Earthling Ed - The Intricacies of Veganism | Cosmic Skeptic Podcast #9

this episode of the cosmic skeptic podcast is brought to you by you to support the podcast please visit patreon.com forward slash cosmic skeptic [Music] [Applause] [Music] so welcome back everybody to the cosmic skeptic podcast an opportunity to break away from the snappiest style videos I usually make and have some long-form conversations with interesting guests and today I'm incredibly excited to have aired winters more commonly known as earthling ed in the studio thank you very hard thanks for having me over yes a pleasure to be here a lot of people have wanted you to come on the podcast it's it's really exciting to have you here because I've been watching your stuff for quite a while people kept sending sending it to me and I'd come across it and you have a style of in the in the kind of atheist skeptic community there's this popular form of conversation known as Street epistemology which you may have heard of it's like you know going out it's kind of like the Socratic method asking questions trying to get people to evaluate their own beliefs and it seems that that's kind of what you're doing it's slightly different to the kind of thing that people like Anthony bagman Bosco would do who's kind of the big name of Street epistemology because it's a little bit more here's my opinion I want you to to agree with me on something but it's a similar kind of approach and I think a lot of people really respect that but aside from just doing that kind of thing which I think you're probably most known for just the videos where you're kind of talking to people in the street they're probably your most popular yes stuff there as well as that according to your about page and you can tell me if any of this is wrong you are a vegan education educator public speaker and content creator based in London you're the co-founder and co-director of surge you also produced the documentary Land of Hope and Glory which was a kind of expose of English factory farming yeah that's right which has been a very affecting film on people I think and it says here you've spoken at over one-third of UK universities is that true yes yes and me knows there's a lot of you know how many how many is that ouais I things like fifty that's that's really great and you've also spoken at six Ivy League colleges and recently were at Harvard and a few other colleges doing a doing like guest lecturing yeah and you open in 2018 unit Edina I'm just amazed at how much stuff there is here like how do you have Keef had to keep it all up plant the plants eating panting yeah so for those listeners who are familiar with it it is one of the kind of up-and-coming faces of YouTube veganism and I've spoken a bit about veganism recently as regular listeners will know we've just recorded a podcast with Peter singer which is probably out by the time this one's come out and I made a video not that long ago called meat-eaters case for veganism and just after that I went vegan and I've been vegan for three months now so I think we're pretty much in agreement on the on the ethics of that but I wanted to break down your story why you weren't vegan and what you think kind of the future of it is because a lot of people who are listening are very sympathetic to the veganism arguments but they haven't quite taken the step and I want to kind of figure out what its gonna take to get people to take that step and whether they really should be doing so so you've been a vegan for how long now four and a half years or they're about four and a half years and you were a vegetarian briefly yeah for about eight months beforehand before that and so what what like what happened I know you've spoken about this a lot but for those who are familiar with the story it's a good question so I was uh obviously like most of us raised eating meat dairy and eggs and never really questioned it for me growing up in my family it was always kind of the brunt a bit of the joke being vegetarian we'd always have a laugh about it and I remember one of my earliest memories was at school I think I was probably in year 7 or year right and we were doing English literature and I come up what we were looking at it might be in the wind singer gosh but anyway and in the book they mentioned being vegetarian and so my teacher had asked about I know what do you think of vegetarians and so I kind of rather abruptly put my hand up in the air quite brashley and so the teacher was like yes Edward and I said all vegetarians a pale weak and skinny because I thought that that was the right thing to say I mean it was kind of ironic because you know I'm not like Hulk Hogan or anything over here but it was kind of this irony that was lost on me and I thought that was true and so it was just something I was raised to believe anyway about five or six years ago I came across a story I was just probably vegetarians about five years ago of about a truck a big slaughterhouse truck carrying 8,000 or so chickens to a slaughterhouse near Manchester and I was really shocked by it because the truck had actually crashed on the road and that's why it was in the news and the journalist was saying that 1500 I served the birds died on the impact but that there were hundreds more of these animals on the side of the road and we've broken bones and broken beaks and broken combs and broken wings and they were bleeding and suffering on the side of the road and for Wow that's horrible but I think I was a hypocrite because I used to love KFC and my fridge was like a zinger burger from the night before and here I was saying this is terrible for these chickens but actually the reason they were in the slot going to the slaughterhouse was because of my actions and so I've made a simple realization the animals I consumed could suffer could experience pain and therefore had a preference to avoid these emotions and the recognition that they could feel these negative emotions meant by default they could also feel positive emotions of you know some level as well and so I just thought well Who am I to to take their life if I don't have to and so that's what made me go vegetarian then I started documentary called Earthlings which looks at animal exploitation in so many different forms so dairy eggs as well but also clothing animal testing entertainment and after that I felt my goodness I've got to you know do something because I feel like a hypocrite for it kind of espousing sorrow to these animals whilst also being the contributor to their suffering and that was what that was what compelled me to make that change to vegan yeah and there's an argument to be made that the the chickens that ended up dead on the roadside the lucky ones because where they were going was going to be gonna be even worse have you have you been able to now that you are a vegan and consider the animal agricultural industry to be just one of the greatest evils I'd imagine have you managed to kind of make peace with your past as a meat-eater is that something that like still troubles you or do you think you're kind of like making up for it it wasn't your fault you hadn't really considered it you couldn't it's not your fault that you'd never come across these thoughts before and the moment you did you kind of begun changing but do you still feel any kind of guilt in that period well I think it'd be a bit probably disingenuous of me to say that the moment that I did realize I changed I mean I I knew before of animals suffering in the sense of I'd seen probably like clips on YouTube or something like it wasn't as if I had no perception of animals being killed in slaughterhouses and so I never want to take that ground of as soon as I knew I change it sounds to hear of me but at the same time I don't hold myself responsible like I don't hold people responsible for something if they don't know the consequences of what they're doing you know if we've never been told anything different from the moment were born were fed the same narrative of me for protein cow's milk for calcium humane farms how well first Nina found human slaughterhouses then it's not necessarily anyone's fault if they if they buy and continue to perpetuate the myths that we're told as a culture so I don't I don't hold myself responsible for the person I was before although I do carry a certain level of of guilt in this sense of I recognize that I contributed immensely to this suffering and so I do view in in a sense what I do is a form of atonement even though you can never really tell because what's happened has happened but a sense of atonement so that the future generations of humans don't perpetuate this violence but also future generations of animals that have to suffer from this violence yeah do you um so you're you're separating the morality of the action from the morality of the person quite well it's like what you're doing is wrong but that doesn't make you a bad person ironically that kind of means that what you're doing what I'm doing now when I when I argue the case of veganism is that we're making people amoral because previously if they didn't really if they hadn't thought about it before then although what they're doing is wrong that they weren't aware of it so it's not their fault but if you make them aware then they become immoral people so we're kind of going around making people into bad people in a way but when you know better you have an obligation to do better so yeah we made people immoral but there so they then have an opportunity to become more moral you know like a moral to become mob do you think that vegans are morally superior people great question all right so if you view actions objectively and you would say that it is more moral to not harm a human than it is to harm a human it's more moral to not be racist than to be racist and so by an objective truth it is more moral not to cause unnecessary suffering to non-human animals and it is to cause unnecessary suffering to non-human animals but the problem with with we're viewing it so simple amount of simplicity is that overlooks the whole cultural conditioning the psychological barriers those cognitive imperfections so to speak biases that really convolute the situation and make it less than simplistic and so yes in a very objective form it is definitely morally superior not to harm others when you don't have to but it kind of loses the nuances of a society that makes that harder for people to realize because everyone around them is doing it they've been raised to believe it's true Society teaches them is fine and so yes but I don't think this one is is less morally superior if they don't know the truth it's your sense so you were kind of talking again at the level of the action there it's it's more moral to not harm animals but I mean like as people is it fair to say that that people who are consciously vegan are morally superior because of the awareness that they have what do you think that because of the the the lack of awareness that other people may have that means that whilst what they're doing is more moral they're not actually more moral people it's an interesting thing I don't I feel somewhat hesitant to use that terminology simply because I don't feel I feel that it can alienate someone if they don't understand their point of view and so you might have a viewer now who who doesn't hasn't seen the footage it's never really explored the concept and so they may feel alienated by me saying yes it is morally Superion to to be vegan it seems almost like that expression of you know placing yourself on a high horse which you know vegans don't ride horses Eva birth the pedantic sucide it is somewhat I guess an alienating concept so yes I do believe and fundamentally that's true but I don't espouse that way of thinking because I don't think it I think it eliminates the kind of the cultural and societal barriers that stop people from realizing yeah because you understand the psychology of why somebody would be a meat-eater yeah but you know okay so I want to I want to get into some some of the some of the reasoning that you're putting forward because like I say people who are listening to this I probably roughly aware that animal cruelty is bad and it's wrong and that I can see why people would think that the meat industry is probably a bad thing but where do you start with somebody who has never really thought about this before and you're sort of coming to them for the first time and saying hey have you ever considered that this thing of doing every single day might be one of the gravest immoralities the world has ever known how do you open that door well I think you actually touched upon it then it's that notion of animal cruelty I mean ask anyone on the street everyone's against animal cruelty the problem is we use phrases and we use terms but we never actually define what those phrases mean so humane slaughter is a great example of that people throw that term around but no one ever asks them to define what that means so again of animal cruelty everyone's against it because who wouldn't be against it but in you've got define well what does it mean to be cruel to animals and so most people will say well cruelty to animals is some sort of unnecessary conscious direct infliction of pain upon them okay great that's a great starting point and so well then why we have to establish is whether or not what we do to animals for meat dairy and eggs or any any animal product flama is it necessary ok well the modern science is quite clear shown that it's not necessary and most people realize that most people you know know we can get protein from plants and iron and calcium from plants and so once we've established it it's not a necessity well then people all you have to do is remind people of what their definition of Cruelty is which is something they're against and so then we had to be morally consistent we then no longer just talk the talk we have to walk the walk and veganism is a manifestation of walking that walk because we're against animal cruelty but we pay for it about realizing and so it's for me that's a really powerful realization with people to have we chat a little bit about it earliest and when I went vegan obviously I felt like I was no longer living kind of a moral lie you know I was actually aligning my morals of my actions my values my actions and so I I genuinely that most people in society have those same values that we were talking about earlier not wanting to cause harm not wanting to cause suffering but they've never thought about it in a way that rationalized is the necessity of it and so I think that's a great starting point and then I think you just have to kind of explore the the reasoning why people do it and fundamentally we can go through kind of a sermon we can circumnavigate through like a whole host of different excuses you know we can point to other animals in the wild consume animals we can point like a food chain but really always boils down to that notion of taste right there people do these things because they enjoy how meat tastes they like cheese I mean who didn't like you know I used to love yeah mozzarella and halloumi and such so taste is is really the big driver in so much of what we do with animals to animals and so that then the question becomes or what has high value in our eyes because if we place in sensory pleasure on a pedestal and if sensory pleasure becomes a justifier for our morals towards animals or non-human animals well you have to work out if that's fair so why is higher value taste or life and do we really value sensory pleasure as being a moral justified because again to be consistent if if it's okay to do these things to animals because the end product tastes nice a sensory pleasure that any action that fulfills a sense of sensory pleasure for the oppressor then becomes justifiable for that reason alone and and we can see in many cases you know rape or a whole host of different cases where sensory pleasure is is not a good enough justice yeah so I think animal cruelty and that notion of sensory pleasure like the two big players and in changing people's perception sure I'm interested in the the concept of necessity because we were talking about you you define cruelty quite well but it revolves around this concept of necessity and philosophically speaking nothing is necessary like you could it you don't need to eat you don't need to be healthy you you want to be healthy you want to live you want to be comfortable but there's a question of kind of how far we take that I think it's reasonable to say that when you say you need to be