this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2024
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I have to laugh whenever vegans claim they don't eat living things. Since when are plants and vegetables not living things? They aren't conscious in the same way people are but they do "live," digest, respirate, and reproduce, and some of them have elaborate networks of roots that they use to send chemical signals to each other.
Anyway, not to knock vegans, some of my friends and family are and they seem to be doing great. Just, whenever I'm eating good chicken wings, or ribs, or any meat with a bone in it, I certainly feel glad to have that "carnivorous" side.
I've literally never heard a vegan claim to not eat any living thing. We know plants are alive lol.
Since when have plants been alive? This is news to me. Next thing you are going to tell me is that plants also crave Brawndo.
Plants crave Brawndo. That's a great slogan if you ask me. Now I crave it also.
And I'm not trying to say vegans are dumb or ignorant about that. Just that I've had the experience of some of them seeming surprised and disagreeing that plants are living things.
Funny - that is an about face from what vegans used to claim.
You're saying "vegans" as if we're a monolith. I'm sure there are vegans who aren't aware that plants are considered living, but I'm sure there's about the same percentage of meat eaters who aren't either. If every vegan you've ever talked to (or some, since you've made both claims) has this misconception, I'm willing to bet your sample size is extremely small, or you're being intentionally dishonest to support your initial claim.
Every vegan I've talked to says they don't eat living things. Literally - every one of them.
I am serious, in every discussion I've had about it some one always says, "but plants aren't living things." ?? Since when!
I don't mean to imply that vegans are stupid or ignorant, they have their valid reasons for being vegans. And I'm on the same wavelength with them about sentience in animals - I think they very much are sentient beings, and the way they are harvested for meat is cruel and extreme.
I also think plants have a degree of sentience - in that they can breathe and communicate (via chemicals) to other plants, the way trees "warn" each other of pests through their root systems.
But we're omnivores, and there's no way I can excuse any of it, it's just what we are. We all eat living things. It's human nature. Even mushrooms contain living larva - most canned mushrooms, for example, have some maggots since they are where flies like to lay their eggs. It's just something we learn to live with even it it's gross and/or unpleasant.
Based on our understanding of biology, a prerequisite for sentience is a central nervous system. Plants have really amazing abilities to pass chemical signals, but they lack any mechanics that would allow them to internalize the signals they receive. For example, I wouldn't say that my doorbell is sentient just because it can warn me when someone is at my door. Importantly, animals are different from plants in their ability to internalize pain, fear, sadness, etc. This is why animal ethics and welfare are considered important discussions, and why it's damaging to invoke plant sentience to distract from that discussion.
This just isn't a big deal to me - I'm not really invested in arguing about it, tbh.
Fair enough. Have a good one.
I have a more "dictionary" definition of sentience, as meaning the capacity to feel, and have a degree of consciousness. Even Michael Crichton (in his book, Jurassic Park) argued that the lowest kind of plant, say a potato, has a mean degree of sentience.
And there have been many documentaries about the organization of plant communication around their root systems - many of them. So it's not really considered pseudo-science, it may just be an idea that is beginning to be understood.
And according to those very same documentaries, plants do possess the ability to process information. In human brains, which are much like a tangled root system, chemical processes are what create what we call "thoughts." It's the same in plant systems, chemical processes exist that enable plants to let nearby plants know if pests are chewing on them, if fire is near, and/or when they are ready to reproduce.
So I'm not really proposing anything that is unscientific here. And when did I EVER state that "veganism is unnatural?" You said that, I didn't. I said we're "omnivores," which means were are physiologically designed to eat and grind up meat AND plant materials, both.