91: “Learning can liberate” – Mary Pat Champeau – Institute for Humane Education – Sentientist Conversation

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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Mary Pat (@mpchampeau) is the director of graduate programs at the Institute for Humane Education (@HumaneEducation & humaneeducation.org) & faculty at Antioch University. Mary Pat has been in the field of education since 1979 when she began teaching as a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger. Before joining IHE, she worked in refugee camps in Asia & supervised culture & language programs for the World Trade Institute in New York.

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.

We discuss:

00:00 Welcome

01:12 Mary Pat’s Intro

– Humane Ed Grad Prog. One of the only graduate level social justice progs that includes non-human animal protection (w/human rights & environmental justice)

– A place where people can be who they are with respect to non-human animal ethics. Without apology

– Humane Education’s focus on exploring questions that are central to Sentientism

– “This is the next level… when are we going to open our circle of compassion – to humans we’ve never met – to animals…?”

– Expanding both our compassion & our role in the world

– Why do so many people committed to social justice / intersectional perspectives / resisting all oppressions struggle to consider non-human sentients?

– Systems thinking & how oppressions (& solutions) interlink. From lose-lose-lose to win-win-win?

10:00 What’s Real?

– “Hardcore, long-term, recovering Catholic”

– Growing up in Buffalo, NW in a large Irish Catholic family

– Catholic schools & public schools (per George Carlin)

– “We kind of looked down on the ‘publics’ because they were going to hell”

– “The 1960’s never really touched us”

– Taking a world religions course

– Reading “The Religions of Man”. Catholicism was only one of the religions! “Why is Catholicism even in this book?”

– Peeking out of the nest for the first time

– Living in muslim communities in Niger. “I could totally relate” because of the parallels with Catholicism

– Rejecting Catholocism but being grateful for the vocabulary

– Religious beliefs (angels, devils, god…) as “iconic representations of our psyche”

– The human impact of the story of Christ. Finding spirituality in adversity

– Easily rejecting & working against the negatives of religious (& non-religious) worldviews (sexism, racism, homophobia…)

– Are religions slowly evolving towards more modern humanistic/sentientist ethics?

…and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info and on YouTube.

Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our “I’m a Sentientist” wall via this simple form.

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Thanks Graham.