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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Sabine is legal advisor to the World Federation for Animals (https://wfa.org/). In 2014, she cofounded the Global Animal Law (GAL https://www.globalanimallaw.org/) Association and led work on the creation and update of the first complete Animal Welfare Legislation Database.
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 video of our conversation is here on YouTube https://youtu.be/OovrrbG1Crk.
We discuss:
0:00 Welcome
1:24 Sabine’s Intro – Animal Law & International Governance for Animals
– Founding GAL, building the AWL Database, developing a 100 strong global animal law community
– The UNCAHP (United Nations Convention on Animal Health & Protection) https://www.uncahp.org/
– #OneHealth & #OneWelfare
– Working with the new World Federation for Animals to make animal protection a UN imperative
3:57 What’s Real?
– Learning about the beauty & value of the natural world from Sabine’s grandmother
– “I believe in what I can see but also in things I can’t see that are obvious”
– Looking into the eyes of a cat & sensing it’s “soul”
– Attending Catholic classes, but always preferring a more holistic, non-religious worldview
– Finding Catholicism restrictive, seeing the downsides of religion, deciding not to attend communion
– “We feel this notion of respect for all beings”
– Respecting all life is common to most religions
– Solidarity & compassion
– The commonalities between religious/naturalistic worldviews. “Souls” vs. sentience. Energy & information processing. Universal connectedness.
– “When I say ‘soul’ I mean that the being I see has a consciousness”
15:34 What Matters Morally?
– A mother who was a nurse, motivated by human compassion
– Developing a similar sensitivity for animal suffering from a young age
– A close relationship with a German Shepherd dog
– Being brought to a bull-fighting event in France at 4 years old. Seeing an animal being tortured to death – “feeling ashamed of my own species”. “I wanted to intervene.” Adults told me it wasn’t real – then I saw the butchery behind the arena
– “These animals needed some people to defend them” – “I felt it was my moral duty”
– The challenges of going vegan in France
– Facing health concerns from parents
– At 18, asking a doctor how to go veg*an and being told “it’s not possible to be healthy”
– Moving to Canada. Finding it much easier there to go vegetarian then vegan. Avoiding zoos & animal tested products
– Social context can make change hard or easy.
… And much more. Full show notes on Sentientism.info or YouTube.
Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/. Join our “I’m a Sentientist” wall https://sentientism.info/wall/ here: https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist.
Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. Main one: https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism.
Thanks Graham for the post-prod.
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