Welcome to the sixth episode of Season Two of Wisdom for Wellbeing Podcast. On this episode I interview Peter Singer, Philosopher, Author, and Professor of Bioethics.

Professor Peter Singer has been titled the world’s most influential living philosopher. Peter’s work influences solutions in areas of global poverty as well as the question of animal liberation. He has influenced hundreds of thousands of individuals to make changes in how we’re showing up in our own lives, how we’re showing up to live the values that we so wish to embody and really move us forward in this creation of a meaningful life. In the interview with Peter today, you’ll see the crossover with the conversation of values and living in alignment which so often shows up in these episodes, around that theme of values-based, mindful, aware-living. He also talks us through utilitarianism and how there was a bit of an evolutionary approach to us looking within a smaller community or circle first, but that we have this capacity to expand our awareness. And in fact, he talks us through why in a very logical framework. It is the ethically most sound action we can take in supporting other beings, both those who are suffering extreme poverty and those who may not be the same species of ourselves.

Want to keep in touch? Head to @drkaitlin on Instagram or @wisdomforwellbeingpod on Facebook to connect.

What is covered in this episode:

>>Utilitarianism is one approach to ethics that supports the idea that we should act in ways that have the best consequences, which includes all affected by it. Judging by what is best, utilitarians follow wellbeing as the standard, where happiness is maximised and misery and suffering is minimised.

>Prof. Peter Singer retells the story of how unacceptable it would be if a child was drowning in a pond and someone hesitated to save the child’s life because they were wearing an expensive pair of shoes. He goes on to explain the dissonance the some people experience when they spend money on luxurious items instead of donating to children in need.

>>Studies have shown that if you show people a face, name, and some identifying details about a child who needs your help, they’re more likely to help than if solely statistics are given about how many children are in need.

>>Giving back is also beneficial for our own wellbeing and fulfilment. There is psychological research showing that people who are generous and support charitable causes are actually happier and satisfied with their lives.

>>Factory farming treats animals as if they aren’t sentient beings and their primary role is for profit.

>>Rationality, language, and moral agency are not characteristics that determine whether suffering matters or not.

>>Having a plant-based diet is better for animals, the environment, and for personal well-being.

Links Discussed

• www.thelifeyoucansave.org or www.thelifeyoucansave.org.au if you live in Australia
• You can buy tickets to: An Evening with Peter Singer
• Take Professor Peter Singer’s course on Effective Altruism on Coursera
• @PeterSinger on Twitter
• www.petersinger.info

You’ll find a copy of the Episode Transcript below.

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Professor Peter Singer

Peter Singer was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1946, and educated at the University of Melbourne and the University of Oxford. After teaching in England, the United States and Australia, he has, since 1999, been Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. He first became well-known internationally after the publication of Animal Liberation in 1975. In 2011 Time included Animal Liberation on its “All-TIME” list of the 100 best nonfiction books published in English since the magazine began, in 1923. has written, co-authored, edited or co-edited more than 50 book which have been translated into more than 30 languages. His books include Practical Ethics; The Expanding Circle; How Are We to Live?, Rethinking Life and Death, Ethics in the Real World and, most recently, Why Vegan?.

Singer’s book The Life You Can Save, first published in 2009, led him to found a non-profit organization of the same name which has raised more than US$35 million for the most effective charities assisting people in extreme poverty. In 2012 he was made a Companion of the Order of Australia, the nation’s highest civic honour.

Photo by Alletta Vaandering

Transcript

Peter Singer: Isn’t it, even if it feels psychologically different, isn’t it really equally wrong to not help a child who will die because instead you spend money on let’s say expensive pairs of shoes or whatever else your particular personal luxuries might be, isn’t that just as wrong when you know that the money you’re spending for that sort of luxury item could have saved a child’s life somewhere in the world?

Intro: You’re listening to the Wisdom for Wellbeing Podcast, the show that blends science and heart to bring you evidence-based tips and tricks for cultivating a healthy wealthy and meaningful life. Now, here’s your host therapist, Yogi, and fellow full life balancer, Dr Kaitlin Harkess.