healthy what we mean is like everybody has such a strong and justifiable desire to live a healthy life that we can term it as a need but I have trouble trying to find where to draw that line I'll give you an example we were in Boots the other day our sufferer very badly from hay fever and I was in Boots with some friends one of whom was vegan one of hims not and I was looking at the hay field it happens and they all contain lactose and I was there for 10 minutes trying to work out whether I'm allowed morally to buy this hay fever medicine I ended up not buying it I couldn't bring myself to do it but I thought to myself if somebody said to me I'm a vegan but yeah I take my hay fever tablets I don't think I'd you know have a quarrel with that but if you think about it hay fever can be pretty awful but it's not it's not like a necessity to not be sneezing all the time or to have red eyes so with that kind of thing fall under your your conception of necessity like should someone be able to to buy havior tablets which not only contain lactose but also will have been tested on least two other mammals and the under UK law so what about that kind of situation that's a good question I think the lactose one's interesting now I could I could be wrong about this this is what I've been told but please researchers before taking me on face value of it but I heard that the lactose they uses binder in a lot medication is actually it's not from bruh house yeah it's it's produced in laboratories and such so the lactose won't be a problem with animal testing is an interest I think for something like that it's very hard as a challenging concept I guess and if in the strictest terms it's not a necessity it would fall out of category of being morally justifiable but at the same time I wouldn't look down upon someone for doing so so that becomes slightly hypocritical of me and I recognize that but I'm not actually sure I'd find it I'd find it slightly challenging to point the finger at someone to accuse them of that because I mean when when I didn't take the haveá-- would have that I was speaking to a friend of mine his name's Walid he's a he's a ex-muslim youtuber and we were talking about this on his podcast and when I told him this story and told him that I put the hay fever top it down he was he was compressed he thought oh that's quite a virtuous thing to do and I'm thinking like does it make sense to think of that as a virtuous thing or does it make sense because but to me I just felt like my my whole argument with with the not eating animals is that my my my comfort and sensory pleasure is you put it shouldn't our way an animal suffering and getting rid of itchy eyes and a horrible nose that I can't put up with is a similar kind of thing is it falls under the same banner its sensory pleasure and you say that it doesn't fall under the banner of necessity but again like you say it's not strictly necessary but neither is any medicine to some extent like it's not necessary in a base level sense it's it's all about just improving that the well-being of human beings and I don't know III just can't kind of get my head around it it's one of those areas in which I really just don't know what to think about it it's I think with the animal testing stylistic with like the tablets I mean every everything is so even when we go to say super drunk and all their range of cosmetics and everything is a cruelty free so they say they're not test an animal right well the issue is all the ingredients of the helping test and animals at some point so when some things like a legal requirement is somewhat takes their ability out of our hands to make a decision because it's out of our hands and so I think if you look in the case of a hay fever tablet where the product has been tested on animals historically and presumably is no longer tested because it's passed those tests and the lactose itself is is not directly from an animal that action could then be justifiable because well you have no sale choice about whether or not that product was testing an animal or not and more importantly you boycotting that product doesn't change the system but the winner it comes to something like food or sale ever or you know it down or whatever it may be offer is directly influenced by the choices that we make as consumers and so we have a direct ability to change how these products are produced or not produced in the future you know if we get our way so to speak we can actually have a direct influence on that which is why it becomes a more of a moral imperative to not buy those products but a product that we we essentially have no control over how it got to those shelves that then becomes slightly more difficult to stop someone from doing it because their actions don't necessarily cause the problem in the same ways it's a legal issue as opposed to a consumer issue mmm do you think that I mean do you think because an argument that my friends and I were toying with was an argument that if you focus on the most egregious parts if you get rid of animal food if that's gone then the ripple effect will be that people will then kind of look at animal testing in medicine and say well now there's no real reason that it will become so ethically obvious that they'll just end up just getting rid of it across the board so perhaps you can still engage with animal cruelty and in the kind of side areas if you focus if it allows you to more effectively focus on the on the most pressing issues that will then ripple out like if I am not suffering from hay fever I'm in a better position to write an essay that 100 people might read and two of them might go vegan because of it so in one way that might be a kind of utilitarian balance of powers but I mean it seems like it makes sense as a biggie to have just a deontological rule against engaging with it but I think I think if we apply kind of a deontological it is it somewhat eliminates again those nuances of society where it's not it's almost impossible to live in that way and so I do agree that in a sense veganism is a minimization of suffering it's not elimination of suffering and and and I also feel somewhat I'm slightly disingenuous when we and I say these things and so I you know I'm very conscious of that when we refer someone who's been a cruelty-free or like you know say you know go vegan right and then you know you're not contributing to animal suffering but these things aren't strictly true you know we can't completely eliminate the suffering it's about a minimization of that suffering and so I think you raised a good point which is say we you know say well one of us god forbid something terrible happens to us and then we have to accept a medicine that was tests and animals at some point it would never restores us to good health or we can then contribute to you know putting forward a message whether that's veganism or or another message that you know helps people live a better life or a more in a virtuous life then that action could be justified by the greater good you know and by a reduction of suffering across the board and so yes I think that there are these little areas you know say the hay fever tablets that create an interesting moral proposition but fundamentally they do nothing to discredit veganism as a Phylis the philosophical teaching they just show that society itself still suffers from an inherently speciesist a mindset which allows things for animal testing to take place when actually the grant money that's came into university is to fund animal testing we much better use funding viable scientific alternatives that exist but are not given the financial backing yet to become universally available and so it these little arguments that we can use a fascinating but that they actually reveal more of a root cause the problem which is society's ingrained speciesism there's allowed it to permeate into so many different aspects that we then have these dilemmas of what can i buy hay fever tablets or not well actually that that is a question should should never have to be answered because the you know the hay fever tablets should never have had to well maybe the time but should never in the future have to go through a period of of using lactose for example how many people listening will probably cringe when they hear the word speciesism yes it seems like a kind of made-up concept that you're you're using to make the issue sound more serious than it is because you're kind of drawing comparison to racism or sexism or something how are we defining speciesism and is it worthy of such a kind of such as strong terminology yeah so speciesism it is like it is an ism and there's a lot of debates around so many isms but speciesism is a discrimination against an animal based on the species so you know an animal that doesn't take our form you know they're not the human species and therefore because they're not human they're therefore subject to discrimination based purely on those factors and and and so yes it is it is in serious enough in the sense of it's completely superfluous right now and it holds no actual I'm currency when it comes to dealing with with moral issues because it's an irrelevant arbitrary factor you know what shaper of being takes if there are feathers or wings or off there are scales that that has no bearing on on their worth of life and so I think it's a very important term because it helps us realize that actually we have a probably some sort of unbiased I'm sorry unconscious kind of discriminatory attitude towards of a life based on something that holds note holds no currency really so you know and I'm reluctant to kind of use that word I don't use it often I don't I think it can seem against almost like an alienating term for the reasons you raise people like what is this word this is this is some millennial kind of you know social justice terminology that and so it can be alienating to use but I think it kind of hits home to the root of the problem which is just an attitude issue a mentality issue that allows us to go oh well this cow doesn't look like me and you know and therefore because they don't take the form of myself or my my peers I'm allowed to do as I wish to this can but people will say it's more than that I mean people who who eat cows it's not just because the qaol doesn't look like them it's like it's a whole different category of seeing to them right they they have completely different cognitive abilities and self-awareness and all this kind of stuff again how do you approach someone who's whose argument is essentially like they are in a different moral category we're we're human beings we philosophize we have our own kind of structures of law and morality and one of the reasons we have that is for stabilization of human societies that's in no way affected by the well-being of a cow or a chicken i what is the rationale for caring about their well-being well it there's a few different ways of looking I mean first you go define your moral code and you've got to define your moral reasoning and so it there's a few ways so it depends what it depends what angle you take on it and so if you're looking at the I mean you raise like an intelligence idea all humans have you know we've created these societies with like a system of lauren ordering so you use kind of intelligence as a factor as to why humans have some form of supremacy of the animal kingdom but we vote we but apply these kind of ways of thinking somewhat unilaterally in a sense of we've got to be consistent and so if you're going to apply something that there's relatively arbitrary like intelligence is a factor for life well that someone has to permeate into our attitudes towards over humans and so would we say this Soni suffers from severe learning difficulties there is somewhat less deserving of life than you know someone in Mensa you know someone is highly intelligent for example well no we don't we don't we don't do that and we certainly didn't use those ideas as a reason to oppress and that's that's I think that's part of the problem is is we come up these kind of like superfluous ideas but then we use them as a reason to oppress and so let's say we have a very severe situation where you have to choose between the life of a human and life of a cow I mean for the reasons we talked about say cognition and intelligence you know advanced sentience and ability to live a life that has a rich value than say the life of care we could in an in a situation where it's one or the other choose the life of a human and that could be justified for the reasons we talked about but when we have a situation where we don't have to choose between one or the other and it's very much possible just to leave one of them alone and the cow alone to do whatever it is that they would do naturally well then in that situation that's the moral imperative because we were not faced with with a conundrum and so the reasons that we would choose the human over the cow in a situation of well situation we had to doesn't then provide justification to choose arbitrarily when we shall allow them to just live so you I think you would like to find your moral code and then apply that somewhat universally to service tool so that I mean that extra quality that that the human has in that extreme situation that would cause you to choose them is not that thing itself that extra bit is not the thing that gives them moral worth at a base level right what is it to you that does give a being moral worth like in the same way that at a table doesn't have moral worth but a but a cow does but then so does a fish and maybe a cockroach like what is the what's the metric what needs to be within an animal and even if we you you could not know if a certain animal actually has it but if you could know if it had it what would you be looking for to say this is something that should fall under our umbrella untouchability I'd say sentence in pain had the two factors so consciousness but also an ability to suffer mm-hmm those the two kind of metrics I would go by mean because I think coupled with an ability to suffer comes a preference to avoid that you know I think it's not just that the fact that they can surf it's that they obviously have a preference to avoid and so that that's what we should respect that in the same way that we should respect amongst our own species as well we recognize I think part of the problem why human inflicted suffering is wrong is because we can empathize to the point where we see well this act of discrimination of violence causes saw in an emotional physical suffering and so we can just define that has been something that should be avoided and so it's the same to non-human animals we can recognize it if you kick a dog they will squeal they will cower they will feel pain we can see that they can experience happiness and so emotions like that particularly which are very much exhibited particularly by the animals that we exploit generally speaking would garner them a sense of moral consideration sure so giving animals moral consideration because like you say I think most people understand that even because because the arguments never seem to be or a rarely a cow has no moral worth it's it's that the cow has so much less moral worth that my taste buds have a higher moral worth given that they do have moral worth what happens so if I go and get a glass of milk or something what's the story of that milk where's that come from because I think a lot of people have the idea that there's a cow on a farm somewhere and maybe it's kept in a small cage or something which is pretty bad someone comes along takes its milk sends it off to the sends it off Sainsbury's and then I get to drink it what what's kind of missing from that that paradigm is interesting I think it's very difficult as well we define kind of moral worth between by more moral consideration of animals based on what it is that was shown and based what it is that we're told and so I think a part of the part of the issue with this is we're fed the the agencies and the industries themselves for incredibly immoral in the way they treat us as consumers and they have a complete disregard for for our desire to make decisions and so we sometimes kind of even fully tap into our own moral consideration because we're fed very much a manufactured events now that's a really big issue and so often when it comes to moral worth like well I perceive this to be within my moral code but what you're perceiving isn't even what's true and so we can't even make those decisions about knowing everything and so we have a glass of milk you have a very