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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Hakeem Jimo is co-founder and CEO of Veggie Victory, Nigeria’s first plant-based food tech company. Hakeem and his partner, Bola Adeyanju, also founded Nigeria’s first vegan restaurant, V Café, and now run the VChunks meat alternative product company – designed to help veganise Nigerian cuisine. Hakeem is also country director for ProVeg Nigeria.
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.
00:00 Clips!
00:36 Welcome
01:59 Hakeem’s Intro
– Nigerian father, German mother, growing up in Germany, now in Nigeria
– 10 years of veganism and vegan entrepreneurship
– Establishing ProVeg Nigeria
03:45 What’s Real?
– Not much supernatural thinking in small-town Germany “there were more cows than humans”
– Lutheran evangelical protestant society but “we went to church twice a year… it was not a very religious background”
– Nigeria: “A completely different ballgame… the spiritual, religious world plays a much bigger role in Africa… religion is everywhere here… and I like it… In Africa I started to pray… you don’t have that sense of control.”
– Christianity, Islam as well as natural / traditional religions from the pre-colonial era
08:33 What Matters?
– “Every day I see these two sides”, Germany (enlightenment, studying philosophy) and Nigeria (travelling as a journalist in W.Africa: “a completely different way people see the world”)
– Only recently exploring the Bible (via podcasts) “just to understand historically”
– Finding references to treatment of animals in the Old and New Testaments
– Nigeria: “Religion is much more taken… by the letter” vs. the German way “it’s just a parable”
– “If you’re coming from a western background you just
shape your belief system” vs. “people are handing over authority to another level”
– “How do we actually convince people… whether I’m in
Germany or Nigeria?”
– “I walk through the streets here… it’s funny… even though everybody is black and in Germany everybody is white I see features… very similar behaviours”
– “I see really the universal parts… that’s where things come together… trying to change the world and not just a few enlightened people”
13:16 Who Matters?
– Step-father in Germany was a farmer “neighbours got
together and bought a pig… the butcher coming to the farm”
– Hearing stories about factory farming “they were
using nicotine to disinfect the chickens… there’s something wrong here”… overfishing… foot and mouth disease
– “Nobody in rural Germany was talking about sentientism or veganism “
– University in Hamburg “there was an alternative meal
in the canteen”… a vegetarian partner aware of history of US colonialist animal agriculture
– Travelling to West Africa and eating #streetfood
“when I’m on a #vegetarian diet I don’t get sick!” vs. getting typhoid fever from a road-side meat barbecue
– “You start learning… what’s the implications… I realised… this is good… let me become vegetarian”
24:35 A Better Future?
48:41 Follow Hakeem
– https://www.linkedin.com/in/hakeemjimo/
– https://veggievictory.com/ “We are winning with the veggies!”
– https://proveg.com/ng/…and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info.
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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This episode is a cross-post of my discussion with Richard Brown on his Consciousness Live YouTube podcast. Make sure you go and subscribe there too. Richard is a professor of philosophy at City University of New York. His work is …continue
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