44: "There is suffering - end it!" - Actress Victoria Hogan - Sentientist Conversation

Victoria (https://www.victoria-hogan.com/ & https://twitter.com/incertaspecie) is an actress, film producer, writer, voiceover artist and animal activist. She has appeared in Netflix's "Haunted", the Comedy Central show "Nathan for You", in various theatre productions & in the video game "Kingdom Come: Delieverance". Victoria is an animal rights activist. She co-founded the production company Quantum Kitten. Look out for Victoria's new Cosmic Creature app (https://www.victoria-hogan.com/cosmic-creature.

In these 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 (subscribe!) https://youtu.be/VKhii84yh5E.

We discuss:

- Victoria's life in the performing arts & animal activism

- Holding the concept of reality lightly

- Our own experience as central to our reality

- We're not fully conscious of much that we do

- Growing up Christian. Believing in god, praying

- Ditching religion at 10-11 yrs

- Being an angry, anti-Christian atheist in early teens

- Rejecting the homophobia & freedom restrictions of Christianity

- Exploring spirituality, Wicca, Buddhism, Hinduism and holding them all as loosely true or real

- Re-visiting some Christian concepts and finding it less troubling, while still rejecting where it conflicts with equality

- The risks of solipsism. Giving up on knowing

- Being sceptical even of our own perceptions and rationality

- Can people have separate personal "truths" and still understand each other and collaborate?

- The path from formal religion to "angry atheism" to a broader spirituality or a more humble naturalism

- Is there "A divine source we are working our way towards"?

- Does a broader spirituality warp compassionate ethics less than the idea of god as a being?

- The role of intuition

- "Most people I encounter are kind"

- The bizarre admission of: "Without religion - what's stopping us from looting and murdering?"

- "Is religion really all that keeps you from murdering?"

- How much wrong comes from ignorance rather than intention (e.g. animal farming)

- Most religious people are more compassionate than their gods or religious books. Which is why most don't follow the books

- Maybe religion doesn't influence ethics that much for good or ill

- Grounding morality in the experiences of others (or something else)?

- Having a very intense, ineffable psychedelic experience using DMT: The universe is relatively indifferent. Nature is sometimes cruel and sometimes kind. The universe values creation (e.g. having a child). The universe wants to exist. Suffering leads to destruction. Nurturing leads to life, flourishing and new creation

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

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

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Thanks, Graham for the post-production: https://twitter.com/cgbessellieu.