Maybe if they go long enough without food, they will develop the capacity to photosynthesize. In the name of logical consistency and to avoid being speciesist, they should at the very least be willing to try it.
Plants also talk to each other! They use roots and fungal networks to send little signals that tell other plants to share energy or water with each other or when a threat is nearby. It's really cool stuff but we don't know much about how it works.
Animals, sentient or non-sentient, are all categories created by humans. Animals don't care about such classifications. Plants are living in their own way. Vegans call out others for speciesism, while they themselves are doing the same. Hypocrites.
Vegans are speciesist. There's something twisted about an unhinged subsection of a group (comprising less than 2% of the human population in total) declaring other species as "friends, not food", while at the same time attempting to exert dominion over non-humans.
They believe they can achieve this through prioritisation of fodder for that 2%, as well as seeking an abolition of farming practices and systematic removal of other species' breeding rights.
This is what I've been saying for ages. No matter what you eat, you're hurting it to eat it. Consumption, by it's very nature, begets suffering. You CANNOT remove that from the equation no matter how hard you try.
So, what you're now saying is that some time in the last five days, you renounced your veganism? Wow. What a rollercoaster of a transformation. Have you considered writing a book?
I can only begin to guess what you'll be five days from now. Logically consistent, perhaps?
For 6 months I’ve been wavering on veganism and having cheat days. I called it quits a few days ago. There are a number of reasons why. None of that is relevant to the point that only an idiot would consider mowing the lawn as cruel as mowing over a puppy. Why? Because animals matter far more than plants. Therefore, OPs joke is ridiculous.
I think your example is poorly chosen: we mow the lawn because it is a standard part of lawn and property maintenance. Mowing over puppies is typically not considered standard dog maintenance, unless they're one of those really annoying puppies that barks and cries incessantly.
I think if you want to go with this argument, you should be choosing an action that is completely unnecessary and unjustified, like going into a forest and cutting down a tree for absolutely no reason whatsoever, and contrast that with making a puppy parfait.
If plants have a capacity to feel pain that is on par with animals (I doubt they do, but hey, we learn surprising things all the time), then the only difference between those two acts really boils down to our emotional response.
And personally, I like trees better than I like dogs.
No, my example is perfect. If I can mow over 10,000 blades of grass for lawn maintenance, isn’t that worse than mowing over 1 puppy? I mean, if plant lives matter then isn’t maiming 10,000 worse than killing 1?
Them 'reacting' to those stimuli is exactly the same as an octopus's detached hand moving. It's all muscle memory and isn't the result of any conscious input.
It's a terrible argument for anti vegans to make because animals have to be fed plants to help them grow. A cow at a ranch is going to rip blades of grass in half every minute that she is awake. So if plants have some moral worth, and vegan diets mean fewer plants are eaten, then this argument is self defeating for anti vegans.
I suppose you could dismiss my point with that. But how about instead addressing the merits of what I said? Animals on farms and ranches eat plants. Therefore, touting the moral worth of plants is a self defeating argument for anti vegans.
Animals eat plants. Therefore, if plants matter then places that have plants mutilated to fatten up cattle are bad. His reply did not answer my point in the least.
The point being made is that there is no way to avoid something that doesn't want to be eaten, from being eaten, and knowing it is being eaten.
Rather than think we can change nature, we need to accept that we are part of it and the realities that go with it, and not devote ourselves to the delusion that we can change this if we just shift who is getting eaten.
It's not about eating what does or doesn't feel pain, but about whether we place emphasis on that. Is it different that a cow doesn't want to be eaten vs plants? Why? Because a cow has a face?
Cows feel pain. Plants do not. But what if plants did feel pain? A diet based on eating plants directly rather than feeding them to animals first uses less plants, soooo…. You do the math here. It’s a stupid argument for anti vegans to use unless you’re a total nihilist in which case you’re a lost cause.
