58: "Factory farming is a complete disaster" - FT Journalist Henry Mance - Sentientist Conversations

Henry (https://twitter.com/henrymance) is the chief features writer for the Financial Times newspaper. He is the author of "How to Love Animals in a Human Shaped World." (https://uk.bookshop.org/books/1606708923_how-to-love-animals-in-a-human-shaped-world/9781787332089).

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 video of our Conversation is on the Sentientism YouTube.

We discuss:

0:00 Welcome

1:27 Henry's Intro

- Studying environmental policy

- Photography and the natural world

- Working for a biodiversity think tank in Colombia

- Journalism at the Financial Times

- Writing "How to Love Animals..."

- "It hasn't really been about changing my values... it's been about trying to align my behaviours."

3:25 What's Real? Anglican Christianity

- Keith Thomas' "Man and the Natural World"

- Different Christian perspectives on non-human animals

- Is the Noah's Ark story one reason why we find zoos acceptable?

- "Noah's Ark is not a particularly good model for conservation"

- "We think we're Noah but in fact we're the flood"

- Interviewing the Archbishop of Canterbury "Pets do go to heaven!"

- Animal Interfaith Alliance

- "Nobody has a monopoly on wisdom or compassion"

- Talking to Mongolian Buddhists about eating meat "if you don't see the killing it's less of a sin"

- How distance means we allow animal farming to continue

- JW: "The Dalai Lama isn't vegan and he has no excuses"

- How Anglicanism focuses on compassion & love rather than dogmatic rules

- Obedience vs. compassion in religious ethics

- The church has often been behind the curve in ethics

- "Iris Murdoch's idea of love helped me more than any direct religious underpinning"

13:00 What Matters?

- At first "I wanted animals to be OK because I liked looking at them." Polar bears and orangutans

- The impact of humanity on wild animals

- Shifting to take the animals' point of view

- Being forced to think about animal farming in Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens

- How viewing species of animals as "eaten" reduces our assessment of sentience

- We spend money on our pets medical bills that could save human lives

- "If it happens like this it must be tolerable"

- "Sentience is a pretty good starting point"

- Are bivalves & insects sentient?

- The richness of bee behaviour & the risks of insect farming

- "Surely people can see for themselves - that is a conscious animal"

- Edge cases vs. the core issue of animal farming

- "There is something really special about consciousness" vs biocentrism & ecocentrism

- Whether you care about sentience or ecosystems what you have in common is "Factory farming is a complete disaster"

- And much more (see Sentientism.info or YouTube for full show notes).

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