Loading ...The Vegan Morality of Life is Flawed
Posted: February 22nd, 2008 | Author: Joe | Filed under: awareness | 2 Comments »To be clear, I am a vegan and a vegan lifestyle has good intentions. The problems I have with it are the several logic, moral and philosophical flaws, one of which I will detail here. I cannot live under a flawed moral principle. Living a vegan lifestyle has been driving me crazy.
Veganism does not condone the killing or use of animals for gain or profit. However, the killing and profiting of plants is acceptable. This is a contradiction. Taking the life of another organism is killing. Believing it is acceptable to kill one type of organism but not another is hypocrisy.
Some vegans maintain that plants do not have the capacity for intelligence and consciousness, therefore cannot experience pain and suffering. While it is true plants do not have a neuron bundle, I argue that plants can experience pain and suffering. Pine trees secrete sap as a defense when beetles bore into the tree. This shows us that trees have a concept of self preservation, which is action to maintain life and are attempting, to the best of their ability to survive. Some plants have toxins as a defense against herbivore. All life has a desire to live. If an organisms life, whether plant or animals is being threaten, they will do it’s best to defend itself and survive. Some plants which have no adequate defenses, such as grasses, attempt to survive by propagating in shear numbers, much like squid, mayflies, etc…
For one organism to live another must die. There is no escaping this. Having a tiered value status of life, i.e. a mammal has a higher status than a plant, based on assigned arbitrary values is a false perception of reality. I believe in a reality of equality, not inequality, regardless of the form and capabilities of the organism. A bear does not have more value than a flower, for both their names, and bodies are not real. The only thing that is real is their life, of which they both have of equal value. With that said, it is the gift of life, not consciousness, which I acknowledge and respect.
Being a vegan helps me meditate on these concepts. Fruits, based on the above logic are an acceptable food item. Fruit, by their very nature are designed for consumption. Generally, the plant whom provided the fruit does not die when it’s fruits are eaten.
I find it perplexing that vegans, whom I have found consider themselves enlightened people, use intelligence, emotion and consciousness as a measuring stick to determine what is acceptable to kill. Those qualities are no more real and have no more value than a snail shell, plant hairs, or a flower. A mind and a tuber are equal. They are both expressions of life. Placing value on the mydrid expressions and characteristics life takes the form of is the same segregation mindset vegans are fighting against. Vegans believe that factory farming is modern day slavery. Well, believing that plants have lesser value than animals is a corrupted belief system. Throughout history, this mindset led to the extermination, subjugation, and persecution of many lifeforms because they were concerned of lesser value than another. On the contrary, all life is equal.
You think it is absurd that I am defending a vegetation genocide?! I think it is absurd you believe that humans, the only species capable of rational thought, are above all other species. Geckos are the only species that can climb flat, vertical surfaces with suction pads on their toes. Every species has something unique – a shell, suction pads, ink jets, thorns, chlorophyll, feathers, whiskers, intelligences, rationality. Because we can exert control over life means we must respect life, not make exceptions on what acceptable to steal life from. We either kill with respect or with disrespect. There is no lesser of two evils. Even killing less life, one is still taking life. This is why Veganism has good intentions, but is inherently flawed.
Because of this moral problem, I have been studying Native American belief systems in hopes of finding a resolution.
Have you looked into religious beliefs such as judiasm? They bless the animal and then they are slain as humanely as possible and they are handled in a much more clean and respectable manner.
I would tend to argue that it’s more likely that plants have “survival” mechanisms, whether tangible defenses or rapid procreation, simply due to natural selection. Basically, plants not well suited to surviving were eliminated over time, while plants with traits suited to position themselves for long-term survival did survive. This view implies that plants don’t have an actual innate desire to survive, per se, but have either survived or become extinct due to cause and effect regarding natural events. Human and animal survival instincts are a bit more complicated, but having no knowledge of the subject, I would just have to guess that survival instinct in sentient species is also a result of natural selection that evolved very early and was very prominent, due to.. well, it’s clear that an individual who really wants to survive is more likely to than an individual that doesn’t.
I don’t believe, as it follows, that individual plant life actively tries to defend its survival. Instead, plants survive simply because they are well suited for it. If a species of plant is not well suited to survive, it obviously has likely died long ago.
As somewhat of an agnostic/atheist myself, I don’t subscribe to any particular moral framework and am left with the difficult task of logically forming my own.. it seems that morality is a largely unnatural and human invention, that still interestingly enough, seems a sometimes useful invention. One moral platitude I do tend to believe in is that all conscious life should be treated with a certain respect and should be treated different in terms of responsibility than other life (I’m a vegan myself). I’m not sure that there’s anything inherent in life itself that should be held as sacred or precious in the sense that an individual instance of it should be preserved at all costs (although it is precious in that none of us would be here without life and in its complexity, which is fascinating), and I certainly don’t think we disrespect, hurt, or otherwise negatively harm an individual plant by eating it (I’m not sure that we really could). As for the fruit argument, fruits are the ripened ovaries of the plant, and by eating that we’re not holding them equal to any other life.. it is also somewhat like saying that it’s okay to eat the toes of animals or humans (or more to be more realistic, their milk or eggs) because they don’t die. (Keep in mind I’m not against consuming fruit or any other plant, just pointing out that there is really no way to eat almost anything with the moral framework that all life cannot by consumed.)
Life – whether it be human, animal, plants, or bacteria – all have a symbiotic role to play in our continued survival, but we cannot regard us all as equal in terms of our responsibilites to each other.. we are very physically different after all, to treat us all as humans would seem to be a fallacy. For example, much of the bacteria in our bodies is essential to our survival, for digestion for example. In return it thrives inside the favorable conditions our bodies provides.
Plants help us humans and animals utilize the energy of the sun which only plants are suited to use in its raw form. In return we often help plants procreate. Many plants have evolved to be specifically appealing to animals (including humans) through natural selection, because we are one effective way to transport seeds. Also, through agriculture humans often greatly help popular food plants to flourish and entrench themselves in this great ecosystem of lives by manually planting them and ensuring the survival of a species. (A great example of this is modern corn, which isn’t even really suited to procreate without humans and really illustrates the symbiotic relationship between different forms of life.)
In other words, I see the world as a bit of a big ecosystem of different forms of life with different responsibilties and traits, comparable to something as small scale as a single human body. Cells die, nutrients are used, bacteria lives and fulfills its purpose and dies, etc, but the body as a whole is preserved. I believe much of the same type of events can be seen on a larger scale.
Sorry for a waaay longer post than I intended.