Sentientism 79: "'I love what you do for me' - isn't love!" - Cat Besch - Vietnam Animal Aid & Rescue Founder - Sentientist Conversation
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." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.
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?"
...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info and on YouTube.
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Thanks for the post-prod Graham.