Jonina ( / joninaturzi ) is cofounder of Lancaster Farm Sanctuary (https://lancasterfarmsanctuary.org/), a volunteer district leader for HSUS, & a doctor of physical therapy & yoga educator. This is an audio remastered version of our original conversation published in August 2021.
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: https://apple.co/391khQO & https://pod.link/1540408008.
We discuss:
0:00 Welcome
1:58 Jonina's Intro
Lancaster Farm Sanctuary, physical therapy, yoga teaching, sobriety, queerness
3:07 What's Real?
Hippie parents, social justice, civil rights
Catholic father & schooling, more cultural than doctrinal
Brethren Church family history
Parents with a spiritual appreciation without buying into religious doctrine
Feeling the freedom to explore "I just want you to be happy"
"It felt like a human construct"
Identifying as an atheist as a teenager
Finding a beauty in the human body (& a sense of spiritual meaning) through an anatomy class
Being bullied, as a "young queer kid", by members of "Youth for Christ"
"I have no idea what's real"
The lower & upper case "Self" in some Yoga practice
Some things might always be unknowable
Reverence, wonder & awe... openness
19:08 What (& who) Matters?
Oneness & interconnectedness
Unnecessary harm to sentient others
Might plants have a kind of sentience? "I'm OK with saying we shouldn't harm plants unnecessarily"
Seeing the similiarities between human and non-human animals through physiology
"The idea that non-human animals aren't sentient is so bizarre to me"
Movement & intent as indicators of sentience
Are Roomba's sentient?
Evolution, behaviour/comms, information processing as inferential evidence for sentience
Intrinsic & instrumental value
The ethical dangers of holistic/ecocentric thinking
"Spirtual Bypassing"... rushing to find a purpose/meaning/spiritual goal while bypassing compassion & understanding
Knowing very spiritual people who also own factory farms
A local factory farm with a Bible verse written on it
"The foundation of a spiritual practice is caring for others"
Stages of moral development: Ego, ethno, anthropocentric...
41:12 Vegetarian to vegan
Rebelling against Jonina's mother's vegetarianism as a teenager
Being vegetarian. Not understanding dairy
Seeing slaughterhouse footage & going vegan together with Jonina's partner
Social indoctrination re: animal ethics & the supernatural
Climate change
The relationship between scarcity & morality. Is it harder to be moral under scarcity?
48:04 The Future
"Treating every sentient being I can with dignity, including myself"
"We should all adopt Sentientism"
Embedding a sentientist culture & ethics of care into education & religion & law
A post-scarcity future? Freeing creative impulses from the bottom half of Maslow's hierarchy
Re-wilding, permaculture, agro-forestry
"A whole new relationship with non-human animals that will blow people's minds" as at Lancaster Farm Sanctuary
Existential hope?
Being clear about problems but radically open-minded about potential utopias
Extending human concepts (e.g. Universal Declaration of Sentient Rights, Sentientist Development Goals) or something different?
You can't just legislate morality. People need to feel it too - by meeting other sentients! Gaps in our compassion are like holes in our brains
Our most basic, important interests are those we most have in common with non-human sentients
"Sentientism will look different depending on where it's practised"
Indigenous perspectives on sentience & connecteness
Humanity to Sentientity?
1:06:20 Conspirituality
MLMs, Wellness, "Alternative" medicine, QAnon, Flat Earth...
The Conspirituality Podcast (https://conspirituality.net/)
Assessing yoga/spiritual teachers & groups. "Is there a clear call for compassionate ethics towards other sentients?"
The danger of putting anything as more important than sentient beings
1:12:21 Following Jonina and Lancaster Farm Sanctuary
[email protected]
https://lancasterfarmsanctuary.org/
Instagram, FaceBook, maybe TikTok soon...
Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/. Join Jonina (https://sentientism.info/sentientist-...) on our "I'm a Sentientist" wall https://sentientism.info/wall/ here: https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentien....
Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here: / sentientism .
Thanks for the post-prod, Graham / cgbessellieu .
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