interesting situation where many people don't even realize why cows produce milk which is ridiculous right but I didn't I never fought about it yeah I just thought that a cow ate grass and out came milk you know it seems so naive because of course it is I mean cows and mammals so they produced milk to feed their child as you know mammals do and so a farm all artificially inseminate or forcibly impregnated is animals so they require semen from abolishes convention this is how it happens across the board you know even small organic local family-owned farms it's not just big industrial factory farms so that the farm will acquire semen from a bowl acquire I mean we can all use our imaginations to know what that looks like so they acquire the semen from the bowl they'll you know put the semen ice then they'll find the female cow who's you know ready to she's fertile so then the farm will place his arm inside the cow's anus and you'll hold the cervix through the lining of the anus and then forcibly impregnate her by putting the semen in it through the vagina into the cervix the cow's gestation is about nine months so then when she's given birth the farmer will take the baby away from the mother because you know the baby will drink the first lot of milk has got Carlist room full of antibodies very important for crafts and well-being but then once they've had the the colostrum and the first feed the calf's often taken away within the first 24 hours because the mom milk of the calf drinks the last milk the farmer can sell and so the calf will then be put in something called a solitary confinement hutch which is a tiny touch of a little bit of a fenced off area maybe but two feet or so long and they'll be in there for up to eight weeks that's legally speaking sometimes longer if you know the farms broke the law which sometimes they do the females will then being correct integrates into kind of like bigger pens where they'll then be put into the herd where they'll be forcibly impregnated on a continuous cycle the males will even be killed 90,000 male dairy cows are shot soon after birth in this country because they useless we don't really consume veal here so it's a bit of a they're a useless by-product so they'll even be Sodom for beef but they're often the wrong breed so they won't be profitable for a farmer so ninety thousand a shot sometimes to export to Europe for veal and sometimes they sold them for beef and then all the female dairy cows eventually be taken to a slaughterhouse as this is the this is the the kind of the hypocrisy of other vegetarian deities or vegetarianism is a philosophical or even just as a way of life is you know people do it because they're against animals being slaughtered but they don't realize that dairy and eggs as well animals are still slaughtered in the exact same way but they suffer for years you know a cattle in a castle for beef 18 24 months a dairy cow five six years you know so we have a whole process of the same problem but actually exemplified because the suffering is endured for longer it requires periods of intense kind of confinement even animals that we see roaming I mean I when I got a train here today big field full of up you know dairy cows roaming and you think wow how beautiful but you know that's fine during summer but you've got eight months of the year where they're locked inside you know we've got all these issues that we don't know about and so there's a whole process at play that we just don't consider and we don't think about because we're not told and what I find infuriating is is the fact that these industries we're so reluctant to show people and tell people the truth because they know that a lot of people will find it probably morally abhorrent so there's this complete denial of actually showing people the truth because then it can have a huge shift or can create a huge shift in people's perceptions and so as consumers with with fed this tiny tiny myopic kind of view of what actually happens on these farms you're going Tesco's Nicolay's big banners supporting local organic you know happy happy cows produce happy milk what does that even mean I mean a cow doesn't have to be happy to produce milk you can beat a cow in so many ways and they're still going to produce milk and is this idea that of course I farmers love these animals and they have you know they'll do the best ways animals because well they need them to produce the product but apart from giving them enough food and somewhere to sleep and making sure they're not like you know being killed off and necessarily for a farmer and necessarily at the beginning well the this is a whole range of things you can do to animals and so tail docking dis budding you know mutilations taking away babies forced impregnation zits all this happens in these industries in this country and around the world and we're just not told about it and so I just find it frustrating that we live in the darkness about all this stuff and when we shouldn't we actually have we should be granted at least enough consideration to be able to make these decisions ourselves given the false some of the truth yeah and look let's contextualize this this isn't like it sounds like you're describing some some awful war practice or some kind of like this isn't for any other purpose all of this that you're talking about all of it like people listening to just really really let that sink in let the process sink in and now just think about that the Telos think about the the end what do we end up with a glass of milk which you drink in less than a minute and go that was quite nice maybe you're not gonna remember tomorrow how what is how can we understand the psychology of people who think that's worth it I mean because a lot of people that you say are in the dark but there's a whole lot of people for that there are also a whole lot of people who do know what's going on they do know that that's the process of milk but they just don't care there's just there's just no empathy and it's not their fault it's not your fault if you don't feel empathy for a certain for for a species that you can't identify with but how can we understand why people don't feel empathy and how can we perhaps try to cultivate that empathy within them well I think for all of society we see huge social progressions happen when a lot of people that time don't agree with the social progression so you know I mean it's not to make comparisons between actions but slavery and a lot of people were against slavery but a lot of people ardently defended it in so we it's very interesting to say we could have gone back a few hundred years ago or even less to be honest and you could have asked me the same question relation to where I know we should have you know keep humans is like and so it's interesting how we still have these same ideas you still have these same questions but societies progress to a point now where that is very much compassion alized for you of course you know most people in society are very happy to admit that that was a terrible thing and it shouldn't have happened and so I think what what we lived somewhat in a it's kind of like a flock mentality were a bit like sheep and I guess I don't view that as a bad thing but I view in the sense that we like to follow and be a part of of the the flock and we don't like to be out outcast we're going to be outsiders and so I think for people that are reluctant to acknowledge that they should even empathize these animals I think seeing that a con that a slow ever growing consensus of people are coming to that realization is very profound because it makes something well actually this is something they should reflect on but right now there's no imperative for them to reflect on it and so I think by kind of accessing people that are kind of more intrigued by these ideas and more open to empathizing with these animals will then encourage more conversation to be sparked within people who were still very much reluctant but that's not to say that we should kind of like push them to the side now and concentrate on the easy people and hope that everything changes around them I think then we have to find some sort of relatability and so again we can look at kind of dogs we can look at cats we can look animals that we love Convention in society or even look at SAS or the lion you know me I caused massive uproar look at dolphins look at whales we know all these animals that we conventionally loved in the Western society and then all we have to do I guess it is draw have some sort of comparisons draw some sort of you know comparative reasonings between these different species to help people understand or to encourage people to understand why they should care about these animals that we exploit conventionally as well and so I think even some this is I do have any empathy for a cow I don't care about this pig you know I guarantee for them for most of those people if they were walking and they saw someone beating a dog up like you know an owners beating their dogs they don't want to go for their walk or whatever that's gonna that's gonna make us angry and that's good we're not just gonna see it and go I don't care you know because I think when a lot of the problem is this violence isn't happening in front of us and it doesn't often feel tangible - yes and we can we can watch the footage but it doesn't feel quite real like I've seen you know pictures of emaciated children in third-world countries but I don't have the urge necessary to go and give free pound to Oxfam you know so I think it's often the same with that kind of like we see this violent footage in slaughterhouses or farms but it we can resonate with on some level but isn't actually encourage us to make a change but the violence isn't often it's not in front of us but when we see violence to mention almost in front of us even the people that I think are most even morally nihilistic still feel something of a sense of that this is wrong and I think trying to make that violence tangible in whatever we can by making it relatable is quite powerful that's interesting you talk about how if you saw someone being someone beating a dog on the street you wouldn't be apathetic but you wouldn't even just feel sad or upset you'd feel angry you'd be motivated to to action are you angry like is that the emotion that you would feel because in the same sense that quite trivially the first emotion that would become apparent if you saw someone doing that in the street would be anger before sadness or compassion or philosophy is that the kind of response that you have to to the to the animal industry into people eating meat is that the kind of emotion that makes itself predominant within you even if you don't kind of make it clear because it's not a tactful thing to do is that is that what you're not thinking not to people eating meat no I don't like if I walk on the street and someone is in a KFC or McDonald I don't feel angry towards them at all if I see footage and I see you know someone beating an animal yeah that makes me angry I guess it's like a degrees of separation again it's that it's that accountability and responsibility you know someone who's punching an animal there's there's no there's no kind of illusion of a lack of responsibility or kind of a dissolution of accountability it's quite frankly you know what you're doing it's a conscious decision you're aware of the problem you're causing so that makes me hungry because this but again but again you can say well the person in the KFC who may be seen all the versions as well but again there's still those degrees of separation which make it easier for us to psychologically distance ourselves from what we're causing yeah there's also like economic dependence if somebody somebody's livelihood and or even just like that job even if they don't like own a farm or something if they're just a farm house worker they can we expect them to give up their life in order to abide by this moral code which as we kind of happily recognize is a slow progress it's not gonna happen overnight is it not like can I can understand the psychology of somebody who'd be like I can see your point but since this is going to be a slow progression anyway it's still gonna be going on and because my livelihood depends on it and my family depending on me I'm gonna stay put is that is that like is that a fair position for that person to take no I think society has to change but I don't believe that we should leave these people out in the dark to change on their own I think there's a mean people often say to me all you don't care about farmers livelihoods that much that's not true at all I rely on farm is just as much as anyone else we all rely on farms and someone says well what about the dairy farmers and well what about the out farmers you know like what why don't you care about their livelihoods so you want everyone to stop consuming out milk well you're going to put up farmers our business so I think we have again we've somewhat place on rankings animal farmers has been like this this these almost like a protected group where their livelihoods is somewhat more important than live loads of plant farmers all over anyone you know we but I mean no one no one's trying to like the meat eaters and the dairy consumers they're not trying to put oat farmers out of business they're saying you know if you want to if you want to go and have a you can yeah I'm not going to but if you want you can and and I think the dairy farmers would just say can you just offer us the same generosity but we have to understand every purchase we make it creates jobs for some people and no jobs everyone so like say you know blockbuster our business right so you know everyone who's by Netflix subscriptions you know well ok wherever or not we care or not well yeah that puts blockbuster up business uber alright well how many taxi cab drivers now so there's everything we go to Sainsbury's know what about the Tesco's workers all these things create like a system where we value some jobs over and it's not a conscious thing necessarily so the situation of animal farmers is I'm not I don't I'm not doing this because I want them to be out of business I want them to diversify and so I'm not trying to I don't believe that Animal Farm is about people inherently I think that animal farmers that go outside of what would be legal econ don't and do things they're bad people but again you can look at the reasoning for why they do these things power struggles you know helplessness all these different things but like I think the generic Animal Farm across the board it is not necessarily a bad person because they do what we do and as such I'm not interested in them being out of business or them another job that's not my issue I want to them to diversify so I want to create a system wherever possible where we can encourage animal farmers to diversify into arable farming and plant farming and many many many many animal farmers can do this a lot of them do arable the mixed farms they do arable on an animal and so we can create a system where they're encouraged financially and also in a food kind of like a social community to be able to transition over I think that's what should be encouraged and you know they say there's a company in the u.s. called Elmhurst dairy there were huge dairy come family owned another entirely plant-based and so the future is very much something that can cater for all for all farmers as much as possible now someone or farmers won't be oz transition as easily and so we can look at different technological advancements where there's vertical farming and you know and different things like that but the root of the problem lies in subsidies and what many people don't realize is is animal farmers are trapped in these jobs a lot of them so let's take the average lamb farmer in Wales if you remove tax subsidies the average lamb farmer loses twenty thousand pounds a year they get about roughly fifty thousand pounds in tax subsidies which means they make about thirty thousand pound ear this is the average lump farmer there's some you know it's land specific subsidies a land specific so some get more some get less this is the average and so they're actually trapped in these industries because they're relying on tax subsidies for the land that they own to keep them afloat and what was that that freedom of choice really and so there's probably a lot of people that are involved in the industry that maybe don't want to be but they've even loaned out equipment or it's a tradition it's family-owned and they're they have a