58: “Factory farming is a complete disaster” – FT Journalist Henry Mance – Sentientist Conversations

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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Henry (https://twitter.com/henrymance) is the chief features writer for the Financial Times newspaper. He is the author of “How to Love Animals in a Human Shaped World.” (https://uk.bookshop.org/books/1606708923_how-to-love-animals-in-a-human-shaped-world/9781787332089).

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 on the Sentientism YouTube.

We discuss:

0:00 Welcome

1:27 Henry’s Intro

– Studying environmental policy

– Photography and the natural world

– Working for a biodiversity think tank in Colombia

– Journalism at the Financial Times

– Writing “How to Love Animals…”

– “It hasn’t really been about changing my values… it’s been about trying to align my behaviours.”

3:25 What’s Real? Anglican Christianity

– Keith Thomas’ “Man and the Natural World”

– Different Christian perspectives on non-human animals

– Is the Noah’s Ark story one reason why we find zoos acceptable?

– “Noah’s Ark is not a particularly good model for conservation”

– “We think we’re Noah but in fact we’re the flood”

– Interviewing the Archbishop of Canterbury “Pets do go to heaven!”

– Animal Interfaith Alliance

– “Nobody has a monopoly on wisdom or compassion”

– Talking to Mongolian Buddhists about eating meat “if you don’t see the killing it’s less of a sin”

– How distance means we allow animal farming to continue

– JW: “The Dalai Lama isn’t vegan and he has no excuses”

– How Anglicanism focuses on compassion & love rather than dogmatic rules

– Obedience vs. compassion in religious ethics

– The church has often been behind the curve in ethics

– “Iris Murdoch’s idea of love helped me more than any direct religious underpinning”

13:00 What Matters?

– At first “I wanted animals to be OK because I liked looking at them.” Polar bears and orangutans

– The impact of humanity on wild animals

– Shifting to take the animals’ point of view

– Being forced to think about animal farming in Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens

– How viewing species of animals as “eaten” reduces our assessment of sentience

– We spend money on our pets medical bills that could save human lives

– “If it happens like this it must be tolerable”

– “Sentience is a pretty good starting point”

– Are bivalves & insects sentient?

– The richness of bee behaviour & the risks of insect farming

– “Surely people can see for themselves – that is a conscious animal”

– Edge cases vs. the core issue of animal farming

– “There is something really special about consciousness” vs biocentrism & ecocentrism

– Whether you care about sentience or ecosystems what you have in common is “Factory farming is a complete disaster”

– And much more (see Sentientism.info or YouTube for full show notes).

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