Our First IRL Sentientism Meetup!
Plus Sentientist Education and Some Other Updates
If you’re in range of London on the 27th July come and join our first in person meetup, a picnic in Regent’s Park. As with all of our communities and events it’s open to anyone interested in the Sentientism worldview whether you agree with it or not. You can find the details here on Eventbrite. Many thanks to Michael for organising this!
On the theme of local groups we now have two more, Sentientism England on Facebook (thanks Michael) and Sentientism London on WhatsApp (thanks Patrick). Why not set up your own for your city or country? I’d love to help so get in touch!
While I’ve got you, here are a few general updates on other Sentientism related stuff:
I had the pleasure of being a guest on the new Changed My Mind podcast. I’m a little daunted to be on their amazing guestlist which includes Rutger Bregman, Peter Singer and other luminaries. Make sure you subscribe and work through their back catalogue too
I’ve started writing a book (yes, about worldviews and particularly Sentientism) with help from the wonderful people at Worldshapers. If you’re interested in reading any of the rough early chapters let me know
I ran a workshop at the recent AI, Animals and Digital Minds conference organised by AI for Animals about how it’s important for humans and AIs to have worldviews with good epistemologies and moral scopes (ahem, Sentientism?) if we want things to go well for sentientkind. Let me know if you’d like a copy of the slides
We’ve run some very productive sessions about the Sentientism worldview for the Humanists UK school speakers network and for their dialogue network (people who engage in inter-faith / inter-worldview events)
There’s a growing backlog of Sentientism podcast / YouTube episodes for you to look out for, including conversations with Jeff Sebo (#2), Seb Alex, Elizabeth MeLampy, Steven Rouk, Michelle St. John and Heather Marshall, Tom Cledwyn, Keith Frankish, Joan Slonczewski, David Clough, Isabella La Rocca Gonzalez, Winnie Street and I hopefully have Stacy Banwell, John Sanbonmatsu (#2) and Melanie Challenger lining up too! As ever my guests deserve a much bigger audience than I can give them so please help share your favourite episodes around
Should you make changing your mind your worldview? (with Jamie Woodhouse)
Jamie Woodhouse is the leading advocate of Sentientism, a worldview that's about: (1) Using naturalistic evidence and…podcasts.apple.com
And here are some more updates on the Sentientism education front:
VINE have launched a new “Understanding Veganism as a Worldview” pack for religious education teachers. Watch out for our upcoming Sentientism episode with the author, Heather Marshall and VINE founder Michelle St. John
In July I’m presenting Sentientism to the organisation, WASACRE, that oversees religious education curriculums in Wales
I’m continuing to work with religious education and religions and worldviews teachers, running sessions for networks from the North East of England, Gateshead, Wiltshire, South Wales and Tower Hamlets & Hackney. I’ve also presented at a recent Church of England RE teacher conference (with some lovely feedback ❤) and another in Hull. I’ve worked with hundreds of different teachers now and its exciting to see some of them bringing Sentientism’s themes into their classrooms
We’re running more school visits on Sentientism, including an assembly for 10 year olds (with support from Luna the puppy who went down very well), two workshops on non-human ethics with 17 year olds, a session for 14–16 year olds on how Sentientists think about euthanasia and another for 12 year olds about death. If you’d like to help with this work, wherever you are the world, please let me know. We already have a small group of volunteers building!
As ever, feedback, ideas, questions, challenges and offers of help are all welcome. Don’t hesitate to get in touch by replying to this email or by finding us @Sentientism or in any of our online groups.