this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
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Isn't the logical extension of this that nothing is vegan? Think about it: animals in nature get preyed upon constantly. A wolf kills an elk, eats part of it, and then its corpse decomposes. The carbon from the decomposing body is then used by plants in the biosphere to build new cells. These plants are now the products of dead animals. Are these unethical to eat because they had their cells built from recycled carbon that once belonged to an animal? Probably not. And this is true of all plants everywhere. And if you were to say "yes, but those plants didn't kill any animals themselves," then that argument would also have to apply for humans eating venus flytraps: humans didn't kill any animals themselves; they're just consuming something that did.
But wouldn't that argument only hold up for flytraps found in the wild? Any that have been cultivated by humans, especially for human consumption, would likely be fed by humans to ensure any food the plant gets is not going to negatively effect the quality of the food. But vegans also wouldn't eat eggs found in the wild, even if they could somehow know that they were unfertilized and abandoned. At the very least this is not a black and white case, I think it's very easy to imagine groups of vegans abstaining from these if they were a food product. Not everyone's definition of vegan is the same I've acknowledged that from the beginning, some vegans go as far as some Jainists do, breathing through cheesecloth to avoid killing as many microorganisms as they can. Everyone draws their own line somewhere, I'm just convinced that if people actually ate flytraps, plenty of vegans would abstain.
In that case, your issue seems more to be with a semantic definition of veganism. You've framed it in the terms of "is eating a plant that eats meat non-vegan," but conceptually what you're asking about is the transitive nature of suffering and accountability and how that intersects with a particular, very specific lifestyle choice. Which is a fine and ostensibly interesting discussion to have, but the way you elected to frame that conversation is...less than ideal.
Or, hear me out, people shouldn't get defensive in a thread explicitly about a fabricated hypothetical. It's meant to be examined and I'm not sorry for examining it.
I think people have found the way you chose to approach the discussion to be counterproductive and frustrating. If you aren't willing to reflect on the frustration voiced by the people who took the time to reply and engage with you seriously, you are either entitled or simply unwilling to reflect on your expressive shortcomings.
And I think people have interpreted everything I've said as a personal attack against veganism despite the fact that no one really eats these plants. Id like to know what specifically you have issue with? Perhaps the one time I called someone obtuse for purposefully evading the point?
I take most issue with the fact that you just don't seem to really understand the conversation you're having or the arguments people are making. No one thinks you are personally attacking veganism. Not that I've seen, at least. What people find frustrating is the fundamental fact that they are arguing that suffering, the act of profiting from it, and the "guilt" that comes with that does not have some kind of transitive property, and you are, it seems, arguing that it does, and you can't seem to understand the fact that the discussion and difference of perspective deadlocks there.
In other words, you don't seem to realize that you and the people to whom you are speaking are operating on different (and this is a very important concept in any kind of debate) foundational premises. These are things that are core ideas on which any argument sits. Most of the time they're incredibly philosophically or ideologically basic, like 1 + 1 = 2, or "a child should not be held responsible for the crimes of their parents." To make matters worse, you also seem to be coupling this foundational premise with a definition of veganism which most people in the thread simply find to be objectively incorrect at worst, or remarkably obtuse at best. Honestly, if it seems like people are pissed at you for how you talk about veganism, it might be the fact that your understanding of it seems superficial, because your argument about fly traps comes across as an attempt at deconstructing the "rules" of veganism while ignoring the ethical intent behind it as a lifestyle.
This leads to a just awful discussion, because you 1) have your own definition of veganism that fundamentally differs from nearly everyone else's and 2) that definition is premised upon an understanding of animal suffering and what constitutes a human being "profiting" from it with which almost everyone here also disagrees. The worst thing, however, and which I personally find the most frustrating is that your reading comprehension skills are just frankly abysmal. You're probably going to read this comment, have a hard time following it, and not really understand the argument being made, and instead latch onto small details that are superficial at best to this reply, probably doubling down on your belief that you are unjustly maligned because people refuse to acknowledge your extremely illogical perspective as more reasonable or intelligent than it really is.
So, summing it up, what I specifically have issue with is that you, from doing the above, have managed to craft a perfect storm of completely useless and unproductive debate. Everyone here is dumber for having partaken in this discussion. Me included. Actually, probably especially me.
