View Single Post
  #14 (permalink)   Report Post  
Posted to alt.food.vegan,alt.animals.ethics.vegetarian,rec.food.veg,sci.econ,alt.philosophy
ex-PFC Wintergreen[_2_] ex-PFC Wintergreen[_2_] is offline
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 55
Default Sorry, vegans: Brussels sprouts like to live, too

Rupert wrote:
> On Dec 25, 7:17 am, ex-PFC Wintergreen >
> wrote:
>> DC wrote:
>>> NY Times
>>> In his new book, “Eating Animals” (Amazon.com:
>>> http://snurl.com/EatAni), the novelist Jonathan Safran
>>> Foer describes his gradual transformation from omnivorous,
>>> oblivious slacker who “waffled among any number of diets”
>>> to “committed vegetarian.” Last month, Gary Steiner, a
>>> philosopher at Bucknell University, argued on the Op-Ed
>>> page of The New York Timeshttp://snurl.com/ttw8wthat
>>> people should strive to be “strict ethical vegans” like
>>> himself, avoiding all products derived from animals,
>>> including wool and silk. Killing animals for human food and
>>> finery is nothing less than “outright murder,” he said...
>>> But before we cede the entire moral penthouse to “committed
>>> vegetarians” and “strong ethical vegans,” we might consider
>>> that plants no more aspire to being stir-fried in a wok
>>> than a hog aspires to being peppercorn-studded in my
>>> Christmas clay pot. This is not meant as a trite argument
>>> or a chuckled aside. Plants are lively and seek to keep it
>>> that way. The more that scientists learn about the
>>> complexity of plants — their keen sensitivity to the
>>> environment, the speed with which they react to changes in
>>> the environment, and the extraordinary number of tricks
>>> that plants will rally to fight off attackers and solicit
>>> help from afar — the more impressed researchers become, and
>>> the less easily we can dismiss plants as so much fiberfill
>>> backdrop...
>>> Continued:http://snurl.com/ttw97

>> "vegans" are not "more ethical" for refusing to consume animal products.
>> In fact, the very fact of being "vegan" is an indication that the
>> person describing himself as such is morally bankrupt, because
>> "veganism" isn't about doing the right thing at all; it's purely about
>> making an invidious, sanctimonious comparison with others and then
>> patting oneself on the back.

>
> [garbage]


"vegans" cannot show how refraining from consuming animal products
comprises more ethical behavior. "veganism" is and only can be about
sanctimony. Any time a person's "ethics" consists in comparing oneself
with others, it isn't ethics at all.