Kaitlin Harkess: Hi there, and welcome back to Wisdom for Wellbeing. I am absolutely delighted to be sitting down with Professor Peter Singer today. Professor Singer has been titled the world’s most influential living philosopher and indeed he is. My first encounter with Peter’s work was back when I was studying Philosophy as an undergrad. And for those of you who might not know my my journey was from Philosophy to Yoga and from there to Psychology. With the Philosophy, I found it really interesting to question, you know, what was the meaning of life and how should we live? But often it was the Eastern philosophies that drew me more in because then there was exploration of indeed how we actually practice and show up in our lives. And this is where Peter’s work I think is incredible because he looks at ethics, he explores how we live and then he actually practices what he’s exploring and uncovering and this is really something we might call Applied Ethics. So for those of you who are just getting to know the amazing work and Peter indeed himself, Peter Singer was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1946 and educated at the University of Melbourne and the University of Oxford. After teaching in England, the United States, and Australia he has since 1999 been Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. He first became well-known internationally after the publication of Animal Liberation, which was in 1975. In 2011 Time included Animal Liberation on its all-time list of the top 100 best non-fiction books published in English since the magazine had began in 1923. He’s written, co-authored, edited, or co-edited more than 50 books which have been translated into more than 30 languages and his books include Practical Ethics, The Expanding Circle, How Are We to Live? Rethinking Life and Death, Ethics in the Real World, and most recently Why Vegan? Peter’s book, The Life You Can Save was first published in 2009 and that led him to found a nonprofit organization of the same name which has raised more than 35 million U.S. Dollars for the most effective charities assisting people in extreme poverty. Not surprising in 2012, he was made a Companion of the Order of Australia, which is the nation’s highest civic honour. Peter’s work really really influences and particularly in the areas of global poverty and the question of animal liberation and how we ought to treat animals, I think has influenced hundreds of thousands of individuals to make changes as to how we’re showing up in our own lives, how we’re showing up to live the values that we so wish to embody and really move us forward in this creation of a meaningful life. And in fact in the interview with Peter today, you’ll definitely see the crossover with the conversation of values and living in alignment which so often shows up in these episodes, you know around that theme of values-based, mindful, aware-living. He also talks us through utilitarianism and how there was a bit of an evolutionary approach to us looking within a smaller community or circle first, but that we have this capacity to expand our awareness. And in fact, he talks us through why in a very logical framework. It is the ethically most sound action we can take in supporting other beings, both those who are suffering extreme poverty and those who may not be the same species of ourselves. So since I cannot say any of this any more eloquently than Peter will himself, let me introduce you to him.

Kaitlin Harkess: Peter, welcome to Wisdom for Wellbeing, I am delighted to be with you here today. So thank you so much for making this space as you settle back into into Australia, and to Melbourne, having made your way here. I know fairly recently from the United States.

Peter Singer: Oh, not that recently actually. I’ve been here a while. So I’m quite settled.

Kaitlin Harkess: Oh well fantastic. Well, it’s wonderful to be with you here today.

Peter Singer: Yeah, good to be with you Kaitlin.

Kaitlin Harkess: And I guess just to get things started, so listeners know a little bit about you and you know, this title that you have of the most influential living philosopher. I’m wondering if you could provide us a little bit of a background as to what sort of brought you on this journey to the amazing work that you’re doing today to ultimately change our world? You know taking philosophy and making it really practical and applied.

Peter Singer: Well there are many twists in that story I guess and I can think back to many, you know, more or less accidents that took me to where I am. When I went up to University, which was the University of Melbourne, and I was grew up in Melbourne. I was going to study law and become a lawyer like my older sister, but I had an advisor who talked to me, I guess talked to all of the people enrolling and he pointed out that I’d done well in several of the humanities subjects in history and literature and so on. He said you might find Law a little bit dry. Why don’t you combine it with an arts degree? So I said fine. Yeah, let’s do that. It’s not that much longer and might be more interesting. And in terms of the Arts degree, I’d always liked history but my sister who has I mentioned was quite a bit older than me had a boyfriend who done some philosophy and I talked to him about that. There was no philosophy taught in high schools then. But it sounded sounded interesting so I decided to do some philosophy as well and I got more and more interested in the philosophy. I ended up not completing the law degree, but getting a scholarship to go to Oxford to study philosophy at a higher level and even then, you know, I was interested in Ethics and I was interested in ethical questions and I suppose I’ve been active on ethical issues like the Vietnam War when I was an undergraduate and also the abortion question, I’ve been a member of the Abortion Law Reform Association, but I still wouldn’t say that I was on a mission to change the world until again more or less by accident, I started talking to one of my fellow Oxford students who was a vegetarian that came up because we were having lunch together. And again, you have to think back 50 years now and it was very rare to meet a vegetarian. I don’t think I’d had a conversation with a vegetarian from a western background, maybe I’d had one with an Indian or you know, perhaps there’s someone who’s a complete pacifist against all killing but but Richard Cashen, the student I mentioned simply said he didn’t think that animals that it was right to treat animals the way the animal that I was then eating had been treated and I said, oh why not? You know don’t they have good lives out in the fields before they get killed? And he said well no, a lot of them are brought indoors now and you know, basically very crowded in big sheds and I didn’t know any about any of that and I looked into it and it did seem really indefensible to given that we didn’t need to eat animals that we weren’t going to die or starve without eating animals. To give them miserable lives just so that we can eat them did seem wrong and that’s got me exploring, what is the moral status of animals? Why is it that we say all humans are equal but of course, we exclude animals from that sphere of equality? And so that got me eventually, took a few years still to writing Animal Liberation, but also to thinking about the role of Ethics in my own life because obviously I changed what I was eating and so there was a major change brought about by ethics in my own life and I’d always been concerned, well not always, but for years been concerned about global poverty photos of starving children during famines and thought we ought to be doing more about this so that then struck me as another area that I really ought to reassess what I was doing which was not giving anything very significant to organizations that were trying to stop global poverty. So I started looking at organizations that we’re doing that and decided to give 10% of my income at that point which wasn’t very much because I was on a student scholarship to initially I started with Oxfam and that went on from there. So then I had two important causes that I did want to change the world about the way we treat animals and the way we think about animals and the way people in affluent societies failed to very much for people in extreme poverty.

