Difference between revisions of "Talk:Philosophical Vegan YouTube Channel"

Revision as of 16:56, 7 January 2018

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Freegan Video

Hey all, I planned to keep this partially under wraps for a big reveal, but I don't have a lot of time and could use people's suggested additions, edits, and feedback if you're interested in the subject. It's going up on the Philosophical Vegan channel and can mention your name in the credits.

Resources:

Freeganism - Vegan Video Resource Library https://activistjourneys.wordpress.com/freeganism/

Freeganism - Philosophical Vegan Wiki http://philosophicalvegan.com/wiki/index.php/Freeganism

Sections

• Intro

• Definition of Freeganism & History

• Pro-Freegan consequentialists; Unnatural Vegan, ModVegan & Ethologic

• Anti-Freegan consequentialists; LayVegan and Footsoldier

• Contrast with Greece's potato movement

• Consequentialist wrap up

• Liam Anthony on unnecessarily exclusive club.

• Contrast with Feedback and Society of St. Andrews

• Virtue ethics wrap up

• Gary Francione on not eating food cooked on the same grill.

• Contrast with APV who also sees merit in treating some duties to equality as a rule

• Deontology wrap up

• Eisel Mazard on meat eating being cannibalism

• Contrast with my interest in the Situationists concept of psycho-geographies,

• Nihilist wrap up

• Video Summary

Other jobs:

• Coming up with a snappy title and enticing thumbnail

• Any ideas for animations that can jazz up the video

• Sourcing clips - Definitely feel like done this now, aha, got all the videos mentioned here on the desktop ready to go if choose to use them.

Intro

[Starting out the video introducing the context, Edwins Generation and questioning whether had done something wrong within veganism by still enjoying taste of meat and preventing it going to waste.]

Throughout the video we’re going to look at the arguments against freeganism about how it might be internally inconsistent, whether that’s because it’s actors don’t consistently act in a way to challenge supply and demand, as they say they wish to. Or because they don’t sufficiently feel the requisite shame attached to the act which cost so many lives in our previous lives as meat eaters.

At the same time I intend to give counter examples of freeganism in action correlating with the same philosophical tendencies, as in a lot of the cases the critique simply has a short sighted idea of what being freegan means, and I don’t want it to appear that the critique is representative of their entire school of philosophy.

Definition of Freeganism & History

For starters let’s quickly give the popular definition of freegan:

[Voice over screen capture video] a person who rejects consumerism and seeks to help the environment by reducing waste, especially by retrieving and using discarded food and other goods. Ok so main point as shown in the picture here: Origin: early 21st century: blend of free and vegan. That’s also interesting 21st century, I know the biggest group advocating against food waste, Food not Bombs have been around a lot longer than that.

Let’s look up one more definition: Wikipedia wrote:Freeganism is a practice and ideology of limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources, particularly through recovering wasted goods like food. The word "freegan" is a portmanteau of "free" and "vegan". So some anti-capitalist sentiments flowing through much of the movement's origin that makes people wary of identifying with the term, what I’m promoting here could be called freegan-lite, but I think the mainstream image has taken on a different much broader use since then and will continue to change over time.

Let’s just quickly look at the history. Yes so; “The word ‘freegan’ itself was allegedly invented in 1994 by Keith McHenry, the co-founder of Food Not Bombs.” And popularised in the 2000s.

Food not bombs grew out of the 60s, ban the bomb demonstrations against the building of more nuclear weapons and ratcheting up of tensions between the two superpowers US and Russia fighting a proxy war with each other in places such as Vietnam and Afghanistan.

So now we’re all on the same page, let’s look at present day advocates for veganism, who are for and against freeganism…

Pro-Freegan consequentialists; Unnatural Vegan, ModVegan & Ethologic

Unnatural Vegan put out a great video discussing the coherency of labels, questioning in reality where is the harm?

ModVegan also in the same vein discussed vegan gatekeeper syndrome and the future of the vegan movement.

Ethologic doesn't want a culture that promotes animal eating, but sees rescuing any food as ethical with world misusing resources, people starving.

Anti-Freegan consequentialists; LayVegan and Footsoldier

Okay back to the first vegan’s critique:

LayVegan put out a great breakdown of Edwins Generation video, acknowledging the good freegans do for advocating against the wasteful system of meat production, distribution and consumption.

"No, it is not environmentally friendly to waste food, food waste is terrible for the environment and globally it accounts for about 3.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Food waste is also one of the leading causes of world hunger, we actually produce enough food to feed the world round, but this food often is wasted or fed to animals instead and this is something that vegans should care about if they truly care about animals they should be concerned with this" And commented this:

I do want to push back on one thing he said in the video which is:

"You're right, and do you know what would save even more money and methane emissions from being released into the atmosphere, not visiting restaurants, you know like actual freegans."

