What about killing plants?
What about killing plants, and follow-ups."It is not wrong to eat plants for the same reason that it is not wrong to kill bacteria.One thing vegan/AR people desperately cling to is the fact that plants don't have a nervous system. But what is the nervous system, anyway? It is a system of cells which, by the means of changing polarity of their membranes and chemical messengers, transmit stimuli, thus enabling the animal to perceive and react to the outside world, and regulate their own bodies. Plants, indeed, do not possess such a system. They do exactly the same thing in a somewhat different way. They do it chemically, using plant hormones, instead of electrically. Their method doesn't work in the lightning-fast way we're used to, but it works just as well. When a herbivore attacks them, some plants are capable of producing defensive toxins not just in the afflicted area, but in other parts of their bodies as well. Some plants communicate the fact that they're attacked (chemical screaming, wouldn't you say?) to other plants around them, and the other plants react to that by producing toxins, even though they're not attacked themselves. We can't perceive it, since plants don't scream or run away. We can't relate to it, since a plant's reaction is so different from our own. But it doesn't mean it's not there.
Bacteria, on the other hand, just like plants, and just like rocks, do not possess anything similar to a nervous system, nor do they exhibit any behavior which would indicate that they possess consciousness.
Bacteria, just like plants, and just like rocks, are not capable of feeling anything whatsoever."
"Therefore, by eating meat, not only do we cause animal death and suffering, we also end up killing many more plants than we would if we ate a vegetarian diet."This reflects another thread of vegan/AR thinking: killing is evil. This is denial of the basic fact of life. If killing other living beings is such a bad thing, then why does every single living being on this planet engage in it, directly or indirectly? Why killing members of your own species, in case of humans, is not something that should be done on regular basis, is another matter.
"...animals are conscious beings capable of feeling pain and suffering. Animals are capable of feeling happiness, joy, and sorrow. Animals are capable of feeling a desire to live."This is a good example of something vegans/ARs like to label other people with: anthropocentrism. Why are pain (and pain is something vegans/ARs definitely don't understand), suffering, happiness, joy, sorrow and the "desire to live" (whatever this might be) so important? Because they're something humans feel. And, as the anthropocentric view of the world teaches us, and vegans/ARs wholeheartedly embrace, humans are the measure of everything. The more different something is from humans, the less value it has, and therefore does not deserve moral consideration. This is the hypocrisy vegans/ARs are very fond of. They portray themselves as people whose moral considerations expand beyond humans, and do it in a way which shows them to be the exact opposite.
posted by Leo @ 19:00
3 Comments:
Animals do have certain emotions. They probably aren't as complex as people's emotions because they rely more on instinct but they still have them. Example, why do elephants stay around a dying relative or a relative's or group member's body? There is no reason to stay except because of a bond that developed between them and the herd. As for the Desire to live, all living things have that or else nothing would survive. (Even plants, and you explained this yourself in your original post. Their defense mechanism is used to help them survive.)
Death is coupled to life - almost everything depends on the death of the other to survive.
One county in New Mexico did a survey of the snakes killed by cars in the 1960's and found 30,000 dead ones in just one year. Assuming they ate one other animal every two weeks, that accounts for 780,000 killings in one county in New Mexico for one animal family alone. Let's assume 4% of all snakes were killed [much more wouldn't be sustainable]. That means the survivor snakes killed 18,720,000 other animals. In one county alone. In one year.
First, I'd like to thank Chack Rabbit for reminding me that I still have this site. And that people actually visit it, and comment.
The response to the anonymous commenter... I would never think of arguing that animals don't have emotions. Some of them have emotions more similar to those of humans, some of them might have emotions so different that we aren't even recognising them as such. Some might not have any at all. That is not the point.
The point is, self-consciousness and emotions, just like sharp claws, poisonous glands, thorns, the ability to photosynthesise, or any other characteristic of any living being you can name, are no more than survival mechanisms (and some of them aren't necessarily even that - they exist simply because they happened to evolve, and didn't hamper the species' survival chances). The worth of any of those characteristics is measured solely by the edge it gives the species when it comes to survival.
Elephants stay around a dying herd member and its dead body because of the bond which had developed between the members of the herd. No argument there. But why has the bond developed in the first place? Because it's a good thing for social animals. A bond between the members of a herd means they're more likely to defend each other against predators and competitors, and less likely to harm each other because of disputes. The so touching way the the elephants hang around the bodies of their dead is one of those things which exist, neither helping nor hampering their survival. I'm fairly sure the meerkats, to use another African social mammal as an example, would do the same, providing two things: 1) that they could find a meerkat who died of so-called natural causes, and 2) that any (or all) of the animals that prey on meerkats wouldn't quickly put an end to such a behaviour. Does that mean that the bonds between the members of a meerkat group are less strong than those between the elephants? No. Actually, the opposite would make more sense, since the meerkats depend on each other much more than the elephants do.
To return to the point you've missed. What I'm saying here is that the AR people are wrong, and are being anthropocentric, when they put the emotions, the ability to feel pain as humans do, etc. at the top of the list of the valuable living beings' characteristics. They very much like saying that their philosophy is one of equality of all living beings, when it is in fact 1) a philosophy of supposed equality between select species of mammals, birds and fish, and 2) something completely opposite, since they clearly put humans and their characteristics on the top.
When one is a human, measuring everything by human standards is neither unexpected nor wrong. I'm sure rats would say they ruled the world and that having a long, scaly tail is something of supreme cosmic importance. Providing that they cared about such things. But it would be nice if one admitted what one was doing, instead of hypocritically putting oneself on a pedestal of (not only) moral superiority.
With Chack Rabit I have only one disagreement. Not almost everything depends on the death of the other to survive. Everything does.
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