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Mark Humanity is a long-time vegan activist. He currently lives on the edge of a rainforest in New Zealand and is on the Board of the Vegan Society of Aotearoa, New Zealand. Mark has been involved in animal rights since a teenager, initially in Ireland’s embryonic movement and later in the much more developed UK movement. A hunt saboteur for many years, Mark has been vegan since 1989 and got involved with the NZ Vegan Society via his vegan outreach Initiative called “Vegan Living Auckland”. He is currently helping raise two plant-based children and has a background in mental health nursing. Mark is the author of “The Humanity Trigger“.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and “how can we make a better future?”
Sentientism answers those questions with “evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” In addition to the YouTube and Spotify above the audio is on our Podcast here on Apple & here on all the other platforms.
00:00 Clips!
00:34 Welcome
02:13 Mark’s Intro
– Anarcho-punk and vegan activism
– Now “anarchish”
– Writing “The Humanity Trigger” about two centuries of direct action for animals in Ireland
– Vegan Society Aoteoroa board
– 20 years as a psychiatric / learning disabilities nurse
– Now stay at home dad raising two vegan kids on the edge of a rain forest
03:28 What’s Real?
– “Things that still exist irrespective of whether people believe in them or not – are what’s real”
– Raised in a staunchly Irish Catholic family and society
– “our sense of reality growing up was filtered through the eyes of a deeply authoritarian… fascist-adjacent dictatorship of the Roman Catholic church”
– “The government were simply puppets at the beck and call of the church when the church chose to intervene”
– Attending church run by Redemptorist priests / monks “on the surface they preach very worthy things… giving to the poor… vows of chastity & poverty & obedience…”
– The monthly Redemptorist “Reality” magazine: “Very medieval thinking… resurrections… ascensions to heaven… virgin births… that was all reality”
– “I tried to believe it because it was what everyone around me was saying was true.”
– “Anyone that even thought or even asked questions about it was deemed to be dangerously… on the slippery slope”
– “If you haven’t been brought up in a strictly religious environment it’s very hard to imagine what it’s like when everyone around you believes in the devil… god… jesus… heaven and hell…”
– Transubstantiation “Jesus does come down into that bread – his body is in that bread… it is literal – it is not meant to be taken as a metaphor… that’s the split between Catholicism and Protestantism”
– “I tried to believe it but I couldn’t”
– Comics, 2000AD, Pat Mills, Alan Moore “I read into those scripts… Flesh… Strontium Dog, some of Judge Dredd… non-human animals had agency… were lead actors in these scripts… were the heroes and villains”
– “It was a direct slap in the face of the idea of dominion… where animals are simply either furniture in the background or something to be eaten”
– “… that allowed me to imagine animals to be something other than sausages or something to look at in a zoo”
– “All credit goes to Pat Mills and people like Alan Moore for broadening my horizons because there was nothing else going in my life that could have told those stories”
– Trying to read the Bible “It’s basically like a ‘Mein Kampf’ for the human supremacist outlook… Genesis and Leviticus…”
– Exposed to anarcho-punk at 14-15, bands like Crass, Conflict “That pinned me to the wall… focused this and politicised it and gave it names… presented a very black and white version of the world… highly aggressive at times… I found my identity… it was absolutely sublime… to stumble across this sub-culture of people who felt the exact same as I did… the most beautiful thing at that age”
– “Highly emotional… everything wrapped up at once… an energy boost and an intellectual boost that I’d been starved of… opening up this prize”
– The influence of punk on other Sentientism guests: Delci Winders, Kristof Dhont, Nick Pendergrast, Nicola Harris, Luke McGuire, Nico Delon, Jamila Anahata, Tom Harris
– “A movement that was full of contradictions and naivety and irony…”
– “Beneath the harshness and the cynicism of a lot of the lyrics… they were deeply disappointed at the world they found around them because they expected so much better from people… a profound anger at how much better things could be and how things are now”
– “Looking back it was too uncompromising – it lacked nuance… but for a 14 year old looking for identity it was perfect… I wanted black and white… I’m right and they’re wrong. As far as animal rights are concerned that is still how I feel.”
