We discuss the biggest questions: "what's real?", "who matters?" and "how to make a better world?" with scientists, celebrities, activists, writers and philosophers. The Sentientism worldview is "evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings." It's a simple, yet radical, philosophy that's grounded in reality (naturalistic epistemology) and has compassion for all sentient beings (mostly human and non-human animals). Naturalism & sentiocentrism combined.
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Karen was an animal rights advocate and president of United Poultry Concerns. UPC is a non-profit organization founded in 1990 to address the treatment of domestic fowl in farming – including chickens, turkeys, and ducks. Karen also ran an animal sanctuary. She was the author of several books on veganism and animal rights, including Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs: An Inside Look at the Modern Poultry Industry (1997) and The Holocaust and the Henmaid’s Tale: A Case for Comparing Atrocities (2005).
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 video of our conversation is here on YouTube.
We discuss:
00:00 Welcome
01:23 Karen’s Intro
– @United Poultry Concerns
– Meeting Viva the chicken
– “A lifelong affinity for birds”
– Seeing a friend’s father killing a hen
05:05 What’s Real?
– Growing up in Pennsylvania
– Catching & killing wildlife “my parents never objected”
– Everybody went to some kind of church “that’s what we did then… respectable people go to church”
– Sunday school “for parents to have some time to themselves”
– Parents not very religious
– “God didn’t make rats, the devil made rats” to rationalise killing
– “I was never a believer”… “If I joined the church… I could wear stockings instead of socks”
13:08 What Matters?
– “I was always directly affected by others whether they were human or other than human”
– Childhood distress: a duck being run over, baby birds falling from nests
– #empathy & #compassion as a moral core
21:02 Who Matters?
– Father & brothers hunting pheasants, squirrels & rabbits
– Realising what father was doing in the cellar
– Arguing at the dinner table “I wasn’t thinking about who was on my plate”
– Father: “Everything hunts the rabbit”
– “I relate directly to other creatures – I don’t need any belief system at all”
– Reading “The First Step” by #leotolstoy . Giving up animal products as the first step of #nonviolence … “that was really it – I didn’t want to eat animal flesh any more… that was in 1974”
– #Animaltesting . #EdwardTaub ‘s primate research #SilverSpringmonkeys
– Nurses having to do animal experiments to qualify
– Do you need to have a psychopathic detachment to be a vet/doctor?
– Being a juvenile probation officer
– Being traumatised by SPCA literature on #harpseal slaughter “This was my eye opening experience of institutionalised animal abuse”
– Witnessing seal culling in Canada in 1974
– National Geographic asking photographers to damage Beaver habitats to get a good story
– Brian Davies’ book “Savage Luxury”
– Cultural/traditional/religious justifications for causing harm…
…and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info.
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