You’re the one being obtuse. Killing a plant is not killing an animal. Killing a plant that eats animals is not humans doing something to an animal. It’s actually the opposite: it’s humans saving animals.
If you want to get that granular, whatever device you’re using to type your pedantic replies was made of parts that were shipped. At some point, the vehicle they were shipped on killed a bug. You caused way more animal deaths typing your replies to me than anyone ever did killing a venus flytrap, because killing a venus fly trap does not actually kill any animals.
When you eat that organism, its cells that feed you were produced because it ate flies, those cells are not products of the flies death? No one said killing a plant was killing an animal, What I said was if you avoid products of animal suffering why would you not avoid the biological products of animal suffering? And if humans eating things that harm animals is saving animals then why don’t vegans eat carnivorous animals? Because that not what veganism is about. Also the amount of animal death I cause has nothing to do with the debate at hand. One thing does not become vegan simply because something else causes more animal death, I don’t even know what point you’re trying to make talking about vehicles.
When you eat that organism, its cells that feed you were produced because it ate flies, those cells are not products of the flies death?
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.
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?
Id like to know what specifically you have issue with?
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.
Venus flytraps aren’t products. They’re organisms.
You’re the one being obtuse. Killing a plant is not killing an animal. Killing a plant that eats animals is not humans doing something to an animal. It’s actually the opposite: it’s humans saving animals.
If you want to get that granular, whatever device you’re using to type your pedantic replies was made of parts that were shipped. At some point, the vehicle they were shipped on killed a bug. You caused way more animal deaths typing your replies to me than anyone ever did killing a venus flytrap, because killing a venus fly trap does not actually kill any animals.
Epic response.
When you eat that organism, its cells that feed you were produced because it ate flies, those cells are not products of the flies death? No one said killing a plant was killing an animal, What I said was if you avoid products of animal suffering why would you not avoid the biological products of animal suffering? And if humans eating things that harm animals is saving animals then why don’t vegans eat carnivorous animals? Because that not what veganism is about. Also the amount of animal death I cause has nothing to do with the debate at hand. One thing does not become vegan simply because something else causes more animal death, I don’t even know what point you’re trying to make talking about vehicles.
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.