Student confronts vegan about indigenous culture | HEATED DEBATE

i see everything that has a song i try to treat every single thing with respect but you're appropriating indigenous culture to justify arbitrarily harming appreciating indigenous cultures hey q nice to meet you my name is ed and today i'm at the university of dallas with a banner that says why aren't you vegan yet you've been listening to a conversation i've just been having yes and it seems like you have some questions or some ideas or thoughts so let me know what you think so my first question for you is what is your opinion on the native tribes such as the inuit who live up in alaska who don't have easy access to these fresh produce that you're wanting them to eat and instead rely on the animals they hunt yeah well the issue of what we do to animals is an issue of necessity this question of veganism comes down to the options and choices that we have so there are obviously people in the world who don't have the availability or the access to be plant-based or to be vegan who are maybe in tribes and in in indigenous communities where they don't have the access that you and i have where we live with the means that we have and so as a consequence of that the you know the morality of that situation is very different because they hunt animals and eat animals out of necessity but the point of me being here with the banner about why i knew vegan yet is to draw on the fact that it's about you and i and the situation that we have and the means that we have which is why it becomes a moral issue for us i mean you talk about you know us like we are not part of these indigenous tribes i mean these indigenous tribes yes they live you know out remote away from you know civilization but many of them you know they don't they don't see veganism as like they don't want veganism because they what about you i i don't want to be vegan and why don't you want to be vegan because one i have um i'm a neurotic which means i'm very sensitive to certain things so i already am you know picky about what i eat and so trying to find like a substitute for the nutritions that nutrients that i need is very risky so eating meat meat that i know meat that i understand you know it helps me that way however with these indigenous tribes they they they because you have to understand veganism is very much a white colonized thought it very much is but people say that but then also people say that when you look at the roots of non-harming animals for diets it's deep rooted in places like hindu cultures and jainist cultures and so the idea of abstaining from eating animals is very much deep rooted in kind of like buddhist uh hindu and genus cultures and not necessarily in a white colonialist process at least yes but like hindu and hinduism they don't eat cows they believe cows are sacred but they eat other meats well not many don't and historically many haven't as well so i'm just saying that it's not strictly true this idea of non-harm to animals is a strictly white colonialist fort so i don't know if that holds up historically historically speaking it's not but this sudden boom of veganism is historically colonial you have do you mean by colonial in this context that i'm i mean colonial as in the white colonizers as in the europeans coming colonizing half the world i mean the americans colonizing the west there's a recent surge in you know white liberals who believe they're doing good and who believe you know such as you know you and i and i'm not saying vegan is bad veganism is not bad if you want to be vegan be vegan cool but when it comes to pressuring other people who don't want who don't want this and who have different beliefs for instance are you aware of the view of cosmos central cosmocentricism no you explain it to me so cosmos synthetism is a worldwide view believed by many many of his indigenous tribes in which everything is equal to each other me you the trees the grass the water the rocks the animals are all equal to each other and animals hear us and they understand us so with many people such as the um not the inuit tribe there's another tribe in alaska it starts with the k i can't remember at the moment they believe that the earth was made by the raven their god for if to put it in terms as a raven yeah but they hunt they hunt elk and they hunt moose but they don't just hunt them they respect the animal they take everything from the animal and they thank the animal yeah and they think the animal in several ways they don't talk about hunting moose they just say i'm gonna go out because they know the moose hears them and if they say i'm going to go hunt moose the moose thinks hears that and they and says i you know they are not worthy to have me oh okay they are not worthy to to to have to eat me and so it hides because they presumably don't want to be killed if they're going to be alerted to that but the point i'm making is that i'm not in those areas of the world talking to indigenous people in those areas i'm talking to people here and whilst we may make the argument that when we look at the rise of veganism as a popular cultural thing it's kind of emerging from yeah places in europe australia and the us actually when you look at the growth rates of veganism in america one of the biggest demographics in terms of abducting veganism are african-americans and so to make the claim this is strictly white colonies thing doesn't hold up especially as why vegans aren't going to indigenous communities in alaska i'm not trying to impose that on them you know i'm here in in dallas talking to people like yourself but through social media there has been a push of people saying you you know inuit tribes who hunt beluga whales who are which are not endangered in any way people are saying that's wrong you can't do that and they say that is our only source of nutrients but at the same time what can be easy to do especially when we have a views about a certain group of people is we can take people from that group who kind of maybe portray views that could be considered extremist or views that could be considered impractical and we can use those to try and almost you know caricature the whole movement itself and so i'm not going to disagree that there are certain vegans who will make that claim but by and large most vegans including myself have a more of a nuanced understanding that there are people in the world who have a different relationship based on the environment that they live in and hence i'm not going to make the claim that people who are