Find our Sentientist Conversation on the Sentientism YouTube here or on the Sentientism podcast here.

Howie (@askhowie & plantyourself.com & askhowie.com) is a coach & author. His coaching work with people & organisations focuses on leadership, values, productivity & health.

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 audio is on our Podcast here on Apple & here on all the other platforms.

We discuss:

00:00 Welcome

02:01 Howie’s Intro

• Coaching & writing
• “Not a big fan of capitalism”
• Effective altruism through organisations
• “Helping people respond to reality”
• Not knowing “what’s real?” or “what matters?” but let’s try to work it out

04:54 What’s Real?

• Growing up in a conservative Jewish household in New Jersey
• Culturally Jewish but “kind of atheist”
• Mother’s history of the holocaust & kindertransport
• Father’s “Jewish identity & socialism.” Needling the Rabbi: “We have to rest on the Sabbath so now I have to walk up 30 flights of stairs?!”
• Being given “The Truth About the Bible” book. Bible inconsistencies & immorality
• “The Jews have learned to argue & doubt & question”
• “The Jewish people must survive” as a core commitment
• Einstein, Marx, Freud
• A militant zionist phase
• “It was safe.” There was no danger to the ritual vs. sweatlodges
• A “safe, conventional, suburban religion”
• Attending an Ivy League college
• “There are smart people who believe in ghosts”
• Exploring parapsychology
• “There were serious academics questioning my worldview which was completely materialistic”
• Rejecting the exclusive tribalism & the simplistic narratives of religion but “There is a big effing mystery out there”
• Shamanic practices “oh honey, it’s all bullshit”
• Being sceptical of our own perceptions & reasoning. Be open
• Predictive dreams
• Contextualism… “How is this working for me?”
• “Look for & assume positive intent… then act like it’s true”
• Talking to trees, brambles as defences, mycorrhizal fungi as comms networks
• Narratives of dominion vs. “consciousness in everything”
• Arbitrary vs. narratives grounded in reality
• “Supposedly using evidence & reason we’ve destroyed the planet”
• Checks: 1) consistency with the natural world & 2) compassion

32:50 What Matters?

• Be nice to people
• Mother’s experience of Nazi occupation of Austria. “The teachers & her so called friends were wearing Nazi armbands” & “Punch a Nazi”
• Father’s labour organising. “Fighting for the little guy” as the central moral theme
• A story of a police horse being stabbed: “I thought ‘what a great story’ until I started considering the sentience of the horse”
• Us vs. them ethos. I’m lucky to be on the “right side”. Realising “everyone thinks they’re on the right side!”
• Mitchell & Webb’s Nazi sketch “are we the baddies?”
• “I’m still a humanist in my heart… I’m a sentientist in my mind”
• Being vegan but not suffering emotionally when thinking about animal suffering. “What’s important to me is how I act”
• Our emotions are easily manipulated (music, contact, stories)
• Vegan for health & env. reasons. John Robbins “Diet for a New America” (1987). Then part of the vegan community
• Dangers of imprinting on “wise elders”
• Gregory Bateson’s “Schismogenesis”
• “I’m vegan now, the world hates me for it… I’m going to buy the whole thing”
• Teaching as a rebel
• “I”m an instrumental vegan”
• Indigenous hunting culture. Honouring animals. “I would eat animals under some circumstances… I don’t see anything in the world that is anywhere close to that standard.”
• Even good justifications don’t erase the harm done to victims
• Species/biodiversity vs. individuals
• Romance vs. reality of hunting
• Biocentrism
• Intrinsic/instrumental moral consideration
• Ecocentrism: “The risk that individual sentient beings can be chewed up for the sake of the system”

55:43 A Better Future

• It’s a problem if we have to deny our self-interest in order to be good
• “Sand Talk – How Indigenous Thinking Can Save The World”… “Western Civilisation is a self-terminating algorithm”
• “It’s how the game is set up”
• “We don’t have the models we need yet”
• Experimentation. It’s OK to make mistakes
• Supporting vs. shaming each other (even re: Ivermectin)
• Being OK with ourselves. Safety vs. fight/flight. Stephen Porges’ “Polyvagal Theory”
• Narcissism
• If I had all the power I’d change things… but I don’t… I have persuasion
• Shame & remorse & denial
• Critic to ally. Shared positive intent
• Stories that make me feel good w/out dominating
• We can’t stop w/systems that make “good people treating each other well” a privileged position
• Tipping points

Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info.

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Thanks Graham for the post-production.