Sentientism | "The Weight of Empathy" - author Lucas Spiegel - Sentientism Ep:107 @Sentientism | Uploaded April 2022 | Updated October 2024, 31 minutes ago.
Lucas (sentientism.info/sentientist-pledge/lucas-spiegel, weightofempathy.com/) studied and practiced architecture in the U.S., Canada & India before leaving it all behind in an effort to rethink what it is to live a meaningful life. Since then he’s traveled the world, started a philanthropic enterprise, Haven Hearts, & written a beautiful, compassionate book. Along the way he enjoys playing frisbee, making things with his hands & befriending every dog who crosses his path. Lucas is the author of Weight of Empathy, a travel memoir. Lucas describes it as an exploration of both our relationship with animals & his own personal process of learning how to be a compassionate person in an often violent & uncaring world.
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
01:15 Lucas' Intro - author & social enterprise entrepreneur
- Architecture, travelling, volunteering, writing "The Weight of Empathy", benefitting the world
03:28 What's Real?
- Non-religious parents, "recovering Catholic" mother, father from a Jewish family
- Raised as a child on a "hippy" commune
- "From the moment I knew the word I probably identified as an atheist", but not anti-theist
- Some "woo-woo" spirituality. Tarot cards, divination, magic
- Open minded, rational, scientific way of thinking
- Experimenting w/levitation & telekinesis "It was not very successful"
- Religious inspiration in art/culture. Community & separation
- Where people turn to for explanations of the unexplainable
- Alan Watts & Daoism
- Hallucinogenics & mushrooms
- A "hybrid rationalist spiritual view"
- Carl Sagan
- "There's an inherent quality in matter... that is self-organising"
- From interstellar dust to stars to elements to life to sentience
- "Sentient beings are a way for the universe to observe itself"
- "Maybe if you took mushrooms you'd describe the same things in a different way"
- Teleology, fine tuning argument & the anthropic principle
- Multiple worlds
29:34 What & Who Matters?
- Sensitive, pacifistic tendencies
- Communism (Russian family history), justice, equality
- An affinity with non-human animals (dogs, cats & wild animal)
- Loving the family chickens, but eating them. "These were chickens I knew"
- Inventing a justifying narrative as a child that humans need to eat the meat of animals because "we're made of meat"
- Previous guest Frans de Waal on empathy youtu.be/1uWQA335pU4
- "Even most serial killers love their mothers"
- Raised with universal human consideration
- Reading Peter Singer's "Animal Liberation"
- Vegetarian at 13/14, vegan at 16 yrs old
- "Over time I've come to associate eggs less with nice food... & more with chickens & the experience those chickens go through"
- "If my primary association with an animal product is the animal themself then it doesn't feel like a sacrifice not to eat them".
- "I'm a Sentientist but probably not as strictly as you are" Broader value?
- Do beauty/complexity have value independently of the minds of sentient beings?
- Sentientism as "ethical guard rails"?
- Would you destroy a galaxy teeming with insentient life to avoid stubbing your toe?
- Challenges of assessing sentience
- Is thinking of sentience as binary like a religious belief in souls?
- Grading, multi-dimensional sentience?
- Jonathan Safran Foer & generosity & prudence
- Plant behaviour & communications
- Insect sentience
- Ahimsa & visiting the vegetarian city of Palitana
- The Jain approach of assessing sentience by the number of senses
- Danger of judging sentience by "how like humans?"
- Adrian Tchaikovsky's sci-fi & octopus/spider/AI/alien sentience
- Peter Watt's Blindsight (previous guest: youtu.be/7399QuK1Bl8)
01:09:27 How Can We Make a Better World?
- The "Carnage" documentary youtu.be/6dXG0_yr7HE as a vision for the future @SimonAmstellNumb
- Volunteering on a nudist banana farm
- Acceptance of veganism
- Alternative products & cultivated meat
- "The landscape is shifting very quickly"
- Making friends with a Thai water buffalo
- Mum going plant-based, then being freed to go vegan "an awakening"
- "She left the butcher's store & wept on the sidewalk"
- The need for moral clarity (vs. incidental environmental/health arguments) & "coming to terms with that reality"
- Animals' perspectives as victims are ignored
- "People don't know how to talk about it [ethics & animal farming]"
...& much more - see sentientism.info/posts for full show 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.
