Yeah, thank you, I think I get you now. I've seen many "gotcha arguments" like you describe and I agree that responding to them is draining. And I can see how what I say can be seen as similar. My way of thinking about these things can be upsetting for both meat eating people and vegans/vegetarians, I'm afraid, but I'm just trying to do my best with what I know. In general, I sympathize with vegans and I think it's a great thing that veganism is getting a bit more mainstream nowadays.

You're asking me what I am and how I handle my sympathy with all that is alive. The truth is, I'm a biologist (botanist). I view killing life for your own survival (and even cruelty) as something natural and understandable, I don't find it a moral thing to do if it can be avoided though. I eat meat, although not often and I don't usually buy it for myself. (When I do eat meat, I feel evil and I own it. I try not to avoid the responsibility and I accept that a fully sentient animal was killed for me to eat.)

I think even unicellular organisms are well equipped for experiencing the world around them including sensations of being harmed - it's crutial to have something like this to survive.

My specialization is plants and I'm seeing a breakthrough of plant senses research now (which used to be kind of taboo in the past). There are so many things we didn't know or didn't want to know being finally objectively researched! Plants are alive too and their aliveness, striving to survive and to not be eaten is evident, even though we don't have enough data to say whether they can have some kind of consciousness by our standards. They do have ways to tell when they're harmed and they react.

My point is, I think many organisms were and still are rather underestimated when it comes to their ability to sense the world around them and to integrate the collected information, which are the basics for what we call feeling something and having some kind of intelligence and consciousness.

So the answer, I guess, is I do what I can and don't do what I can't. And I feel a lot of sympathy with all kinds of life forms, despite eating some of them regularly :)

I hope I've explained myself in some decypherable way, I sometimes find it hard.