The literal first thing I did was acknowledge that everyone has a different version of veganism, explained one I've heard from plenty of vegans I've spoken with, so your whole thing about foundational premises is pretty moot. I defined a clear scope of my arguement and stuck to it, most of that critique is you being mad I stayed within the scope I defined instead of letting off topic points detract from what I said and then the fact that I still don't buy your arguements. God forbid we don't agree on a hypothetical, sorry that upset you enough to want to be snide in your critique. I find your critisim to any lack depth or relevance to actual things I said, and contain little substance but veiled personal attacks about making everyone reading it dumber. Im sure it did make you dumber so at least we agree on that.
My first comment verbatim with emphasis added:
"If a plant has to eat animals to survive then that plant is a product of animal suffering. Thats why vegans don't drink milk or eat eggs too. So if that's the definition of vegan that someone subscibes to then the flytrap is not Vegan "
I set pretty clear conditions of my arguement, don't be upset I didn't let people detract from what I actually tried to argue instead of what they perceived I was arguing.
In that case, since the definition of vegan is relative, what did you hope to get out of this discussion beyond people agreeing with you?
It's really not, though, and the fact that you think it does strongly supports what I've said about reading comprehension.
It's not an "arguement" (also, not how argument is spelled), it's an opinion you are voicing. You think it's not vegan. Other people think it is. It's a discussion purely couched in competing definitions. You never try to work beyond those competing definitions so whatever it is you're "arguing" for is DOA.
They aren't veiled.
And if my grandmother had wheels, she would have been a bike. Pretty much everyone here already said "that's not really the definition of veganism." And you proceeded to argue with them about it. That's not productive discussion or "lively debate" - it's just bickering.
Once again, you don't understand the argument I made. You are not doing anything to move beyond competing foundational premises and competing definitions, so there's no point to the hypothetical you posed. Either people agree with you without argument, or they won't, and there's nothing beyond that. And that's because of how you chose to frame the discussion.
How does you ignoring my foundational premise make you the arbiter of whos talking in good faith and, but me refusing to justify points I didn't make makes me the bad guy? Perhaps I framed it the way I did because thats the way it made sense to me.
Of course im not moving beyond that definition because my whole premise was dependent upon that definition AS I SAID IN THE FIRST COMMENT COMPLETE WITH A BIG 'IF'. You're whole arguement is that it's wrong of me to not change the definition that I already stated my arguments depend on because then people either agree or won't. Thats probably because I did nothing but follow logical steps from a definition I know is still common. And I don't know how many times I have to say that I know and have spoken with plenty of vegans who use that definition so Im not really concerned that a handful of people on lemmy use a different one, especially when they go out of their way to continue ignore my premise, without proving any type of evidence that no vegans use the definition I've started with other that saying 'no they dont' after hearing that I've heard these definitions right from real people. Some I'm even related to. Or do you really think your definition is the only way someone can be a vegan? Because what I think is your definition is the only one where you can keep arguing. You even tacitly admited to that saying that within the framework I chose, one can only agree or disagree. No wonder you're so desperate to move away from that
No one forced anyone to respond to my comments but if I make a point completely within a common framework, the least one could do is not ignore the framework simply because it's easier to respond that way. Hell I'd even accept any kind of data on how people define their own veganism, but short of that my anecdotal evidence from the vegans I know is by definition just as good as any anecdotal evidence provided against it, and that's all thats been provided. Tell me if theres any things you've heard from people you trust that someone could change with anecdotal evidence online?
What kills me is you still won't even acknowledge theres not simply one type of vegan with only one definition despite the fact that its the first thing I did before making a point on a clearly defined subset of vegan. And if you look through my comments elsewhere on this post, not in this chain, youll also find me aknowledge a differnt definition of vegan and come to a different conclusion, so if thats all you wanted you've been wasting a lot of your own time. So only one of us is even stuck on there only being one way to be vegan. Thinking I haven't been the flexible one is hilarious.
I'm not ignoring your foundational premise. I'm pointing out to you that your foundational premise is at odds with that of the people with whom you are speaking, and that at no point have you attempted to address those differences. What is happening is that you are basically saying "I think eating Venus fly traps is non-vegan because..." and other people saying, "okay, I disagree with that perspective." There's no synthesis to take place. You just have thesis and anti-thesis and no attempt at making anything new from that difference of opinion.
I'll reiterate my initial question: if this is the case, then what did you hope to get out of this discussion? Because as I've already said: either people agree with you or they don't. There's no wiggle room, here. The best course scenario was people going "I agree" or "I disagree" and then never talking to you ever again.
