this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
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[โ€“] anarchost@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Edit: thank you for all the thoughtful replies from the people who downvoted but left an explanation!

The more I think about this question, the more complexities it creates. I am not a vegan, so I can only guess what the average vegan would think...

  • If you eat a plant that causes harm to a living being like an insect, are you doing a moral good from a vegan perspective because you are reducing harm?
  • Would it be morally good for a vegan to use vegan means to prevent more harm to animals?
  • Would it be the ultimate moral good for vegans to hunt down every wild Venus flytrap and consume them?
  • What if the Venus flytrap only ate insects that significantly harmed animal or human populations by spreading diseases?
  • If vegans could alter the environment using non-vegan means, in such a way that bats stopped eating mosquitoes without upsetting the overall ecosystem, but these mosquitoes started spreading a terrible but non-deadly disease in humans, would it be moral for them to do so, or would it be immoral for them to avoid it?

Unfortunately, I don't know the calculus a vegan uses when placing value on the life of a human versus an animal, so the bat mosquito thing is entirely up in the air for me up in the air for me

[โ€“] PM_ME_FAT_ENBIES@lib.lgbt 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Genetically engineering the disease in the saliva of the lone star tick so that it's sexually transmissible between humans is vegan.