guilt or responsibility to continue that heritage but actually if they were granted like a choice maybe a lot of them wouldn't want to do it you know I speak to a lot of farmers both current and all and X who express regardless of where they are a sense of guilt no don't a lot of them they don't enjoy driving to the slaughterhouse with the Lambs these Lambs they've spent six months or so if and then dropping them off there's there's often a sense of guilt there's often a sense of hopelessness in the sense where they can't do anything and so I'm very I'm very keen on these subsidies still been filtered through to animal farmers for the land that they own but then those subsidies must be given with the incentive therefore to encourage cultivation of plant-based agriculture instead which we can all support as a society it's just about redistribution of these funds that exist but are given to uphold kind of traditions and cultures that are somewhat outdated now so yeah I have nothing at sama farmers I don't think about people and I want to support transition that that works for them as well John this is but it's important to stress the economic basis of all of this it's it's all it's all demand driven in did the way to effect the change is to use your purchasing power that's basically it isn't it I mean that that's what we're doing is as what someone like yourself would do as a vegan activist what you're essentially trying to get people to do is to change their purchasing habits that's what it comes down to right and it's fairly easy to do now but a lot of people live in places where it's not really that feasible when I went to Texas recently I remember people talking about the comparison between Dallas and Austin and Austin it's fairly easy to be to be a vegan but in Dallas as I found myself there are many options available to you you can you can go to two entire complexes where nobody's really got anything vegan you have to go and get just a pizza without the mozzarella and basically have brecht bread for lunch so can we expect people who live in those kinds of societies to to go vegan to just kind of throw it all to the wind and put put in this this this incredible amount of effort the people living in a city like Oxford or London don't have to do is that really fair to put the same moral imperative on them as it is someone like us yes I think so I mean there's no denying that it's harder for some than his for others I think and I've been to Dallas actually and there's a strong vegan community there and yes maybe there's not all the restaurants that we have that we know you know we have in the UK this is so easy here now but the point is that you know you've got supermarkets you've got all the products there and so yes social situations might become more challenging and yes it may require a bit more preparation but you know inconvenience it des still doesn't justify what what happens and also the only way these things become more accessible is by people making that change and demanding that that happen and so what's happened in Austin is it's quite brilliant because there's it's easy to be vegan there's so many great places there in Austin which is kind of wigs it's in Texas and so there has to be a permeation from this kind of like vegan centric is Austin to confirm you into Houston and Dallas and San Antonio and such yeah so I think we still have to do that because if we were ever to bring about change it is through changing we're not solely about consumer habits or a massive driving force in and so we still have a moral imperative to start demanding products to make it easier and so I don't I think the the real question of what you're asking there is not about like options and how difficult is when you're e now it's about financial situations and so impoverished people so people but living below the line that's when this question I think becomes really pertinent because you have a socio-economic system that somewhat sets up a dichotomy where the traditionally that the the the lowest standing family is the one ones most reliant on things like fast food most rely on things like ready meals and processed foods which are still very far away from being vegan friendly in so many regards and so that's when I think that question becomes important because the the question then becomes can we expect see a single mother with a family who's having to work maybe two jobs to feed you know you know children can we expect her to then go and buy fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds and grains and cook up a banquet and that's when the question becomes challenging and so then I always say well it's the responsibility of those who can - to do so and then through through kind of like a changing that system we can make things more accessible which is happening with like KFC and you know like ready meals yeah yeah and that's because of people that can do these things demanding change for that for the perch in habits so it's not always gonna be easy for everyone but but for most of us yes it may not it may no but we might not going to get drunk and go to McDonald's anymore right now like there are definitely gonna be social challenges and issues that we have to kind of like reframe but those slight inconvenience isn't and a slight change of habits and routines that there and I used the word suffering very very lightly the suffering that we face from those inconvenience is nothing compared to the suffering is happening to the animals and also to the planet on a wider scale as well on a similar point to the to the point about people who don't have very much money struggling to get by I was thinking about this recently is it immoral to give some change some spare change to a homeless person knowing that he's probably going to go and spend it in McDonald's no I don't believe it's immoral um your intentions are not your intentions a different I would say if you're and if you want them to have food then go and buy them something to give them I think that I think that's better anyway because you know you would give to money Hut to a homeless person it could go to drugs and alcohol and you could argue well that's their choice and it's kinda like once you've given money to someone well that's their money now alright so they can kind of choose to do what they want with it based on their own lifestyle and moral kind of reasonings so now I don't believe sorry you've done it for a good reason for a virtuous reason to hopefully help maybe to get them a hostel and stuff and so if they then choose to spend that on on that well so be it but if it's something you're worried about we're not so big but if it's something you're worried about then you should definitely buy the food yourself and give the the food so there's no worry you're doing a good thing without the work of your most their money then but the money you've given them their benefits would you have like a rule because I remember recently I was stood at a kebab van getting some chips which another thing I want to ask you about actually when with with things like chips being cooked in the same fats and things if that's something if that's something you avoid but I remember I was I was getting some chips and a homeless person came up to me and asked if I had any change and I said what's it for he said he wants to get some food and I said it's fine I'll I'll get you something so we both got some chips and then you saying the the lovely kebab man says you want cheese on that and the guy kind of goes yeah that'd be great and I froze I was like am I supposed to go no no no I'm gonna buy you food but I'm gonna choose the food for you like is that something that I should have done yes um yeah I think so II it again well these situations it's very tricky I would have I would have said that it'd be better if you not to do that but at the same time it's not like it's not like you're no longer a vegan or you're a bad person because you did do that because again the situation comes from from that to virtue and then this extra thing happens that you didn't really have much control over in the moment apart from you have to say no and then you're worried about your virtuous act seeming less virtuous and then you're worried about how people perceive that and so then there's this pressure socially of not wanting to see more quit or like seeming selfish or something even though the act itself is very unselfish so now I would say that it bit you should still not do it because the principle is you're still creating the demand you know who's saying right then we'll have you will have lost a little bit more cheese and then you know how to buy more cheese quicker and stuff like that so yeah you shouldn't have done that but it doesn't make you a bad person you know this is where it becomes challenging you know but then it becomes challenging because if my if my reasoning is this is good and this is bad then to buy these products is an act of bad which means if you're consciously doing it you're a bad person but then I don't think people are bad for doing these things and so it's a roundabout thing of like just mental gymnastics of trying to find good and bad without making without defining people as good and bad sure I see what you mean so so what do you think about like because at hussein's for instance I'm pretty sure they cook the chips in the same oils as they cook the animal the products and I don't have any quarrel with it but I know a lot of eagles really really do that they'll they'll completely avoid that kind of thing you someone who avoids that I do avoid it but back when I mean you've only be vegan like three months now so back back then I would have not fought too much about it I actually I don't know if I ever did it or if I did it consciously I'm not sure I wouldn't do it now but back then maybe I would have done and the reason I wouldn't do it now is that it's not necessary because of a moral or he said it's not because I see it doesn't add to the supply and demand it doesn't check it but it I just just I don't suppose got it yeah I don't want like a piece of like fried chicken to end up in my chips or some things you know what I mean yeah so it's more of that reason alone it's not necessarily a moral reason it's just more of a personal yeah and you reminded me as well bringing up KFC for instance there's there's a big debate and we nearly spoke about this earlier when I said let's say that for for the podcast KFC I've have released a vegan chicken burger burger king a trialing the impossible burger so so many places are beginning to do this kind of thing should we be going and spending our money at a place like McDonald's or KFC or Burger King which are the big dogs when it comes to animal exploitation in order to buy their vegan products so a Miss links back to what I was saying before is so if I was when I was talking about low-income families rely you know dependent on these on these um these fast-food outlets a lot of the time and so yes I think we should but for people that can't live like you and I necessarily can the people that can't go into M&S or can't buy fruits and veggies do you think you we shouldn't do that I think we can buy them if we want to I don't I don't I don't have an issue against people buying it that's all I think I think it's a great thing that this is happening if not and it's not just about the burger it's about it the burger is symbolic of change yeah and that's why I love it it's not because I'm like yay KFC let's give the money it's because it symbolizes progression so that's I mean there is there is a because the way that I'm looking at this is that as soon as a vegan option becomes available in McDonald's or KFC or Burger King we should just absolutely just flock there and make them sell out and make the demand increase because if that doesn't happen there's a chance that they're just gonna take it off the menu well they're not going to care about too much other keep it as a side product if we show that this product is the dogs needs it's it's the it is the thing that everybody wants then it come it takes a bigger place on the menu it's a bigger picture you know that there's nicer writing and the price goes down and there are special deals and everything and then eventually that will convince more people to purchase it and and for them to put even more money into vegan options I feel as though given that a lot of people say that because these people are so big on animal exploitation we should avoid contributing our money to that economy yeah but because they're so big the best thing we can possibly do is affect that economy right so to me it's not just like yeah go go there if you want it's like absolutely you should go out of your way to go and buy it you should every time you get lunch if you can afford it you should go and buy a vegan burger even if you don't really want to eat it like that's we should really be driving that economic yeah progress yeah I mean it's funny I've spoken about this quite a few times and I always said and I use but this is before the co-ceo used to use McDonald's and I said madhan's is one of the places I'd at least like to go and buy anything and the reason for that is so bad which ironically means it's the place I should most go and buy something when the vegan product is out because if we think about it again this is this is an indictment of our society right it's then diamond above the fact that McDonald's and KFC Burger King hold so much power and can create so much damages as a single corporation and so we are somewhat battling within the confinements of of kind of what's possible for us as consumers and so if McDonald's is is destroying the rainforests for cultivation of cattle or for beef and for soybean that's fed to those animals and such and and even in this country it's responsible for you know you know land is you know habitat destruction can have you know deforestation and such if it's so bad then we need them to stop as quickly as possible right we need them to stop what they're doing yeah and so you could do that through kind of like a social you know a kind of through a consumer supply and demand thing you can do it through some sort of like an anti you know kind of firm anarchistic kind of anti capitalist kind of like uprising so you know but we have to work with the confinements of what we have now and and the last thing i said probably is not going to happen right now regardless of how you feel about it but the thing that we kind of act is is kind of like a supply and demand consumer thing and so that's something we have direct power over right now and so I do think that these things happening is a great thing and I do think that we should buy them but same time like I'm also not um if someone doesn't want to go into care see him buy the vegan burger and they're vegan like I get that as well I can understand that that a we feel uncomfortable about it you know a little bit of a saving grace is people like our if you buy this burger then that money's going back to - chicken farming no no not necessarily in fact is going back to corn because you know the corner this corners using the burger and so when you buy that vegan burger that money is actually going to be going back to corn to produce more of it and then it'll be profits and dividends for and so it's not actually that necessarily every penny you give to KFC is going back into chicken farming it's going back and providing that product more because you're increasing the demand for that product was also one of the first things we spoke about today and I remember asking you about like how far you would take the principle anyway because I've never understood why somebody would say and also like you say someone might be uncomfortable going into KFC it is considered that in the same way that it's uncomfortable to change your diet like if it's if it's for moral progress then who cares let's do it right come on you have a you have an obligation here if it's so if there's this real opportunity for economic incentive for someone like McDonald's to change the way that they're treating animals or at least the extent and I think we have an imperative to do it but if you're going to have this this rule against going to places and contributing to companies that exploit animals it's like I said to you earlier are you going to go and buy your books from waterstones if the cafe upstairs is selling me that money in a roundabout way is going into a into a company that's spending money to to exploit animals so in a roundabout way you're funding that it's