I think this stereotype is the reason Edwin and others are scared away from identifying his actions as freegan, but is this really a good thing? I recommend reading our article on all the actions that being freegan can encompass, but are not mandatory:

Freeganism - Philosophical Vegan Wiki http://philosophicalvegan.com/wiki/index.php/Freeganism

"The interest in stripping back and living as minimally as possible can be seen to be more synonymous with Zero Waste. However, Freeganism also concerns itself with how society's most abundant, most energy intensive products are poorly managed. In this way, Freeganism and Zero Waste have a similar consumer activist mindset that can mean taking steps to lead the way in changing consumer practices."

Main point being, very few in the Zero Waste lifestyle actually consider that they’ve cut out all harmful waste from their life, but it’s something they’re working towards, we shouldn’t scoff at someone who cares about food waste but also felt it was important to go to a restaurant with their family or friends.

Quick note, LayVegan also liked this comment, which proposes we don’t pick up the bad habit of eating other’s leftovers and that the solution will come in the form of energy captured from landfills. I find these arguments to be unconvincing; I think they make vegans look like we’re grasping at straws to defend an irrational puritanical form of veganism.

Whilst becoming more and more efficient at recycling resources is definitely a priority as a society, I don't however think a good fix would be that we carry on wasting at the rate we are, but that it gets burnt off in some slightly more environmentally friendly way than being buried. Although calorie counting is a problem for some, which might lead some to want to avoid the habit, it doesn't detract from it being a good carbon negative act for most.

FootSoldier also put out a video where in response to UV asking people not to fear monger against freeganism because it’s a lifestyle that doesn’t contribute to animal exploitation and saves food waste he says this: If anyone who doesn't know about freeganism, it’s essentially dumpster diving for food because either you're too poor or too stingy to actually buy food and so you just get it out of bins. Really great work staying objective, you've just taken a stereotype of the most prolific image or action people relate to freegans of dumpster diving and declared that "the definition." He goes on: The thing is I've got a bit of a problem with this, so situation one there's lots of food being chucked away, and it’s just really wasteful when it could go to feeding people who need the food, well then the system should be addressed better like in Berlin we've got something called food sharing and you get a little membership card and you can go around shops and take all the food that they're going to chuck out, you can just take it, it is really well adopted and really well done in Berlin and so places like in America and in Canada or wherever that they should probably adopt similar schemes, that's a much better solution that people dumpster diving.

But if you do have enough money to shop, but you're a freegan because you sort of have some sort of objection to the food system, then you're an idiot because I can buy a really good organic food around the corner that has been produced like really well at the highest possible quality standards, why wouldn't I give my money to the farmers who've worked hard to grow this food and to the people who have worked hard to distribute this food for me, I'm perfectly happy paying for that. So footsoldier previously a member of the Durianrider raw fruit cult, can’t wrap his head around freegans who have money but chose not to consume the highest quality fresh produce and instead pick up food going to be wasted from shop owners or bins out the back of supermarkets, okay, that’s a personal value judgement, but again why misrepresent freeganism?

Freegans want the kind of food sharing solutions you gave as an example like in Berlin, but as a stop-gap to that perfectly legislated system, some are willing to drive to mega-supermarkets fill the van up to the brim with perfectly edible packaged food inside double-wrapped bin bags put out that night, bring it home and cook it up often for the public and homeless by street tabling like Food not Bombs do.

Contrast with Greece's potato movement

Or look at the potato movement in Greece whose national produce was going to be wasted because the austerity measures had driven consumer prices through the roof; groups organized days for the public to be able to buy in bulk from the farmers directly in town centres from the trucks, streamlining the utility of local resources.

If you are convinced about the hard effect we can have via supply and demand then freegans offset climate change for being carbon negative and reduce animal cruelty by feeding waste meat to their cats or making meals for carnists that would otherwise eat more bought animal products.

Consequentialist wrap up

Okay I think that about wraps up the supply and demand consequentialist concerned section of this video. The consequentialist system being rooted in a hard calculus of weighing observable harm vs. good usually has a broad degree of consensus. So, any disagreement is usually rooted in misunderstandings and incorrect information. I think we’ve demonstrated that this is very likely the case here.

There’s an acknowledgment from those putting down freeganism that food sharing systems are morally positive and reduce harm. However, they question the need for vegans to participate in that for fear of sullying the image with newbies who haven’t acquired the right yuck factor yet. Ultimately though, we have no evidence of harm and plenty of good examples of harm reduction.

