Vegetarianism and veganism

Every Argument Against Veganism | Ed Winters | TEDxBathUniversity

How hard do you think vegans are going to push back against, ignore and deny the slowly but steadily growing evidence that plants do respond to trauma and anticipation of trauma, can learn, and are thus probably conscious, making them screwed either way? I'm guessing it's going to be quite a lot, but that's always been my contention. Something is suffering either way so you might as well enjoy the taste till there's a real solution like some form of safe lab grown food or full on Star Trek style food replication instead of make believing plants are really any different as a justification. It's pretty much the old "it's not murder because they're not really people" medieval war argument applied to food. Beyond that the economic and environmental arguments for vegans can't really be beat.

[Laird]

How hard do you think vegans are going to push back against, ignore and deny the slowly but steadily growing evidence that plants do respond to trauma and anticipation of trauma, can learn, and are thus probably conscious, making them screwed either way?

He did address that in the video. Check out his line of reasoning because it's pretty decent.

For what it's worth, my own perspective on it (complementing that of Ed's in the video) is this:

I accept - and have done for many years now - that plants are very likely sentient, and deserving of ethical consideration. For this reason, I consume a fruitarian diet.

Something is suffering either way so you might as well enjoy the taste

I don't think that that's a fair comparison. Have you seen what factory farms are like? The suffering of a factory-farmed animal is almost certainly orders of magnitude above that of a farmed plant, so even if you do accept that plants are sentient, you should ethically prefer to consume them rather than to consume factory-farmed animals.

One response to everything I've written above might be:

OK, but (1) even the fruitarian farming of plants entails plant deaths if only because land has to be cleared (and kept clear) for the crops anyway, so even a fruitarian ethic (in the world of modern agriculture) isn't one free from plant deaths, and (2) if I don't consume factory-farmed animals but rather animals which are free to roam and don't suffer, then I might even be causing fewer deaths in total.

The problem with this response is that given the human population, there isn't nearly enough land on which for enough farmed animals to roam freely so as to meet the voracious carnivory of the human population. Some people might be able to farm some animals with some degree of freedom from overt suffering, but it's not a solution that every person (or at least the vast majority) on the planet can adopt. Fruitarianism, or at least veganism, is.

The other problem is that land often has to be (or simply is) cleared to support even relatively free-ranging farmed animals, so the comparison again doesn't fall in favour of free-range animal farming versus fruitarianism (or veganism).

How hard do you think vegans are going to push back against, ignore and deny the slowly but steadily growing evidence that plants do respond to trauma and anticipation of trauma, can learn, and are thus probably conscious, making them screwed either way? I'm guessing it's going to be quite a lot, but that's always been my contention. Something is suffering either way so you might as well enjoy the taste till there's a real solution.......

Heh? Hehe, ahhh 

Why thank you for pressing "us vegans" for an answer, Mediochre, here's mine;

When I turned vegetarian (in a family that all ate meat) back in 1990ish, aged 12-13, I encountered many such arguments as you present here. Numerous versions and numerous times. Open mindedly, I have looked into and tried to consider all such arguments, and find them to be quite transparently arguments to justify and rationalise individual's taste buds, and nothing at all related to reality, morality, love or compassion etc. I mean, it's not too difficult to state plants do not have a central nervous system therefore clearly do not process pain, suffering and death in the way that sentient beings which DO have a CNS do.  One could could get deeper down the rabbit hole by stating there is clearly a circle of life where all life subsists on other life, and that plants are simply designed by nature to be food for other living beings, and that in some circumstances some animals are designed/destined to be eaten by other animals and humans. Ethics, morality and the choices we make comes in whereby we engage in that cycle of life subsisting on other life with the ethic of minimising suffering as much as possible, and with compassion, clarity and awareness. I do not find this to be a viable option in the West when it comes to eating meat or, as I have recently appreciated, any dairy products. They are not needed, indeed as I have learnt by experience as well as education are harmful to health, and are said to be damaging to the environment etc That it is not to say, however, that the shaman or indigenous society in the rainforest or Siberian plains who hunts and eats meat - always with deep respect, reverence and awareness of both hunter and hunted's place in nature, an alien concept to the mass produced animal product companies in the world today - is committing some sort of "sin", or is out of touch with nature (as absurd as that even is to suggest about indigenous cultures!).