like that's ridiculous come on you're still going to shop at Tesco even though they're selling milk it you can't take that principle to the reductio ad absurdum and so it seems like a bad principle to be holding I think that I don't not only do I not understand the argument of people who say that it's wrong to go into these places I think the exact opposite I think it's the best possible thing we can be doing you seem a bit more sort of apathetic about where you're getting the vegan goods well yes I guess so I think that's probably that that's slightly puritanical side of me that wishes this wasn't the way you know it's almost like a reluctance to accept that this is what has to happen but I also do think that in currently as the way society shaped at the moment that is what has to happen and so we talked a lot about consumer demands and so blinder man and this is a perfect example of that and so yes if no one went and bought the vegan KFC burger I mean thankfully they did and I say thankfully which kind of summarizes how I feel but if they didn't then that burger would would not be there and then it would be a failure and then other fast food chains you'd be like we're doing well for KFC like why would we do it yeah but it's a great example for a salt you know it sold out like we've been three days or something this they had to restock it I mean that's fantastic you know so I do when I try and sit somewhat like on the fence like how do I do I personally need to buy it why personally to endorse it or will it just happen naturally or is that a risk you know and but you are right in the sense of how many degrees of separation do we need to have you know we can go in to Tesco's Tesco's have farms you know so if I'm fine a vegan sandwich from Tesco's and that money's going back into Tesco how do I know that that money is not then going to promoting animal farming you don't know so it really is about how many degrees of separation are you willing to have I mean this didn't kick off with the Gregg sausage roll it's and kick off with Wagga Mama's or Frankie and Benny's already know always like Wagga Mama's have a vegan katsu curry I'm never gonna wag a mamma's because they have a chicken katsu curry like why is it that KFC has suddenly kind of created such a kind of like a binary scenario of like yes or no like no no one else did done so I think it's what keV see in Boulder's and what it represents that much that makes me it's like these these companies KFC and McDonald's and the like they've become just metonym for animal cruelty to the vegan community it's like they they are the poster child of that of that kind of thing that it's like they're synonymous with it wears like Greg because what Wagamama isn't really even though they're doing the same thing but yes just it's just it's just a cultural effect I'm interested in putting some kind of specificities to you because I imagine you find this with the work that you do many of the conversations you'll have are not really on the big picture ideas which i think is worth kind of covering that ground but a lot of the the the nitty-gritty is where the interesting stuff is found so let me give you a slightly contrived thought experiment shall we say and you'll understand why I'm sending you camping in a second but you're going camping and you pick up some vegan foods on the on the way it's only once you get to the and you're far far away from civilization this is important that you realize that you've accidentally bought some non vegan food and so your choices oh it's already bought you choices oh you either eat it we throw it away there's no like going give it to a homeless person there's there's no kind of like get out cloths like that it's like you're either eating this milk and egg product or you're just going to throw it away or not eat it what do you do I wouldn't eat it why is that well I mean you cannot you make the Angwin race so I bought the product I mean like I could be a facetious and say I'll take it back you know it's not allowed exactly okay so the arguments made okay you've bought the product the damage is done yeah so what's the harm well again you can you could make the moral argument that there is no harm and so again like say I'm three months we you know like you know I have long there was a time where I would probably eat and they're right at the beginning where I've said ah you know whatever I've done the damage but now I wouldn't I think that's just because for me for me like I don't view this as being food anymore in the same way that I if you know in the same way let's say I bought a sandwich I opened up and then I realized actually this the the it's actually a layer of plastic and I still wouldn't eat it because I don't see it as being food and I seem like a strange thing said I don't see as you mean sweet presuming you could eat that plastic and it was like a healthy ish thing to do your other your other option here is to throw it away the other option is is to is to waste the food contribute throw the plastic into the ocean you know like surely that that's worse especially since as you say the damage has already been done well I mean it depends how long I'm out there for if it comes to a situation where I so first of all like if I if I if I don't have to eat it so I could you know feed the you know it so what you could do to say but I mean there's a sandwich one of my BOB if we're gonna grate that's well I'll I'll lay the cards bare here the other day I bought a corn sausage roll thinking that it was vegan and it was not okay so you've bought a you've bought a sausage roll that that one of these corn sausage rolls it has house milk and egg in it I'm a terrible vegan what can I say I'll say that for you can but do you know what do you do well I mean I mean so you could I mean maybe you could've taken about maybe could have given it to someone else or maybe you could have thrown it away I think you faced with free conundrums there if you eat it I mean morally you can make the argument well the damage is done if you can't return it then you know and you know you could give it to a homeless person of course me for the same time if for me I don't want to normalize that to myself and so if I my mentality says now that these products to me aren't food and so at the beginning if I was to consumers products I'm still normalizing this has been something I want to eat we're in reality now I don't want to eat these things and so if it's a choice of between not eating it and eating it even if not eating it means I'm gonna go hungry and miss a meal and I've just all rather do that because there's no there's no part of me that it has the design I mean it's not just that the bad effect on you in terms of of hunger but also that the the intrinsic wrongness that there seems to be with food waste food waste is a massive problem yeah and you're kind of contributing to that I mean it's almost a bit of a red herring because the environment we describe and I could keep the food take it back and give to a homeless person you know or you know or I could take it apart feed it to animals there's so many different options so it's it's it's it's an environment and it was never really happy much worse oh okay but maybe that's not what you're saying maybe because you seem to be implying that it wouldn't be would it be wrong to eat it I suppose it's what I'm asking I can understand why you wouldn't because you're a bit disgusted by it I don't want a bit but is it immoral because there are two ways to look at it for me the first is to say the damage has been done and because we're trying to minimize suffering and maximize pleasure the small pleasure that I'll get from now eating this is is worth the fact because the sufferings already been done so we may as well maximize the pleasure now by having it the other argument is to say there's something incredibly grotesque about allowing someone to take pleasure from the exploitation of animals even if the damage has already been done like I wouldn't eat baby flesh or something from a murdered baby even if even if I would quite like the taste because there's something a bit grotesque about taking enjoyment from that right so I think it can consume both ways but is it is it actually wrong rather than just a kind of practicality is it an immoral thing to do yeah I think so because also it comes down to that issue it's almost like um well because it was just a like with the baby example the human baby example say they say it's the exact same situation you were given this sandwich you were told it was Pig and then you get to the thing and there's like a little note that says hard this is actually baby right well you're still not gonna eat it because you recognize that it's been it's been wrong but actually well again you know the damage is done but what I mean because thinking obviously people like will intuitively say that's wrong but to me I putting on the Philosopher's cap I'd say well actually I don't necessarily think has anything intrinsically wrong with eating human flesh and like the damage has already been done I didn't do the murder the only thing that's possibly wrong there is the slightly gruesome feeling of taking enjoyment from eating that but if you do then it seems to me that you can make the philosophical case that actually that is the right thing to do yeah well I mean that so it depends but you fall in that line I suppose then doesn't it mean if if it's if you believe that it's right to I mean I think to be consistent if you believe that it's right to to eat the animal product then you would have to be consistent to say I think it's right to eat the baby because if the arguments are the damage is already done and you know this is the situation we're in well I didn't say it's not wrong even if it's not even it's not not it is not wrong yeah not immoral but I do I do think it is because at the same time I think I wouldn't want someone to do that with my flesh even though I held no real kind of I guess no I wouldn't if I died and then like someone ended up eating my flesh I would probably like now I rather they didn't do that so I guess it's almost a sign of respect in the sense of you know this is not something that we would want so it's almost like a respect and a normalization of the process of what's happened to young do you think that we should have a similar kind of reverence for animal carcasses I mean the fact we even have a different word the carcasses rather than like and then what would be the word I'm slipping my mind for human bodies cops and courses like I can understand I can understand why we want to live in a society where people after death are treated well I think the reason for that is because as you say you would quite like to be treated well I personally they particularly care you can do what you want to my body after I've died but I understand why people do and even though the person who's died isn't going to be there to experience it other people will be assured by the fact that we're treating them like that that we'll be treating our ourselves like that but you think we should do the same thing for animals if we're having kind of equal moral consideration especially because animals are going to look at other animals and think oh I'm glad that's not going to happen to me like is it fair to say that like an animal dies naturally we give it a perfectly nice natural life try to try to increase its pleasure but when it drops dead which kind of chuck it in the incinerator is there something wrong with put them in the incinerator yeah like should we should we because I think we kind of cringe at the idea of doing that to a human body yeah just discarding them yeah yeah it should we kind of be treating animal bodies in the same way with a similar respect it really depends I mean it depends what value that animal has and see if you've come across say like a a deer in a in a forest that's just night you have no burden or moral responsibility to do anything with the body just you know so you have to perform like a burial or a ceremony or respect their life or anything like that but at the same time with dogs and cats the idea that we would treat them as family and then just throw them away when they die seems wrong but I guess the argument could be made or what's really the difference there in the sense of you know with I would be quite shocked if someone had a dog and the dog died and they freed them an incinerator you know I'm not cremating I mean that's different but I'm just like start burning them and I would be shocked by that but really I mean what why would I be shocked by that like what what I guess it just shows a lack of respect for life or off for the life that they had even though that seems somewhat ironic because there's no life there anymore that's essentially what we're doing with human beings and we when we a funeral service is just this strange ritualistic like sanctification of life mmm that's essentially what we're doing and I think maybe if we're trying to kind of cultivate a similar um maybe that's part of the route like if you think about the kinds of animals that we would treat well and bury after death would be the same kind of animals that we intuitively wouldn't want to see getting beaten up on the street when use the example of a dog people can kind of relate to that that's the kind of pet that we would that we would bury maybe maybe it's kind of connected in that way I don't know that it must be maybe it must be I don't know which way I don't know if it's like because we treat dogs with reverence whim or when more kind of morally attuned to their suffering or because of the fact that we're morally tuned to their suffering that we then treat them with reverence I'd be interested to find out because that might be a good way to to cultivate empathy if we find out which way around it works we could kind of try and apply the same thing to other animals perhaps that's true but I think it's very difficult to develop empathy for for instance fish mm-hmm it's almost impossible for most people I mean you can look at a dog in the eyes and tell it's feeling pleasure and pain you can kind of do it the pig - I mean pigs pigs were quite emotive animals cows you know they'll roll around and have fun never seen it in a fish I have to admit I've never seen a fish smile never seen as a fish kind of squeal in pain I mean like how can how can that come about like it especially if the arguments that were kind of making are resting on this this consistency someone might say to you at you know I'm I'm with you you've made me realize that I'm inconsistent by being angry at a dog being slaughtered but not with a pig being slaughtered but I have no empathy for these fish I think that that shows a significant significant with the word be a significant kind of boundary in our species or kind of like a war on our species that it's almost like we place like our inability to empathize is a reason for them to suffer where I should that that's a failing on our part rather on the from the fish's part are we certain the fish feel pain in the same way as pigs and cows yes I mean it signs that there's a whole bunch of literature out there about this but let's take it study was done with fish they little I think was like a little incision was made into them or something and so their heart be increases they begin to to breathe more more erratically and then they administered the morphine and so the heart rate dropped their breathing so all the symptoms of humans in pain you know were then exhibited in fish and then when you know that the morphine was administered the same reaction that would apply in humans applies to those fish as well so that the I guess if anyone has any doubts about whether or not they can empathize with fish there are there are actually videos online that I think are very shocking so a fish being eaten alive and I think this is a really great way to gauge whether or not we amplify to these animals where we see a fish that that's half eaten but but they're still alive and I think most people are really I think most people have a reaction to that and it's a big thing in in Asia where we live octopuses and stuff so go and have a look at that you know have a look go google like fish being alive and see if that provokes a emotional reaction because again to be morally consistent the reason that we should show more consideration to dogs and pigs is not because we can hear them scream yeah you know that that's redundant vocal cords don't don't attribute moral consideration it's the foundation of