Liam Anthony on unnecessarily exclusive club.

So next up we’ve got Liam Anthony, his position is that if you plan to save food waste in the future then you're out of the club and shouldn't identify as vegan as a matter of rule-virtue that you would act like a cannibal. I think this represents the narrowing down of who can call themselves vegan on the ethical spectrum of interpretations of veganism.

Because you can be a freegan or vegan and fit within each other's ethical definition of one another, it makes sense that there would be a blurry line at the level of identity, one that shouldn't be as troubling as a meat eater being mostly vegan but calling themselves vegan, and more of a pragmatic issue of when to rep for which cause.

I think the attempt by some vegans to label freeganism as something aberrant or entirely impractical is an example of trying to maintain ideological purity to such an extent that you end up defending something irrational. Freeganism doesn't have to come at the cost of getting to live the comfortable capitalist life, but through the mere fact that this lifestyle is possible, it opens up room for critique to be had of both extremes.

This time the percentages doesn’t represent identity but strategic cross-over, I think we wouldn’t expect a person to be able to come from one type of campaign and immediately be able to put into practice that strategy in another context.

In response to the analogy of the vegan country club-house, would it not be possible for a guy to come from a rescued food, soup, street tabling, having eaten some of the bread that contained whey to a vegan house that doesn't let any animal products through the door and being able to respect that custom and participate in vegan activism also? Does it not makes sense for that person to call themselves vegan if they practice that most of the time, but sometimes also participate in freegan practices, and just chooses when to represent which lifestyle and campaign strategies.

. .

At the food not bombs action guy reps for freeganism: . . At the animal save action guy reps for veganism: Against food waste, spreading awareness about . . . . . . . Against contributing to the killing of animals, wasteful energy intensive products like meat. . . . . . . . . Bearing witness to the cruelty, Uses vegan staples for what they can't rescue. . . . . . . . . Spreading awareness to those with their eyes closed. Food evangelism; feeding carnists so they don't go buy . . more animals. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Liam is trying to straddle both philosophies, intensely concerned with supply-demand, but seeing the social in-group as being something important enough to go through rituals like asking servers to change their gloves, and calling anyone a flake and not vegan if you 'exploit' the dead bodies not commercially viable anymore.

I try to support vegan cafes and restaurants whenever I can, but if I ever eat at a place that cooks meat and get served something with animal in it, I might not be able to eat it and send it back, but I'm not so naive that I think yelling and having a fit is going to endear them to adding more vegan dishes to the menu.

Unnatural Vegan wrote: Definitely, it's good to let the waiter know it's not what you ordered, even if you do end up eating it. Most won't save it for another patron, unfortunately. The hospital I stayed in for L&D did, though. They kept bringing up trays of food, and we kept turning them away. Every patient got the same thing so they would just take it to the next room.

Contrast with Feedback and Society of St. Andrews

Contrast with Feedback and Society of St. Andrews who help farmers glean vegetables that were not cost effective to pick because of cosmetic issues that year and give to charity, raising awareness at the same time.

Gary Francione on not eating food cooked on the same grill.

Francione just anchored down so heavily on abolitionist approach, spectacle of imagery and social media change.

Contrast with APV who also sees merit in treating some duties to equality as a rule

Contrast this with APV who also sees merit in treating some duties to equality as a rule.

[her clip of the black panthers free breakfasts program, and clip of food not bombs today.]

Since writing the first part of this video LayVegan commented back to me to explain where his confusion lay with freeganism, thinking it had to be a fulltime anti-capitalist commitment that you’re either in or you’re out. So happy to say he is a firm yes to acknowledging a practical and ethical way to call yourself vegan and do freeganism.

It really has developed into something so broad, if you look at wikipedia, people just doing urban gardening, rescuing food thrown away by shops to feed their worms to make vermi-compost think of themselves as doing something freegan:

"In order to fertilize those guerrilla gardens, food obtained from dumpster diving is sometimes also reused, and some use vermiculture instead of ordinary composting techniques in order to keep the required infrastructure small and adapted to urban areas." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeganism#Wild_foraging_and_urban_gardens

APV also talks more about the challenges of anti-consumerism in her videos here:

“…”

APV has an anti-capitalist critique of the price of consumer objects not matching the cost to the environment, promotes food not bombs for prefigurative redressing that balance a little, and black panthers free breakfast program in the past.

