NDE Life Review and Eating Animals

The plants are not having my jelly babies, Typoz ! (sorry couldn't resist) Interesting thread though impossible to resolve IMHO !
I'm ok with the humour - mine was a pretty daft remark too.

I remember reading something years ago about the way ancient humans used red ochre as a pigment. There were indications from archaeology that it was extracted from the ground with a certain reverence, and the places from which it was extracted were afterwards refilled with care.

This seems to resonate with some Native American ideas about treating everything with respect, rather than dividing things into categories, "treat this with care", "abuse the hell out of this". I think there's a point there, not so much in the idea of treating the rocks as alive, like one's own mother, but more importantly, that we should not switch on and off our respect and reverence, but maintain it as a continuous state.
 
Remember that we only detect sentience in animals by correlation - first with animals that are awake, and then with us. There is no accepted theory as to what sentience is!

If you watch speeded up recordings of many plants, they do appear remarkably sentient.

David

That's true, consciousness and sentience are complex things. I think it's pretty inarguable that animals are more sentient and more able to suffer then plants. Animals are able to escape suffering, whereas plants are not, seems a bit cruel and evolutionarily make no sense for plants to be able to suffer but not escape it amiright?

Cheers!

Robbie
 
It's very similar, the main difference I can see (after doing a bit of reading) is that they don't eat potatoes (which supposedly contain many, many lives) nor onions, garlic and eggplants (which three they see as having a dark energy, lethargy and putrid smell), and that they do eat plants such as broccoli and cauliflower, apparently because if those plants aren't harvested then they wither and die soon afterwards anyway. I'm going to have to check up on that and contemplate it, they may have a point.

Another difference is that they do not forbid milk and dairy, although there is now a growing movement for Jain veganism, motivated by concern over the abuses of factory-farmed dairy.



I've collected a lot of it here. There has also been a relevant Skeptiko thread which contains some evidence: Plant Intelligence.



Mmm, you're right that plants and not just fruit are included, but I get the impression from that link that grains, cereals, etc are more prevalent. Anyhow, you may be right that in the end, eating meat results in more lost plant lives than eating plants directly - it would be a hard one to quantify.

I'm not comfortable accepting that plants are definitely less sentient than animals, let's just note that there is some uncertainty, and that we may disagree here.



Indeed!

Here's a good link for the amount of resources, crops etc used to feed animals, it ain't pretty:

http://www.earthsave.org/environment.htm

I'll check those links out, and whilst I don't doubt that plants have some sentience/intelligence, here's my counterpoint to them being on the same level as animals. If you think plants might have the same level of sentience as animals, it means they have been given or have evolved the same ability to suffer, without being given or having evolved the means to escape it.

Just worth thinking about!

Cheers as always my friend!

Robbie[/QUOTE]
 
Here's a good link for the amount of resources, crops etc used to feed animals, it ain't pretty:

http://www.earthsave.org/environment.htm

Bookmarked. Those are some sobering stats. Well referenced too.

If you think plants might have the same level of sentience as animals, it means they have been given or have evolved the same ability to suffer, without being given or having evolved the means to escape it.

Mmm, a reasonable point, but on the other hand, not all animals (including humans) can escape suffering all the time either - think for example of people who suffer from chronic pain. The Mythbusters video of the Cleve Backster experiment (linked to in the page of evidence I shared in an earlier post) is, I think, pretty compelling evidence that plants do suffer.
 
Bookmarked. Those are some sobering stats. Well referenced too.



Mmm, a reasonable point, but on the other hand, not all animals (including humans) can escape suffering all the time either - think for example of people who suffer from chronic pain. The Mythbusters video of the Cleve Backster experiment (linked to in the page of evidence I shared in an earlier post) is, I think, pretty compelling evidence that plants do suffer.

True but those people aren't healthy people, they are sick people. I'm certainly open to and reading your plants links it seems plants do have sentience, and I'm looking at altering my diet from reading the links. My main point is just that plants don't have sentience or the same ability to suffer or process suffer as animals as humans do, I could be wrong though, it does seem cruel to me that they can't escape it like healthy animals can though!

Cheers!

Roberta
 
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My main point is just that plants don't have sentience or the same ability to suffer or process suffer as animals as humans do, I could be wrong though,
Aren't we here back to the same question which is asked over and over on these forums: just what is consciousness? I don't have an answer, but there's plenty of reason to suggest it doesn't depend on having a brain, or a physical body. Certain types of pain clearly relate to having a physical body, but suffering itself is not necessarily so linked.
 
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The Mythbusters video of the Cleve Backster experiment (linked to in the page of evidence I shared in an earlier post) is, I think, pretty compelling evidence that plants do suffer.
Those Backster experiments have always fascinated me. What seems a great shame is that I first heard about them decades ago, and it seems little progress has been made in increasing our knowledge in this area. It's easy for sceptics to claim that there's nothing to see there, but I've also a feeling that to even seriously investigate the topic could be a career-destroying move.