sentience and also of the ability to feel pain and so all we have to do is acknowledge that the fish can fill an assent and then it shows a moral in consistence heated to a grant consideration to cows and pigs chickens dogs cats humans but not to tuna and salmon and and fish and animals in the ocean yeah I think the answer is probably a philosophical empathy you can have a kind of emotional empathy in the sense that you look at a pier you can see his eyes and you think man I want your suffering to end but you can also have a philosophical empathy which is like thinking about the reason I'm I'm empathetic towards my fellow creature my fellow my fellow man my fellow dog and seeing if that also applies to fish even if I don't feel same emotional response I can kind of cultivate a feeling that I should be empathetic at the very least and that's kind of practically equivalent to having the empathy when it comes to the treatment but that it can't be done I read the story of Franz Kafka who after he went vegetarian was stood in an aquarium looking at a fish and he was just overwhelmed with the sense of contentment he was like I can finally enjoy standing here and looking at you without feeling guilt but talk to me about honey oh honey because we're gonna get smaller and smaller we've come from the from the humans to the to the to the cows to fish and I want to get down to where this ends I mean honey is controversial one and insects more generally people want to start eating crickets because they're full of protein and things like where are we standing on this well that's interesting I mean um it depends how you if you are environmentally speaking yes the the farming of insects is significantly better than the family of ruminant animals and well any any animal you know outside of that mammals birds like so you can make that argument the honey ones address let's break it down will do like crickets next let's see what let's do honey so I think there's a certain illusion that actually by buying honey you're somehow promoting be the bee populations you know which which in actuality doesn't work I mean you know we've been consuming on you for such a long time and we buy lots of it but it doesn't doesn't mean like the bee populations is somewhere stabilizing so farmers conventionally with honey um what will happen is the queen bee so that the worker bees will they were so loyal to the queen bee and that if they cut the wings off the queen bee then the worker bees will stay with her for anything so you have these these hives they cut the the young the wings off the queen bee but they also artificially inseminate them which is really weird so if you crush round about five of the male bees the worker bees to acquire the semen and then they clump the queen bee in and then the last fish inseminator so that's like a first of all that's that's that's an issue in itself and also honey is it's the bees food source so this is where it becomes a little bit disingenuous when we say we're buying honey promotes bee populations and healthy be you know populations because it doesn't because we take honey away from the bees which is their food source when we replace this in like high fructose corn syrup which is nutrition adequate and there's nothing to actually promote healthy bee populations so we take that honey we consumer even though it's their food source that they vomited to produce for themselves replace it a nutrition adequate thing and then come winter often what happen commercial honey houses and the farm will gas the bees to death and then come spring and they'll repopulate them and start the process again so yeah it's a it's about the conventional farming thing has again a disrespect for life so there are obviously stages so you can consider that about the factory farming of honey and then you can have maybe like an environment of honey where the bees aren't gassed is for example you know where maybe the queen bee isn't mutilated in the same way that I'm sure she's always artificially inseminate she's not mutilated in the same way so we eliminate a lot of that problem but but the issue is it again is we're still not we're still dealing with an idea an ideology that insists that animals are here for us to use and I think that that's the mentality of speciesism weakness isn't just it's not about food you know that's one aspect it's not it's not a diet is it's a philosophical understanding of our relationship with with non-human animals and and while we have a dependency or an idea an idea that non-human animals are there for us to use I believe that's a very stagnating mindset and so again we've I don't have an issue of beekeeping again this in fact I think beekeeping is essential and it boils down to these subsidies again and so people say well without honey where's the incentive for us to breed bees normal these subsidies subsidize farmers to produce bees to then have bee populations that can be then used for pollination and to produce plants that we need and so in a roundabout way it just let the bees produce honey but let them keep the honey as their food source and then let's subsidize farmers they don't need to sell honey to make money subsidize them so they can ensure that they have beekeeping and they're producing bees and then we can either bees to do their thing hopefully restore and stabilize bee populations and you know and also with things like vertical farming in search we can reduce pesticides and herbicides and be killers in that way so yeah there's no need for honey agave maple syrup there's all these different things and as such let's just leave the bees to do with it she'll be really care like can bees feel pain and in the same way but they can feel pain I mean pain is subjective how do we know that they don't feel pain worse than we do you know I think we have this I guess it's almost a human arrogance where we think that because we are potentially the most evolved beings cognitively speaking that we therefore have the ability to feel emotions its strongest but I don't think that actually necessarily equates to being true for example killer whales the part of their brain that has the associative empathy is actually more advanced than that of a human on you know also the solar survivor it's less you know no makeup salutes so that would message that would maybe insinuate that killer whales or orcas have an ability to empathize more than we do who knows but say like dogs is a good example you know one thing we always say about dogs is they live in the present you know they're very you know they're always live in the present that's one thing about non-human animals they exist in the present this might be something you've said no maybe not Miller Beck anomaly but with humans we have an ability to think to the future have an ability to distract ourselves you have an ability to kind of disassociate right and so when it comes to pain the fact that we can disassociate - you mean that we can cope with pain better than Nandi and animals because we can take ourselves out of that equation we take an animal that's more rooted in the present car necessarily think in the same way that we cannot you know we distract themselves in the same way that we can pain for them might be a lot more severe because they don't have these natural psychological escapes that we do but I mean can we even talk about the psychology of bees but I think that's the thing that I think most people are feeling it's like yeah we can't know that they can't feel pain in the same way that we can a good plant doesn't feel pain but we can we can look at the structure the chemical structure and say that that's not what we're talking about when we mean suffering really people talk about the release of chemicals something that that's not what suffering is and I don't know I can see what people would think that that doesn't exist an insect what do they have a nervous system yeah well yeah I mean they said so they do like so say like the snakes for example in a bit of a spinal stuff although we don't believe that they feel pain so it's it's you know um yes you know we think we have to owe somewhat of a benefit of the doubt to these animals and say that we don't know necessarily everything about them we don't know how deeply they think and stuff but we should grant them enough of a benefit of the doubt that says less not harmed yeah because I mean it's not a big sacrifice just not eat honey much so can you be a VIII not to moralize but can you be a vegan who eats honey in your in your the army no no I understand whether you can't be a vegan that consumes milk or eggs you know but there's an animal product this suffering involved is it there is no necessity for it and it better for the animals if we didn't do that interesting okay I want to I want to talk to you about something that comes up all the time and I kind of know how I would navigate this this but I understand why people bring it up and it's a it's it's kind of it's not something that could exist universally but people are always talking about things like you spoke about ethical humane slaughter before which I understand your reservations about but the kind of concept of taking an animal and letting it live fairly well and killing it painlessly before it before it's due but still killing it painlessly and then eating its meat you'd still have problem with that yeah why well first of all let's take from a practical perspective I sometimes I'm sold this kind of idealistic version of animals like having just the most beautiful lives and then and when they've lived a really good life we just kind of shoot them in the head or something first of all that that's just not physically possible so even if we try to argue this from moral perspective any we can perceive this to be moral it still can't be implemented especially certainly not with the land we have and with the demands that's in place and so currently no products that you're buying are coming from this idealistic environment anyway even free-range organic it still doesn't subscribe to what what this idea is discussing but let's say that we have I said that we can let's say we have as much land as modern as many resources as we want and this is an issue we can feed everyone to demand with this reasoning is it then still a moral issue yes I think it is because these animals still have a preference to they can still have the ability to feel happiness and the ability to you know let's take cows their matriarchal beans exist in familial herds you know for example I so you take out one you shoot the mother in the head well that's still gonna have a knock-on effect in the herd you know and even solitary animals they still exist in a way that means that they value or they do it's hard to say whether they have a preference or they value but we can we know that they seek out experiences that provide pleasure yeah because I mean we know we know that they that they desire their pleasure but like I don't think it makes sense to say that they desire to stay alive if they probably have no conception of living but the things that they do to attempt to stay alive will be side effect of the evolutionary processes that have brought about avoidances of pain and things that German right to death I don't think they're kind of consciously thinking I don't want to die although we can see animals mourn and mourning is a saturation of a recognition that yes no longer life and so do they do they conceive a notion of death I mean I guess we don't know even if they can mourn it must mean they have an understanding that life is finite well there's there's there's a animal mourning is an interesting but it but a tricky thing to navigate I've spoke to Michael Shermer about it on this podcast actually he did a whole book about death and and and the the different responses across the animal kingdom morning I think can be just an expression of missing somebody it doesn't necessarily require a concept of death and knowing that it's going to happen to you as well but animals do seem to recognize a finality of death and you it sometimes you hear stories again it's hard to attribute this to being exactly what we perceive it to possibly be but you hear stories of people that say that their dogs when they're sick they go off to go and you know maybe go and sit somewhere and also you hear stories of dogs go into the gravestones you know their owners and so that that that must suggest so we say oh well they have a perception of missing well to miss that means do you have to recognize they're gone - gone means that to recognize they're no longer alive which well I mean dogs seem to miss their owners when they go down to the shops as well like in the same way that they kind of scratch at the door maybe that's a similar thing and sitting at the graves - and they're kind of waiting for the owner to pop the grave potentially sir which is very very upsetting now that I think about it that's absolutely heartbreaking it is however that but there again if is if they don't if why is it heartbreaking to worry because we have an empathy and we recognize yeah but there again it's heartbreaking my ties with the dancer thing out there morning yeah I suppose so but at the same so yeah it may be maybe it's hard and we can probably imagine that say bees as an example don't you know maybe rightly make the argument that dog is doing pigs do and whales do but we would probably say that cockroaches bees and crickets but we don't so there's this scales to this but I doesn't necessarily mean it's it's justifiable to kill those animals for that reason alone I mean it's like if I see a cockroach and I just squash it and then cook it up and eat it for my protein you know it it hasn't suffered if I kill it instantly I might develop some kind of again in the world philosophy you can do whatever you like so I have a special insect cockroach washing device that painlessly kills cockroaches and I just used it on the odd cockroach and eat it for my protein why don't we apply that that notion of killing without painter to to humans I think only because of the recognition that other humans have at that happening to them I I've spoken to people about this I remember I spoke to a friend of mine who's a very very happy person he was a very very happy life but he said to me we had this argument about it because he said we were talking about this topic and I said you know but how would you feel about someone just coming up to the back of your head right now and shooting you and you have no awareness you just dead instantly and he'd be like he was like fine I'm not gonna know I've got like I'm if I knew it was coming I'd want to avoid it but like I can't think of a reason to be particularly scared of that happening because I wouldn't be aware of it I'd just be gone that would be a kaput so I think like intrinsically there might not be anything wrong with with killing someone painlessly because they're not going to suffer for it you just don't do it because of the the suffering that's going to come about in the world that they leave behind the same thing isn't really true of cockroach unless they're homeless and they have no families and they have no socialist what that is that's where things get that's where things get interesting and interesting it's a good way Ricky yeah I think again the reason why we'd be against that is the society it cultivates you wouldn't want to live in a society where an individual or government or whoever it may be has the power to go and kill people they don't need like useful or worthy I think that is the reason why we will have developed this empathy and this this feeling of this feeling of legalistic morality we say that somebody else shouldn't be able to be treated that way because that means I can be treated that way that's the kind of I think that's the evolutionary psychology behind it they the same just isn't true of a cockroach no so so why not why not just squash the cockroach in and get the protein what's the problem I guess because they kind of they can experience oh I would imagine I mean I don't know a lot about cockroaches but I would I would imagine from the little I know about them they can experience some form of yeah yes and so to deny them potentials to experience these things would be an immoral act so are you pro-life oh this is my view Alex this is my view do you see that I do I do but if I am so it depends what what stage why I mean it I don't believe that abortions I don't believe the conception equals life I mean it is fundamental in either yeah so I don't but I do believe