Trying to live entirely free from consuming is looked down upon even within the anarchist movement:

"I'm a better anarchist than you" song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvlWSnLxrrc Can Masdeu - "there is an understand that we need money." https://youtu.be/D7BoHdNg31U

And reforms part and parcel of the struggle:

In general, platformist groups aim to win the widest possible influence for anarchist ideas and methods in the working class and peasantry—like especifismo groups, platformists orient towards the working class, rather than to the far-left. This usually entails a willingness to work in single-issue campaigns, trade unionism and community groups, and to fight for immediate reforms while linking this to a project of building popular consciousness and organisation. They therefore reject approaches that they believe will prevent this, such as insurrectionary anarchism, as well as "views that dismiss activity in the unions" or that dismiss anti-imperialist movements. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platformism#Overview

Deontology wrap up

...

Eisel Mazard on meat eating being cannibalism

Eisel Mazard on meat eating being cannibalism, his wildlife management paradigm of a sign saying don't feed the bears, us on one side, them on the other to do their own thing. Subjectivist/intutiionist refutation of Singer's Marginal Cases essay, an interesting case of where vegans flip the status quo on it's head and see participating in the waste-products of animal slaughter as - as abhorrent as voluntary cannibalism, that the change is going to happen in terms of culture and instilled imagery: http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3665&p=35497#p35497

a-bas-le-ciel sees no value in one person deluding themselves about effect can have on consumer demand, but should think of themselves as part of political "animus," where dignity is prized. Likes the idea of organizing on the frontiers of new battles, doesn't want to see community of organizers reduced by those with little motivation hanging around muddying the water?

There are certainly desirable consequences, and the veil of ignorance should lead us to feel a great deal of compassion for animals who we know their biological imperative is to live simple enough lives. That we we would deprive them of those interests is a great harm if we know about the pain and try to bury the knowledge behind a pacivity to do the work of finding alternative practices in line with the reasons you value a specific culture.

So all arguments for purity in ideology from Eisel in relation to actions you can avoid, I think is that they're symbolic representations of compromise, e.g. we've done a disservice to the cats that we tolerated them to catch our rats for us, and then fed them all their food because we found them cute, that you're inabling pacivity, preventing them from playing a unique role in their habitat, having relationships and experiences with their environment and other cats in only a way they can relate to each other. So he's saying there's absolutely a moral good to connecting with the material process the object went on and feeling disgust towards it like waste meat. Not about reducing your personal impact but maximizing the good and feeling of comradary with other vegans with the same dignity not to do that.

Even though I want that culture without any more domestic animals or carnism, I still just see a win in the political act of rescuing animals and food going to be wasted, building relationships with the people that can benefit from those calories or companionship, where no positive change would happen otherwise.

Contrast with my interest in the Situationists concept of psycho-geographies,

There’s also my interest in the Situationists concept of psycho-geographies, being able to cycle tour living frugally on land protests, doing a modicum of environmental consciousness raising through campaigns. The exploration of towns in the time between trains, the randomness of what you'll find, like a pram for a mother that will be able to let her kid sleep while they go out looking for a chance to stow away in a lorry, or lemons that you didn't know would help them prepare the citrus infused food that reminded them of home.

This never felt like a moral wrong. I experienced it as helping them get enough calories, find some comfort in being able to repeat habits from home, and preventing food waste. Not sure what you mean by that.

Enabling people to enjoy more the meat they were already going to eat isn't causing more suffering. While intuitively sometimes we like to look at the world in karmic terms, where we see meat eaters as not *deserving* to enjoy their meals so it being some cosmic retribution to deny them that, I don't necessarily think that's good practice. So I don't think you were wrong. That is, if I understand what you're saying.

Though neither is karma necessarily always wrong in a rule-consequentialist sense, but people need to understand the causality behind it to make it meaningful and when there's that kind of disconnect (as there often is with meat) I don't think that's on the horizon.

I agree, and well put, there needs to be the oppurtunity to experience it as meaningful. There will also be the vegan advocates who say why were you spending any time doing that work in the first place when veganism is the most important struggle, but that's stupid easy to shoot down as simply something you want to learn in expanding your horizons, that expecting others to pick up veganism and revolve their whole life's meaning around it like Sorsha did with Pewdiepie is just naive and laughable.