– “This was the first time people had plugged into my anger about what was happening to animals… ‘we know exactly what you are thinking about’”
– “I am basically an atheist but like most Christians I sometimes have my doubts… experimented a lot with psychedelics… the take-away was that there is lots of things out there we don’t know about” Magic mushrooms, salvia divinorum
– “If I get lost in the woods… there’s a real peace that comes around nature… I’m not a hard-headed materialist… it isn’t a religious thing… but there’s something nebulous there”
– “I don’t think there’s life after death unfortunately because I really enjoy life and death does scare me…”
– “I would like to think there’s something else out there… it certainly isn’t the model I was taught as I was growing up… I hope it’s nothing like that because it’s a horrible vision”
– “When I die… I’ll be broken down into nutrients… get absorbed… by a tree… it’s a really nice thought – to be a tree”
– Psychedelics: “I’m not sure if that’s the power of the mind or the power of the universe… I’ll be agnostic about that… I just don’t know”
19:05 What and Who Matters?
– “The basis of my ethical thinking hasn’t changed that much since I was very young”
– “A visceral reaction to particularly animal cruelty… nothing stirs me up like seeing animal abused… a really painful idea in my head”
– “I’m not a real animal person… I don’t stop for every cat I see on the street… the same as people – I do like some and I don’t like others… they’re full of personality”
– Dad raised on a farm “all animals there were to be worked or eaten or milked… if a farm dog… was no longer useful… he was simply shot and thrown into a bin”
– “It [concern for animals] was just there. I was looking for something to plug that into… in Ireland… nothing whatsoever… a barely visible vegetarian society… league against cruel sports group… hunting was rife… enclosed coursing was really popular where a hare is chased around an enclosed field and mauled by greyhounds… a highly speciesist country”
– “How I popped up I have no idea… but there was a couple of dozen others like me… in Cork city… all anarcho-punks… we formed punk bands and our own animal rights group”
– “We were just the one in ten thousand who come out thinking like this… we happened to meet up because of this sub-culture called anarcho-punk”
– Moving to the UK and getting involved in the hunt saboteur movement
– “It’s a painful thing to carry around… when you get exposed to footage… I just can’t think about it… I would go insane… the only thing I can do about it is to try to lessen the amount of violence.”
– “If I was to be passive around this… it would do me psychological damage”
– Liberation and autonomy vs. suffering and harm vs. wrong-doing by the moral agents?
– “The main thing is an empathy… suffering with others… I’m feeling that pain too… it’s almost as if it’s being done to me… it’s that offensive”
– “Violence is contextual… not all aggression and violence is wrong depending why you are doing it and who you are doing it to”
– “I worked for 20 years in psychiatric hospitals… and that doesn’t come close to the violence I saw as a hunt saboteur”
– “The manic… feral aggression that you see… the hatred in the faces of the people coming towards you… it’s terrifying… it’s illuminating… you either front up or you go home and stay home”
– “You won’t do the animals any good by ending up in A&E [accident and emergency]”
– “Violence breeds violence… [but] in short-term solutions it can be very effective”
– Getting involved in the UK hunt sab movement “they were a bit more organised…”
– The Vale of Aylesbury Hunt “which has since disbanded”
– Sabbing in Galway “we had had the shit kicked out of us… if they could have hung us from the lampposts they would have”
– Getting involved in the anti-globalisation movement in the 2000’s
– The Wombles “tried to form a defensive line between riot protesters and police”
– London’s Anarchist Direct Action scene “almost got imprisoned for various things”
– Writing for a weekly eco-anarchist publication
– “Inspired by classical anarchism… Kropotkin and Bakunin… I was interested in it because of the direct action emphasis”
– “It was the only part of the radical left that were genuinely interested in animal rights… the labour left couldn’t give a shit”
– “If you want to see a socialist radical turn into a conservative reactionary just mention animal rights”
– “There was a real vibe then… it got sort of crushed… nowadays that space is being dominated by the far-right… sucking up all the media oxygen banging on about immigration…”
– Anti-fascist action
34:30 A Better World?
