this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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The difference between killing animals and plants, which do not have a CNS and therefore almost certainly aren't sentient, has been discussed thoroughly elsewhere in this comments section. Do you believe mowing a lawn is equivalent to harming a dog?
Regarding insects, it should be emphasised that veganism is avoiding anything that causes animal suffering or exploitation as far as is practical. Necessary cases, like the unavoidable death of insects for plant agriculture, aren't morally equivalent to unnecessary cases in the same way that killing other humans can sometimes be justified by circumstances, eg. self-defence. (EDIT: And any livestock raised on feed are indirectly causing more insect death regardless.)
People can indeed have different personal comfort levels when it comes to moral debates, but we can also discuss whether those comfort levels are reasonable. Otherwise 'we have different personal comfort levels' could be used in response to any moral question. It could be within someone's 'personal comfort level' to kill and eat babies as long as they were treated well until then.
Edit: TL;DR: context matters for any moral question and I'm not a fan of total moral relativism.
There is no proof that the central nervous system is responsible for sentience. Mowing a lawn is a mass extinction event for the residents of that lawn. Does a broken grasshopper suffer less than a broken human, simply because it can't wax poetic about its experience? Veganism promotes monoculture and environmental destruction as well, it's just easier to pretend that it doesn't.
My point about personal comfort is that it's the ONLY metric by which you measure your moral code regarding consumption of other life forms to extend your own life.
While we can't be completely sure, our current understanding of sentience makes it a reasonable assumption. Even if plants are sentient, eating from higher trophic levels causes more plant deaths than eating plants directly.
Regarding the rest, I feel like I addressed all of that in the comment above. I'm a fallible human being and personal discomfort with killing animals no less cognitively complex than our pets, and sometimes toddlers, is definitely a factor, but I've been arguing based on necessity and quantity instead of that.
EDIT: And to be clear, I've never claimed veganism is environmentally perfect. It doesn't solve every problem with food production, it just helps with some, and it seems largely better for the environment (albeit with nuance around grazing certain types of land) even if we keep doing monocultures.
^ This is what reddit was like before it got big
If by that you mean both sides were civil, ty haha. I'm trying not to replicate the toxicity of the average reddit argument (which I got sucked into a lot) but I worry I still get too logic-as-my-blade, so I'm glad if my intentions still got through.
A great tip I've heard is to try to read others' comments in the most good-faith tone possible, since it's easy for that not to carry over text.
Yeah civil but also just a higher level conversation overall. And in a place like /memes. Just reminded me of old reddit. But maybe I just like logic-as-a-blade convos lol