Anyway, as one of these "vegans" you claim must be ignorant about plant sentience, the following book arrived a few days ago for me:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Plant-Intellige...1591431352

I should also mention that I have encountered the "souls" of plant intelligence in a variety of both natural and entheogenic altered states of consciousness. They sure have something to say! I have encountered the "soul" of "Gaia" (who showed me the destruction of human civilisation due to pulling oil out of the planet - this was 24 odd years ago before I had any knowledge or concern about environmental issues, or problems with fossil fuel use) back as a teenager whilst following a guru. I have met "Mother Nature" personified as an old woman in a forest (terrifying, yet unbelievable loving, btw  ) on Salvia, and consider psilocybin mushrooms, and fungi in general, to be an "ally" on my own life path. I also started seeing faces in trees over the past few years, I mean ridiculously clearly and in every tree, though I suspect that may be an artefact of high dose psilocybin journeys 

So that is one vegan's take on your argument. Doesn't really represent the choice to be a vegan at all, imo.

I don't have any fucks left to give for chickens and cows and I'm not going to engage in some communistic redistribution of happiness where some people are brow beaten to give up something they like because something else's happiness is more equal than theirs. I'll care about farm animals when they stage a successful rebellion somewhere the same way I'll care about third worlders or truth movement freedom cells when they do the same. If the argument is that they're not smart enough to do that or something, then that's even less reason for me to care. If everything really has free will and agency, then let's see them use it for their own sake first. Until then I'll conserve my energy for goals I deem more important.

[Laird]

Mediochre, have you ever seen footage of factory farms, or at least read descriptions of them? Nobody's saying that the happiness of chickens and cows is "more equal" than anybody else's, but rather that at the very least they deserve not to be treated in the brutally cruel and callous way that they are. I'm not sure how you expect them to stage a rebellion - they have no weapons nor tools nor the opposable thumbs to use them even if they did have them. The people best placed to help them are us as consumers. I'm sure you would hope for the same mercy if you were in the same situation - with no way out other than the kindness of strangers.

Mediochre, have you ever seen footage of factory farms, or at least read descriptions of them? Nobody's saying that the happiness of chickens and cows is "more equal" than anybody else's, but rather that at the very least they deserve not to be treated in the brutally cruel and callous way that they are. I'm not sure how you expect them to stage a rebellion - they have no weapons nor tools nor the opposable thumbs to use them even if they did have them. The people best placed to help them are us as consumers. I'm sure you would hope for the same mercy if you were in the same situation - with no way out other than the kindness of strangers.

Yes I'm aware factory farms are horrible with eyeless chickens in cages too small to turn around in and such but I don't have the energy left to care about anything else. As for rebellion being hard, join the club. You can hope for help all you want but chances are it's not going to come, so you might as well assume you're on your own and act out of spite just to be annoying if nothing else. Knowing me I'd probably do something like refuse to eat until I die because fuck you for trying to farm me and fuck my body for sending hunger and pain signals like it actually wants to live in those circumstances. And if that's not possible because of forcefeeding then I would try something else. If possible I'd probably come back as a ghost to disrupt and terrorize things. Would I lose? Yes, but winning was never really the point to begin with. It's one thing to not care about the world and another to not care about yourself. If you don't even care about you, then why would anyone else?

Something is suffering either way so you might as well enjoy the taste

This only works if you assume there not to be a difference between a human being, a dog, a slug, a plant, a slime mold, an amoeba, etc. The old fashioned chain of being, I suppose.

[Laird]

This only works if you assume there not to be a difference between a human being, a dog, a slug, a plant, a slime mold, an amoeba, etc. The old fashioned chain of being, I suppose.

And/or if you assume that all suffering is equal.

Removed

[Laird]

Hey Brian, just a heads-up: that image doesn't load unless you're logged in to the forum which hosts it, which I suspect won't be the case for most folk trying to view it in this thread (including myself - I still don't know what the image is of).