"Your Neighbour Kills Puppies" - Tom Harris - Activist, Artist & Author - Sentientism Ep:190
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- Опубліковано 3 лип 2024
- Tom is an internationally acclaimed artist, published author, and social justice activist. He is an expert and consultant on animal liberation history and strategy, and the global animal rights movement. His first book, Your Neighbour Kills Puppies was released in March 2024. The book is the previously untold story of one of the world’s most powerful social justice campaigns, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC). Tom became involved in the animal liberation movement at the age of fifteen when he attended his first hunt sab. Over the years that followed he devoted his life to helping animals and co-founded one of the UK`s most successful regional animal rights organizations, SARC (The Southern Animal Rights Coalition). Tom is a regular contributor to Forca Vegan magazine, and other periodicals. Under the professional name ‘Tattoo Tom‘, Tom has also achieved a highly successful and acclaimed career as an artist.
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 audio is on our Podcast: apple.co/391khQO & anchor.fm/sentientism.
00:00 Clips!
00:49 Welcome
- Nicola Harris and Anita Krajnc episode @PlantBasedTreaty : • “This is a critical de...
03:18 Tom's Intro
- 20 years in the #animalliberation movement
- Founding the Southern Animal Rights Coalition
- Closing a military research facility, a puppy farm, several chicken units
- Getting fur and foie gras out of shops
- #SHAC (Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty) co-ordinators "the largest and most dynamic grass-roots animal liberation campaign"
- "The model we came up with was so effective... that the American and British governments were both really terrified... while I don't think any of us necessarily set out to create a blueprint that could end capitalism... I think we probably came dangerously close"
- "The government in the UK essentially framed us and set us up on bogus blackmail charges... I received a 5 year prison sentence for... a lawful campaign... I served 2 years."
- 3 years on bail before-hand and 2.5 years on license afterwards with a tag "which was probably the toughest bit... I wasn't allowed to talk to my brother... a constant threat that they were going to send me back to prison."
- Since release, finding a very different animal liberation world
- Lord Sainsbury's intention "to eliminate the anti-vivisection movement... he succeeded for a good decade"
- "The movement I knew didn't exist... new groups like the Save Movement, Animal Rebellion, DxE... started forming"
- Taking up tattoo artistry because "I was essentially banned from talking to any other activist... any other vegan... all of my friends I wasn't allowed to talk to them"
- "Stabbing people for money" :)
10:10 What's Real?
- "I actually dropped out of a philosophy degree to do more animal rights activism"
- Growing up in a non-religious family, probably atheists
- Christian grandparents "it was good for them... I saw the positives"
- Cartographer dad, psychologist mum, quite analytical / logical focus
- "I didn't learn when to stop following that logical path"
- "I was raised to be kind to animals and respect nature... to value life"
- "For me if I'm respecting and valuing life then I have to respect and value all life"
- Cognitive dissonance
- "God... angels and demons... fairies and ghosts... It seems unlikely... but I'm not going to go as hard as to say it's impossible"
- 9 years old, visiting a farm shop with a petting zoo and an abbattoir "there were just these skinned pigs everywhere... 31 years later I still vividly recall... my two favourite animals in the petting zoo were pigs... I immediately made that connection... something in me... broke... I declared to my family I wasn't going to eat meat any more"
- "It wasn't just this dietary change... I started questioning what I was being told on quite a deep and profound level... I didn't trust authority... my parents... anything I'd been told"
- Getting in trouble at school "generally doing things I thought were right"
- "It changed my entire worldview... it's impacted everything since... I have to do something"
- "I feel almost burdened with this knowledge... because a lot of other people don't know or don't care"
- Misinformation, disinformation and conspiracism. Are vegans particularly susceptible?
26:13 What and Who Matters?
01:04:53 A Better Future?
01:45:00 Follow Tom
- tomharris.me/
- shacjustice.com/
- / tattoo_tom
& much more... (sentientism.info for full notes)#sentientism
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28:11
🫂 💜 thank you for mentioning / acknowledging their dire struggle for survival
3:39
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Wow......this may be your longest upload to date to Sentientism 👍
I think it might be! Definitely worth it though... Thanks as ever for watching and sharing your thoughts Louis
Best UA-cam channel ever :]
Thank you! I'm sure, soon, billions of others will come to agree with you... thereby nudging humanity's default worldview towards Sentientism's "evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings" and so solving all the world's problems :)
Not sure where to begin with this one. Usually, I listen to the podcasts, but as I listened to this one, I felt I had better listen and watch on YT… I have watched it twice! And am on chapter one of his book. What a wise, profound, brave and extraordinary person. I agree whole heartedly with all of the sentiments / reflections discussed here. And the thought that it does not matter what system we create, we are now too many to make any system work, I have often thought this to be true. Not to mention that humans have an uncanny ability to destroy or somehow corrupt good ideas and intentions. Never the less, I certainly will not give up on speaking for non-human animals. I also appreciated the part about even vegans feeling superior to other animals, without really realizing it. And the part about the madness of the institutions that we live by (capitalism, etc)… I shouldn’t even get started on that. I can only say that I feel it to be an absolute truth, that the human world we have created is 100% mad on the whole. The question of wildlife and animal rights vs freedom: so well expressed!!! As was the reflection on whether or not humans should nosy their way into the world of the wild. Again, his answer was superb: small acts of help and kindness make sense, but anything beyond that, let’s be more humble, etc. Thank you so much for this discussion! It makes me feel less alone in my thoughts. :)
Thank you Erika. Glad you enjoyed our discussion. Tom is awesome. All too rare bravery in pursuit of doing the right thing.
1:16:50
Zzzzzzzzzzzactly, Jaime! I've been arguing this for years
1) Liberation activists are the heroes. They perceive the dire urgency and act at their own risk. Rights- (legal) focussed, or welfare-focussed reformers are necessary too, but their efforts are frustratingly slow and unobserved, even though liberation is their end goal too.
2) Tom is right about population and capitalism - but take a deep look at bitcoin. It solves some of the worst problems of crony currencies and debt-based capitalism. I could go on and on... It's just better money. Sentientism and bitcoin fit together well, especially for those who have an anarchic bent, like Tom.
3) Went back to ep. 157 - ua-cam.com/video/Obs1Zv1jP6w/v-deo.html - seen it - good one!
The sound quality on podcast apps is noticeably lower. Are you able to fix it?
Sorry about that. Was it on Tom’s audio, mine or both?
57:52
I agree that it's a moral imperative.......but unfortunately Tom seems to conflate moral imperative with moral obligation or duty.
The two are definitely NOT the same.
The only moral obligation we have that makes any sense whatsoever is the choose to not be complicit in the preventable, intentional, needless exploitation or harming of innocent sentient individuals.
55:42
Zzzzzzzzzzzactly
1:38:00 - Yes, capitalism is a "failed experiment".
To my mind, humanity, in its current configuration, is a failed ecological/evolutionary experiment.
But by all means - keep trying to fix it !