The meat industry and its defenders promise ethical consumption and sustainable farming, but animal agriculture fuels ecological destruction, entrenches human supremacy, and masks cruelty with comforting myths. John Sanbonmatsu, philosopher and author of The Omnivore’s Deception, shatters the myths of “humane meat” and the 'naturalness' of eating meat, and explains why abolishing the animal economy is essential to living an ethical human life. Highlights include:
- Why growing up as the child of a Jewish mother and Japanese-American father in the U.S. sensitized John to bullying and injustice - against both human and nonhuman animals;
- Why the origins of human domination over animals are rooted in patriarchy and an ancient human estrangement from animals, and reinforced today by a toxic nexus of masculinity, human supremacy, neoliberal capitalism, and pronatalism;
- Why focusing only on factory farming misses the fundamental problem of human domination of animals and the planet - and how books like Michael Pollan's The Omnivore’s Dilemma and the new American pastoral ethos perpetuate myths of so-called ethical meat while attacking the animal rights movement;
- Why justifying meat-eating as “natural” is ethically bankrupt - on par with past appeals to nature to justify slavery or denying women’s rights - and how vegans and vegetarians provoke defensive ridicule because they reveal uncomfortable truths;
- Why the flood of scientific studies on animal cognition and emotion hasn’t changed behavior - and how cultural fascination with AI and plant consciousness distracts from our brutal treatment of fully sentient animals;
- Why bad faith - our self-deception about how we treat animals - is the most destructive force preventing moral progress, and why what we’re doing to animals deserves to be called 'evil';
- How empathy, an evolved trait we share with animals and desperately need to nurture, is being eroded by increasing social disconnection and anti-empathy tech bro ideologies;
- Why lab meat, also known as 'clean meat', is not the solution to speciesism and human supremacism and consuming our way to animal liberation is a delusion;
- Why the animal rights movement is being undermined by the money pouring into utilitarian effective altruism and “realistic” approaches - when true compassion demands not animal welfarism, but the abolition of animal exploitation and a direct challenge to the entrenched power structures that prevent moral progress.
See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript:
https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/john-sanbonmatsu
OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance
OVERSHOOT tackles today’s interlocked social and ecological crises driven by humanity’s excessive population and consumption. The podcast explores needed narrative, behavioral, and system shifts for recreating human life in balance with all life on Earth. With expert guests from wide-ranging disciplines, we examine the forces underlying overshoot: from patriarchal pronatalism that is fueling overpopulation, to growth-biased economic systems that lead to consumerism and social injustice, to the dominant worldview of human supremacy that subjugates animals and nature. Our vision of shrinking toward abundance inspires us to seek pathways of transformation that go beyond technological fixes toward a new humanity that honors our interconnectedness with all beings.
Hosted by Nandita Bajaj and Alan Ware. Brought to you by Population Balance.
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