Sentientism | "Being more rather than having more" - Ecolinguist Arran Stibbe @theuniofglos - Sentientism 211 @Sentientism | Uploaded August 2024 | Updated October 2024, 3 hours ago.
Arran Stibbe is Professor in Ecological Linguistics at the University of Gloucestershire. In his teaching and research he focuses on how language makes us who we are as people, and the role of language in building the kind of society we live in, using discourse analysis and ecolinguistics. Ecolinguistics examines how language encodes the stories we live by, and shapes how we see ourselves and our relationship with other animals and the earth. This involves linguistic analysis of a wide range of discourses, from advertising which encourages people to buy unnecessary and ecologically damaging products, to the inspirational language of nature writing. He is founder of the International Ecolinguistics Association.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The audio is on our Podcast: apple.co/391khQO & open.spotify.com/show/3c9OG5Mwf7PGChWFYBzuQI.
00:00 Clips!
01:00 Welcome
- "I'm a massive fan of Sentientism. It's a crystal clear worldview that you're expressing... it's an important message that needs to get out there."
- Arran's book "Econarrative"
03:39 Arran's Intro
- Ecological linguistics... "I get to analyse any kind of discourse that I want to... then I critique the stories that are emerging... based on my ecological philosophy... respecting living beings and wanting them to flourish"
- Discourses from Men's Health magazine to the Pork industry handbook to nature poetry, creation stories... "positive ones and negative ones"
- "Searching for new stories to live by"
- Consulting with @greenpeace and others on messaging
- Stories... Ben Okri: "Stories are the secret reservoirs of values... if we change the stories that individuals and nations live by then we change the individuals and nations themselves"
- "If we pay careful attention to the language we can understand these stories that fundamentally underpin our unequal and unsustainable and quite cruel society"
- Stories as "cognitive models in our minds that influence how we think, how we talk and how we act"... individuals and across a culture e.g. "The masculine man being strong & not showing emotions & eating lots of meat... a hegemonic story"
- Narrative: "A more traditional kind of story you might tell to children at bedtime... sequences of events..."
- "I would go with this #meme idea... but I think it's even more fundamental than that... so much of what we're thinking is part of this wider social cognition..."
- "Is it a simplification to think of a separate being... you wouldn't exist for more than a few minutes on your own in space... your continued existence depends on breathing... an interchange with other species... within your body... you only exist in an interconnected web"
- "Even your thoughts aren't yours they're coming from this wider social cognition"
- Eastern religious challenges to over-simplistic rationality / language / concepts "the world is more complex"
- "We can't just stay quiet and meditate in a forest... we have to tell other stories... they will be simplifications but they're necessary... to spread compassion"
11:27 What's Real?
- "The way we're thinking right now is a function of our upbringing and our history"
- An intellectual family... number theory, mathematics, physics, NASA, computer science, philosophy
- Father spent 15 years on an "extremely rational" philosophical treatise. "He started from nothing... from there he came up with the secrets of the universe." "...He was embarrassed by the fact that he wasn't a completely rational being... he had emotions and he had imagination..."
- Father aspiring to be like Spock from Star Trek?
- A very atheistic family
- "I did feel like my father was missing something by denying the emotional, the imaginative, the embodied, the experiential, the sensuous side of being human"
- Turning towards eastern religion... daoism, zen "that's really influenced everything that I've done"
- "I've ended up being quite scientific in my analysis of language but I do have a real appreciation for the whole other imaginative, emotional, intuitive, experiential and sensual world"
26:35 What and Who Matters?
46:15 A Better World?
01:12:52 Follow Arran:
- glos.ac.uk/staff/profile/arran-stibbe
- storiesweliveby.org.uk
- ecolinguistics-association.org
- Econarrative: ethics, ecology and the search for new narratives to live by. London: Bloomsbury
- Ecolinguistics: language, ecology and the stories we live by (second edition). London: Routledge
& much more... see sentientism.info for full notes.
#sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all #sentient beings.” More at sentientism.info/. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall sentientism.info/wall/. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. E.g.: facebook.com/groups/sentientism.
Arran Stibbe is Professor in Ecological Linguistics at the University of Gloucestershire. In his teaching and research he focuses on how language makes us who we are as people, and the role of language in building the kind of society we live in, using discourse analysis and ecolinguistics. Ecolinguistics examines how language encodes the stories we live by, and shapes how we see ourselves and our relationship with other animals and the earth. This involves linguistic analysis of a wide range of discourses, from advertising which encourages people to buy unnecessary and ecologically damaging products, to the inspirational language of nature writing. He is founder of the International Ecolinguistics Association.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The audio is on our Podcast: apple.co/391khQO & open.spotify.com/show/3c9OG5Mwf7PGChWFYBzuQI.
00:00 Clips!
01:00 Welcome
- "I'm a massive fan of Sentientism. It's a crystal clear worldview that you're expressing... it's an important message that needs to get out there."
- Arran's book "Econarrative"
03:39 Arran's Intro
- Ecological linguistics... "I get to analyse any kind of discourse that I want to... then I critique the stories that are emerging... based on my ecological philosophy... respecting living beings and wanting them to flourish"
- Discourses from Men's Health magazine to the Pork industry handbook to nature poetry, creation stories... "positive ones and negative ones"
- "Searching for new stories to live by"
- Consulting with @greenpeace and others on messaging
- Stories... Ben Okri: "Stories are the secret reservoirs of values... if we change the stories that individuals and nations live by then we change the individuals and nations themselves"
- "If we pay careful attention to the language we can understand these stories that fundamentally underpin our unequal and unsustainable and quite cruel society"
- Stories as "cognitive models in our minds that influence how we think, how we talk and how we act"... individuals and across a culture e.g. "The masculine man being strong & not showing emotions & eating lots of meat... a hegemonic story"
- Narrative: "A more traditional kind of story you might tell to children at bedtime... sequences of events..."
- "I would go with this #meme idea... but I think it's even more fundamental than that... so much of what we're thinking is part of this wider social cognition..."
- "Is it a simplification to think of a separate being... you wouldn't exist for more than a few minutes on your own in space... your continued existence depends on breathing... an interchange with other species... within your body... you only exist in an interconnected web"
- "Even your thoughts aren't yours they're coming from this wider social cognition"
- Eastern religious challenges to over-simplistic rationality / language / concepts "the world is more complex"
- "We can't just stay quiet and meditate in a forest... we have to tell other stories... they will be simplifications but they're necessary... to spread compassion"
11:27 What's Real?
- "The way we're thinking right now is a function of our upbringing and our history"
- An intellectual family... number theory, mathematics, physics, NASA, computer science, philosophy
- Father spent 15 years on an "extremely rational" philosophical treatise. "He started from nothing... from there he came up with the secrets of the universe." "...He was embarrassed by the fact that he wasn't a completely rational being... he had emotions and he had imagination..."
- Father aspiring to be like Spock from Star Trek?
- A very atheistic family
- "I did feel like my father was missing something by denying the emotional, the imaginative, the embodied, the experiential, the sensuous side of being human"
- Turning towards eastern religion... daoism, zen "that's really influenced everything that I've done"
- "I've ended up being quite scientific in my analysis of language but I do have a real appreciation for the whole other imaginative, emotional, intuitive, experiential and sensual world"
26:35 What and Who Matters?
46:15 A Better World?
01:12:52 Follow Arran:
- glos.ac.uk/staff/profile/arran-stibbe
- storiesweliveby.org.uk
- ecolinguistics-association.org
- Econarrative: ethics, ecology and the search for new narratives to live by. London: Bloomsbury
- Ecolinguistics: language, ecology and the stories we live by (second edition). London: Routledge
& much more... see sentientism.info for full notes.
#sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all #sentient beings.” More at sentientism.info/. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall sentientism.info/wall/. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. E.g.: facebook.com/groups/sentientism.
