I have a question I have always wanted to ask a few vegetarians, and perhaps this is a good place to finally do so…

Is there that much difference between an animal and a plant?

In recent years, and especially after reading Stephen Harrod Bruhner’s book The Secret Teaching of Plants, Derrick Jensen’s book, A Language Older Than Words and learning more from other Earth poets and students of Nature who read her book through direct and conscious experience such as Goethe and Thoreau, this distinction has become less and less clear to me. When a plant is eaten it is sacrificing its own body so that we can live, it is the same with an animal.

Currently both plants and animals are being horribly abused, disfigured and treated inhumanely, we think of cows stuffed into factory farms or of lab rats being experimented on to further the development of new drugs but there are also vast green deserts of genetically manipulated soy, and all the other terrible things we do to plants in the name of science and feeding the world. It does make me sad that the poor underdog, plants, have no Vegetation Activists to protect and defend them from these disrespectful and abusive attitudes. But I suppose it is even worse for rocks and minerals that are considered to have absolutely no personality.