AI Use Note: Main body text entirely human written. Claude (Opus 4.8) helped develop models of animal life histories in the appendix.
Cross-posted from Good Structures.
Executive Summary
* Animal advocates sometimes make claims like “there are X of this animal...
“How long have you been v*g*n?”
This is one of the most common icebreakers at animal protection events. It’s a baseline assumption, and it mostly holds true: if you’re out advocating for animals not to be tortured or abused, realistically these days you are v**n, or close. And it makes for good conversation. It seems fairly safe to assume when you meet strangers.
But this assumption is hurting the movement in a way which we don’t always notice: someone new comes into the sp...
Summary
Back in November 2023 I posted here to launch Spiro and raise our first $198k. Two and a half years later this is an update and a fundraiser for the next step.
The short version: we've now reached over-5,900 people with TB preventive medicine, including over 3,000 children under five years old. Our early results have held up well an...
Title:
I'd like to draw attention to a new (very old) cause area. It is this: Feeling our body more fully and working with it to improve every aspect of life and work
Context:
Buddhism and a host of other practices are what I've been engaging with over the last 8 months while living and training with others in a small community, a new Canadian Monastic Academy near Toronto called Willow. growingwillow.org
After working on EA community building for 3 years, I see the last 8 months as a very effective use of my resources for many reasons.
Premise:
Scale - everyone has a body and everyone that I have met has trouble with it, for example, the body sends information to the mind--information which we could label as 'pain' or 'shame' or 'lots/AHHH'--and this information plays a role in causing misery internally and externally
Neglectedness - the time, space, and teaching/methodology to compassionately listen to the body has been hard for me to find until recently, and this seems true for most people that I have met
Tractability - various teachers, methods, and communities are already in place which demonstrate valuable, accessible, true paths to greater embodiment
Summary:
Embodiment, as a cause area, is something that I would love to see EAs work much more closely and deeply with for the benefit of all beings.
Closing:
I welcome all reactions and feedback to this.
I look forward to sharing more of what I now have and later will have to offer, at the least to help fellow EAs find more calm and energy, though more deeply and truly to encourage the young movement of EA to work more closely with the old movement of Buddhism and other sources of wisdom on problems that we all face, problems that EAs are working on one way or another.