you probably think that it's okay but i'm saying it's not okay from my particular point in time because i think it is morally wrong because that is what society as a collective has decided is wrong but you don't even in the absence of a universal moral code we can still understand something was wrong even if in that time we didn't believe it to be okay like for example you know you may get into an argument with someone and at that time you may feel that the position you're arguing is completely justified but then realized afterwards actually that wasn't a justified position now just because at the time when you're arguing you felt that it was doesn't negate the fact that actually with a bit of objectivity it it wasn't so with animals we may subjectively in this time decide well this is fine but that doesn't mean that it is because especially if in the future we reflect and go actually that was wrong that's because in the time it is wrong regardless of our personal perception of that action well just from my understanding about you know nature of beings and animals we can you know you see animals all the time in nature consuming other animals and you know you even see chimpanzees now like in the last 10 years chimpanzees which are you know close relatives to us have been starting to consume meat yeah so you know i think that historically it has been very normal to consume meat and i think that is but does the longevity of an action uh determine whether or not it should still be considered moral now and into the future just the fact that we've done it for a long time mean that it's automatically accepted okay great now and based on my own morality that's good okay good well all right something we both agree on that our moral codes align at this point okay and the second thing is to do with wild animals should we base our morality on the actions of wild animals who also do things like infanticide rape and other actions that we would conventionally think not to be justified well we are animals at the end of the day and you know a lot of our decisions and a lot of things that happen in society can be mirrored to what happens in the animal kingdom every single day so should we base our morality on the actions of wild animals well we're not basing we're basing it around our own values we're not basing it around the animals it's just our biological nature to do so i'm not basing anything like looking at an animal say oh that's an animal i should you know mimic what they are doing it is that i am an animal so these are tendencies of an animal it is my tendency to consume food is my tendency to eat is my tendency to you know to reproduce these are all things that are just innately human okay but those are necessities for human survival but the thing is you said well chimpanzees have done this and so you're kind of like justifying your action by going well other animals do this so whilst we might not go right what do animals do okay that's what's morally immoral when we say well other animals do this we're saying well we're justified because these other animals are doing it and yes we are animals but at the same time we have significant differences such as the ability to have alternative choices such the ability to rationalize the morality of those actions to understand if there is an alternative that reduces the harm that we cause other animals to have the privilege or unnecessarily the cognitive ability to be able to do those things in the same way that we can but see i think the harm done to animals is not that big of a problem you just look at it because you see that it's an animal and you think that it has a soul and you feel this kind of uh you know it's about sense of compassion for them but i i feel the same thing for trees i feel the same thing for plants it's like you feel nothing for them so you feel nothing further yeah but you do recognize or maybe you don't but do you think that there is a a moral distinction between a plant and a and a conscious being you know a sentient being who feels and suffers in much similar way that we do it's based on my own morality i have to i have to keep coming back to that because that is my philosophical belief that you know morality is relative to to the beholder so if someone was to harm you that would be acceptable because uh i know i'm talking i'm not talking about in our culture let's take it a little bit hypothetical we go to another culture where uh you know something isn't you know legally wrong okay where something isn't you know there isn't a bandwagon effect we're just in a situation with you and someone else would it be morally wrong for someone to harm you simply because of the harm that it causes you outside of the context of a cultural norm well see because i have experienced something outside of that that cultural norm therefore my morality has dictated that that is wrong but if you were maybe you know in viking times and it was normal to go to someone and you know take their belongings and that's a different story because they have been in that environment so their morality has uh been facilitated to believe that that that is a normal thing yeah again we've gone around in a in a big circle so my apologies that was because of the question i just asked you but there again we're talking about this idea that if someone is bred into that situation and they don't know any different that makes it you know that makes it moral to do what we do to them is that it because they're bred for that reason no from okay so let's go back so i think from my perspective that it is immoral on my own beliefs to do something like that but in their environment if they think that that is normal then it is then it is and it's fine for them to do it in their own because that is their world that is but you would object to that happening you wouldn't allow it to happen simply because in their version of reality they think it's okay that's objectively based on my own version of morality but if they think that is okay they can partake in that it's like it's like how a lot of people oppose you know uh people in china and cambodia consuming dogs because people have a compassion towards dogs but that in their mind that is just another good to consume and they don't have that compassion for it so i don't see any problem with it based up because personally i also don't see that compassion for dogs because i grew up in a culture where dogs are