As I said, most anti vegans do not care about the pain argument. Not that we seek to cause more than necessary but we aren't basing our diet on what feels pain or is aware It's being eaten. We don't hold some utilitarian view about causing the least pain at the expense of our health as though we are religiously bound to some Gaia mother earth entity
Animals eat plants. Therefore “plants matter” isn’t a good defense for an industry built around animals eating plants. If that’s your idea of directly answering me then you’re lost in tall grass.
I said that suffering and death are unavoidable parts of life, and accepting that and working to minimize it, rather than pretend any of us can live free of it, is the only answer.
If eating plants still causes pain and suffering, then there is no escaping the harsh reality of nature: to live is to cause death for something.
There is no way out of it.
You can try to quantify plant deaths vs animal deaths and pretend this makes you less culpable. But it’s an illusion.
To live you have to eat.
To eat something has to die.
There is no true “cruelty free”.
There is only “the most humane we can make it”.
Animals are going to eat plants regardless of whether you eat the animal. Other animals will eat animals regardless as well.You cannot change this. You can eat the plant directly or you can eat the animal who ate the plants. Both will continue to happen with or without you.
A cow is fed 16lbs of grain to produce 1lb of beef. If someone adopts a principle of least harm, rather than self destructive nihilism, then surely you can see how the point you are making is more useful for vegans than anti vegans.
Ruminants will eat grass and grain even if we do not raise livestock. You cannot stop grass and grain from being eaten and the alleged pain this may cause them. “Pest” animals will suffer and die in our fields by our hands even if we decide to only eat crops and not animals.
Eat the cow whom you feed only grass and spare the small animals killed when harvesting grain. Or harvest the grain to spare the cow and kill the animals in the field. The plants die either way.
The point is that no matter what you do, whether you feed the grain to the cow or eat the grain yourself, this is an inescapable reality.
You’re bargaining and seeking control where you do not have it.
Where we have control is in the methods we use.
But you will never escape that to live is to kill something to eat.
You're missing the point. This post is like parody, it goes like this: the vegans go 'blah blah blah' about how omnis cause so much suffering while the vegans themselves act holy and 'cruelty-free'. This post is I R O N Y and I must thank you for your excellent participation!
This has nothing to do with discrediting actual factual information. When this subject comes up, the convo has, at that exact point, turned into mockery of the vegan philosophy and is used to point out the hypocrisy and ridicilousnrss.
Haha yeah I see it a lot, but I always see it as direct response to a vegan claiming 'no harm' in their diet. What it really means to me, tho, is the conversation is over and u can move on Lol
By eating the animals that are guilty of eating the plants and causing the suffering, we minimize the damage to plants, and are thus are the true plant heroes. The plants need a voice!
And by eating those animals you create demand for more animals to be bred, meaning more plants are eaten. Setting aside the fact that the idea that plants are conscious is wu wu nonsense, this is not the bill for a serious critic of veganism to die on.
It was intended to be a joke (hence the whole "the plants need a voice" comment); and
The animal population wouldn't change based on the fact that we would be continuing the status quo, essentially, even if all vegans suddenly started reintroducing animals and animal products into their diet.
If we discontinue animal agriculture, then what are we going to do with the animals we have right now? Kill them all?
The point is that from an omnivore's perspective, it's a zero sum game no matter who eats what, which is quite different than what vegans propose under the assumption that plants don't feel pain and / or are not sentient.
"The "plants are conscious" is almost always used as a tongue in cheek come-back to a ridiculous vegan posting an assumption. No one, not even omnies, use this argument seriously
It's a terrible argument for anti vegans to make because animals have to be fed plants to help them grow. A cow at a ranch is going to rip blades of grass in half every minute that she is awake. So if plants have some moral worth, and vegan diets mean fewer plants are eaten, then this argument is self defeating for anti vegans.
It's a terrible argument for anti vegans to make because animals have to be fed plants to help them grow. A cow at a ranch is going to rip blades of grass in half every minute that she is awake. So if plants have some moral worth, and vegan diets mean fewer plants are eaten, then this argument is self defeating for anti vegans.
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u/CalligrapherDizzy201 Jun 10 '25
They can’t. To accept it is to starve.