there's a point where it has to be wrong I don't think that you know unless unless it unless there's a danger to the the mother I don't believe there has to be a point where it but I have a problem with the with the potentiate the potential argument that that's why I bring it up because you say like this cockroach has the potential to to achieve some happiness and it would be wrong to restrict that potential for happiness just because of my my convenience and my taste buds or protein in the same way like a a fertilized egg has the potential to achieve extreme happiness and yes a mother would have to go through significant pain in order to have that child but that's presumably outweighed by the overall happiness of that child's resultant life and yet I still think it'd be justifiable of us to say no no like it's not about the potential like yes all that potentials there but that mother still has the right to just to get rid of that fertilized egg because it is just the first lies dead girlfriend yeah same way yes the cockroach has a has the potential for a bit of happiness but that happiness doesn't exist yet and it's just a cockroach so let's squash it but the cockroach is in a position currently where they can experience happiness where it's a fertilized egg is it's still then there's not a human there well there's the foundations for a human but the human tilt doesn't exist we're still talking about about potential here like the wealthiness is what we're interested in and the happiness doesn't exist in the cockroach well let's say let's say we have a situation when we can we can take cells and we can produce them and in labs yeah let's say you could clone someone which would mean that every cell and every one of our bodies then all of a sudden should be granted some sort of moral consideration because any cell could then be taken to be produced into a human well but but then on on your view it seems that you would have an ethical obligation to take as many cells as you couldn't turn them into humans because potential happiness is so important that we need to try and cultivate as much like as a higher quantity you know of happiness in the world as possible but they're not but you do that and it leads to a problem where you actually create a system that creates more negativity and it's detrimental to society and soap I guess of the reason of of abortion is that if we have overpopulation issues currently and we're only gonna continue exceed in that level and so to add more life into this world doesn't necessarily ensure happiness yeah and how do you even quantify people's happiness it's literally let's say you take again let's take a rape victim who who is impregnated for that rape well how do and they live in they're an impoverished working-class person you know yeah who knows that baby isn't there so you can have a happy life just because that you can't you can't plug it into a calculator right but then again like there's always a counter-argument I mean if you talk about like the population thing the same argument can be made for culling the elderly like I think we need to be careful with this I'll agree I think this kind of you Joel but but they're the reason I'm ready the reason that I'm talking about it is because I think that it seems easier to avoid all of this baggage by just saying yes quash the cockroach yeah maybe consistently does I have to say even as someone who is completely on board as you know with your ethical position when it comes to animals and and as motivated for people to change as you are I don't think I'd have the same kind of reservation someone when squishing a cockroach especially if they offered this justification they weren't just doing it because they didn't think about it they were like listen I know what you're gonna say but hear me out and they explained this rationale and the squash the cockroach you need it I'd probably say if there I wouldn't do it but I understand you there it's a cockroach an easy example because we read amplifies why maybe would we do that to any animal but it could put a pig in there or a way like it gets complicated because of the social nature of their of their psychology like you like you rightly point out if you kind of take a cow away then it's his family you're gonna gonna be sad but it'd take like an isolated cow that's why I sort of I'm talking about the cockroach because the original question was about this cow that's lived a fairly happy life it's like come across in nature or something and someone goes and shoots it in the back a head and eats it it's the same thing here really like the potential happiness is there yeah but so what like potential happiness is not is not intrinsically a worthy kind of concept because otherwise you get all of this package with with the issues of abortion and the issues of like quantification of happiness I think that that happiness does not exist and somebody could somebody could just kill that animal the animal isn't gonna feel any pain so there's no net suffering so at the very least it's not wrong because you're not contributing to any suffering it absolutely did that I was thought to exist in a vacuum because yeah in yeah because even if you take like modern agriculture again it comes down to the issue of practicality and so I think a lot of what we discussed it provides an interesting proposition but it doesn't apply to like a real-world scenario if you know their meanings and so I guess I've never thought about it before because it isn't something that that's feasible with the resources and finite in your position you can't advocate position that couldn't be implemented universally like as right doing what you can do that yeah I'm just interested in like this for tonight so something someone's asked me but people people always ask me about hunting and you have this immediate kind of revulsion to the idea of going out and shooting an animal but especially if you're doing it for food not for fun a wild animal is probably gonna have a pretty horrific death if you if you don't go and shoot the deer or whatever it is then that deer probably is gonna go on get its foot stuck in some some some log somewhere and then and then break their leg and died of starvation surely it would actually be nicer to have them beep shot in the head especially if you can then increase the pleasure even further by feeding a family of five for like half a year I don't believe I think there's some interest now you let's be had a fancy I don't I don't perceive that to be one because the natural to exist and we I think we all acknowledge that nature's a violent thing they wanted one thing I don't like about vegans sometimes is when we romanticize animals into this to this extent where we think that they're you know virtuous beings and unique you know where humans commit the problem their nature is violent and brutal and horrible and animals don't die in in nice ways at all but that doesn't mean that we are therefore entitled to Harlem because we could use that justification to hurt any animal I mean all animals I mean even humans in many areas around the world are gonna die in horrific ways but we won't be justified to then kill them in any less horrific way to try and yeah well I mean so so I'm not kind of making a case that we therefore have a right to kind of inflict suffering on the moon I'm saying that you could you can imagine the virtuous hunter who genuinely is like like I I want to save these animals man they they're gonna they're gonna they I don't want them to have to live the rest of their days in this horrific violent brutal situation I'd rather them just die painlessly now so do we condone just eliminate in the animal kingdom because that would be the natural conclusion of life if we recognize that these animals going to die and we recognize the nature's violent then to be virtuous becomes well than to wipe out all which potentially is the most virtuous yeah what do you say someone who buys the bulletin says that yeah minimization of suffering that's like the anti-nationalist position which you might you might have come across it's like some people think that that if if in humanity there is a net suffering which there probably there seems to be if you consider that the the worldwide population of humanity seems that there's probably a net suffering overall you'd like to minimize suffering if you're gonna be consistent is just to just a coal all living be the best thing we could possibly do is keeping tributing to global warming so that the whole population just dies out right sounds like we're right in here Avengers and game script mountains yeah maybe maybe the if V Eagan ISM is a philosophy about the minimization of unnecessary suffering maybe the best thing I've eaten can do is be the least environmentally friendly person on the planet I mean this is something it's a funny thing isn't it we just we stray into dangerous territory obviously for for you know arguments of like her you know people that believe that veganism is this kind of agenda to do that but it's a very interesting proposition I believe that life is mostly suffering and I and I and I honestly don't believe that the happiness even comes close to a counteracting the suffering even just on a personal level right those hardships are much worse than any sense yeah joy that we have feel so yes I think it's the case we made that if we want to eliminate suffering well that would be a no that would be an elimination that light it's not just like that that seems to be like a plausible situation it's like if your philosophy really is as simple as minimize unnecessary suffering hmm then it seems that you're kind of ethically obliged to to commit mass suicide yeah I mean that but I guess a utilitarian approach would would would reach that conclusion as well so why not like what what's the what's their approach to that well true and if happiness is a the possibility of happiness doesn't justify not killing then or what justification do we have left not to do that well that's a very interesting it's like you've got a burden in front of you and you can press that burden and it wipes out the human race and all living beings you're probably not gonna press that button right it someone asked me that years ago and I said no when they said they would hmm and I said how could you do that and I said because life is suffering and that idea but people can we can change that life could be soaked become so grey and maybe emit maybe maybe that's it maybe life has the potential to change but nature come you know maybe as a society we could reach a point where we live in some form of idealistic utopia where these isms these negative isms we discuss as something in the past very very unlikely that would ever happen but maybe that is this is kind of like an idealistic almost naive perspective of saying well things can change so we should grant it the chance to change oh I don't know many societies progress so far then maybe we could continue to progress to a point where a lot of the things that we perceived to be wrong and cruel are no longer a thing of society and maybe that that's the point that it's not about how we live now is about trying to foster a sense of a world where the things that we suffer from now and are no longer things people have to suffer from yeah it just it it seems a bit wishy-washy well I'm thinking about the fact that we are expanding so much effort to try to save and prolong the sentient experience of this this this this this creature of humanity but also like the other animals of the animal kingdom that perhaps is completely waste and we shouldn't be doing it at all because the the minimization of suffering would be a lot easier if we just kind of let it kind of fizzle out it seems to be a kind of it's not just like an interesting philosophical like musing it's it's kind of a it's a it gets to the core of the whole philosophy that we're talking about it it knocks the legs out of it if the whole reason we're building this edifice of good treatment of animals and environmental consciousness and all this kind of stuff is is based upon the minimization of suffering then if the minimization of suffering is the very thing that kind of takes the legs out then we're in big trouble surely I guess that the question becomes could we reach a point where we've minimized suffering so much that suffering is no longer prevalent what do you think do you think that's possible I mean as someone who quite confidently says that that you know life is constituted mainly and suffering you think do you think it's possible for that to be reversed mean like there's a good philosophical literature and people should read Arthur Schopenhauer essay on the sufferings of the world where he was one of the kind of early people to wake up and and make this make this point it was like suffering is if suffering is not the aim of humanity then nature has completely failed in a mission like this is it seems clear that suffering is the the active thing and pleasure is the kind of is the responsible not the other way around as people often think like all pleasures seem to be a kind of a negation of some kind of suffering I'm flattered of eating is the negation of of hunger that's kind of thing they couldn't exist without virtue of the opposite so I so like you say like it might it might not just be like a societal indictment that right now there's more suffering than there is it might just be within human nature it is the case that suffering is the the predominant and always will be the predominant force if that's the case then then what are we doing here that's a good question I don't know I don't know I mean these are self conscious conversations I have very much privately and it's like it because it reveals something that you don't want to accept really doesn't it it's it's kind of like a we we do I do what I do because I have this this idea that I can try and help in some way that would would reduce this suffering that would would help in the long run would prevent others you know human non-human from having to endure what what what people and you know human aren't human currently enjoy but if it is this sort of like redundant kind of like pursuit for some sort of like in a piece because I'm you know maybe maybe the the reasons we do a lot of things we do to be virtuous is to reduce suffering within ourselves to try and pretend that we're making a difference you know it's almost like a form of like self-congratulation where it's like our well I know I'm suffering because life is suffering so if I can help that makes me feel good so it's almost like a lot of what we do as virtuous is in effect just a form of trying to reduce our own suffering by making ourselves feel that were actually generating a positive difference yeah well that's a pretty defeatist attitude as well and it almost eradicate this idea that people do genuinely good things for genuinely good reasons but I think I think most people will intuitively accept if they think about it hard enough that there's no truly altruistic act you're always going to benefit in some way from an action that you that you commit and I think well I mean yes all those selfs alcaman it becomes challenging me I guess they I'm thinking of no and yeah probably like a soldier throwing himself on a grenade yeah this is this is the sort of example I was thing but they still I mean you can still see even it's like totally irrational somebody is doing that because either to maximize the intense pleasure of virtue that they feel in the moment of doing so or the converse which is the avoidance of the pain of the guilt of having not done so for the rest of their life like that they're still kind of trying to write today aim at doing that I mean an interesting thought experiment that was put to me and I've I've spoken to a few few people and a few guests about this is it's an interesting bit of food for thought people listening want to this was something that kind of proved to me that I think all actions are ultimately self-interested which is if I put the dilemma to you of choosing between killing an innocent person and then immediately forgetting about it or not killing the innocent person but living the rest of your life thinking that you'd done it and living with that guilt like which would you choose and people kind of virtuously might say yeah I died you know I wouldn't kill the person I'd take the kill but I think I think rationally speaking if you think about it hard enough you realize that ultimately you would probably just kill the person and it seems