Kaitlin Harkess: I think that this is going to be such an interesting conversation because what comes up on this podcast a lot, what listeners would have no doubt kind of been following along theme-wise is this I guess notion and the psychological benefit that actually comes when we live our life in accordance with our values and our most deeply held beliefs and you flagged that you know, you were sitting there with this animal on your plate and that it had been highlighted maybe the animal hadn’t led quite the life that you thought and you started investigating and going actually this isn’t something that aligns with me that you know is something I wish to continue doing in alignment with my deeply held values and then similarly looking at these images of children starving in different nations and going why aren’t we doing more? This doesn’t seem like it’s something that aligns with my heart and who I want to be showing up as. So I think this is going to be a really interesting point to explore. However, you are also our first Philosopher on this podcast. So I’m wondering if we could also maybe introduce a couple of concepts that I think will be really relevant to the conversation today and specifically utilitarianism and what that means.

Peter Singer: Sure, so utilitarianism is one approach to ethics, not the only one but one that has been around for quite a long time. It’s usually traced back to Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th and early 19th century and a school of thought that formed around him of which probably John Stuart Mill is the best-known example. And and the view that Bentham took and that utilitarianism broadly takes is that we should do what we’ll have the best consequences. The right thing to do is the thing that will have the best consequences and that means best for all affected by it. And when judging what is best, the utilitarians take well-being as their standard, they use the term happiness and pleasure, another term that’s used in this context. So you could say that the utilitarian view is that the right action is the one that maximizes happiness and minimizes misery or suffering and that’s a guide to how we ought to act and how we ought to live.

Kaitlin Harkess: That makes sense. Again, so this idea that we look broadly and go while we want to maximize happiness minimize suffering and that determines our actions. It sounds fairly clear. But something seems to get in the way of us humans doing that all the time. I don’t know where we should start whether we start with poverty or animal rights, perhaps perhaps we start with poverty and kind of what gets in the way of saving lives of children and people who are suffering and we know are suffering extremely but may not be in our community, in our realms.

Peter Singer: Exactly. I think the fact that it’s outside our community and depending on what you mean by community. If you mean like your whole country, then I think much smaller groups also are important. So I think it’s beyond our family and our friends and those we associate with and my explanation of the problem here is that we have evolved over millions of years really because I think this was true of ancestors before Homosapiens emerged as a species. We have evolved to defend our close kin, to defend ourselves obviously, to try to make sure that we survive, to make sure that our offspring survive, and to have concern for our close kin and perhaps for some friends with whom we’re in mutually beneficial reciprocal relationships. And those are strong influences in us and obviously they helped us to survive and if we hadn’t done that, we would you know, our descendants wouldn’t would not be around or if our ancestors hadn’t done that. We would not be around. But now we live in a world in which we have the capacity to act at a distance, to help anybody anywhere in the world and we haven’t evolved to be so impartial and in particular we haven’t evolved to be concerned for individuals who we don’t identify. So a lot of studies have shown that if you give even if somebody is far away if you show people a face and give them a name and some identifying details about this child who needs your help. They’re more likely to help then if you just say look, here’s the statistics about how many children there are in need. And this organization will help some of them if you donate to it. That doesn’t work as well. And I think it doesn’t work as well because we haven’t evolved to help near statistical children if you like. We’ve only evolved to help children who in some way we can relate to as individuals and particularly those who can relate to as being like us and close to us.

Kaitlin Harkess: So there’s an evolutionary component to perhaps our minds’ capacity to understand or to really more deeply empathize with what’s going on, to hold that space and and yet if these these children were in front of us, it would be such presumably a different experience than when we might be reading about statistics or numbers and you’ve very cleverly have devi- devised a number of scenarios that may be called to attention some of the dissonance, you know, the the ways we might relate to others differently than to when someone’s in front of us and I’m wondering if for demonstrative purposes you might be willing to share the story of a child drowning and an expensive pair of shoes that we might be wearing.