hunting belugas out of necessity to survive should be held to the same moral standard that you and i can with the choices that we have and that's what's important moral standard because you're saying that them hunting beluga is morally wrong no no i'm saying in a situation necessity it's different like with humans if i said you know shooting a human is morally wrong it is but if you have to shoot a human out of necessity then it becomes morally justified so i can say harming an animal is morally wrong but if you have to harm the animal to survive then it can become justified so issues morality are always nuanced based on those circumstances but by and large the general rule should be if we can avoid causing unnecessary harm to someone morally speaking we should try to pursue that option what do you think about that i mean yeah i fully agree and so my question is just why are you why are you here asking these people why why we're not vegan why why what is your reason for that because it's a thing that we don't often think about it's an idea that most of us don't kind of like consider when we're buying food and most of us in society are against animals being unnecessarily harmed and so morally speaking we already agree that reducing suffering for animals is morally preferable but when we go into a supermarket or onto an ordering app or whatever and we buy food we don't really think about the process of what we're supporting because you know it's culturally normalized we've been raised with that and so the purpose of me being here isn't with this kind of naive opinion that everyone's going to sit down and agree with me and be like hey i'm going to be vegan now but it's to try and like maybe ask questions and talk about topics that people maybe haven't considered and to try and get maybe a deeper reflection on those values and ideas because it is a moral issue and morally we do agree with reducing suffering it's just that we haven't always thought about the suffering that occurs for our food that we consume okay so i i know because i was raised in the texas education system yeah i'm sorry many people here were i'm sure we were all taught high school like health class or whatever how fast food was made and they show us like the mass like the slaughter camps and all of that of the animals and whatnot and they try to traumatize us and whatnot and they're like don't eat fast food that's why you only eat you know real meat and whatever and but then they don't see say that that exact same process happens for real me so but so one that's you know a whole issue but you have wanting you have the the plant-based produce right you have who are those who is growing this plant-based produce it's immigrants who are undocumented who are being paid cents a day in order they are being exploited on their own reason yes animals are being exploited they're being harmed but so are humans and so you saying that you know what's you know morally you know overall better to have plant-based that's also like it's a gray area because you're also furthering harm on these on these people so we have a very imperfect system not just agriculturally speaking but just generally speaking there is a huge amount of exploitation happens in all different systems and that's unfortunately a thing that needs to be challenged so um i will never say that veganism is perfect but plant-based production is perfect it isn't what it is is it's a reduction of harm and the reason it's a reduction of harm is because everything you just described in terms of what's happening to humans happens in the animal farming industries as well it's the same people growing the feed for the animals it's the same people working in the factory farms and document undocumented migrants and it's those people working in slaughterhouses and slaughterhouse work has been shown to increase rates of you know ptsd mental health problems suicide drug and alcohol abuse so the situation of animal farming also causes intense human suffering and in many ways the same and also with an add-on of what happens in a slaughterhouse so it's a reduction of suffering but it doesn't mean we should stop there we should challenge that and what we need is a plant-based food system that takes out the animal suffering and challenges that suffering of humans as well to create a fairer system for everyone i agree have you considered going about it perhaps the other way saying we need to focus on humans first we need to focus on getting these undocumented immigrants one that you know making them welcome in this country giving them fair pay giving them fair rights all of these things making them not fear being deported because then once you get their support they'll be much more likely to help us in reducing the harming of animals they'll be able to help us say to go on strike against these slaughter slaughter facilities you know it's all about how how you go about things yes we can do both at the same time though is the argument i'd make but we can tackle this animal exploitation and the human animal exploitation at the same time and create a system which is growing plants which is best for animals and takes into a consideration the rights these humans deserve so that we create a fairy system for everyone in a perfect world we can go about it at one like at the same time this is not a perfect world and that it would be an incredibly difficult thing to do and so but it's incredibly difficult whatever so we might as well try to do that and the first thing we can do is abstain from the animal products and then with our time if this is something like you yourself clearly care about for a righteous and just reason we can take out the animals and then campaign to create accountability for farmers to make sure they're treating humans right of course it's going to be a challenge but it's a challenge whichever route we take so let's take the route that gets us to where we want to be for the benefit of everyone i mean either way you're going for the benefit of everyone that way is just that way is just your way your worldview you are wanting to help the animals first and then human second we can do both at the same time yes but you are you are deliberately going animals first slaughterhouses then to the agricultural plants it doesn't matter if you are also helping humans in that slaughterhouses your main focus is those animals is it not my main focus is to create a better agricultural system for everyone and veganism is that because veganism isn't just about consuming plants it's about