Lucas (sentientism.info/sentientist-pledge/lucas-spiegel, weightofempathy.com/) studied and practiced architecture in the U.S., Canada & India before leaving it all behind in an effort to rethink what it is to live a meaningful life. Since then he’s traveled the world, started a philanthropic enterprise, Haven Hearts, & written a beautiful, compassionate book. Along the way he enjoys playing frisbee, making things with his hands & befriending every dog who crosses his path. Lucas is the author of Weight of Empathy, a travel memoir. Lucas describes it as an exploration of both our relationship with animals & his own personal process of learning how to be a compassionate person in an often violent & uncaring world.
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
01:15 Lucas' Intro - author & social enterprise entrepreneur
- Architecture, travelling, volunteering, writing "The Weight of Empathy", benefitting the world
03:28 What's Real?
- Non-religious parents, "recovering Catholic" mother, father from a Jewish family
- Raised as a child on a "hippy" commune
- "From the moment I knew the word I probably identified as an atheist", but not anti-theist
- Some "woo-woo" spirituality. Tarot cards, divination, magic
- Open minded, rational, scientific way of thinking
- Experimenting w/levitation & telekinesis "It was not very successful"
- Religious inspiration in art/culture. Community & separation
- Where people turn to for explanations of the unexplainable
- Alan Watts & Daoism
- Hallucinogenics & mushrooms
- A "hybrid rationalist spiritual view"
- Carl Sagan
- "There's an inherent quality in matter... that is self-organising"
- From interstellar dust to stars to elements to life to sentience
- "Sentient beings are a way for the universe to observe itself"
- "Maybe if you took mushrooms you'd describe the same things in a different way"
- Teleology, fine tuning argument & the anthropic principle
- Multiple worlds
29:34 What & Who Matters?
- Sensitive, pacifistic tendencies
- Communism (Russian family history), justice, equality
- An affinity with non-human animals (dogs, cats & wild animal)
- Loving the family chickens, but eating them. "These were chickens I knew"
- Inventing a justifying narrative as a child that humans need to eat the meat of animals because "we're made of meat"
- Previous guest Frans de Waal on empathy youtu.be/1uWQA335pU4
- "Even most serial killers love their mothers"
- Raised with universal human consideration
- Reading Peter Singer's "Animal Liberation"
- Vegetarian at 13/14, vegan at 16 yrs old
- "Over time I've come to associate eggs less with nice food... & more with chickens & the experience those chickens go through"
- "If my primary association with an animal product is the animal themself then it doesn't feel like a sacrifice not to eat them".
- "I'm a Sentientist but probably not as strictly as you are" Broader value?
- Do beauty/complexity have value independently of the minds of sentient beings?
- Sentientism as "ethical guard rails"?
- Would you destroy a galaxy teeming with insentient life to avoid stubbing your toe?
- Challenges of assessing sentience
- Is thinking of sentience as binary like a religious belief in souls?
- Grading, multi-dimensional sentience?
- Jonathan Safran Foer & generosity & prudence
- Plant behaviour & communications
- Insect sentience
- Ahimsa & visiting the vegetarian city of Palitana
- The Jain approach of assessing sentience by the number of senses
- Danger of judging sentience by "how like humans?"
- Adrian Tchaikovsky's sci-fi & octopus/spider/AI/alien sentience
- Peter Watt's Blindsight (previous guest: youtu.be/7399QuK1Bl8)
01:09:27 How Can We Make a Better World?
- The "Carnage" documentary youtu.be/6dXG0_yr7HE as a vision for the future @SimonAmstellNumb
- Volunteering on a nudist banana farm
- Acceptance of veganism
- Alternative products & cultivated meat
- "The landscape is shifting very quickly"
- Making friends with a Thai water buffalo
- Mum going plant-based, then being freed to go vegan "an awakening"
- "She left the butcher's store & wept on the sidewalk"
- The need for moral clarity (vs. incidental environmental/health arguments) & "coming to terms with that reality"
- Animals' perspectives as victims are ignored
- "People don't know how to talk about it [ethics & animal farming]"
...& much more - see sentientism.info/posts for full show 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.
