If oysters - lacking a CNS - react to external stimuli and quite probably "feel" something, even something as basic as lack of food, shouldn't we abandon the idea to live without hurting some other living being?
Even in the most ideal circumstances we kill other beings simply due to resource consumption. Maybe not now, but in the future - what we consume isn't available to them. Even if you claim the resources we consume aren't food to the food species of your choice, due to the law of increasing entropy we definitely shorten the lifetime of whatever comes after us just by existing.
Hardcore buddhists for example consider all life equally worthy. No karma bonus for vegans, maybe less than for non-vegetarians who buy only from farms which provide a healthy, livable life to the livestock (or, obviously, for the plants)
"If oysters - lacking a CNS - react to external stimuli and quite probably "feel" something, even something as basic as lack of food, shouldn't we abandon the idea to live without hurting some other living being?"
Some have already abandoned that idea. I quote Joseph Campbell[1]:
"Life lives on life. This is the sense of the symbol of the Ouroboros, the serpent biting its tail. Everything that lives lives on the death of something else."
I've always felt that sustaining oneself with the life another animal or plant or whatever is the ultimate sign of respect and should be considered an almost sacred act.
Amusingly enough, saprotrophic fungi come the closest to putting this idea into practice. Their enzymes externally digest decaying matter, I.e. the disorganized jumble of proteins and nutrients “left over” from dead organisms.
Even in the most ideal circumstances we kill other beings simply due to resource consumption. Maybe not now, but in the future - what we consume isn't available to them. Even if you claim the resources we consume aren't food to the food species of your choice, due to the law of increasing entropy we definitely shorten the lifetime of whatever comes after us just by existing.
Hardcore buddhists for example consider all life equally worthy. No karma bonus for vegans, maybe less than for non-vegetarians who buy only from farms which provide a healthy, livable life to the livestock (or, obviously, for the plants)