Edit:

I watched the Youtube video, certainly interesting. The first part, using physical 'attacks' could potentially have a conventional explanation, but then they did an experiment involving thought alone. That was more interesting. But all too brief.
 
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I'm not quite sure where this is going. Do we end up not eating anything?

If we could, that would be ideal; I haven't figured out how to do that just yet though...

The approach I advocate is as I wrote above: to eat only fruit (by the botanical definition). This doesn't harm or kill the plant, since fruit is designed to detach from the plant naturally.
 
Interesting fact (not that there are many Christians on this forum): the original diet in the Garden of Eden was fruitarian or at least vegan. Genesis 1:29-30 states:

Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.
 
There is one school of thought which suggests that humankind evolved the larger brains which supposedly separate them from similar creatures as a result of a somewhat prolonged 'waterside' living, eating a diet of seafood (shellfish and the like). Of course there's another hypothesis which suggests that what separates us from similar creatures is that we are hybrids, a mix which is particularly discomfiting to these who like to eat meat.
 
I'm not quite sure where this is going. Do we end up not eating anything?

I have posted this here before, but this is an interesting article:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/23/the-intelligent-plant
Sidenote: NOT saying I agree with everything in that article, but it did lead me to look into more research about plant consciousness. There are some interesting TED Talks on it too.

If you define "consciousness" as recognizing change and adapting to one's environment, then plants do count as "conscious." It doesn't mean we can't eat anything. Humans, supposedly, evolved to eat meat. But manufacturing meat through the horrific conditions of feedlots and slaughterhouses makes eating meat unethical under those conditions.

If plants have consciousness and are, possibly, social, then it is unethical to farm them in the same way we are farming and exploiting animals, through Big Agriculture and monocropping.
 
You're sort of advocating a Jain's view aren't you? What evidence is there that plants are sentient?

If they are ill adapt my diet but we still need to be clear that A) Animals are more sentient and B) Eating animals kills more plants, it doesn't just kill fruit plans they use all kinds of plants.

This is a useful link, but probably only relevant to the UK:

https://www.food.gov.uk/business-industry/farmingfood/animalfeed/what-farm-animals-eat

That's also the land and the resource aspect of factory farming. However like you said, we agree on most things!

I agree with the statement that vegans consume much less plants than omnivores (including of course feeding for the animals). I also agree that animals are more sentient than plants (this is why i do not eat meat since 1993, only later I realized that I am also saving plants). However, I recognize that some animals are also killed when producing e.g. grain (rodents, insects etc). Therefore I think it is realistic to strive for reducing the suffering caused by ourselves, but it will probably never be no suffering at all. I think the best (and also healthiest, if done properly) answer to animal and plants suffering is veganism, but I do not see how to go further from there. I myself use cotton shirts, wooden furniture, paper, i pay for grass being mowed etc...
 
I agree with the statement that vegans consume much less plants than omnivores (including of course feeding for the animals). I also agree that animals are more sentient than plants (this is why i do not eat meat since 1993, only later I realized that I am also saving plants). However, I recognize that some animals are also killed when producing e.g. grain (rodents, insects etc). Therefore I think it is realistic to strive for reducing the suffering caused by ourselves, but it will probably never be no suffering at all. I think the best (and also healthiest, if done properly) answer to animal and plants suffering is veganism, but I do not see how to go further from there. I myself use cotton shirts, wooden furniture, paper, i pay for grass being mowed etc...

Yeah Veganism is about reducing the amount of suffering as far as possible, so start with a Vegan diet and lifestyle, and then if we can buy products more ethnically sourced and produced etc we should do that too!
 
I agree with Roberta's comment. It is probably impossible to leave no suffering "footprint," but it is also my goal to reduce the amount of suffering I inflict through the choices I make. I took up a vegan lifestyle several years ago, even though I previously believed I was a lifelong meat-eater. It all changed when I had a foundation-shaking experience with a dying animal that (a nineteen year old family cat) that I firmly believe fell into the extended consciousness realm. By whatever means it happened, I experienced a powerful sense of both his awareness and his suffering as he slipped away. Whatever in fact happened (and I do not now feel a need to dissect or reduce it), it completely turned my perspective on animal consciousness on its head. I have only eaten meat one time since.

I think it is a common misconception in our society that simply because an animal has less intelligence (which is in some cases a questionable claim anyway, especially in regard to dolphins, whales, and elephants), it has less awareness and hence its suffering is not as real. I feel it is unrealistic to imagine that our society will embrace vegetarianism or veganism en masse any time soon, nor to I try to push such a lifestyle on others. But I do hope that more people choose to take a broader view of animal life, rather than continuing to buy into the paradigm of them being merely resources or possessions without any inner life.
 
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