creating a system that reduces exploitation and that's not just to non-human animals so as a vegan i wouldn't be if we had a situation where it was just plant-based agriculture but everything you're describing still exists well as vegans i would hope and i certainly would as a vegan think well this isn't where we want to be so i'm not saying that it's about just animals i'm saying it's about humans as well but we shouldn't just say hey let's try and help the humans in slaughterhouses but not help the animals in slot houses when we can help animals and humans in slaughterhouses by not paying for it and then help those workers um plant-based products from those type of companies are you do you know those companies that do that are you avoiding that or are you still buying from those companies well the supply chain is murky isn't it and so i can't i can't sit here and say honestly that i don't pay for that to happen because i can't honestly say that but that doesn't mean that i agree with it and if i had the choice in front of me in a supermarket to say hey this comes from here and this comes from here if i had that choice i would buy that but we don't have that choice yet because the supply chains are so you know ubiquitously bad so we need to challenge that as well products there are companies that do that but there are also companies that don't there are organically grown but they still cause harm they still end up in the same slaughterhouses they're still killed in the same way no i'm talking about those that are like very local very yeah i know they you know they kill animals again in a humane way again the idea is that what does humane mean you know when you say humane if you kill them in a humane way where they don't feel pain in a halal way right they don't feel pain where they are cooked a certain way right they don't have any added stuff any any non what is halal how do they kill animals halal they they kill them without pain they describe the process i could not tell you specifically because i am not muslim but you can tell me that they die about pain but you can't tell me how that yes because i have muslim friends and i ask them i'm like what does halal mean they say basically they're killed in a very specific way where they you know as less pain as possible can i tell you how they're killed they have their throats cut but they're not they're not um rendered unconscious so they're conscious and they have their throats cut is that how they're killed in the halal way yeah kosher and halal that's what it means but okay so again that's all about anatomy do you think that that sounds compassionate it's more compassionate than other than other ways of killing them it is but is it more compassionate than not killing them they're gonna the base of the problem is if you have respect to the animal right can you respectfully cut their throat for an unnecessary reason you can respectfully people do indigenous people hunt in a respectful way but people who buy meat from slaughterhouses when they don't have to slaughter houses no but again if you go from organically sourced small you know very small companies their meat is expensive because they are so small but it's still killed in the same way though they may be raised slightly different but they're still killed in the same way the standards still apply halal coach or even just the usda you know humane regulations it's the same in all slaughterhouses yeah but yeah so they're but they're raised in the same way they still are able to have a a better life they're able to go out in the pastures and they're able to live life as a cow but they're still killed in a slaughterhouse so you can kill them i'm saying you can you can kill them in the cosmocentric worldview who can kill them in a respectful way where you thank the animal where you that help the animal does us thanking the animal worldview yes it does but would it not be better just to eat the plants no because the morally there's no difference so if you balance in animal farming animal farming destroys balance it destroys the environment we're artificially breeding animals into existence we're selectively breeding them giving them hormones and then we're killing them in slaughterhouses we're talking about slaughterhouses right now i'm not talking about slaughter i'm talking about locally grown ranches still go to the same slaughterhouses they do they may be raised differently but they they're killed in the same ways they're killing the same methods with the same techniques the same ways but they do not go to slaughterhouses they are stay at the ranch these are their own meat suppliers they grow and kill their own meat they may have local slaughterhouses but it doesn't matter they're killed in the exact same way they may not go to some of the big industrial smithfield slaughterhouses but they're still killing the same way and for that individual animal the experience that they endure is the same because the methods and the action is still the same the action is still the same but it's again least pain is possible so they're cutting the throat at the right place where the cow honestly just falls unconscious they don't feel the bleed out and are we saying that is it compassionate to unnecessarily kill someone else is that compassionate someone else no it's one it's an animal but we're animals too we are animals too but we are different from animals and now we have conscious thoughts so do they they're conscious and if they're not a someone are they what are they something they are they are something that see that trying to explain the cosmic like with causative worldview and with animism right again something indigenous people most indigenous tribes believe in there is a difference right you know you have to understand the indigenous people they were doing this before us but i'm not so interested in indigenous people i'm not interested in people in those scenarios i'm just talking about the everyday person in their scenarios i i myself am trying to follow the cosmocentric worldview so i only tried to buy meat products that were sourcely grown raised and slaughtered here right so i know that they living their full life they were not stuck in two by two pens or whatever but they were still respected right but they don't live their full life you know they're killed you know cows can live to 20 25 they're killed at 12 to 24 months and respect is a mutual thing when you sat down with me we've had a respectful conversation because we've listened we've engaged with each other you know