Peter Singer: Sure happy to retell that story, it’s one I’ve talked quite often because I wrote about it in the 1970s in one of my early articles on this topic, so I ask you, the listener, to imagine that you’re walking across a park and in this park, there’s a shallow pond, you know the pond quite well. In summer you see teenagers playing in it to cool off and you know that they can stand, it’s only about waist deep to an adult but it’s not summer now. You don’t expect to see anybody in the pond, but you’re attracted, your line of vision is attracted by something moving in the pond and you have a look, what is this? And you see it’s a small child, too small to stand in the shallow pond who somehow has fallen in and seems to be in great danger of drowning. So I suppose your first reaction would be to say where’s the parent or the babysitter of this child? This child is too small to be alone in a park, must be somebody looking after it but you look around and you can’t see anyone. You have no idea what’s happened. How the child got there, but there’s only you and the child and so your next thought is well. This child is in danger of drowning. Maybe I better run down jump into the pond and pull a child out but then you have a less noble thought which is I’ve just put on some really expensive shoes today. My favorite ones, it would be costly to replace and they’ll get ruined if I jump into a muddy pond with them and I probably wouldn’t have time really to get rid of them. So do I really have to do this? Would it be okay if I just walk on? Forget about the child, after all it’s it’s not my child. Nobody even asked me to look after the child. So why don’t I just forget about it? And you know, when I tell that story to audiences I asked them whether whether they think that would be okay and overwhelmingly, of course they say no. That would definitely not be okay. That would be a terrible thing to do. How could anybody think that a pair of shoes no matter how expensive they might be is to be valued above the life of a child? You have to be a monster to walk past that child. And of course, you know, I agree with that. I hope that’s that’s the way all of you will have reacted. But if you do react that way there is a bit of a sting and the sting is okay. So you’re not walking past a drowning child in the pond. But right now there are children who are dying from preventable causes in low-income countries. It may be that they don’t have safe drinking water. It may be that they get malaria from mosquitoes because they don’t sleep under bednets. Maybe a whole lot of different poverty-related reasons that we actually know very well how to prevent and there’re organizations, effective nonprofit organizations that are working to prevent them, but they simply don’t have the resources to save everybody at the moment. But if you gave them some money maybe not that much more than the cost of your most expensive pair of shoes, they probably would be able to save another life or you know put that together with someone else’s donation and it would save another life. So if you really think it would be monstrous to walk past the child you see in front of you in the pond, isn’t it, even if it feels psychologically different, isn’t it really equally wrong to not help a child who will die because instead you spend money on let’s say expensive pairs of shoes or whatever else your particular personal luxuries might be. Isn’t that just as wrong when you know that the money you’re spending for that sort of luxury item could have saved a child’s life somewhere in the world?

Kaitlin Harkess: It’s a really beautiful story in the sense of how much emotion I think it evokes, you know, and then putting it together with this notion of the fact that we can save lives. All of us can save lives every day. And you said effective charities there. Would you mind just defining for us what an effective organization or charity is? Because this links then to not only your book The Life You Can Save, but of course the not-for-profit.

Peter Singer: Hmm, definitely. So and that’s interesting that you picked up on that word because when I first wrote about this as I say in the 1970s, I didn’t particularly focus on the effectiveness of the nonprofits that you might donate to. Partly I guess I just wasn’t tuned into that. But also there wasn’t the research that has been done more recently to indicate which are the most effective nonprofits working to save lives or improve the lives of people in low-income countries. But over the last dozen or so years, the effective altruism movement has sprung up and its concern to do exactly that, it’s concern to provide people with information about how they can be most effective in improving the world and there’s a lot of good information out there and you mentioned the organization that I founded that spun off the book I wrote called the Life You Can Save and if you go to the lifeyoucansave.org or .org.au if you’re in Australia, you will find a list of recommended charities that have been examined, scrutinized in various ways to rigorously assess that they are highly effective in saving lives, cases doing things like restoring sight, improving the lives, helping people to start small businesses and get out of poverty. Basically improving the lives of people who are in extreme poverty or saving their lives or the lives of their children.

Kaitlin Harkess: Listeners, I’ll put links to the to thelifeyoucansave.org and .au in the show notes so you can easily get on there. And when you go to the Life You Can Save, you can also access your book The Life You Can Save which is an incredible resource. So whether it’s you know via an electronic format that listeners can read on their Kindle or Kobo or iPad but also an audiobook opportunity where people can actually then, you know, when you’re travelling or doing the dishes can actually listen to this wisdom around how we can show up in our lives to really live the compassion that we might align with so deeply in our heart. It’s really useful in terms of guidance and I think listeners now who are going, oh wow, like I really I would save that child. I want to save that child and you know, one pair of shoes no worries. But how do I balance this in then continuing to lead the life that I’m living? You examine some of those questions around how we might balance, you know, the Western lifestyle to an extent and still show up in the way that we want to leave our legacy.

Peter Singer: Yes, thank you for mentioning all of that. I think you’re right, a lot of people will say okay, so I’m prepared to give the cost of a pair of shoes but one difference between the story of the child in the pond and the situation we’re in is that there isn’t just one child in need. In the child in the pond story, you can rescue that child, find the parents or babysitter wherever they are, hand over the child and and that’s it. In the real world, you can save one child’s life, but there are more children needing help. So there is a real question as to how far do I go? What’s the level that I that I do in terms of giving and helping? And of course people make their own individual decisions as to what they can do on that and the organization, The Life You Can Save is really just encouraging people to do something significant. Maybe to make a start at a fairly low level, I do suggest in the book levels that people might aim for at different income levels. So it’s a bit like one of those tax scales where the more you earn, the more you give and you know, I think the main thing to do is to get started and then say, okay. Well that wasn’t so difficult. Maybe I’ll do maybe I’ll do better next year. So I hope people will pick that up and go ahead with it.