you know not really uh they're like outside and they're on the streets so but that doesn't but again right because we went to the culture at the beginning that point aside yes you were raised in a culture where maybe you weren't uh culturally taught to empathize with these animals that doesn't make them uh suffering inflates upon them less or more moral than another country you know like let's take a border if in one country this is fine and culturally accepted but just over this border it's not if we pick the dog up and move them over the borders right left right left the immorality of the action of harming the dog doesn't change based on whether we go right left right left it's based on the person who is inflicting the harm on the animal well we've already established that culture itself shouldn't determine morality right so the cultures that we that we raised in which determine our individual morality as well determine a collective morality in which that society has power and they can impose their morality on other people so as a collective if they believe something they can impose that law on other people but at the end of the day everyone has their own morality so if that society determines that that is okay that is their world that is how they want to behave you know and that's that's just how it goes but i think okay let's maybe we'll wrap it up in a second i think that leads to a scary situation in the world where we'd ever strive to do anything that's more the substantially better you know that's the sort of society that allows slavery to continue it's the sort of society that allows homophobia and sexism all these other issues that i would like to think most of us would rather not have in the world it's a it's a mindset and a belief system allows all these things to continue without accountability and without the the desire or the demand for change how how how do we ever dismantle systems of injustice and exploitation if we allow those systems of justice if injustice and exploitation to continue because of individual morality and collective morality in those countries where injustice is allowed so those societies have determined what is right and what is wrong their experience that if something has a negative effect they will make those adjustments to that and that will therefore change their morality but will they what what will will a society that stones people being homosexual change that why would they without without the accountability to acknowledge that it's wrong okay so that i think we'll go back to that example in a sec but i just wanted to bring up the example like of the dog thing if they want to start farming dogs and they think that is okay but in the united states that our morality has determined that it is not okay to consume dogs because we have this compassion for them but in china they start farming dogs i don't see a problem with that based on my own morality because that is how they want to handle it we want to farm cattle that's completely understandable and the same thing is with the okay let's so my belief is that homosexuality is completely fine but in the these arab countries they believe in god so in their mind they think that god has told them that homosexual homosexuality is not okay in my i can believe as much as i want that it is completely okay to be homosexual but in their culture in their minds it is not okay to be homosexual and would you tell them that that is wrong or would you say or would you not would you say that is something you should stop i will tell them yeah i would be worried to tell them because you know you can get uh prosecuted for that if you tell them something but so and then it comes back to the subject of let's go back to like consumption of animals in my own morality i don't believe that it is wrong to consume these animals whereas you know other things i believe are wrong so just so just to touch i want to just try and finish by trying to understand your morality trying to understand where you create a notion of right and wrong so why in your mind is stoning someone being gay morally wrong what is it about the action that's morally wrong uh that they are humans and that this action inflicted on them is done for something clearly just religious based and there isn't really anything wrong with it what is it about being human that therefore makes it something that's morally wrong that biologically we have empathy towards humans because that is how we operate as a species and we want the longevity of our peoples therefore we have a compassion for other humans okay but obviously the i don't think that's necessarily true because if someone is is killed that doesn't impact the longevity of the species of someone if one person is called prematurely for these actions okay but it would say about empathy okay so we have the ability to empathize with a human when a human is uh going through that ordeal what aspect of what they're enduring are we empathizing with well we it is an innate nature in us to empathize with them because we are one biological species therefore they are related to us we have the empathy towards them okay okay so when you see a human having that it is like you have like a troop of animals they have the empathy towards their own species but outsiders are rejected it's the same thing well i mean a lot of animals can show empathy for other animals and so so can we we know that's that's if they're co-dependent or if there's a you know a benefit to to gain from i'm sorry and we can empathize with other animals okay so maybe this isn't what you've said but with empathy we say that we're emphasizing with them because they're human and we recognize that they're human but when we see something bad happening to someone else our first thought isn't oh they're human surely the first thought is oh they're suffering oh the reason that's stoning a gay person is because for them because they are human no because we have the intellect to be able to empathize and understand that they're suffering we can understand that it's in our it's an innate biological nature that we feel that you know empathy for them so we have no okay so because of our innate biological nature we have no ability to empathize with animals there's nothing about animals that we can empathize with and the only reason we can empathize with humans is because of an innate biological understanding that they are the same species so