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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John is an activist academic, a green political economist and former Green Party politician in Northern Ireland. He is Professor of Green Political Economy in the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at Queen’s University Belfast. His main research interests span politics, economics, the ethics of sustainability/ sustainable development, green moral and political theory, green political economy, vulnerability, resilience , civic republicanism and green politics, Irish/Northern Irish politics, Q Methodology and sustainable energy politics and policy.
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!
01:01 Welcome
– “Summer in Ireland… best weekend of the year” 🙂
03:34 John’s Introduction
– Green political economy
– Co-chair the Belfast Climate Commission
– “A recovering politician” led the Green Party of Northern Ireland
– “I’ve always been politically active… I feel compelled… at this moment of crisis… a polycrisis… climate, ecological,
social… animal welfare horrors of our current social order”
– “A dissident political economist – I don’t accept either #capitalism or endless economic growth”
– “Our current economic system has now passed its
sell-by date… industrialisation, globalism, the horrendous suffering of the more-than-human world”
– Pessimism amongst climate scientists “describing in
many respects… an uninhabitable world in the future”
– “We cannot continue in a business as usual manner in
the academy while the world is on fire… we need to practice what we teach”
– “This time, not only of crisis… of great opportunity… we can fix so many problems… science… political will…
justice focus” (global, inter-generational and inter-species justice and equity)
– “We have all the solutions… What we lack… is the
political will and the ethical courage of our convictions”
07:33 What’s Real?
– Growing up in working class Dublin
– “Not just as a lapsed but a completely collapsed #Catholic… I’ve been an #atheist all my thinking life”
– At ~10yrs old asking “What’s the evidence for this
off-world, male, white deity?… Not really finding satisfactory answers from
the priest or from teachers.”
– “I do hold some affection for Catholicism…”
– The denial of evolution & #creationism among some
Northern Irish Protestants and Evangelicals. Often #climatechange denialism too
– Flaws of Catholicism: abuse of women & children &
abuse cover-ups “effectively brought down the church… in Ireland… from its position of power”
– General acceptance of science within Catholicism
– “A form of poetry… religious perspectives as beautiful stories… they’re fairy tales… beautiful but they’re not real… can have certain morality lessons”
… and much more!
21:50 What Matters?
39:54 Who Matters?
55:43 A Better Future?
01:27:03 Follow John:
– John on LinkedIn “I like subverting LinkedIn – there’s far too many shiny, happy
business-type people”
– John’s MarxistLentilist Blog
– John at Queens University Belfast
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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