we haven't shouted over each other we haven't cursed it we haven't been nasty and that's respectful because it's a mutual i'm trying to understand your thoughts and your feelings and you know i feel like you're reciprocating and doing the same for me but what we do to animals isn't respectful because it's a non-consensual thing we force them into these environments for something that we want again with the cosmic world view the moose will gladly give himself up to the hunter does the cow gladly walk into the slaughterhouse and present their throat no technically no but a cow is different from a moose in that they are domestic right they still have they're still sent in this love feelings domesticated just means that we've kind of like you know given them certain traits to make them more passive so we can farm them but they're still inherently the sentient conscious beings just like the moose and the elks and of animals in the wild yes but there's it's it's hard to explain if i don't have my notes with me but there is there is that nuanced difference that many indigenous tribes have followed you have for instance the comanche tribes right who hunted buffalo or the bison they hunted them some could argue an inhumane way they would chase them off cliffs they would you know they would kill them they would feel harm but they still thanked the animal they still took everything from that animal if we took everything from the cow and put it to use instead of just taking the meat and throwing the rest away we don't we boil the bones down turn into gelatin we do we do use everything we use blood and make it into different things so we do use everything from the animal but that issue of respect again i think you can do something more respectfully when you have to which these indigenous tribes they have to but for most people in society they're paying for animals we put into a slaughterhouse when they don't have to and these things have been done to these animals and it's not consensual they don't willfully walk there so it's an unnecessary action that doesn't need to take place by the virtue of it being unnecessary and we have an option that reduces that harm that we can cause and that's the primary argument i'm trying to make that we have a choice we have choice and when people have choice that's when these issues become moral issues if i were to say grow my own chickens and kill my own chickens and eat them no because we're still we're still killing them we're still taking their life from them when we don't have to so whilst that system may be preferable for the chickens up until the point they're killed that point still has to arrive and that point is when it becomes an immoral thing because you're needlessly taking their life from them i'm not easily taking their life i gotta eat you don't have to eat them that can be argued right well no for most people it can't be that's the point for most people it can't be and that's the point i'm making for most people they don't have to cut the throat of the chicken they could just eat something else instead yeah okay if you don't want to eat meat don't eat meat all right that's the fair thing but you trying to you know you say broaden the horizons of these people but really you're wanting to make them feel guilty for consuming these meat products i'm not trying to make anyone feel guilty i'm just having a conversation where i'm asking people why they're not vegan and trying to establish their views on it i'm not trying to make you feel guilty i'm just trying to ask questions and you know and respond to your questions that are you know authentic to my feelings and in a way that potentially allows us to reach some commonality which i think is important here so i'm not trying to make you feel guilty but interestingly guilt is an emotion which comes from the sense of morals you know if we feel guilty about something it comes from the sense of there's something to feel guilty about you know if i pick up a rock and throw the rock on the floor i don't feel guilty if i pick up a piglet and for a piglet on the floor i do because i recognize that that action is causing harm and that's why i feel guilty so guilt can often be a powerful emotion in helping us determine how we view something when it comes to that being right or wrong last thought before i go to class you're talking about picking up the rock throwing it on the ground indigenous people see that rock as a soul it has assault right and so they also would not pick up a rocket throw it on the ground i'm not saying that i would do that but i'm just saying that i would feel less guilty because i recognize that action causes less harm and the the feeling of guilt that you have comes from the concept that there's a notion of harm being inflicted what i would encourage you to do is look into cosmocentric worldview to look into how the these indigenous people have lived their lives thousands of years before we have come to them and recognize how they were able to to hunt but in a way that's a community they bring the community together in a way that honors the animal in a way that even with the cow the domestic cow they do it in a way that honors the animal even if they're being killed or not the animal is giving up its life for us we are thankful for that animal for giving us its nutrients indigenous people that have to hunt to survive i have i have no bones with i'm accepting that people have to do that to live so like i've said i just want to say right again in the end the situation i'm describing is not the situation i'm here to oppose i'm asking people at this university in dallas why they are vegan because they're not an indigenous person in alaska who has to hunt to survive they're a person who is paying for an animal to be unnecessarily killed it's not about you know that what i was describing then couldn't can be here at ut dallas that's what i personally try to do i see everything that has a soul i try to treat every single thing with respect but you're appropriating indigenous culture to justify arbitrarily harming appreciating indigenous cultures going into a supermarket and buying a piece of steak is nothing has nothing to do with that because they're going for a whole process that's predicated on their survival whereas us we're not doing that so going to a supermarket by mistake is nothing like what they're doing the only thing is an animal has died but in that situation it's justified but in this situation it isn't i gotta get close all right thanks so much q have a great day you

