Sentientism | "To see a socialist... turn into a conservative... just mention animal rights" Mark Humanity ep:207 @Sentientism | Uploaded August 2024 | Updated October 2024, 47 minutes ago.
Mark Humanity is a long-time vegan activist. He currently lives on the edge of a rainforest in New Zealand and is on the Board of the Vegan Society of Aotearoa, New Zealand. Mark has been involved in animal rights since a teenager, initially in Ireland’s embryonic movement and later in the much more developed UK movement. A hunt saboteur for many years, Mark has been vegan since 1989 and got involved with the NZ Vegan Society via his vegan outreach Inititive called “Vegan Living Auckland”. He is currently helping raise two beautiful plant-based children and has a background in mental health nursing. Mark is the author of "The Humanity Trigger".
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!
00:34 Welcome
- Tom Harris episode youtu.be/BJ3pq1np9UY
- Corey Lee Wrenn episode youtu.be/3oe47NEZQ_k
- Philip McKibbin episode youtu.be/vJUOacXnHNA
02:13 Mark's Intro
- Anarcho-punk and vegan activism
- Now “anarchish”
- Writing “The Humanity Trigger” about two centuries of direct action for animals in Ireland
- Vegan Society Aoteoroa board
- 20 years as a psychiatric / learning disabilities nurse
- Now stay at home dad raising two vegan kids on the edge of a rain forest
03:28 What's Real?
- “Things that still exist irrespective of whether people believe in them or not – are what’s real”
- Raised in a staunchly Irish Catholic family and society
- “our sense of reality growing up was filtered through the eyes of a deeply authoritarian… fascist-adjacent dictatorship of the Roman Catholic church”
- “The government were simply puppets at the beck and call of the church when the church chose to intervene”
- Attending church run by Redemptorist priests / monks “on the surface they preach very worthy things… giving to the poor… vows of chastity & poverty & obedience…”
- The monthly Redemptorist “Reality” magazine: “Very medieval thinking… resurrections… ascensions to heaven… virgin births… that was all reality”
- “I tried to believe it because it was what everyone around me was saying was true.”
- “Anyone that even thought or even asked questions about it was deemed to be dangerously… on the slippery slope”
- “If you haven’t been brought up in a strictly religious environment it’s very hard to imagine what it’s like when everyone around you believes in the devil… god… jesus… heaven and hell…”
- Transubstantiation “Jesus does come down into that bread – his body is in that bread… it is literal – it is not meant to be taken as a metaphor… that’s the split between Catholicism and Protestantism”
- “I tried to believe it but I couldn’t”
- Comics, 2000AD, Pat Mills, Alan Moore “I read into those scripts… Flesh… Strontium Dogs, some of Judge Dredd… non-human animals had agency… were lead actors in these scripts… were the heroes and villains”
- “It was a direct slap in the face of the idea of dominion… where animals are simply either furniture in the background or something to be eaten”
- “… that allowed me to imagine animals to be something other than sausages or something to look at in a zoo”
- Trying to read the Bible “It’s basically like a ‘Mein Kampf’ for the human supremacist outlook… Genesis and Leviticus…”
- Exposed to anarcho-punk at 14-15, bands like Crass, Conflict “That pinned me to the wall… focused this and politicised it and gave it names… presented a very black and white version of the world… highly aggressive at times… I found my identity… it was absolutely sublime… to stumble across this sub-culture of people who felt the exact same as I did… the most beautiful thing at that age”
- The influence of punk on other Sentientism guests: Delci Winders, Kristof Dhont, Nick Pendergrast, Nicola Harris, Luke McGuire, Nico Delon, Jamila Anahata, Tom Harris
- “A movement that was full of contradictions and naivety and irony…”
- “Beneath the harshness and the cynicism of a lot of the lyrics… they were deeply disappointed at the world they found around them because they expected so much better from people… a profound anger at how much better things could be and how things are now”
19:05 What and Who Matters?
34:30 A Better World?
Follow Mark:
- earthislandbooks.com/markhumanity
- earthislandbooks.com/product-page/the-humanity-trigger-by-mark-humanity
- thehumanitytrigger.com
- vegansociety.org.nz
& much more... (sentientism.info for full notes) #sentientism
#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.