No, my whole argument is that you came into this thread with that and seemed to be expecting people to agree with you when they had different definitions. But once again, like I said before, if my grandmother had wheels, she would have been a bike. So, once again, what were you expecting to happen? Either people are going to agree with you or not, and if they don't, then they're going to tell you why. And they did. And then you got upset when they did. So, once again, what did you expect to happen?
I cannot emphasize how little your personal experience or relationship with "plenty of vegans" matters to a discussion like this. One one very basic level, it's because your sample size is so astronomically low as to be meaningless. On another because it's the internet and lying is trivially easy. I could also point to websites that define veganism as something different from your definition, but that would be equally worthless because you wouldn't care and because you would say your personal knowledge of people with the definition you're using carries more weight. Which, it doesn't, but you probably believe that it does.
I don't really care about veganism or how it's defined. What I care about is how arguments are structured and the mechanisms of language. Language is a descriptive tool and veganism is a complex lifestyle choice whose goals are tied to equally complex ethical values. There's probably multiple different and equally "valid" ways of practicing veganism, but your argument is founded upon a very specific, very narrow definition of that label. Your discussion with most people here can be summed up as you saying "according to this narrow definition of veganism, this act is not vegan" and multiple people responding with "that isn't my definition of veganism" and you responding with "yes, but I know a lot of vegans who have that as their definition, therefore it is more legitimate than your definition, and, also therefore, it wouldn't be vegan" and people responding again with, "I don't believe you, but, yes, changing the meaning of words will fundamentally alter the outcome of a hypothetical syllogism that relies on specific definitions of those words. What is your point?"
And what is your point? Like, I am serious, when you went into this discussion, what, in your mind, did you want to get out of it? It feels like you just wanted people to blindly agree with your position without providing their own perspectives on the hypothetical.
Yes, but that point is that that isn't productive as far as discussions go. If you frame a hypothetical in narrow conditions around a binary label, such as "vegan" or "not vegan," such that someone can either agree or disagree with the applicability of that label, there is no point in having that discussion. It's like if I said, "if I define good food as food I like, then pizza is bad food, because I don't like pizza." That's a completely useless statement. There is no reason to voice it because it leads to nothing.
Here we are again with competing foundational premises: you believe the definition of veganism you are applying is valid, common, and, in some ways, universal. The people responding to you think differently and have provided their own perspectives, which you have largely dismissed, in much the same way you feel like yours has been dismissed. It's a conflict of foundational premises, and the premises are so entrenched and inflexible as to prevent any kind of meaningful discussion. Competing definitions are fairly common in any kind of ideological debate, but they're also fairly useless and ultimately dissolve into No True Scotsman fallacies. So, once again, you came in here, said something people thought was dumb and incorrect, and then got defensive when they told you as much. So, yeah, you didn't force anyone to respond, but nobody forced you to post your inane question in the first place, either, did they?
Yeah, but that means your anecdotal evidence is as equally worthless, not as equally valuable, because neither has any real value. It's an ideological label whose edges are innately fuzzy or fluid. It's not like you're a radical empiricist debating the geometric definition of a triangle. You're debating whether or not a very specific act is itself "allowed" by a lifestyle choice. Let it go. If you don't want to eat Venus fly traps, I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who wanted to force you.
Remember that part of my previous comment that said you wouldn't actually understand the argument being made and instead narrowly focus on a very small part of the reply while ignoring every other part of it? Because I remember that. My entire argument is founded on two points: one is that the definitions of veganism are fluid and open to interpretation and that the particular definition of veganism to which you subscribe is so central to your hypothetical as to render the hypothetical largely pointless as a topic of debate.
I thought this comment chain would go a lot like the other comment chain I made in this exact thread, where it was civil and constructive instead of targeted critique of the way I decide to present what I know without so much as attempting to offer things that could change my mind, because you so deeply think 'i wouldn't listen anyway' which to me sounds like you got nothing to say except you don't like how I speak, yet you choose to keep engaging which is the funny part to me.
Never said it was more legitimate, only that it was legitimate. And as long as it's legitimate the qualified statements holds up. People even pointed out land clearing and we went back and forth on that, you make it sound like there was no argument to be had whatsoever but the thread tells a different story, and you sure don't suffer of picking out things that are unacceptable to you.
Because any evidence anyone has given me to the contrary has been as worth, or worthless as the evidence I gave that it was. Would you like me to imagine a definition I haven't heard before on the basis that you don't like the one I'm using but refuse to supplant it? I really don't know what it is you want me to do with conflicting evidence of similar origin? I dismissed it as quick as you dismissed my anecdotal stuff, is that not fair? Especially when I qualified my whole comment on that definition. If you really think the premise is such an issue then challenge me to change it instead of just repeating it's an issue. I said what I said, within the bounds I said, because that's how I can be sure of my conclusion, within those conditions. Sorry you seem to take such offense to narrowly defined declarations on a hypothetical question online.
