Sentientism | Let's create more effective, compasionate narratives - Writer Alex Lockwood - Sentientism EP:94 @Sentientism | Uploaded January 2022 | Updated October 2024, 1 hour ago.
Alex (twitter.com/alexlockwood & alexlockwood.co.uk/) is a fiction & non-fiction writer. He is Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Research in Media & Cultural Studies at Uni of Sunderland. He has a PhD in Creative Writing from Newcastle University & has published stories, essays & journalism in a wide range of magazines, journals & newspapers. He has a particular fascination with how we write about our engagements and relations with the nonhuman world. Alex's debut non-fiction work, The Pig in Thin Air, was published with Lantern Books in March 2016.
Alex was one of the founding team of Animal Rebellion, a director of the Save Movement & a member of the Vegan Society's Research Advisory Committee. His "Planting Value" report for @TheVeganSociety lays out plans for a transition towards a vegan UK plantingvalueinfood.org/.
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:
00:00 Welcome
01:11 Alex's Intro
- A writer-academic-activist
- The challenge of focus!
- Private & public writing (e.g. COP26), being part of a network
05:10 What's Real?
- Last week's shamanic journeying ayahuasca retreat: "Asking deep questions about what it means to be a human being on this planet"
- Animist ontologies & methodologies
- Advocating for the non-human
- "Who is a person?... can we co-create this planet [in a way] that recognises the birthright of all beings"
- Growing up in working class, inner-city, South London council estates
- Catholic upbringing, but with some atheist family
- "School of hard knocks... spiritual & religious questions weren't very real"
- Confirmed as Catholic, school run by monks & church every weekend... "Realising it was a symbolic story... it wasn't taught as a fundamentalist truth"
- "Didn't sit right with me that my very very kind & generous atheist grandfather (& his cats!) wasn't going to go to heaven."
- Experiences of connecting with our planet, the broader universal spirit... that have always been quite real to me
- Symbolic synthesis
- Tarot cards for journaling (narrative & myth, not divination)
- We've lost connection from how myths/images/narratives work within us
- Indigenous beliefs & practices... "to recognise a broader church of beings who are persons"
- Mother had a baby taken away at 17 because "born out of wedlock... it was a sin." "I did not like the family dynamic [grandmother-mother]... The imposition of external authority."
- Effective Altruism: "it doesn't often respect the very individual need in front of you... the one person in front of you is the one you're connected to"
- Ethics of care re: individual flourishing more than abstract questions of morality
- "Seeing how ethical structures were blocking the flourishing of individuals"
- Is quantum field theory where some of the inexplicable might lie?
- Putting things into narratives... "It's part magic"... intuitive, symbolic, emotive
- "I'm not a believer in outright magical explanations"... but there are limits to naturalistic understanding
- What is evidence & which questions do we ask?
- Elisa Aaltola "we set a much higher bar for non-human life than we do for human life"
- A symbolic approach to life. "Stories & values shape our behaviour more than facts"
- "I'm open to exploring what's real beyond the naturalistic"
- Subjective perspectives on our shared objective world?
- Using ayahuasca/meditation: "There are different ways of seeing reality"
34:39 What (& Who) Matters?
- Moral scope & priorities
- Is it easier to expand your circle of compassion when you're not so strongly bonded to a family unit?
- Loner meerkats that connect communities
- Taking mental parental care of himself from 6-7 yrs old... "freed me up"
- Sentientism's neutrality re: ethical systems
- Utilitarianism "feels relatively inflexible"
- "Everything matters whether sentient or not"... rights of nature
- "Veganism is a fuzz boundary issue" vs. perfection & purity (accepting a spoonful of a milk dish offered by a refugee in a camp)
- "If we all still lived in hunter/gatherer groups there would be no vegan"
- Ancient, indigenous forms of compassion for non-humans?
- Going vegetarian as a teen. An emotional response to whaling
- Companion animals, environment & climate
- Vigils at slaughterhouses. "Bearing witness is the centre of my ethics" & testimony
- "The suffering of others matters a great deal"
... and much more. Full show notes at sentientism.info/.