that empathy that has been adapted for animals is based on the the utility that we've gained from them so like when you have a dog it brings you satisfaction therefore we have created that that sympathy for them or that empathy for them and that is how that empathy is gained for other animals but when you when you're in the animal kingdom and you see like a lion it doesn't feel any sympathy or empathy for you and it will they don't have they don't necessarily have the ability to i i think it's not because of utility they do because if you spend time with that animal and you give it food you've seen people who who tame lions and they create a relationship with that lion therefore that empathy is built with the lion and you actually and it feels empathy for you but that doesn't mean that they they held to a the same moral standard when they kill a gazelle out of necessity for survival right okay so we said about um you know it was humans and animals um and i think that when we talk about this uh kind of situation of empathizing it's not about utility it's about a recognition of what animals are capable of achieving so back you know obviously not that long ago we often thought of animals as being these kind of like um incentive automatons that you know kind of like they didn't have any consciousness they didn't experience they were separate to us and so we justified exploiting them because we didn't see that they had some of these uh these capacities to experience so i think that it's not the utility of animals that has allowed us to empathize with them because the utility of them the the fact that we are able to take things from them such as you know flesh and secretions and such has actually made us exploit them more than we ever have so the utility they can provide for us has led to the mass exploitation that now occurs but i think that what we've learned about animals is what is now creating our ability to empathize with them the fact that the things that are in humans that we empathize with you know the suffering the pain the desire for for pleasure the things that we can empathize when a human is suffering we've learned that the animals who we exploit also possess the same traits the the sentience the capacity to suffer the capacity to to experience pleasure as well as pain and now we can empathize with them in the same way that we do with other humans see that that's all living beings at the end of the day and that that's we've understood this for a while that these animals feel pain and i think that even though killing them for our own consumption is fine because we don't feel that same empathy for them i still feel that we don't feel that empathy for them you know like we must i don't believe for a second that if you saw a gratuitous thing happening to an animal in front of you that you could stop and was needless that you wouldn't feel empathy for the animal so when i was in africa like i don't know 2017 or something like that we had uh we had this goat and in the like i lived with the maasai for two weeks and in in that culture how they they kill an animal how they kill a goat is they they actually they don't cut it with a knife they they cover its mouth and nose so that it can't breathe until it dies and they believe that's the way to you know uh dispose of the animal and then they cut the neck and they drink it and i had to do that process myself i had to you know strangle this animal and personally i didn't feel that sense of uh that empathy for the animal like i could see that it was scared i could see that it was you know knowing it was about to die and it was kicking and flailing but i understood that you know this is what must be done so that we can consume well maybe for the tribe for the truth and let's say not for you in the society where you are now and look we can debate the morality of what the tribe does in the culture where they are but i'm more interested in what we have to do here and now and look i your inability to empathize with the goat it doesn't change the moral consideration an animal deserves because as an individual you lack the capacity to empathize with what they're enduring yeah i do like the uh empathy for them yeah and that's based on my own morality that i don't feel that empathy for them therefore i think it's okay to consume them well i feel like we're touching on a circle again yeah it's just like because that is kind of my own philosophical belief about it you know like just the whole kind of you know the virtuous thing of feeling this empathy for the animals people play that card a lot but like at the end of the day we are all exploiting in so many different ways and you know you probably in your day-to-day life you have partaken or you have contributed to something that has exploited many people probably even killed people like you know if you go into these like crystal shops or if you buy anything that's mineral related yeah well i'm just saying i'm just saying anything like mineral related you know that exploits so many people like if you've been to a mine before and see how these people are exploited and they don't even they don't even get paid but it's an appeal to futility again just exploitation here does not justify exploitation here when both expectations should be addressed and i think that brings us to a nice ending and uh i i obviously hope sincerely hope that you never come across someone who lacks empathy for you because obviously at the end of the day when we're talking about what happens to animals our lack of empathy towards them doesn't negate their suffering that they're forced to endure as it wouldn't for you if you came across someone who lacked empathy for you happens every single day yeah okay every single day it was a great it was great to speak to you it was a real really great conversation thank you so much for your time i appreciate it very much [Music] you

Channel: Earthling Ed

Views: 162,305

Keywords: earthlinged, earthling ed, vegan, veganism, why, be, go, earthlings full movie, activism, debate, ladbible, meat eater and vegan debate, heated, change my mind, steven crowder, vegan version change my mind, funny, vegan gets owned, in debate, confrontation, argument, vegan fail, vegan funny, animals, ethics, morality, college student, campus, USC, university of southern california

Id: Eug1You8SH0

Length: 38min 56sec (2336 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 19 2021