Re: How can we stop suffering?

Description: It's a simple matter of responsibility.

Transcript:

I think that we live in a world where people make . . . people have very strong opinions about things that are not in front of them. You know, I remember back when Newt Gingrich was the Speaker of the House, and he was all upset about welfare moms. And it dawned on me. I was like, “How many welfare moms has he ever met?” You know, he’s sitting in an air-conditioned hotel suite doing an interview talking about welfare moms. It’s like, “If you’re gonna talk about something, talk about it when it’s in front of you.” And I have a feeling that he would not be so flippant about welfare moms if he was, say, on 179th Street in a shelter with a bunch of welfare moms. And so, when I meet people who claim to not care about animal suffering, it’s usually because they’re not experiencing suffering animals. You know, if you took that person and put them in a battery farm with 300,000 chickens, they might feel differently about animal suffering. So I just . . . I don’t trust anyone’s opinion on something that’s not right immediately in front of them.Recorded On: 5/29/07