Kaitlin Harkess: Yeah and listeners, I mean this can be like an action that you do for your everyday sort of when you finish the podcast or even now if you’re you know able to to multitask and you’re not driving maybe flicking over and start to have a look at some of those charities because there is a lot of research that also supports how giving impacts our well-being. It’s fantastic, you know, we are we are literally changing the world and making someone else’s life better. But what kind of nice side effect that will actually feel better for it as well. And I think that The Life You Can Save does also a beautiful job of kind of looking at different areas that we might feel passionately about and be able to look at charities that are operating in those areas too.

Peter Singer: Yes. Absolutely. I think there is a lot of psychological research showing that people who are generous and who support causes like the one we’re talking about actually are happier and more satisfied with their lives. The best example I have of that perhaps is Charlie Breslow who’s just stepped down at the beginning of this month as the Executive Director of The Life You Can Save after being the sort of founding person in terms of organisational. So I sort of founded it, but it was basically a website when he contacted me about it and said, you know, do you want to turn this into a real organisation? And I should say that Charlie was the volunteer Executive Director all of the years he did it. He never took a penny and in fact was a significant donor to the organization. But Charlie often tells people that the life that he saved, and he’s actually saved many lives through his work but the life that, the first life that he saved was his own, because what he was doing gave a purpose and fulfilment to his life that his career in business, although it earned him a reasonable amount of money, never gave him that fulfilment and that sense that he was living in accordance with his values.

Kaitlin Harkess: That’s really beautiful and that’s important for us to remember, you know, all of us as humans have have the days where things are more of a struggle and for some of us that can last for more extended periods and it maybe feels like we’re powerless to make changes in our lives and in a world that if we are sensitive, is no doubt experienced at times as growth suffering, but actually you can make a difference and being able to see how these dollar amounts actually translate to lives saved can perhaps start to provide that circle and and that lift that we need to then make different changes in our lives to improve our sense of well-being and purpose as well.

Peter Singer: Yeah, absolutely. I think that as I say there’s independent research by psychologists who have done various kinds of tests and experiments. It’s not just correlation. Some people might say well maybe people who are happy just give more but you know, if I give it won’t make me happier, but but there is some research in which for example one experiment people were given some money and half the people at random were chosen say here, you know his I tend to remember if it’s $20 or $50. I mean, you know, here’s some money go out and buy yourself something nice and the other half was were told here’s some money go and do some good for somebody, for somebody else.And then at the end of the day they came back they were questioning what they’d done and the ones who’d follow the instructions to do some good for someone else reported a more positive attitude to their day. You know, they had a more enjoyable worthwhile day than the ones who’d spent some spend it on themselves.

Kaitlin Harkess: That’s incredible. That causation the fact that even if we don’t think that it will so immediately impact our lives that actually the research indicates that it can. Now you mentioned psychologists and we as psychologists have a lot to answer for in terms of experiments done in past not on researching so much happiness and you know the benefits of generosity and caring but animal experiments in particular, which I know is across a number of fields, but psychology doesn’t does have a special special history and I say special perhaps in a more negative connotation. Your work extends to animals. You know, when we talk about consideration for individuals who are suffering in impoverished conditions and considering their welfare like we would our own and at the very least are luxuries kind of looking at how we can maybe rebalance some of the blessed opportunities we have in more wealthy nations. We don’t always then as easily make the jumps to looking at animal suffering. But you have made that jump and and you did when Richard kind of notice what was on your plate that day many years ago. Could you share with me a little bit about animal suffering and what inspired you to write Animal Liberation and and what you’ve learned and examined since then?

