Dr. Steven Best - Veganism: The War We Cannot Lose

Talk to a Vegan Brunch at Saarbrücken, Germany
September 25, 2011

Category:

Education

[somarvelis]

steve, this is so perfectly put. thank you! <3

RISE UP, PEOPLE!

[Eriyah]

Dr. Best, I realize the points you are trying to make here are that we need to not live in a fantasy land about the gravity of the effort ahead of us. No one leafleting lives in the fantasy land that EVERY leaflet handed out creates a new vegan and we do see how many leaflets end up in the trash. For you to suggest that vegan outreach or other organizations leafleting think that is totally disingenuous and absurd. Otherwise, thank you for your perspective on the vegan movement strategy.

[TheGoonie1985]

@RuinOrPeace

Exactly, I agree with you 100%. The first step is to "recruit" vegans/vegetarians and make our "army" grow in numbers and strenght, and to do that we need to focus on education. I am optimistic and I do believe that we will prevail, but not in our lifetime, that's for sure.

[RuinOrPeace]

I'm picturing a vegan occupy movement, with a bunch of vegans chanting 'We are the 1 percent!'...

Seriously though, I don't think violence and disobedience can be effective when we are such a minority. It only serves to isolate us further and isolate non-vegans from our message.

[VeganLuxembourg]

Thank you for spreading!

[Eriyah]

Thank you for your response, I'll attribute my failure to understand your satire as what I refer to as "single child deficit disorder" (no siblings to banter with, hence, I miss a lot of jokes).

[drstevebest1]

@Eriyah I guess the point was lost on people, but that was satire. The point remains the inflate their figures. More basically, any and all numbers are necessarily fictitious, as to get an accurate number would require tracking every person who took a pamphlet, monitoring and polling them for many years, and guaranteeing that they are telling the truth the entire time. Doesnt sound possible does it? It's not. So the very attempt to produce any number is misguided and necessarily a lie.

[y0shisgrl]

@lifeisaliewithoutaf CONTINUED. I have been oppressed! My family has been oppressed! We live on less than 900 dollars a month, but still afford to pay my bills and be vegan. we are not elitists, we are people that care about our health and about eliminating all forms of holocausts. and for you to say that Vegans are elitists on "ivory towers" and assuming that there are no Vegans living in the ghetto (probably because you figure that all Vegans are white and no whites live in ghettos) is unfair.

[y0shisgrl]

@lifeisaliewithoutaf I am Vegan and I live in the ghetto. It is not that expensive! The things I eat costs just as much or less than what I see my family buying. And, luckily for me, I have a backyard large enough to grow a small garden of fruits and veges which also cuts down costs. Living in a ghetto has nothing to do with wanting to change your health. Half of these people around my ghetto can afford to go buy drugs and guns and kill eachother, but they can't make some changes to their diet!?

[creaturagirl]

LET'S get one thing straight:just because a person is caucasian, and hasn't lived in the "ghetto", as someone below stated, does NOT mean a person hasn't lived under situations of severe adversity.this ISN'T a contest, ok?until you have walked in someone else's shoes, don't claim to know what a good life, OR bad someone has had.we all suffer. we all have adversity. it's all relative. people in the US who live in the"ghetto"as the person below said,live 100 X better than people in other countries