107: "The Weight of Empathy" - author Lucas Spiegel - Sentientism

Lucas studied and practiced architecture in the U.S., Canada, and India before leaving it all behind in an effort to rethink what it is to live a meaningful life. Since then he's traveled the world, started a philanthropic enterprise, Haven Hearts, and written a beautiful, compassionate book. Along the way he enjoys playing frisbee, making things with his hands, and befriending every dog who crosses his path.

He is the author of The Weight of Empathy, a travel memoir. Lucas describes it as an exploration of both our relationship with animals and his own personal process of learning how to be a compassionate person in an often violent and uncaring world.

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:

00:00 Welcome

01:15 Lucas' Intro - author & social enterprise entrepreneur

- Architecture, travelling, volunteering, writing "The Weight of Empathy", benefitting the world

03:28 What's Real?

- Non-religious parents, "recovering Catholic" mother, father from a Jewish family

- Raised as a child on a "hippy" commune

- "From the moment I knew the word I probably identified as an atheist", but not anti-theist

- Some "woo-woo" spirituality. Tarot cards, divination, magic

- Open minded, rational, scientific way of thinking

- Experimenting w/levitation & telekinesis "It was not very successful"

- Religious inspiration in art/culture. Community & separation

- Where people turn to for explanations of the unexplainable

- Alan Watts & Daoism

- Hallucinogenics & mushrooms

- A "hybrid rationalist spiritual view"

- Carl Sagan

- "There's an inherent quality in matter... that is self-organising"

- From interstellar dust to stars to elements to life to sentience

- "Sentient beings are a way for the universe to observe itself"

- "Maybe if you took mushrooms you'd describe the same things in a different way"

- Teleology, fine tuning argument & the anthropic principle

- Multiple worlds

29:34 What & Who Matters?

- Sensitive, pacifistic tendencies

- Communism (Russian family history), justice, equality

- An affinity with non-human animals (dogs, cats & wild animal)

- Loving the family chickens, but eating them. "These were chickens I knew"

- Inventing a justifying narrative as a child that humans need to eat the meat of animals because "we're made of meat"

...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info.

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Thanks Graham.