Peter Singer: Right well, as I said, you know the the first thing that I really learnt from from Richard was that animals are treated in ways that really treat them as if they didn’t have feelings, as if they were not sentient beings as if they were just machines and this was made clear for me. So I asked Richard a bit more and he said well, there’s a book that you ought to read and there was just A book about modern farming methods from an animal welfare perspective at that time. It was called Animal Machines and it was written by Ruth Harrison, an English woman, and I read that and it was very powerful and it was powerful because it wasn’t a strongly emotional book. It was a pretty factual book and the facts were drawn not from Ruth Harrison’s own observations, but from farming magazines essentially the industry magazines that were advising producers how to go about this then relatively new transformation of the farm if you can still call it that and what what would have been a farm with animals out on fields into a confinement industry, into factory farming and it was you know, it was very plain. I remember there was even a quote which said something like, you know treat the hen as a machine for producing eggs. You have to factor in the price of the food and any the price of the housing and then you get out the price of the eggs and that’s really what what matters and it even went as far as in one case a study showing so these hens are in small wire cages and the question arose, so here I have this cage which was a certain size. I think maybe that’s stage. They were measured in inches, 12 inches by 18 inches and the question was how many hens should I put in this cage? And so did a study and it turns out that if I think the issue is four or five hens, if you put five hens in the cage, more of them will die in the year or so that they’re in the cage, you know by which time their rate of laying drops off and they’re killed anyway. But more of them will die during that period because of the crowding but the article went on to say the death of those hens in no way outweighs the extra profits you will make because you get more eggs because you know, so you’ve got five hens in each in each of these little cages in this huge shed. And when you add all that up, even if a number of them died, you’re still going to make more money. And clearly that that was what it all depended on, the idea of looking after an individual animal had completely gone out the window. It just wasn’t profitable in this system and so as I said that just started me thinking about well, how should we treat animals? And I started thinking well, why is the boundary of species so important? Why does it make a difference that they’re not human beings? And I couldn’t really see that it did and on the contrary, it seemed to me that to some extent are thinking about other species was parallel to the thinking of the very worst kinds of racists, the let’s say that the Europeans who trade bought and traded slaves and sold them to the Americas in the Americas to their attitude to Africans that they had. This was a profitable thing for them to do. It was beneficial in a sense economically beneficial anyway to the plantation owners. And so they developed a whole ideology which we know of course think is completely racist and abhorrent to justify what they were doing. And I think we also have developed ideologies to justify the way we treat animals in some cases and this is another parallel with at least some of the slave traders, they appeal to the Bible to justify what they’re doing. So we appeal to this verse in which God gives us dominion over the animals and we interpret that as saying we can do whatever we like to them or we exaggerate the differences between them as the slave Traders exaggerated the differences between Africans and themselves or they claim it’s beneficial to the animals as well as the slave trader said it’s beneficial to the Africans to be brought in contact with Christian civilization. So I started to see this as an ideological thing really more than something based in reality and I thought you know if we look at animals objectively and honestly they do have interests, they can suffer, their lives can be miserable or they can be reasonably pleasant and yet we ignore that and we are not justified in ignoring it. The interests of animals in not feeling pain should count just as much as the interest of humans in not feeling pain if we’re talking about similar kinds of pain that we and they may feel.

Kaitlin Harkess: It’s interesting because you know, we would all probably accept that, you know our dogs and our cats can feel pain and have interest but it was interesting you mentioning for instance the chickens that were talked about in this book that you first read and when we you know, sit back and go. Oh, wow, that was a number of years ago that you were first exploring this topic and presumably the number of animals and living in factory farm conditions has only increased over these years. So there would be more and more animals experiencing suffering in conditions that we don’t find advertised you know in produce shops or you know on milk cartons or anything like that that there’s this real discrepancy between what is actually happening, what we probably have access to understanding does exist and what we’re sort of holding in the forefront of our minds when we make our decisions around food consumption.

Peter Singer: Well, you’re absolutely right that the number of hens in cages has increased. That’s partly due to the world’s population growth and partly due to the increased prosperity of countries in Asia, particularly China and that’s led to more demand for animal products. So the number of animals in factory farms has dramatically increased in China and other newly prosperous Asian countries. Yeah, so that’s true. And in that sense the situation is just worse and we’re talking about vast numbers. So the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation says that there’s 73 billion animals raised and killed for food each year. The majority of them would be factory farmed animals. So you’re talking about many times or 73 billion is almost 10 times the world’s population of humans being raised and killed every year. On the other hand it, you know, it’s not as if we haven’t made any progress, for example, here in Australia you walk into a supermarket and eggs are labelled now are either free range or what’s the term barn laid or eggs from caged hens and the animal movement in Australia, which I’ve been involved in worked very hard to get those labels to inform consumers at least and you know, so we have had a big increase in people choosing free-range and barn eggs over caged eggs, and that’s encouraging and that’s happened in other countries as well and some countries have banned the standard battery cage. We haven’t quite got to that point, but I hope we’re getting there. But the whole of the European Union for example has banned the standard battery caged hens can still be in cages, but they have to have more space than they do here and they have to have a nesting box to lay their eggs in which ethologists have shown is a basic instinct of hens that they want to lay their eggs in a sheltered, protected, private kind of place. So yeah, there’s been some progress but I have to admit that the numbers had way other the progress we’ve made and they in that sense it’s a worse world for animals than it used to be.

Kaitlin Harkess: Yeah, and you mentioned that we don’t have to eat animals to survive, you know, and that this isn’t necessarily a need for our survival and yet it’s something that perhaps the vast majority do. You know that meat is taking as something that is on the dinner plate and perhaps in Western countries on breakfast and lunch as well. And and that it’s not something we think as much about but yet if it was kind of again, this is a cultural bias in Western countries putting a dog on the dinner table, we would find it a abhorrent. So what do you think it is that maybe leads us down the path to considering the suffering of animals differentially because you mentioned suffering was a consideration. How do we how do we explore that or is that an example of dissonance? Where does that sort of sit?

