Is a Vegetarian diet healthier?

Antagonising and patronising? Actually what I did was take a spammer seriously. I object to my blog and my readers being insulted and used, PM’s is the comment that is antagonistic. For some weird reason our society thinks it’s ok to insult people and doesn’t like it when the insults are called.

Why I consider ‘PM’ to be a spammer:
– It turned up in my spam folder, and Akismet has a pretty good track record. I actually gave PM the benefit of the doubt.
– The comment has little or nothing to do with the post.
– The comment has nothing to do with the previous comments.
– It’s about ethics, in spite of the fact that the second sentence of the post specifically says that ethics is a separate issue.
– It’s anonymous. While there can be very useful and genuine anonymous comments like the one above, add it to the others and it adds to the spam suspicion. PM could be a person or a bot set up by a vegetarian group – I’ve had ones from chiropractors, and as you say it’s a passionate issue so it’s plausible.
– It’s ridiculous. Someone in their mid 40s was told they look like a teenager? Look around you – the differences between teenagers and 40 year olds are not about diet and everything about growth, maturity and deportment.

Do you seriously consider this to be an intelligent contribution to the discussion? That sort of over the top claim is a sign of propagandising, not of serious engagement. To use your own words, I consider it patronising for someone to expect me to swallow a statement like that. That undoubtedly influenced the way I replied.

If you look at my reply, you’ll see that I’ve patiently clarified what the post was about, and then I’ve taken PM’s claims seriously and asked he/she/it to explain them. I’ll openly admit I didn’t expect a reply, most of these sorts of comments are drive-bys by people just wanting to scatter gun their own message on other people’s work without taking the time to build up a platform for themselves.

We all know what people look like, and I say again – how is looking like a teenager a compliment for a mature adult? Perhaps you could explain, since I would take it as an insult or at least a very strange thing to say. Asking a question is not patronising, it’s a sign I don’t understand. It could be antagonistic to not politely let the lie past, but I don’t see why I should be polite to people who are lying to me.

I’ve devoted a couple of paragraphs to clarifying the point of the post. Re-reading them, I honestly can’t see them as patronising or antagonistic. They might be short because I’m trying to summarise the whole post, but personally I’m happy with the way they turned out. I’ve even sincerely congratulated he/she/it on finding a healthy diet that is working for them.

The next paragraph is the only bit of my comment I would agree is patronising, because I really am confused by people thinking that dead things are moving. I would hope we all know what vibration means, therefore I’m completely serious in asking what on earth that statement means. How does food vibrate? It is so weird it sounds a lot like someone taking the mickey, don’t you think? Perhaps I shouldn’t have lost my patience with a (possible) commenter, but when they haven’t engaged with the post or comments, haven’t read the clear disclaimer, and are using my work to push their own agenda, how much patience do they deserve?

Then I have some completely serious questions about cell memory, trying to work out what he/she/it means. Far from being antagonistic I’ve even given suggestions about what I think it might mean, in case PM is a human not a bot and wants to clarify the way they talk to others so they can be understood (and not be sent to spam).

The last paragraph is again completely serious. Asking someone if they realise plants have cells would be patronising if you assume that is basic knowledge. But the statement is so illogical and the previous statements about vibrations and cell memory show so little biological knowledge that I didn’t think it was safe to make that assumption. If I’d wanted to be patronising I would have phrased it slightly differently – ‘You do realise that plants have cells too, don’t you?’ It’s a slight change, but I believe the way I wrote it is more neutral, an attempt to give someone an out and admit to a mistake rather than ignorance. It’s difficult communicating with an anonymous, ambiguous set of initials – if I assume knowledge then I’m treating them as if they are lazy or illogical, if I assume ignorance then I’m treating them as if they are ignorant. I can’t actually see a good outcome here so I did the best I could.

If animals have ‘cell memory,’ whatever that may happen to be, then plants do as well. The things that are done to process plant cells are at least as bad as what is done to animal cells. If animal ‘cell memories’ are scary, aren’t the cell memories from plants? When you make a fruit smoothie do the cells of the banana make a memory and pass it on? Wouldn’t being picked and crushed be a bad memory? Exploring the consequences of someone’s statement is not antagonistic, it’s how we learn. It’s testing whether the idea is a useful hypothesis. If you are going to base your diet on an idea, don’t you want to test it out first to see if it is plausible and what the consequences would be?

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog because I am passionate about a message – that we can all be involved in science and use it to understand our world. Part of that is making a habit of questioning what ‘they say’, which is exactly what I am trying to do in this post. I resent it when someone/thing tries to hitch a ride on my work to push an unquestioning agenda. It is an insult to me and to my readers to use us in that way. I had three choices – leave it in the spam folder, publish it and go against the whole point of the blog and this post, or try to use it as a teaching moment.

If that didn’t work for you, then I’ve missed the mark. But questioning is not patronising and it is not antagonistic.