If you really think the definition of vegan is so fluid then there's no answer to the question at all, because for some it will be and some it wont be. My narrow qualified statement pointed out a subset of Vegans for whom it wouldn't be okay, did it not? Then I proceed to defend it with things like how Vegans know land clearing kills animal, so in practice many make the choice to reduce animal suffering wherever possible, to imply that it logically follows that many vegans would not eat human farmed fly traps because that would almost necessarily imply they were human fed for disease control reasons. Even there I qualified my statements, at every turn I was acknowledging that there is no one way to be a vegan which you 'supposedly' agree with, but still think it's problematic when I talk about one of those definitions to analyze a hypothetical.
I just don't understand how if your premise is that veganism is fluid you'd have such an issue with a statement that outright says its not about every vegan. You already know, or claim to know, the definition is fluid, and you know my conclusion logically follows my premise, which is why you attack the premise. So let me ask you this, do you believe my premise, the definition of veganism I gave, somehow falls outside of your spectrum of veganism? Because unless you do, to me it seems the biggest thing your mad it is that I phrased a comment in a way that didn't invite argument or logical fallacy, but oh boy that didn't stop you now did it.
I made a narrowly defined claim and responded logically to counter arguments. Why are you so upset with my specificity? What does the thread gain from me making a claim that obviously overreaches and is not correct other than giving you an opting to say that it's wrong? Because for the life of me it doesn't sound like you want discussion, it sounds like you want to say someone else is wrong. If you wanted discussion I'd imagine we'd be talking about definitions of veganism in any capacity other than an anecdotal rebuttal of an anecdotal assertion, or that we'd be talking about the land clearing, how many flies these things actually eat, basically anything but what you're actually talking about. Instead, you refuse to give a definition even just as a framework to speak within, say the definition of veganism is fluid, however my definition which I from the start said was simply one way of many, is a problem and somehow outside your spectrum?
I can't in good faith believe you're upset that there's no discussion to be had, when your objection to my framework contradicts your supposed first point of your argument and you've been pulling discussion out of semantic and linguistic composition rather than focusing on any kind of substantive arguments about veganism and flytraps. The only inference I can walk away with is you have much more to say about semantics and linguistics than you have to say about veganism and flytraps which brings me back to the question what is you really want to talk about?
Yeah, because I like arguing with people on the internet. I'm fairly up front about that.
Indeed I do not. I don't think you're very good at it. But life's all about the destination, not the journey, and we all have to start somewhere.
This seems tangential to the initial topic. I'm glad you got something productive out of it but if you wanted to talk about industrial farming and the impact of human agricultural practices on the environment, which is a fine topic of discussion, you could have, y'know...lead with that.
There were plenty of arguments to be had, but they weren't good arguments. Nobody's perspective or understanding of the world was improved by it, and I'm pretty sure nobody's mind was changed.
Of course it's fair. But it's also a waste of everyone's time because you should have known before starting the discussion that this was what was going to happen. Like, this is so obviously going to occur and it's going to waste most people's time. If you ever go into a debate, you have to anticipate your opponent's responses and have arguments prepared ahead of time. What was your plan for dealing with the obvious response to your hypothetical for "I have a different definition of what constitutes veganism?" Because you either didn't anticipate that, or didn't care. You also didn't provide a lot in the way of initial details of the hypothetical. Seriously, you know you can fill out the body of a text post with quite a lot of text, right? You literally just asked the question in the title "Settle a debate: would eating a Venus fly trap be considered vegan?" and then, in the comments, clarified that your hypothetical was couched in a definition to which most people did not subscribe. If you had lead with "Settle a debate: would eating a Venus fly trap be considered vegan [if your definition of veganism is this specific definition of veganism]" we wouldn't be having this discussion. Because the entire argument I'm making is that you went about engaging with this topic in a way that is, quite frankly, annoying. You posed a hypothetical and then moved the goal posts in the comments by adding additional criteria after the fact. Just ask the entire question up front next time.