Mark Humanity is a long-time vegan activist. He currently lives on the edge of a rainforest in New Zealand and is on the Board of the Vegan Society of Aotearoa, New Zealand. Mark has been involved in animal rights since a teenager, initially in Ireland’s embryonic movement and later in the much more developed UK movement. A hunt saboteur for many years, Mark has been vegan since 1989 and got involved with the NZ Vegan Society via his vegan outreach Inititive called “Vegan Living Auckland”. He is currently helping raise two beautiful plant-based children and has a background in mental health nursing. Mark is the author of "The Humanity Trigger".
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!
00:34 Welcome
- Tom Harris episode youtu.be/BJ3pq1np9UY
- Corey Lee Wrenn episode youtu.be/3oe47NEZQ_k
- Philip McKibbin episode youtu.be/vJUOacXnHNA
02:13 Mark's Intro
- Anarcho-punk and vegan activism
- Now “anarchish”
- Writing “The Humanity Trigger” about two centuries of direct action for animals in Ireland
- Vegan Society Aoteoroa board
- 20 years as a psychiatric / learning disabilities nurse
- Now stay at home dad raising two vegan kids on the edge of a rain forest
03:28 What's Real?
- “Things that still exist irrespective of whether people believe in them or not – are what’s real”
- Raised in a staunchly Irish Catholic family and society
- “our sense of reality growing up was filtered through the eyes of a deeply authoritarian… fascist-adjacent dictatorship of the Roman Catholic church”
- “The government were simply puppets at the beck and call of the church when the church chose to intervene”
- Attending church run by Redemptorist priests / monks “on the surface they preach very worthy things… giving to the poor… vows of chastity & poverty & obedience…”
- The monthly Redemptorist “Reality” magazine: “Very medieval thinking… resurrections… ascensions to heaven… virgin births… that was all reality”
- “I tried to believe it because it was what everyone around me was saying was true.”
- “Anyone that even thought or even asked questions about it was deemed to be dangerously… on the slippery slope”
- “If you haven’t been brought up in a strictly religious environment it’s very hard to imagine what it’s like when everyone around you believes in the devil… god… jesus… heaven and hell…”
- Transubstantiation “Jesus does come down into that bread – his body is in that bread… it is literal – it is not meant to be taken as a metaphor… that’s the split between Catholicism and Protestantism”
- “I tried to believe it but I couldn’t”
- Comics, 2000AD, Pat Mills, Alan Moore “I read into those scripts… Flesh… Strontium Dogs, some of Judge Dredd… non-human animals had agency… were lead actors in these scripts… were the heroes and villains”
- “It was a direct slap in the face of the idea of dominion… where animals are simply either furniture in the background or something to be eaten”
- “… that allowed me to imagine animals to be something other than sausages or something to look at in a zoo”
- Trying to read the Bible “It’s basically like a ‘Mein Kampf’ for the human supremacist outlook… Genesis and Leviticus…”
- Exposed to anarcho-punk at 14-15, bands like Crass, Conflict “That pinned me to the wall… focused this and politicised it and gave it names… presented a very black and white version of the world… highly aggressive at times… I found my identity… it was absolutely sublime… to stumble across this sub-culture of people who felt the exact same as I did… the most beautiful thing at that age”
- The influence of punk on other Sentientism guests: Delci Winders, Kristof Dhont, Nick Pendergrast, Nicola Harris, Luke McGuire, Nico Delon, Jamila Anahata, Tom Harris
- “A movement that was full of contradictions and naivety and irony…”
- “Beneath the harshness and the cynicism of a lot of the lyrics… they were deeply disappointed at the world they found around them because they expected so much better from people… a profound anger at how much better things could be and how things are now”
19:05 What and Who Matters?
34:30 A Better World?
Follow Mark:
- earthislandbooks.com/markhumanity
- earthislandbooks.com/product-page/the-humanity-trigger-by-mark-humanity
- thehumanitytrigger.com
- vegansociety.org.nz
& much more... (sentientism.info for full notes) #sentientism
#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.
