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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Natalie Bennett is a politician and journalist who was the leader of the Green Party of England and Wales from 2012 to 2016. She was given a peerage (Baroness in the UK House of Lords) in 2019 and is working to abolish her own post bycreating an elected upper legislative chamber. Her journalism in Australia, Thailand and the UK has been published in the Bangkok Post, The Guardian, TheIndependent, The Times and many other newspapers. Her latest book is “Change Everything: How We Can Rethink, Repair and Rebuild Society“.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and “how can we make a better world?”
Sentientism answers those questions with “evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.
00:00 Clips
01:09 Welcome
03:03 Natalie’s Intro
– “Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle for really formal occasions – this is not a formal occasion”
– Leading @GreenPartyofEnglandWales & the “Green Surge”
– “If we had a democratic electoral system… a fair electoral system… we would have got 40 MPs… democracy would be a good idea”
– Journalism @guardiannews @BangkokPostOfficial
– “My first politics is #feminism … I became a feminist at age 5 because I was told ‘because you’re a girl you’re not allowed to have a bicycle'”
– “…consistently being told not only could I not do something because I was a girl… I shouldn’t even want to do it because I was a girl.”
– “I swerved close to a PhD several times and then runscreaming in the other direction”… a broad academic background… agricultural science then Asian studies degrees then a masters in mass communications (Donna Haraway, AI
– “What we have now, so called generative AI, is notintelligence it is actually big data… we almost had intelligence 20 years ago and we’re still at the point of almost having intelligence… I’m very much an AI sceptic”
– The environmental impact of AI
– Politicians lacking scientific background is “a huge problem”
06:59 What’s Real?
– “I’m very fundamentally… essentially a materialist… but what life generates is very complex”
– Attending a church school & then Sunday School”the polite thing to do… the same grandmother… who didn’t think I should ride a bicycle because it wasn’t ladylike”
– Sunday School at 8-9 yrs: “It was really boring… Isaid to my parents I didn’t want to go any more and so that was the end of that”
20:10 What Matters
31:05 Who Matters
54:13 A Better World?
01:12:58 FollowNatalie:
– @NatalieGreenPeer “I’m absolutely hyperactive on socialmedia“
– Natalie’s Change Everything Substack – including a recent article on how the UK government are teaming up with Saudia Arabia on historical preservation as Saudi are working to erase much of their own history
And more… full show notes at Sentientism.info.
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