Sentientism | "You don't really have to convince people to be compassionate" - Jesse Tandler @newrootsinstitute @Sentientism | Uploaded September 2024 | Updated October 2024, 29 minutes ago.
Jesse is Managing Director of the @NewRootsInstitute. He oversees programming, people operations, and implementation of New Roots Institute's strategy. Jesse is a writer, academic, and has been an educator for nearly two decades. He earned a B.A. from UC Berkeley in 2002 and an MFA from the New School in 2007. Shortly thereafter, he began teaching high school students about the ethics of our food culture. Later, during his PhD work, Jesse continued to include environmental and animal ethics on the syllabi of his undergraduate classes at the @CityUniversityofNewYork, where for five years he taught philosophy, literature, writing, and rhetoric. In 2017, he moved to Los Angeles to apply his years of research and educational experience in the non-profit sphere. Outside of New Roots Institute, you may find him practicing yoga, appreciating beauty in its myriad forms, reading in one of his preferred languages, or teaching food politics at @UCLA
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!
01:09 Welcome
02:55 Jesse's Intro
- Continental philosophy, teaching food politics and running New Roots Institute (was the Factory Farming Awareness Coalition)
03:32 What's Real?
- Jewish pre-school
- "I assumed there was a god because that's what the adults told me"
- At 6-7 yrs old "It seemed slightly improbable to me because there was no other evidence for it"
- At 4-5 yrs "I started getting really concerned about death and what was going to happen when I died... the annihilation of my consciousness"
- "I asked my dad and he said 'of course there's no god'... I felt validated actually"
- Next 15 years "a very atheistic worldview... probably some contempt for religion and people who believed in something that seemed completely impossible to me... I was pretty loud about it..."
- "Very few atheists around me..." A 9th grade debate: "Is there a god... it was pretty much me against the class"
- "It became a point of identity for me... in middle school and high school"
- "Some of my points of identity - like being a meat-eater - had changed drastically"
- College at Berkeley, psychedelics "It opened me up to the possibility that I might just not be seeing everything... my five senses were limited... I had a circumscribed intellect... it was unlikely I had access to whatever the reality out there is."
- "Us looking at the universe is like a dog looking at the TV... the dog has no idea what's going on with the TV... I barely have any idea..."
- 2 layers: phenomenon "what we experience" then "something else going on that we just don't really have access to - maybe some kind of spiritual access.. intuitive access.. but we can't figure out empirically."
- "I'm actually not sure how much it matters what that fundamental reality is that we can't access... I still have to behave as though this world is this naturalistic thing that I'm experiencing."
- "The understanding that there is more gives me a humility and more compassion"
- "I might not believe that fundamentally we have free will.. but it definitely appears that way... I have to hold myself accountable on that level... I still have to behave with choice."
- "I'm looking at things at a very particular scale... my table... is actually mostly space... that's definitely not the way I'm experiencing it"
- "I operate as though the world is naturalistic because I'm not sure how else to operate in it"
- JW: How our intuitions work better re: "middle sized dry goods" and not so well for philosophy of mind or the foundations of physics
- JW: Open-mindedness and humility vs. arbitrary / fabricated beliefs
- @Conspiritualitypodcast and the risks of people in the yoga / wellness / mysticism worlds can slip into conspiracism, cults and far-right worldviews
- We need to disagree about reality... but without undermining our compassion for and relationality with those we're disagreeing with
- JW: Actual reality, socially constructed reality, cognitive reality (and the degree to which they're correlated)
20:38 What Matters?
- "The journey was definitely away from the certainty that I had about what was right and wrong and who was right and wrong"
35:38 Who Matters?
46:47 A Better World?
01:19:29 Follow Jesse:
- newrootsinstitute.org/our-team/jesse-tandler
- linkedin.com/in/jessetandler
- https://x.com/jmtandler
& 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.
Jesse is Managing Director of the @NewRootsInstitute. He oversees programming, people operations, and implementation of New Roots Institute's strategy. Jesse is a writer, academic, and has been an educator for nearly two decades. He earned a B.A. from UC Berkeley in 2002 and an MFA from the New School in 2007. Shortly thereafter, he began teaching high school students about the ethics of our food culture. Later, during his PhD work, Jesse continued to include environmental and animal ethics on the syllabi of his undergraduate classes at the @CityUniversityofNewYork, where for five years he taught philosophy, literature, writing, and rhetoric. In 2017, he moved to Los Angeles to apply his years of research and educational experience in the non-profit sphere. Outside of New Roots Institute, you may find him practicing yoga, appreciating beauty in its myriad forms, reading in one of his preferred languages, or teaching food politics at @UCLA
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!
01:09 Welcome
02:55 Jesse's Intro
- Continental philosophy, teaching food politics and running New Roots Institute (was the Factory Farming Awareness Coalition)
03:32 What's Real?
- Jewish pre-school
- "I assumed there was a god because that's what the adults told me"
- At 6-7 yrs old "It seemed slightly improbable to me because there was no other evidence for it"
- At 4-5 yrs "I started getting really concerned about death and what was going to happen when I died... the annihilation of my consciousness"
- "I asked my dad and he said 'of course there's no god'... I felt validated actually"
- Next 15 years "a very atheistic worldview... probably some contempt for religion and people who believed in something that seemed completely impossible to me... I was pretty loud about it..."
- "Very few atheists around me..." A 9th grade debate: "Is there a god... it was pretty much me against the class"
- "It became a point of identity for me... in middle school and high school"
- "Some of my points of identity - like being a meat-eater - had changed drastically"
- College at Berkeley, psychedelics "It opened me up to the possibility that I might just not be seeing everything... my five senses were limited... I had a circumscribed intellect... it was unlikely I had access to whatever the reality out there is."
- "Us looking at the universe is like a dog looking at the TV... the dog has no idea what's going on with the TV... I barely have any idea..."
- 2 layers: phenomenon "what we experience" then "something else going on that we just don't really have access to - maybe some kind of spiritual access.. intuitive access.. but we can't figure out empirically."
- "I'm actually not sure how much it matters what that fundamental reality is that we can't access... I still have to behave as though this world is this naturalistic thing that I'm experiencing."
- "The understanding that there is more gives me a humility and more compassion"
- "I might not believe that fundamentally we have free will.. but it definitely appears that way... I have to hold myself accountable on that level... I still have to behave with choice."
- "I'm looking at things at a very particular scale... my table... is actually mostly space... that's definitely not the way I'm experiencing it"
- "I operate as though the world is naturalistic because I'm not sure how else to operate in it"
- JW: How our intuitions work better re: "middle sized dry goods" and not so well for philosophy of mind or the foundations of physics
- JW: Open-mindedness and humility vs. arbitrary / fabricated beliefs
- @Conspiritualitypodcast and the risks of people in the yoga / wellness / mysticism worlds can slip into conspiracism, cults and far-right worldviews
- We need to disagree about reality... but without undermining our compassion for and relationality with those we're disagreeing with
- JW: Actual reality, socially constructed reality, cognitive reality (and the degree to which they're correlated)
20:38 What Matters?
- "The journey was definitely away from the certainty that I had about what was right and wrong and who was right and wrong"
35:38 Who Matters?
46:47 A Better World?
01:19:29 Follow Jesse:
- newrootsinstitute.org/our-team/jesse-tandler
- linkedin.com/in/jessetandler
- https://x.com/jmtandler
& 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.