– “The way to make a better future? It’s a combination of tactics but direct action is a vital part of that… Just Stop Oil… Extinction Rebellion… these are the modern day groups that have taken over from groups like the hunt saboteurs and the Animal Liberation Front”
– “A sort of catharsis for individuals to get things off their chest… that’s an element… a very healthy thing to do… to keep things pent up inside can be disastrous… It doesn’t justify direct action in and of itself necessarily… but it is important to recognise the cathartic nature of direct action and the psychological health that naturally flows from that”
– “When direct action is done collectively in conjunction with other forms of activism.”
– Anti-fur campaigns in the 1980’s-90’s. Lynx, Greenpeace, Sea Shepherd “attacking it from one side with information… video footage of seals being clubbed”… the ALF “burning down department stores that had fur coats in them”
– “Between the two fronts the fur industry was decimated in about 5-6 years”
– “When forms of direct action are used in conjunction with forms of above ground, more legalistic nature”
– “A direct action should be direct… Some of the scattergun approach of Just Stop Oil can be counterproductive… rather than blocking a motorway it might be better to block the entrance to a dairy processing plant… hit the real enemy directly rather than stopping everyone just going about their daily business”
– Animal Rising / Animal Rebellion “very direct action… taking over slaughterhouses… getting to the core of the problem”
– “The animal rights movement has always used direct action… if they didn’t nothing would be getting done about the issue whatsoever… this will never come from government – they are not interested in this… not much will come from the general public either…”
– General public “They’re interested maybe in banning fox hunting and stag hunting but they’re not interested in… the same concerns about fishing”
– “The general public and the government cannot be relied on to be a serious force for animals on this planet… for the moment”
– “The militant animal rights movement has been needed to punch its way through people’s imaginations… and to demand attention… it had to do it loudly and aggressively… and it did so”
– Episodes with Troy Vettese, Emilia Leese, John Sanbonmatsu, Corey Lee Wrenn expressing deep frustration that the political left doesn’t engage on non-human animal rights issues “There is a change here happening”
– “They are recognising that the most oppressed animal in a factory farm isn’t the underpaid worker it’s the chicken in a cage. They’re both being exploited but one is being exploited a lot more ruthlessly than the other one. For Marxists to not see that considering… their whole project is one of liberation… is really odd.”
– “Marx himself used the term ‘species-being’… the freedom of all species to live their life as nature intended their species to live their lives… it wasn’t just ‘human being’”
– “At the same time Marx and Engels were deeply cynical about the growing vegetarian movement… they poured scorn on it… bourgeois sentimentalists that had no interests in the class war.”
– “So called communist liberators are also marinated in a society that is so speciesist… a root metaphor that goes deeper probably than sexism… separation of humans from all the other animals probably happened tens of thousands of years ago… this idea of supremacy… that we’re better than them… above them.”
– “The biggest poison in our brain is this idea of what Christians call dominion – but it’s been around for a lot longer than that.”
– “It’s going to be like extracting a tooth with no pain relief… it’s in there that deep”
– The Leigh Claire la Berge episode and “Marx for Cats”
– “The radical animal rights movement in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s in the UK and Ireland outshone the radical left… in terms of actions. The radical left were all theory and sitting around in pubs talking about stuff. They were not really generally doing stuff… direct action was nowhere near the agenda.”