Peter Singer: I think it would be an example of dissonance if we really thought about the animals we’re eating. And certainly if we thought about them in the way that we thought about companion animals, dogs or cats we live with so I think we escaped the dissonance to some extent by not eating the companion animals by saying that we’re horrified at the fact that people in China or Korea do eat dogs while you know, we continue to eat pigs and cows and chickens and we don’t really think about them. We know that a dog is an individual and it has a life of its own to lead or we wouldn’t do something to harm it, but we just don’t think about the the other animals that are there on mass and of course, we don’t have to see them very much now, sometimes we may see some cows but but the pigs are mostly indoors and the chickens are indoors. So we just see this big sheds and we probably drive past them without too much thought about who’s inside them and what’s going on in their lives.

Kaitlin Harkess: So again, it’s that being in our awareness in our attentional and visual perhaps in this case span. I guess quickly Peter, would you mind talking us through your argument around suffering? Because you actually you know, you talked about racism as being a really great example of how ideological arguments separate out how we might you know, in that case, treat individuals who look different than us, but there’s this species line that we’re drawing now when some of the arguments around why we have that that line drawn don’t necessarily hold up when you put them under scrutiny. So for example around cognitive capacity or you know, like even when we’re looking at like a young child or an infant perhaps their capacity of awareness is not even equatable to that of a pig.

Peter Singer: Right and of course, this is one of the things that people most commonly say when you refer to the fact that animals are sentient beings and that they’re capable of suffering. They will say well but they’re not rational beings or they might say they’re not moral agents or something of that sort. They don’t use language, but the question really is does that make a difference to how bad it is when they suffer? And one way of asking that question of illustrating is to say look as as you just mentioned, Kaitlin. There are there are some humans who also are not rational beings, not moral agents, don’t use language, and the largest of those beings is very young ones. So I know you told me earlier that you’re about to go on maternity leave. So you’re expecting a baby. I hope everything goes wonderfully well, but of course, you don’t expect your baby within the first week or month or six months really to be a particularly rational being or to have conversations with you about what he or she wants and you won’t treat that child as a moral agent for some years now probably in a full way. And yet we would all recognize that it would be really bad to allow that child to suffer in ways that you could prevent and we would think that that was a terrible thing to do and we punish people who do inflict, you know cruelty on their children or just neglect them in ways that make them suffer. So it can’t really be any of these characteristics: rationality, language, moral agency that determines whether suffering matters or not. It matters because of what it is and some of these other characteristics may affect the nature of the suffering, arguably the degree of intensity of the suffering, but but that animals can suffer in particularly that the vertebrates the birds and mammals we eat and fish too really are capable of suffering I think is is beyond reasonable doubt.

Kaitlin Harkess: Thank you and thank you for kind of clarifying that because there has been a move in recent years also towards veganism. So recognizing that for instance the dairy industry also causes suffering for animals and also the impact it has on climate change and I guess ecology as well. I know that you’ve started exploring that area a little bit more and we might not have the space to get into all of your wisdom today. But are there any sort of thoughts that you wanted to maybe leave listeners with as we do start to to kind of tie things a little bit together?

Peter Singer: Yeah absolutely. I I am encouraged by the movement towards vegan food. I don’t think it’s something that you have to be absolutely purest about as I said at the beginning as a utilitarian. I’m concerned about consequences, so I’m not fanatical about eliminating every possible trace of animal products from from when I eat and maybe there are some animals who aren’t capable of suffering and maybe oysters aren’t capable of suffering, that seems plausible from what I know about oysters. So, you know in that sense, maybe you don’t have to be strictly vegan if you happen to like oysters, but but I think moving to a plant-based diet is clearly a way of no longer being complicit in the suffering you inflict on animals. Plus, as you mentioned, it’s good for the planet. It will dramatically reduce your carbon footprint or your carbon equivalent footprint I should say because animals produce greenhouse gases, factory farming is an inefficient way of producing food. It’s much more efficient to eat the plant products directly. And so yeah, you’re you’re going to do the planet, the climate a favor as well as th animals and of course, I think as well as yourself. If you do move in the direction of a predominantly vegan diet.

Kaitlin Harkess: It’s about yourself I suppose we’re probably spending that more beyond just you know, feeling aligned with our values and that we’re living a life that it is, I guess directly demonstrating maybe compassion or kindness or equality things that we might hold but was that also referencing perhaps some of the health benefits I think the World Health Organization has recently made statement on plant-based diets being being more of a cognizant alternative.

Peter Singer: Absolutely. I think that I think to avoid some of the major diseases of civilization, people at least need to drastically reduce the consumption of animal product. I think the World Health Organization is particularly referred to red meats, but even the white meat I think cutting that cutting about that back is is important and particularly as chicken is such an intensively farm and factory farmed product, I think chickens really have miserable lives and I think there’s very good reasons for avoiding them too.

