This is nothing short of a call to slavery for those yet- undiscovered quantum organisms we just can't detect yet. How does it feel to be a fascist? /s
We meet again, Tom! I know you jest, but I legitimately know folks who would sit down and have a lengthy chat about whether bacterial products should be considered vegan.
(I personally tend to fall on the side of "don't eat factory farmed animals" side of vegetarianism. Know the farmer? Animal was raised with plenty of space and care? Enjoy. Mass produced beef from a CAFO? Avoid.)
I do love seeing advances in microbiology and fermenting novel products. Brave robot, for instance, produces milk from engineered microorganisms rather than cows. Makes for a pretty tasty vegan ice cream! The future is wild.
I am completely in line with your thoughts on eating animals. I used to call myself a farmer but the truth is I can't even slaughter any of my chickens, and was shattered when one died last year. It's a luxury belief. I am also sympathetic to those who don't have that luxury.
I do know the farmers we buy meat from. I am grateful for what they and the butcher do for me.
TBH I have also worked through the ethics of bacteria but eventually came to the same conclusion Ben Franklin did. He was a vegetarian for quite some time. In his autobiography he describes seeing someone cut open a fish and seeing inside it the three fish it had eat recently. He went back to eating meat after realizing we're all on the food chain.
I have even thought about the research showing almost-sentient behavior, or at least chemical reactions, in plants. It troubles me a little. Again, they would have no compunction about consuming me if I were available to them in consumable form. I am certainly never going to advocate against eating plants though.
I have been living with similar thoughts for most of my life and it's been keeping me somewhat unhappy. My mere existence results in plenty direct and collateral damage. Big animals, small ones, microscopic. Growing plants kills other plants, etc. Eating cheese and even bread is not exactly vegetarian.
What /u/mandmandam says below. But life is brutal and unfair. If you try to do too much to "give back" you sometimes end up doing more damage than if you did nothing. Brother, it's just hard to be a good citizen these days. Try to stay employed, try to keep your kids out of trouble, try not to suckle too much at the public teat if you can avoid it. If you do those things most of the time, as far as I'm concerned, you're golden.
Also, does it help to judge yourself with no more harshness than you do others? Do you feel the people around you who don't have the same self-doubt as you are being unreasonably destructive? If so... maybe give yourself a break.
> ‘All life,’ said the Buddha, ‘is sorrowful’; and so, indeed, it is. Life consuming life: that is the essence of its being, which is forever a becoming. ‘The world,’ said the Buddha, ‘is an ever-burning fire.’ And so it is. And that is what one has to affirm, with a yea! a dance! a knowing, solemn, stately dance of the mystic bliss beyond pain that is at the heart of every mythic rite.
The stuff we're learning about mycelium networks and plants these days is incredible.
It's really great getting to meet your farmer and butcher. Buying a whole animal and learning how to use the cuts and what goes into raising the animal is fascinating.
The Jain version of veganism is interesting, similar to veganism but also don't kill plants, just eat the bits of them that grow back. So no onions, potatoes carrots etc. Thats a simplification though:
The shoe in TFA is the opposite of minimal. Honestly I don't know how people are supposed to walk in shoes when the heel extends so far back. I feel like I'd die going down stairs.