the national thing to do in that situation and I've I don't know maybe that's not something you agree with but I think and it's it seems a fairly um it's not a nice thing to admit like you say it's quite revealing of your eye of yourself but I think it's probably what most people would do it's easy to take the high ground and say no I would never do that you know I think there's a lot of questions where people no cost no I would I would much rather live like this kind of self sacrifice I would much rather live with that but yeah I mean in practicality and we don't know I mean nothing less a lot of the time we just don't know what we do the big big button art thing is I mean I wish I could tell you that I believe that everything will be fine and so I would of course not push it but if the bomb was there and and I and I fought about it long if there's a good job out and it's a good chance I'd press it you know so it it's very difficult to know because what how we want to be and how we want the world to be and how we want people to perceive us is often different to what we do in a situation where that but yeah option was presented to and also there's an important distinction because often times these things get caught up and talking about what you would do but we should really be interested and it's what you should do right right it's like yeah would you press the button would you would you kill the innocent person well maybe maybe not but what should you be doing that's the question for you so why shouldn't you press the big red button well that's that's the question but what philosophical reasoning would say that what I mean obviously there will be some so what what what reasoning would there be to not write like a nihilistic perspective that it doesn't matter if you don't so the nihilistic the nihilistic position could only go as far as saying it's like indifferent to whether the buttons pressed or not you can't say don't press the button right just says like I don't do what you want there are like arguments for the sanctity of life which I don't think are particularly compelling but for instance from a religious perspective people think that you don't have the right to take the life of other people natural rights views will take this approach of saying that the rights actually exists like you you have an actual right to life it's not like a product of because I mean John Stuart Mill believed in rights even though that seems weird as a utilitarian he had a had a had a whole edifice of building up the system of Rights that is justified in the utilitarian principle which seems really counterintuitive but it's done quite well and it makes sense but he doesn't believe that rights right their own thing Bentham said the concept of Rights R is complete nonsense and natural rights is nonsense on stilts quite famously he he didn't believe in them but some people do I don't I didn't give it a the time of day but that's one way you could perhaps get around it outside of that I don't know what else there is you you have to believe in some kind of intrinsic value of life of its own accord not because of the pleasure or because of the the suffering that that's involved with living but but just life in itself it's a saint it's a similar question of like an isolated case of somebody who's completely comatose and incapable of feeling pleasure and pain is there really any it's it's not like should you flip the button it's like is that even a moral question like it does it doesn't matter it's is flicking that button not the same as like turning off a computer or something it's like if there's no pleasure and pain there is that really all that matters some people will intuitively feel that there's a value to the life it's not just like for taking off a computer that there's something breathing there there something organic maybe that's but then again that that would just be what we do feel not what we should feel it's an indictment of our psychology that we have this is strange the strange value of life of its own accord and even even though we have no rationale for it it's not even an indictment maybe it's something we should be thankful that we have well it's only thankful by virtue of the fact that we think that we want some justification not to press the buttons right it's like it's completely circular yeah we're only thankful to have a reason not to push the button because we don't want to push the button yeah you know I don't know if I don't know if there's really an escape from it they say I don't know this it and this is why this is why philosophy is such an interesting thing to discuss because I because it draws up so many challenging concepts that are just I think sometimes beyond the realms of us of course beyond the realms to explain that's the foundation in so many ways so it is a very much interesting thing to conceive of is why shouldn't we do that I mean I don't believe that I don't if if we don't have some sort of if you don't believe in religion then I don't then there's no preordained rights you know where do these rights come from you know culture maybe but in cultures there's the poor determinating factorial of something like that of morality the basin roads that were exactly the matter ethical basis yeah so without if we don't have inalienable rights then what do then what do we have exactly it and I think in inalienable rights can only be thought of us as in a liberal I think I think it's useful to think of them as inalienable it's useful it's like a it's like a metaphorical truth as brett weinstein would say like like the gun is always loaded even when it's not it's useful to think that it is because practically it helps to stabilize things in the same way it's useful to think that the rights are completely inviolable in any situation you know you can't twist the innocent persons thumb to save the other person's life you can't do it they have a right to it but ultimately that's not grounded in an intrinsic value of the right or existence of the right it's grounded in a separate principle which i think is is undermined by the fact that if it is the case that life consists mainly in suffering I think the whole thing is undermined especially if the rights including the right to life is built on top of this kind of utilitarian principle then by knocking out the utilitarian principle we're also knocking out the rights so it just all falls out completely falls down so where does that leave us somewhere not very pleasant no somewheres nihilistic and somewhere of but is that I feel no that idea that just makes sense and I thought that people try and deny that it's almost it's almost like a religion I think this is how I feel a lot about religion the people are religious because it gives them a sense of inner peace and I think that that often with philosophical teachings I think that the default is nihilism and then we try to convince ourselves of different principles so that we can try and give ourselves a sense of inner peace you know what rights or whatever and so but is that it when everything trickles down and we discuss is that not just it's not just that where everyone's gonna fit in that sense yeah I mean even I mean even like the thing that I've spoken about before with people like Steven rationality rules is the idea that people use religion to get that kind of basis but ultimately that itself is still a fairly flawed basis because you asked about why you would care about what the divine creator the universe thinks and you still end up in a similar kind of nihilistic and spiral but like if listeners don't feel that way if you don't life consists mainly in suffering but I don't think I think many people would dispute that but also if you're just somebody who doesn't like to go down that rabbit hole and is thinking at the level of practical ethics as well as philosophy taking you to these horrific annoying and difficult places philosophy can also take you to places like the realization that perhaps you should stop eating animal products that's what it did for me it can kind of take you both ways I hope the people listening have kind of been given some food for thought in that sense in both directions of course but use this philosophical principle of consistency examine why it is that you feel certain things are right or wrong and whatever justification you have for that whether you're a natural rights theorist or a utilitarian or you're a religious person or whatever it may be figure out what it is in that ethical construct that's making you think that something else is wrong like racism or sexism thinking why it is what's the rationale for saying that's wrong and just see if it applies to animals too and I think that most of the most of the time it just absolutely does I think also just something sad towards their nose like wishes of should we or shouldn't we say press the button or you know that's not something we actually control over so there are really interesting things to debate but but regardless whoever or not we think we should press that button or you know or if the the minimization of suffering taken to its extreme is this scenario yeah that's not something that's ever gonna happen us and we have control over and so we have to kind of operate within what's possible to us and then in the world that we live in and so if we do believe in the minimization of suffering and yes that might be the the fundamental logical conclusion but it'll never happen so let's just operate within the framework of what we have in our availability and the minimization of suffering calling - how what we can do is including you know the minimization of animal suffering yeah by being vegan yeah now I'm worried that if we draw this one any longer than will start inflicting some suffering and our listeners because they'll just be kind of dragging themselves along ears probably hurting from from the headphones that they're wearing but um I think I in in sort of closing I've become convinced recently it's become the most ethically obvious thing to me that I need to be a vegan and that other people need to be vegan too do you think it is irresponsible to say that veganism is the most important moral emergency currently facing us no I don't think it's irresponsible I think when if you view everything in its totality that's the obvious statement because it transcends beyond just what's happening to animals it looks at what's happening to our planet and also looks what's happening to our health as well and so if we knew the number of preventable deaths when humans alone the human rights and justices that occur in slaughterhouses in another environments of animal exploitation it becomes all-encompassing ideology that deals with so many different issues and so a lot of other social justice issues if that's the right terminology is is it's not a single is quite a single issue it deals with one problem but this deals with a multitude of different problems and so actually if the question becomes you know what is the most important thing that we can do in our day-to-day lives to alleviate the most suffering being vegan is is absolutely that that that that's your I I think because people are often quite offended at the suggestion that is the most important world consideration I think because they say things like human trafficking still exists like sexual slavery still exists what why are we focusing on animals I think my answer to that is that if you go on to the street and ask the average person what do you think of human trafficking you know what they're gonna say but if you go out and reading us the average person will they think of KFC it's gonna be a completely different story so the moral emergency for me isn't necessarily what's going on per se but the fact that it's going on completely without notice and under the radar and no one seems to care even when it's brought to their attention that's where I place the kind of height of moral emergency well that's all sad this the equation as well as to say like if um if if we get to a world where we have conceived the idea that um raising chickens for food is is wrong well presumably again to reach that kind of point in our moral development would presumably and you would certainly hope your world with human trafficking cease to exist by default because to an engage or to expound our empathy to include non-human animals that we conventionally find difficult to empathize with would surely mean - surely the empathy that we filter and species would enhance by default cause because veganism doesn't need to be about non-human animals veganism is a philosophy to me I've always defined it as a philosophy at the minimization of unnecessary suffering of sentient creatures yes so in vegan is that those things don't exist the vegan is to be is to be to be a vegan philosophically is as much to be against racism as it is to be against speciesism yeah it's just that one of them is is not as prominent in the moral context of the current climate so like that's just kind of what has to be focused on but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's more important it's just more of like I say a moral emergency I think yeah I think that's it that's that's fair to say and I hope that people can kind of understand that that's where we're coming from yeah maybe important wasn't like if I yeah I agree what exactly just said important I don't think that any suffering is more important like they're all equally important in a sense that they should be abolished yeah that they're important to the to the to the extent of the extent of the suffering involved right so something could be more of a problem because the suffering is of a higher quantity or even a higher quality because people are different they're capable of experiencing different types of right of pleasures and pains but they're all when it comes to as as singer has said when it comes to just the experience of pain at a base level non-human animals are are equals in terms of the ability to to fill pain I hope people can understand that it's not like we care about animals more than we do about humans or even the same amount it's just that when it comes to moral consideration the only thing that makes sense to attribute moral worth to is the ability to feel pleasure and pain and that cannot be detect that cannot be affected by the vestibule in which the pleasure and pain is is existing that that essentially I think it's the summary of the of the V condition there but I want to thank you for coming on IDI it's been a fun discussion it's been a bit wide-ranging went to areas I didn't think you would I didn't think it would go to I want to remind people about the animal rights march happening August 17 17th and where it would like where can people find out about that yep on Facebook so if you type in search which is the group running at co-direct there's a whole list of different marches there's also a website www.moocchile.com find you if you just youtube search earthling in it I'm at you've got the dot-com forward slash nothing out on YouTube yes everybody should definitely go subscribe it also you're very active on Instagram I don't think you have twitter I used to like not anymore likewise you can also follow me if you feel so inclined that's fine too we don't mind but yeah thanks for coming on really appreciate the work you do and congratulations and all the success as well the things that you've been doing if people follow you on social media they'll see that you're all over the world doing all kinds of crazy stuff I think it's a it's a it's an encouraging thing to see so you know seriously thank you thank you for the work I always tell I say to all guess it's exciting to have you one but it really is a real real thrill to have you here and I hope the people the people who've been incessantly commenting and emailing me about getting you on can now be somewhat satiated and that this conversation has been been somewhat fulfilling for them but with that said I have been as always Alex O'Connor and say I've been in conversation with Ed winters or Earthling end [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: CosmicSkeptic

Views: 138,683

Rating: 4.8294659 out of 5

Keywords: Alex O'Connor, cosmic, skeptic, cosmicskeptic, Earthling Ed, vegan, veganism, podcast, animal rights, philosophy, Cosmic Skeptic, meat, ethics

Id: r-BTN8Ajs04

Length: 114min 51sec (6891 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 13 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/tyler_kreis]

Thanks for sharing!

[u/[deleted]]

Awesome podcast