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

Cat (@CatBeschVN) founded and leads Vietnam Animal Aid & Rescue. She is also a writer & activist addressing many non-human animal issues.

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.” In addition to the video above, the audio is on our Podcast here on Apple and all on the other platforms too.

We discuss:
0:00 Welcome

1:10 Cat’s Intro

• Founding Vietnam Animal Aid & Rescue
• Growing up in Virginia, USA
• Studying International Relations in Washington DC
• A political/military family

3:10 What’s Real?

• Growing up as a liberal Lutheran with very religious parents
• The church as social fabric
• Figuring out that “I just don’t really believe in any of that crap”
• High school & Baptist society in Alabama
• The church seeing all sex as shameful… “holding virginity in such high esteem”
• Feminism & Islam. “Headscarves & Hymens” by Mona Eltahawy.
• “The way the institutions look at sex & sexuality just makes you want to put your fist through a wall”
• “A whole bunch of girls that think they’re going to hell”
• That was the turning point. Everything started to crumble
• Not picking at the church too hard as it was the social fabric. “Life is hard enough at 16.” I left it silently on my own
• The hypocrisy of religious compassion & judgementalism
• Atheists & agnostics are not immoral people
• “I attended church… I took communion… my sins are flushed… now I can go back to being a dickhead”
• Religious compassion is often conditional & constrained
• The immorality of even “moderate” religious worldviews (e.g. hell, sexism, homophobia)
• “Women are not emotionally stable enough to be leaders in the Catholic church”!
• “I found it oppressive.” Leaving the church was a moment of liberation
• Travelling & living in many religious cultures
• Starting the “Let’s not be an asshole” religion
• Being wrong. “I used to hate vegans”, now I’m “on the side of all sentient beings”
• Everybody has a chance to change
• “I just don’t know” as a strong naturalistic stance

25:09 What (& Who) Matters?

• An early empathy for animals “they were my best friends”, but living in an environment where killing sentient beings was normal
• I never met a vegan in the horse riding world
• “I love what you do for me” isn’t love
• Being angry at our previous selves for not seeing
• Thinking all vegans must be “dirty hippies”
• Meeting first vegans hosting couch-surfers in Mongolia
• Being challenged “You love animals but who are you eating?”
• “I looked at dairy & was appalled”
• Going vegan at 34
• Advocating for fishes after diving
• Living with Louise the chicken
• We can philosophise, but compassion can also come from lived experience
• Jonathan Balcombe’s “What a Fish Knows”
• Humanity to Sentientity
• Animal ethics in Vietnam. Dog meat & chicken meat
• Rejecting dog meat is not a gateway to veganism
• Millions more likes for resisting dog farming vs. chicken farming
• Being worshipped for saving a dog by the “gods of bunny-hugging dumb-assness” but don’t talk about veganism
• There’s no philosophical grounding to rejecting dog farming then having chicken for lunch
• Generous funding available for resisting dog funding but not for other animals
• The racism that underpins much single-issue activism against dog farming
• Bio/ecocentrism
• How non-human & human animals are seen in disasters
• Psychedelics & experiencing everything as connected

57:45 The Future

• Sentiocentrism, naturalism leaves space for broad pluralism
• So many un-founded beliefs: MLMs, Goop, Anti-Vaxx, Flat Earth, Religion, Cults…
• Telling the RSPB “You know chickens are birds, right?”
• Social indoctrination re: religion & animal ethics
• Rebels are too rare
• Welfarism vs. abolition
• Welfarism gets all the money
• “I lost 60 grand [of charitable funding] by being an outspoken vegan”
• “If all those big organisations finally just stood up for animals, period!”
• They take so much money from people diametrically opposed to the idea that they have to stop or change anything
• Ban dog meat but “humane” farming of other sentients is fine
• “Vegan is not a dirty word” – It’s a moral baseline!
• Gary Francione
• #JustTransition paths
• Oregon’s IP13 https://www.yesonip13.org/
• Driving change in different cultures. Going local & getting out of the way.
• “I suffer from delusional optimism”
• “Even the worst people can change”
• “People are assholes & people are amazing”

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

Join Cat on our “I’m a Sentientist” wall using this simple form.

Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on Facebook.

Thanks Graham for the post-production.