Channel: Earthling Ed

Views: 323,846

Keywords: earthlinged, earthling ed, vegan, veganism, street debate, street interview, debate, public, public freakout, public debate, reasons to not go vegan, vegan fail, owned, destroyed, fail, funny, vegan versus, vegan versus meat eater, heated, argument, emotional, meat, dairy, eggs, arguments against veganism, change my mind, table debate, campus, liberal, university, college, animals, recipes, veganuary, how to go vegan, vegan owned, gets owned, intersectional, indigenous, dallas, culture

Id: UWp9qBTz1a8

Length: 22min 56sec (1376 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 03 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/_Risings]

She tweaking off the dairy. Hard for me to even get past minute 5 with the straw man arguments but always great to see Ed.

[u/[deleted]]

Did she say she is neurotic and that is why she cannot be vegan?! She briefly mentioned her inability to branch out regarding her unwillingness to go vegan, but immediately sprang into an erratic and misinformed history lesson about meat-eating… what?!?

Edit to add: holy shit, this chick is confidently incorrect in every way.

[u/jodyyodedode]

Is there a reason to watch this past 6 minutes? Because I am not sure how much longer I can listen to her. She really needs to cut back on the Dr. Pepper.

[u/gunsof]

Can anyone name a single colonizer who was a vegan?

And she brings up how people in India only avoid cows, this isn't true. I don't understand why so many people who claim to care about "indigenous" or minority cultures when it comes to veganism are so misinformed or ignorant about foreign cultures. I mean, I do, of course, 'cause they're just using them as props, but it's a bit ironic. About 20-30% of the Indian population is vegetarian, and even the meat eaters say they limit their intake of meat. There are also Satvic Hindus and the Jainists in India who are vegan, for the exact same reason some random woman in the US is vegan: non cruelty to other living beings.

Then there are Mahayana Buddhists throughout Asia who are either vegetarian or vegan. Jamaican Ital Rastafarians who are vegans. There's a 4000 person black Hebrew Israelite village of just vegans. Plus just lots of random vegans throughout all of history all over the world like Al-Ma'arri from Syria, Pythagoras from Greece, da Vinci from Italy. And probably loads of random vegans from thousands of indigenous tribes who just woke up and decided to abstain from meat for the same reasons everyone else does. It's not some white centered thing from some LA, I don't get why that's even become a belief. I became a vegetarian at the age of 4 staying with my family in Colombia because I learned where meat came from and that was that for me. I didn't even know the word "vegetarian" existed, I had no idea there were others. It didn't matter, I didn't want to see an animal die for a meal and that was that.

[u/lovelywontons]

the way she didn’t understand that’s she’s appropriating indigenous culture to justify her actions was probably the best part. OH and when she said she said she needs her notes. I really strive to be able to argue veganism in this manner any time of day

[u/ammeoo]

Halal is the most barbaric method to kill an animal. I was a muslim for 30 years, i've seen it myself. Its like a living nightmare. A complete horror show

[u/xboxhaxorz]

She did not witness the killing, she is right that halal farms do kill the animals on the farm at least that was my experience when i was a kid in a muslim family at the US halal farm in DC

In Pakistan the people typically take the animal home and kill it on their property or on the street, so the streets are pretty gross, a sibling of mine did SACRIFICE an animal at age 8 i think, i was around age 12 and i refused to do it and was crying and screaming, i never ever consumed goat or sheep again

The animals do still move and shake after they are cut, its not instant and they cry and its traumatizing for them because they KNOW their death is coming cause they arent blind

I DID believe that kosher and halal was the best option for killing animals based on the fact that i thought people needed to consume animals to survive, so whenever i went to BK, McD or other places i would get a vegetarian meal or fish, fish in general is just halal by default, we never consumed crab or other things in my family im not sure if thats a muslim thing

I stopped being muslim a decade ago and have been vegan for about 3yrs or so

[u/JustAnotherIPA]

You can tell that she is not listening at all

[u/sp00kybabie]

Love earthling Ed 💚