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.
Thanks Graham! twitter.com/cgbessellieu
Alex (twitter.com/alexlockwood & alexlockwood.co.uk/) is a fiction & non-fiction writer. He is Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Research in Media & Cultural Studies at Uni of Sunderland. He has a PhD in Creative Writing from Newcastle University & has published stories, essays & journalism in a wide range of magazines, journals & newspapers. He has a particular fascination with how we write about our engagements and relations with the nonhuman world. Alex's debut non-fiction work, The Pig in Thin Air, was published with Lantern Books in March 2016.
Alex was one of the founding team of Animal Rebellion, a director of the Save Movement & a member of the Vegan Society's Research Advisory Committee. His "Planting Value" report for @TheVeganSociety lays out plans for a transition towards a vegan UK plantingvalueinfood.org/.
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:
00:00 Welcome
01:11 Alex's Intro
- A writer-academic-activist
- The challenge of focus!
- Private & public writing (e.g. COP26), being part of a network
05:10 What's Real?
- Last week's shamanic journeying ayahuasca retreat: "Asking deep questions about what it means to be a human being on this planet"
- Animist ontologies & methodologies
- Advocating for the non-human
- "Who is a person?... can we co-create this planet [in a way] that recognises the birthright of all beings"
- Growing up in working class, inner-city, South London council estates
- Catholic upbringing, but with some atheist family
- "School of hard knocks... spiritual & religious questions weren't very real"
- Confirmed as Catholic, school run by monks & church every weekend... "Realising it was a symbolic story... it wasn't taught as a fundamentalist truth"
- "Didn't sit right with me that my very very kind & generous atheist grandfather (& his cats!) wasn't going to go to heaven."
- Experiences of connecting with our planet, the broader universal spirit... that have always been quite real to me
- Symbolic synthesis
- Tarot cards for journaling (narrative & myth, not divination)
- We've lost connection from how myths/images/narratives work within us
- Indigenous beliefs & practices... "to recognise a broader church of beings who are persons"
- Mother had a baby taken away at 17 because "born out of wedlock... it was a sin." "I did not like the family dynamic [grandmother-mother]... The imposition of external authority."
- Effective Altruism: "it doesn't often respect the very individual need in front of you... the one person in front of you is the one you're connected to"
- Ethics of care re: individual flourishing more than abstract questions of morality
- "Seeing how ethical structures were blocking the flourishing of individuals"
- Is quantum field theory where some of the inexplicable might lie?
- Putting things into narratives... "It's part magic"... intuitive, symbolic, emotive
- "I'm not a believer in outright magical explanations"... but there are limits to naturalistic understanding
- What is evidence & which questions do we ask?
- Elisa Aaltola "we set a much higher bar for non-human life than we do for human life"
- A symbolic approach to life. "Stories & values shape our behaviour more than facts"
- "I'm open to exploring what's real beyond the naturalistic"
- Subjective perspectives on our shared objective world?
- Using ayahuasca/meditation: "There are different ways of seeing reality"
34:39 What (& Who) Matters?
- Moral scope & priorities
- Is it easier to expand your circle of compassion when you're not so strongly bonded to a family unit?
- Loner meerkats that connect communities
- Taking mental parental care of himself from 6-7 yrs old... "freed me up"
- Sentientism's neutrality re: ethical systems
- Utilitarianism "feels relatively inflexible"
- "Everything matters whether sentient or not"... rights of nature
- "Veganism is a fuzz boundary issue" vs. perfection & purity (accepting a spoonful of a milk dish offered by a refugee in a camp)
- "If we all still lived in hunter/gatherer groups there would be no vegan"
- Ancient, indigenous forms of compassion for non-humans?
- Going vegetarian as a teen. An emotional response to whaling
- Companion animals, environment & climate
- Vigils at slaughterhouses. "Bearing witness is the centre of my ethics" & testimony
- "The suffering of others matters a great deal"
... and much more. Full show notes at sentientism.info/.
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.
Thanks Graham! twitter.com/cgbessellieu
