My belief that all beings have consciousness is precisely why I became a vegetarian. Consciousness comes in varying degrees, though. Eating people is less acceptable than eating animals, I’m sure we can agree on that. For the same reason, eating plants is more acceptable than eating animals. Killing is inevitable part of survival but I choose to kill lesser beings. I haven’t tasted meat or fish since 1996 and I feel just fine so if you think you need meat, you don’t. You were raised on meat so eating it is normal and you probably like it so selling you the story that you need it is no difficult task. To me it just feels wrong and I have a choice so I don’t eat it. I don’t judge, nearly all my friends and family eat meat and I’m not the preachy type, I mind my own business, but there’s a surge in anti-vegan bullshit and it’s beginning to get on my nerves. I’m not technically a vegan, I eat dairy, but whenever I hear abot annoying, meddlesome vegans I think about all those times I was harassed because I’m the weirdo who doesn’t eat meat. So if you think I’m “triggered”, yes, I am.
My go to for things like this:
“This is necessary. Life feeds on life, feeds on life, feeds on life, feeds on life…”
Fun fact - the song uses a shot gun as percussion.
As long as you toss the seeds around as you eat it - that’s why fruits evolved.
I went through a period where I tried eating completely vegan – it is possible, but I myself couldn’t sustain it. I still try and lean toward eating vegan, though.
A lot of it is mental focus, and willpower – and of course the need and desire to do it in the first place. Meat of course does taste good, but if we use our cognitive functioning and realize that taste is not everything, it does kind of open our minds to eating differently. I agree it is hard to sustain or be appetizing.
But if we ever get into a planetwide situation where we have to eat bugs and plants (or even just put yourself in an environment where there’s nothing to eat but plants), I’m sure we can learn to adapt. It’s either that or starve …
More possible though is that we’d find ourselves one day regarding meat as a delicacy, because the methane-producing beef industry has been scaled back so much … just some food-for-thought scenarios.
So we’re down to fungi then.
You do realize that the vast majority of that plant material is grown to feed livestock, right?
I’m a long time vegetarian and in my case it’s no sacrifice, believe me. It’s good eating and I got a belly to prove it. Western cuisine is meat-centered and people don’t really know how to cook vegan/vegetarian; it takes some time to learn. The problem is made worse if you’re sold on health food fads and your idea of vegetarianism is eating steamed vegetables with three grains of salt. Good veg is just like good meat - greasy and spicy. If your diet is bland tofu and broccoli then yeah, I guess it must take willpower. Personally, in 20+ years of vegetarianism I never missed meat. In fact, after a few years the smell of it becomes repulsive. I heard this from others too, a woman I know tried meat after some 10 years and said it was absolutely disgusting. I’m not trying to belittle other people’s tastes and the standard diet, just saying the alternative doesn’t have to be a sacrifice if done right.
Here’s the relevant portion of the Don Hertzfeldt Simpsons couch gag:
All facetiousness aside, a lot of the way meats and certain animal products are mass-produced for cheap consumption are inhumane, unsustainable, and pretty far outside the realm of the “natural cycle.” I totally understand people who base their eating habits around objecting to that process, even as I casually eat meat and buy cheap eggs and milk off the shelf without much self-reflection at all.
And then there are people who take the whole thing beyond the realm of reason, but I just don’t eat lunch with them, the same way I don’t eat lunch with fad weight loss diet evangelists. Just keep your eyes on your own plate, and we’ll get along.
Which may or may not be better that screaming when you eat.
I’ve got major tooth things going on.
It is a matter of consciousness, what if you could take LSD or meditate and reach a level where you could communicate with plants?
I get the scientific method needs to be able to filter and measure information through the rational and limited awareness of everyday life but that doesnt mean there doesnt exist feelings and awareness in plant beings
That’s when we’d put our masks on and hunker down in the trenches, as the phosgene settled around us…every so often some poor Tommy’d get a leaky mask, and he’d panic and go over the top, where the Jerries’d mow 'im down. Wretched business, all of it.
Animals must eat plants, so processing plant energy through animals for food is inefficient and requires unnecessary resources for the same amount of food energy.
Roald Dahl wrote a short story in 1949, “The Sound Machine,” in which a scientist invents the eponymous detecting device which proves that trees and plants scream in pain when damaged. Wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if Hubbard had read it at some point.
‘A green salad,’ said Arthur emphatically.
‘A green salad?’ said the animal, rolling his eyes disapprovingly at Arthur.
‘Are you going to tell me,’ said Arthur, ‘that I shouldn’t have green salad?’
‘Well,’ said the animal, ‘I know many vegetables that are very clear on that point. Which is why it was eventually decided to cut through the whole tangled problem and breed an animal that actually wanted to be eaten and was capable of saying so clearly and distinctly. And here I am.’
It managed a very slight bow.
‘Glass of water please,’ said Arthur.
—Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Yes, just before Dianetics was published. Hubbard could only dream of being published in the New Yorker.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1949/09/17/the-sound-machine
Depends on where you want to draw the lines. Eating honey doesn’t (necessarily) result in bees starving. Seeds and nuts aren’t necessarily going to result in living organisms. Eating fruit is part of the perpetuation of the life cycle of the plant - fruit only exists to be eaten, after all.
It’s true that all life-cycles rely at something dying at some point, but not necessarily by any means directly. Are my skin mites living off my death?
Well, wheat abortions, anyways.
Intelligent anything would probably be pretty horrified by human beings, but doubly so if they resemble any Earth organisms, because we probably eat it.
Yeah, I can’t really think of any herbivorous mammals that haven’t been observed snacking on vertebrates. (Cattle even eat human remains.) Then there’s the “accidental” eating of small animals that happens along with plant eating as well, which provides some non-accidental nutrition.
Yes, it is indeed very convenient - I absolutely can’t be arsed to provide footnotes. You can look it up, though. Even New Scientist did a run-down of some the research a few months back.
You ain’t write, sun.