France actually has some legislation encouraging it's biggest supermarkets to donate food going to waste to charity, when we got the chance we would drive an hour up the motorway in the van to Dunkirk to one of these distribution centres. The refugees could get really nutritionally poor soup once a day from a centre that used cheap staples. And in our cycling around the edges of town checking in with squats we could pick up tons of dumpstered bread and other packaged food in bike trailers to distribute that would have meant walking for hours out of town for the refugees. A small percentage of the refugees would be able to buy food for themselves from the money brought with them or transferred to them from family. Picking rosehips, blackberrys, sea-buckthorn, apples and finding lemons they could use then grating off the husks to make citrus jellies. We got arrested many times and pepper sprayed, always kept us in till maximum 24 hours and never charged.

https://calaismigrantsolidarity.wordpress.com/2013/11/23/statement-from-the-women-of-boulevard-hugo-51/ https://activistjourneys.wordpress.com/an-experience-with-solidarity-activism/

Nihilist wrap up

The Horizon, For Eisel Thucydides and aspirational virtues, whilst we exist in this state of conservative ignorance about animals, it’s important not to get wires crossed, or the stakes are so high that it’s wrong to even risk promoting eating animals under existential circumstances.

The narrow bars on downward regression, and the all-encompassing philosophies on upward virtue and absurdism

I accept consequentialist concerns such as quantifying material conditions at the base of society. These would include, each persons labor and educating and providing the capabilities to arrive at good consequences such as people being able to follow their own craft. But I feel like the culture that is created out of different egoist ethics is so broad that if you tried to drill down at the level of description you'd find a radical emptiness that allows us to define the limits of our own societies. I don't know if that's true existential nihilism.

The existential nihilist concern with existing first and then having to create essence, rather than having an eternal essence and being given a pre-ordained existence stated sufficiently broadly is unassailable aha,

general existential sense of finding yourself as being something you do on the road to doing good (if I get what you're saying).

I'm thinking of a creative nihilism that does this, and a future to orientate ourselves towards that will be the mode of relation above simply keeping up the co-operation to satisfy everyone's basic interests. but the adoption of the school often orientates one to see meaning in the preservation of heterogeneous communities in society through solidarity, rather than try to bend them to one will, as an explicit conclusion. Because it's at those highest levels of subjectivity and intuition where unique poetry and meaning can be created, but is not a given. I just think there's still merit in using the word existentialist because to me it denotes that powerful imagery of solidarity when all interests might begin to work in close symbiosis.

I picture this similar to the Overton Window, with a graph of different philosophies usefulness, the leveling out that will occur when a new status quo is achieved, when we've moved carefully towards the top with culture and society functioning at it's highest.

For me:

• The scientific image of man & Nihil Unbound - http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=3283 • Stoic virtue ethics (Matthew Sharpe) - http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=3384 • The Stranger (Albert Camus)

For Eisel:

• Max Stirner’s philosophy (in/and my life) • Thucydides – On Justice, Power and Human Nature - You can’t read this stuff in a book: “recommended reading” is hard to do. • Buddhism, Apotheosis and the History of Religion / Multiculturalism vs. Social Cohesion: “Trust” as a political concept.

Video Summary

[Sentiments about hoping it was a good introduction to freeganism and that vegan advocates will take a more inviting role in the future.]

Additions to work in

brimstoneSalad wrote:Assuming moral value is based on consequences which can be defined in terms of natural things (like pleasure/pain happiness/suffering or fulfillment/violation of interests) then the results of careful thinking on these topics with good evidence converge.

That basically there are right (consistent) and wrong (inconsistent) normative conclusions to draw from those ethical theories. And we can see by the differences between consequentialists that diasagreement with freeganism is rooted in misunderstandings and incorrect information.

But when it comes to other moral foundations, from the deontological to the intuitionistic etc. normative conclusions don't necessarily follow strictly from logic and evidence from the theories, but are rather subject to personal belief, feelings, and biases, so there's a much more broad and diverse interpretation.

Then I'd go over them.

And close it with a brief discussion on the issue of whether these beliefs resonate with you probably depends on your personal feelings and intuitions, but unless somebody already shares your intuitions it's very hard to use them in any prescriptive sense. That is, we can't compel others to agree with our personal intuitions, even if they agree with deontology or intuitionism etc. because they may have completely different takes on these.

Thus at least in terms of outreach where there are differences of intuition, arguments from naturalistic consequences (less suffering, etc.) are the best to bridge the gap, and the only ones that lead to undeniable conclusions (at least once we have all of the facts straight) vindicating freeganism.

You might also want to include discussion of virtue ethics right after consequentialism. How if somebody is eating freegan to save food from waste and reduce harm that's good, but if somebody is doing it for personal pleasure to enjoy meat that might not be, but also how we can tie this back into consequentialism where an unbroken addiction to meat may be harmful in itself and result in recidivism if a time comes when freegan meat isn't accessible and they buy it instead (although a consequentialist would want evidence that this is a probable outcome, rather than spite freeganism for speculation).

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