– Trying to talk to the Socialist Workers Party about Crass records and animal liberation… “get the hell out of here… this is not for us… middle-class wankery”
– The inspiration for writing “The Humanity Trigger”
– Being a guest on an Irish podcast called “Policed” sharing stories of encounters with the Irish police. Traveller communities, strikers, hunt saboteurs…
– Using the Irish Newspaper Archive to research the history of hunt sabotage and animal liberation/rights… “loads of stuff came up… thousands of articles and letters to the editor, opinions, exposes…”
– “I had a narrative in front of me – I had a story… I put it into this book and made a history out of it”
– Richard Martin in 1822 passing the “Cruelty to Cattle Act” and setting up the RSPCA and a police force to enforce the act
– “The world’s first police force was the RSPCA… it wasn’t a human police force… The animals had a police force before humans did”
– Jack McLelland, the mixed martial artist and champion swimmer “he was a vegan… there should be statues around the country for him”
– Links between the early IRA pre 1916, the rising vegetarian movement in Dublin, Indian revolutionaries who inspired Gandhi…
– “The history is golden and it hasn’t been recorded properly… if no one else is going to do it then I will”
– “I’d never known that Ireland had played such a prominent role”
– The Kim Stallwood episode and his animal rights archive
– “There needs to be a paradigm shift in terms of how the human species… sees the world”
– “We’re part of the world… certainly not at the tops of any chains… the most ridiculous idea I’ve ever heard of… a human supremacist mindset… as poisonous and as ugly as white supremacism and Nazism… it’s going to take us all to hell unless it stops”
– “Any political system going forward… a little bit of communism… anarchism… ecoism… there might even be a little bit of capitalism”
– “I don’t know enough… to say that you can do away with something like capitalism… you might have to accommodate it”
– Studying Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do “no system is the system… you would look at all the systems… take the best bits out of each one… don’t get caught up in purity”
– “It’s the philosophy MMA is based on – I think politics could do with a bit of that sort of thinking… what works around the world… the best of all the different isms… not be too worried about ideologies”
– “Including non-human sentient beings the way we would include humans – is a priority”
– The boundary of sentience? Where “things become things” and the precautionary principle “we can assume things are sentient unless we’re really sure they’re not… even if they’re not it doesn’t mean we can destroy them or just use them as we will… it’s OK to throw a stone into a river but it’s not OK to throw a cat into a river”
– “America first… humanity first… it’s going to be our comeuppance in the end”
– Descartes “we’re able to separate ourselves from the rest of nature even when it’s screaming in pain in front of us nailed to a table. We’re still able to come up with excuses as to how this shouldn’t matter and how this dog isn’t in pain despite all the evidence.”
– New Zealand and the animal movement “It’s very similar to Ireland… 5% vegan, 8% vegetarian… Hunting is different here – it’s more democratic.”
– Apart from 2 species of bat every other mammal is not indigenous to New Zealand “so you have this culture where schools, primary schools, will organise cat hunting as a day out”
– “It’ll be on the news… they’re having their annual ‘bash a wild cat to death day’… rabbit shooting… duck shooting… they’ll blast everything out of the sky… they’re pest species… so we need to kill everything… in order to bring ‘national’ species back”
– “They’re doing it because they enjoy it… it’s accepted by the public that that is just the way things are”
– “The dairy industry here are huge… as they are in Ireland”
– “About 80% of all the fresh water lakes in this country aren’t fit for humans to touch… because of nitrate run-off from the dairy industry”
– “The dairy industry have managed to position themselves as the backbone of the economy and the salt of the earth at the same time destroying, massively, the ecosystem”
– “Fonterra, the dairy conglomerate… are the country’s largest polluters by a long shot… and they only employ 10 thousand people… they’ve managed to position themselves as heroes of society while being the most destructive force in this country”
– Industry responses to challenge “No Farmers, No Food”… “They’ve even managed to hijack the word ‘farmer’ so only people in animal agriculture are considered farmers – everyone else is a ‘grower’… bastards”
– “It’s magnificent PR work… but they’re pushing at an open door… everyone wants to hear this”
– “The farmers here… they’re a law unto themselves”
– “It is inspiring to be involved in this small but growing scene”
– “I’m terrified about the future – I have two young kids”
– “I look around and I wonder where’s the modern-day anarcho-punk militant reaction to this that we need… I don’t know where it is and we so need it now.”
– “If we can sort things out in the next 2030-2040 we’ve got a chance… this really requires mass mobilisation plus direct action… everything, everywhere all at once”
– A sense of isolation but also safety in New Zealand
– “When people’s backs are literally against the wall on a personal basis then we will see the survival reaction kick in… Whether it’s too late or not at that point is the question”
– “We are in control of the future right now, unbelievably – that is slipping out of our fingers”
– “This is such a beautiful planet… to see it all fry up and see the death of birth… just awful”
– “The sort of people you’re talking to – they need to be heard”
Follow Mark
– The Humanity Trigger Web Site
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