Sentientism | "Boom! - the entire world changed - everyone was questioning everything" Mariann Sullivan Ep:71 @Sentientism | Uploaded August 2021 | Updated October 2024, 1 hour ago.
Mariann (twitter.com/marisul) is Co-host with previous guest Jasmin Singer of the Our Hen House podcast (ourhenhouse.org/) and host of the Animal Law Podcast (ourhenhouse.org/animallaw/). She is a lawyer, lecturer, teacher and animal rights activist.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?”
Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The audio is on our Podcast: apple.co/391khQO & pod.link/1540408008.
We discuss:
0:00 Welcome
1:40 Mariann's Intro. An Animal life
- Working as a lawyer in New York
- Adopting a dog on impulse then waking up to animal issue
- "He'd stopped eating meat because of the way animals were treated - and t was just like 'boom!'"
- Most people know there's a problem - they just avoid thinking about it
- Joining (later chairing) the Animal Law Committee of the NY bar
- Connecting animal advocacy organisations
- Meeting Jasmin Singer & starting Our Hen House
6:02 What's Real?
- Growing up Catholic
- "I had faith but it was never a burden for me"
- Not really being religious any more... "but those voices never really go away"
- As a teenager "It just started to seem unlikely"
- Getting comfortable with "I don't know"
- Ethics & evidence as reasons for abandoning supernatural worldviews
- The tumult of Catholic college in 1968. From dressing for dinner & attending church to "men with beards living in the dorms"
- "Boom - the entire world changed - everyone was questioning everything"
- Leaning towards atheism but not being certain
- "We're connected to each other in ways we don't understand"
- Non-sentient living things
- Woo! vs. naturalistic views of sentience & consciousness
- Finding awe in a naturalistic worldview
18:01 What Matters?
- "It's all about suffering"... and about pleasure too
- Suffering matters... "It's so obvious"
- "What kind of god - would create this planet - where animals eat each other"
- Morality as compliance vs. concern for suffering/flourishing
- Reading Peter Singer. He wrote down what many were already feeling
- "Why did I get there and everybody doesn't get there?"
- "I don't think it's a philosophical problem... it's a psychological problem"
- "How can you not sound self-righteous when you're right?"
- "I don't understand why this is this big moral journey"
- The "all we have to do is tell everybody" stage of activism
- The family & social challenges of going vegan
- The risks of motivated reasoning even within a naturalistic worldview
28:48 The Future
- Balancing despair & hope with the help of Our Hen House
- Things have shifted. "It's almost as if we have won the moral argument already."
- Using the need for institutional change as an excuse for personal inaction
- "It seems so obvious that personal veganism is part of the process"
- Being vegan has so much more influence than just what you eat
- Melanie Joy's carnism - normal, necessary, natural, nice...
- "Maybe we're just weird"
- Social justice
- Denial "is going to be our doom"
- Tribalism & dogma
- Personal, institutional, legal, transition levers of change
- Alternatives to animal products aren't enough
- We need to "get the meat out of people's ears they can start to hear these arguments"
- Carol Adams: "Don't have this argument at the dinner table"
- Can religious compassion help with non-human animal ethics? Ahimsa
- "How can religious people ignore this fundamental moral issue?"
- The Animal Interfaith Alliance
- "Whatever lever you can pull... we need them all"
- "We're trying to change the way the entire world works"
- Greenwashing, ethicswashing, humanewashing
- People need to hear the stories of animals
- Anthropomorphism vs. "they are voiceless"
- Alexa chips in on artificial sentients
- How individuals can drive institutional/systemic change
- "Obviously personal & institutional change go together - that's how change happens"
- Rising Anxieties & animal agriculture: "They're frightened of us"
- "What else are you going to do with your life?"
- "Our audience is just grief stricken - it's overwhelming - we just put it aside every day... what else is the cure?... only to try to do something about it"
- "If we could take this scourge [animal farming] off the face of the earth"
- "We just have to get everybody to agree with us!"
- The law is a conservative institution, but look at Steve Wise's work re: personhood!
Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at sentientism.info/. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall sentientism.info/wall here: sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist.
Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. Main one: facebook.com/groups/sentientism.
Thanks Graham twitter.com/cgbessellieu.
Mariann (twitter.com/marisul) is Co-host with previous guest Jasmin Singer of the Our Hen House podcast (ourhenhouse.org/) and host of the Animal Law Podcast (ourhenhouse.org/animallaw/). She is a lawyer, lecturer, teacher and animal rights activist.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?”
Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The audio is on our Podcast: apple.co/391khQO & pod.link/1540408008.
We discuss:
0:00 Welcome
1:40 Mariann's Intro. An Animal life
- Working as a lawyer in New York
- Adopting a dog on impulse then waking up to animal issue
- "He'd stopped eating meat because of the way animals were treated - and t was just like 'boom!'"
- Most people know there's a problem - they just avoid thinking about it
- Joining (later chairing) the Animal Law Committee of the NY bar
- Connecting animal advocacy organisations
- Meeting Jasmin Singer & starting Our Hen House
6:02 What's Real?
- Growing up Catholic
- "I had faith but it was never a burden for me"
- Not really being religious any more... "but those voices never really go away"
- As a teenager "It just started to seem unlikely"
- Getting comfortable with "I don't know"
- Ethics & evidence as reasons for abandoning supernatural worldviews
- The tumult of Catholic college in 1968. From dressing for dinner & attending church to "men with beards living in the dorms"
- "Boom - the entire world changed - everyone was questioning everything"
- Leaning towards atheism but not being certain
- "We're connected to each other in ways we don't understand"
- Non-sentient living things
- Woo! vs. naturalistic views of sentience & consciousness
- Finding awe in a naturalistic worldview
18:01 What Matters?
- "It's all about suffering"... and about pleasure too
- Suffering matters... "It's so obvious"
- "What kind of god - would create this planet - where animals eat each other"
- Morality as compliance vs. concern for suffering/flourishing
- Reading Peter Singer. He wrote down what many were already feeling
- "Why did I get there and everybody doesn't get there?"
- "I don't think it's a philosophical problem... it's a psychological problem"
- "How can you not sound self-righteous when you're right?"
- "I don't understand why this is this big moral journey"
- The "all we have to do is tell everybody" stage of activism
- The family & social challenges of going vegan
- The risks of motivated reasoning even within a naturalistic worldview
28:48 The Future
- Balancing despair & hope with the help of Our Hen House
- Things have shifted. "It's almost as if we have won the moral argument already."
- Using the need for institutional change as an excuse for personal inaction
- "It seems so obvious that personal veganism is part of the process"
- Being vegan has so much more influence than just what you eat
- Melanie Joy's carnism - normal, necessary, natural, nice...
- "Maybe we're just weird"
- Social justice
- Denial "is going to be our doom"
- Tribalism & dogma
- Personal, institutional, legal, transition levers of change
- Alternatives to animal products aren't enough
- We need to "get the meat out of people's ears they can start to hear these arguments"
- Carol Adams: "Don't have this argument at the dinner table"
- Can religious compassion help with non-human animal ethics? Ahimsa
- "How can religious people ignore this fundamental moral issue?"
- The Animal Interfaith Alliance
- "Whatever lever you can pull... we need them all"
- "We're trying to change the way the entire world works"
- Greenwashing, ethicswashing, humanewashing
- People need to hear the stories of animals
- Anthropomorphism vs. "they are voiceless"
- Alexa chips in on artificial sentients
- How individuals can drive institutional/systemic change
- "Obviously personal & institutional change go together - that's how change happens"
- Rising Anxieties & animal agriculture: "They're frightened of us"
- "What else are you going to do with your life?"
- "Our audience is just grief stricken - it's overwhelming - we just put it aside every day... what else is the cure?... only to try to do something about it"
- "If we could take this scourge [animal farming] off the face of the earth"
- "We just have to get everybody to agree with us!"
- The law is a conservative institution, but look at Steve Wise's work re: personhood!
Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at sentientism.info/. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall sentientism.info/wall here: sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist.
Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. Main one: facebook.com/groups/sentientism.
Thanks Graham twitter.com/cgbessellieu.