Kaitlin Harkess: Thank you. I think that’s an important note for us to be finishing up on that we can make change in our lives, kind of thinking of whether we need every pair of expensive shoes that is out there or need to have three lattes from the shop daily that maybe there’s a way that we can be investing some of our energies, our finances in charities that are effective, that are making a difference in the lives of individuals around the world and not just saving lives but as you said, you know, perhaps that opportunity to save our own life in terms of bringing a sense of purpose and meaning but also then looking at what we’re putting on our dinner plate in terms of Animal Welfare, our planet’s, our planet’s well-being and our own health. Peter you are giving a talk in a few locations around Australia and even in New Zealand, would you mind just sharing with listeners about the Think Ink event so that they can kind of flag it bookmark it, buy their tickets. I know I have. So what’s going on with this the special event coming up now in August?

Peter Singer: Yes. Thanks very much for the opportunity to mention that. It was going to be in April but because of Covid, the pandemic continuing, we have had to postpone it to August. It is a speaking tour entitled An Evening with Peter Singer, I’ll be talking but also be conversation and discussion in which the audience will get a chance to enter into and I’ll be speaking in Auckland, as you mentioned, and Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne and this is in August.

Kaitlin Harkess: I might just jump in and say online as well. So (ah yes), for those of you who are not based in.

Peter Singer: There is an online as well, that’s quite right. So the dates starting on August 7th in Auckland and then going to Sydney on the 11th and Brisbane on the 13th and back to Melbourne on Sunday the 15th of August. So depending where you are you can put those dates into your calendar and you can book tickets online by going to thinkinc.org.au/events/singer or you can just search for me on the website and the events will pop up. And I should say that all of the profits of this tour are going to The Life You Can Save, to the organisation we discussed which spun off my book and which will help people in extreme poverty. So if you’re thinking about that know that yes, there is a cost to go but it’s going to a good cause.

Kaitlin Harkess: Certainly an investment, an investment in feeling like we’ve got the information to make decisions in our lives that really lead us to leading meaningful lives in alignment with our hearts. Where else can listeners connect with you? Oh, there’s lots of ways they can connect I have a website PeterSinger.info dot i-n-f-o where I try and keep up to date posting events also posts my recent writings often with links where they can be found online. So that’s another good thing to do. And if you’re interested in effective altruism, which we talked about there is a free online course run by Coursera, c-o-u-r-s-e-r-a,on effective altruism again, you can search for me or for effective altruism on the website and we’ve had tens of thousands of people have take that course, had good reviews and you can learn more about effective altruism that way.

Kaitlin Harkess: Beautiful and I will put links to all of these websites to the Thinc Inc one, to Peter’s website, and to the Coursera in the show notes as well as to the lifeyoucansave.org and in Australia .org.au and also really put the reminder there to download that copy of the book The Life You can Save because I think that’s such an invaluable and generous resource and I know that it was an investment in getting the rights back for that book. So I think you know, we’re all very blessed to be able to take advantage of that wisdom. So thank you very much Peter.

Peter Singer: You’re very welcome. Yes do get the book. We have made it available for you free. We felt that was more important than continuing to earn a little bit from the royalties.

Kaitlin Harkess: Well, thank you so much for your time today and I hope that you enjoy your time in Melbourne, and I’m so looking forward to this Think Inc event myself.

Peter Singer: Great. Thanks very much for the opportunity to be in contact with your listeners, Kaitlin. And may I say all my best wishes for the joyful event that you have ahead of you.

Kaitlin Harkess: Well, I hope you found that interview with Professor Peter Singer inspiring and very hopefully action generating. What we do in our lives matters greatly. To ourselves, to those around us, and I think that through the course of this conversation what’s really highlighted is you know that concept of what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. That actually when we extend our circle of influence and support other beings to live better lives, less suffering. We actually improve our own well-being. So perhaps you might head on over to thelifeyoucansave.org or .org.au and have a bit of a look at the charities that you might support there. Of course heading to Peter Singer’s website itself as well as to Think Inc. If you’re in Australia or even if you’re internationally because there is an online event you might consider joining for one of his profound conversations, teachings, and opportunity to learn from the world’s most influential living philosopher. I know I’ll certainly be taking the opportunity. Without further ado, I will let you get back into your day, into your week, and I will look forward to connecting with you again. It’ll be in a fortnight’s time that the next episode is released and please if you want to continue the conversation in the meantime head to @drkaitlin on Instagram, on Facebook, and at Wisdom for Wellbeing Pod on Facebook. There’s lots of sharing of resources that we can engage in there and stay connected. Alright wishing you and yours well, bye for now.

Outro: Thanks for joining us this week on the Wisdom for Wellbeing Podcast. Please visit drkaitlin.com to connect, find show notes, other episodes, and to subscribe. While you’re at it, if you find value in the show, we’d appreciate a rating or perhaps simply tell a friend about the show, Wisdom for Wellbeing is not a substitute for professional, individualized, mental health treatment. If you are in crisis, please contact 000, your local emergency number if you are outside of Australia, or attend your local hospital ED.