Sentientism 133: "I relate directly to other creatures - I don't need any belief system" - Karen Davis - United Poultry Concerns President - Sentientism
Karen was an animal rights advocate and president of United Poultry Concerns. UPC is a non-profit organization founded in 1990 to address the treatment of domestic fowl in farming – including chickens, turkeys, and ducks. Karen also ran an animal sanctuary. She was the author of several books on veganism and animal rights, including Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs: An Inside Look at the Modern Poultry Industry (1997) and The Holocaust and the Henmaid's Tale: A Case for Comparing Atrocities (2005).
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?”
Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.
We discuss:
00:00 Welcome
01:23 Karen's Intro
- @United Poultry Concerns
- Meeting Viva the chicken
- "A lifelong affinity for birds"
- Seeing a friend's father killing a hen
05:05 What's Real?
- Growing up in Pennsylvania
- Catching & killing wildlife "my parents never objected"
- Everybody went to some kind of church "that's what we did then... respectable people go to church"
- Sunday school "for parents to have some time to themselves"
- Parents not very religious
- "God didn't make rats, the devil made rats" to rationalise killing
- "I was never a believer"... "If I joined the church... I could wear stockings instead of socks"
13:08 What Matters?
- "I was always directly affected by others whether they were human or other than human"
- Childhood distress: a duck being run over, baby birds falling from nests
- #empathy & #compassion as a moral core
21:02 Who Matters?
- Father & brothers hunting pheasants, squirrels & rabbits
- Realising what father was doing in the cellar
- Arguing at the dinner table "I wasn't thinking about who was on my plate"
- Father: "Everything hunts the rabbit"
- "I relate directly to other creatures - I don't need any belief system at all"
- Reading "The First Step" by #leotolstoy . Giving up animal products as the first step of #nonviolence ... "that was really it - I didn't want to eat animal flesh any more... that was in 1974"
- #Animaltesting . #EdwardTaub 's primate research #SilverSpringmonkeys
- Nurses having to do animal experiments to qualify
- Do you need to have a psychopathic detachment to be a vet/doctor?
- Being a juvenile probation officer
- Being traumatised by SPCA literature on #harpseal slaughter "This was my eye opening experience of institutionalised animal abuse"
- Witnessing seal culling in Canada in 1974
- National Geographic asking photographers to damage Beaver habitats to get a good story
- Brian Davies' book "Savage Luxury"
- Cultural/traditional/religious justifications for causing harm...
...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info.
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