You literally asked a question with the intent of "settling a debate." Of course it's annoying that you phrased your comment in such a way that didn't invite argument, because it reduces the debate to a pure difference of subjective definition. It seems like you just wanted to be right, so you moved the goal posts to include your definition, saying "well, if you look veganism like this, it's not okay to eat this particular plant or other plants grown as a result of industrial farming." Which...yes, we are all culpable for the iniquities of the world in which we live. There's a reason so many vegans are also anti-capitalists. This is not a new perspective. Fuck, the t.v. show The Good Place has this facet of modern human life as one of its foundational premises in the later seasons, that people are so wrapped up in a web of causality that their actions have innumerable unforeseen and unintentional negative affects on the world, rendering all of us incidentally guilty of a host of accidental evils. And having a discussion about that topic is all well and good. But you didn't do that. You asked people if venus fly traps as a food would be considered vegan. Which is, by comparison, a stupid fucking question.
Do me a fucking favor: cite me. Seriously. Quote the exact phrase where I say your definition of veganism is objectively wrong in ANY reply I've given to you. In fact, I will do you one better. I will give you the links to my replies in this thread.
https://lemmy.ml/comment/5331374 https://lemmy.ml/comment/5331573 https://lemmy.ml/comment/5338345 https://lemmy.ml/comment/5344857 https://lemmy.ml/comment/5376311 https://lemmy.ml/comment/5385702 https://lemmy.ml/comment/5397623
I've commented on my perspective of how you've expressed your understanding of the lifestyle. I've said it seems superficial. That's my reading of it. But something being superficial or shallow and being "objectively wrong" are fundamentally different. You can't have an "objectively incorrect" opinion on a topic like this. You can have one that comes across as underinformed or which others think is weird, but those are themselves just opinions about your opinion, and they can't be objectively right or wrong, either.
In fact, I think we should try to make something very clear: I am not talking to you at any point about the actual topic of debate (which is to say the nature of veganism or, for some reason, venus fly traps). I agree that veganism is a fluid concept and its definitions muddled. But, once again, that's irrelevant.
Rather, think of me more as an English teacher commenting on how you have elected to construct (or perhaps more accurately, failed to construct) a logical argument or provide a well structured discussion, at the very least, of a particular topic that you yourself chose. You are approaching this like a student who thinks that your teacher disagrees with your conclusions: maybe you didn't like the book you were writing about and said as much and you feel you got a bad grade on your essay because the teacher disagrees with your criticism because it's a book she really likes. The reality is that she doesn't really fucking care what you think; she cares how you think, and how you construct and present your ideas. Nobody likes reading a shitty paper. I'm similarly annoyed by someone who starts a thread and fails to present a full argument up front and then proceeds to add additional qualifying information when they get responses that they don't like because they (presumably) just assumed everyone would be working off of the same definitions as them.
I did not add qualifications later to the statements I made, they started like that,. how many times can I say that from the beginning I was talking about one type of Vegan. I also never assumed everyone was working off the same definition, only that the one I used was eqully valid. Again you seem upset I started with a clearly defined a scope, and i don't think you'd find an actual teacher that would take issue with that. Knowing you like to argue online makes plenty of sense for how much issue you take with that. Thers absolutely nothing wrong with speaking within a scope you've defined from the very beginning.
Text posts on Lemmy have a "Body" field to them. You did not put anything in the body of this text post. Ergo, you added qualifications later to the question in comments. Which is classic goalpost moving, by the way.
If you pose a question like "Is doing X vegan" and you don't immediately provide a working definition, you are implicitly assuming everyone shares the same definition as you. That's how language tends to work. Like, imagine if someone asked you "what's the largest planet in our solar system" and you said "Jupiter" and then they responded "Actually, no, the largest planet is the Sun," you would probably say "the Sun is not a planet." If they said, "well, my definition of a planet is anything round and in space, so according to my definition the Sun is a planet," then you would probably say, "okay, then we have different working definitions of what constitutes a planet. Maybe you should have lead with that."
I'm annoyed by the fact that you clearly didn't and made it up as you got push back from people who gave you an answer you didn't like.
Except, you didn't. You added that in replies after people answered your question in a way you didn't like. Like I know taking criticism is hard, especially from strangers on the internet, but you didn't frame this conversation correctly initially and then added important details after the fact, which is just not productive. You may not like it, but I'm trying to help you be a better conversationalist. Also, if you wanna have real discussions, don't do it on mobile. Bust out something with a real keyboard.
Well the main reason I didn't put anything in the body of this text post is because im not the one who made this text post lmfao, but at least know I know where this disconnect im perceiving is coming from. You think im someone im not. Oh man thats a hoot, have a good one.