Perfect is Impossible, So Why Try?

Argument #13 of 13

The Argument

"You can't live perfectly anyway—every action you take causes some harm. The air you breathe deprives others of oxygen. The water you drink is taken from the ecosystem. Since it's literally impossible to cause zero harm, why obsess over one arbitrary category like eating meat? You're being a hypocrite by drawing the line at animal products while ignoring all the other unavoidable harm you cause just by being alive."

Steelmanning the Position

This argument touches on a real philosophical truth: Perfect moral purity is impossible.

Living in the modern world necessarily involves causing harm. You cannot exist without consuming resources, displacing other organisms, and creating environmental impact. If we take the principle of "minimize all harm" to its logical extreme, the only way to cause zero harm would be to cease existing. Since that's absurd, there must be some level of harm that's acceptable—and if some harm is acceptable, why not the harm from eating animals?

The Response

"Perfection is Impossible" Does Not Mean "Therefore, Anything Goes"

The fundamental flaw in this argument is that it confuses "you can't be perfect" with "therefore you shouldn't try to be better."

The Logical Structure of the Argument:

1. It's impossible to live without causing any harm
2. Therefore, it's hypocritical to try to reduce harm in specific areas
3. Therefore, there's no moral difference between causing necessary harm and causing unnecessary harm

The conclusion doesn't follow from the premises. Watch what happens when we apply this same reasoning to other moral issues:

Applying This Logic to Other Moral Issues

Murder and Manslaughter: "You can't go through life without accidentally contributing to someone's death at some point (car accidents, spreading disease, consumption of resources, slave labor for cell phone production). Since perfect safety is impossible, why does it matter if I intentionally murder someone?"

Obviously, this is absurd. The difference between accidentally causing harm and intentionally causing harm is fundamental to ethics. The fact that you might accidentally harm someone doesn't give you license to intentionally harm anyone you want.

Theft: "You benefit from systemic injustices and stolen land. Since you can't avoid benefiting from theft, why is it wrong for me to steal your wallet?"

Again, clearly flawed. Unavoidable participation in a flawed system doesn't justify committing intentional crimes.

The Actual Ethical Principle

Ethical people follow the Principle of Harm Reduction:

"We should minimize the harm we cause to the extent that is practical and possible, prioritizing the reduction of unnecessary and intentional harm over unavoidable harm."

This principle distinguishes between:

• Necessary vs. Unnecessary harm (Breathing vs. Eating animals)
• Unavoidable vs. Avoidable harm (Existing vs. Choosing what to buy)
• Intentional vs. Accidental harm (Slaughter vs. Crop deaths)

Comparing Unavoidable and Avoidable Harms

The table makes it clear: eating animals is fundamentally different from the unavoidable harms of existence. It is completely avoidable, intentional, and massive in scale.

What Veganism Actually Claims

What Veganism Claims:

• You should avoid causing unnecessary harm when practical
• Eating animals is unnecessary for most people
• Animals suffer when we kill them for food
• We should eliminate this source of suffering

What Veganism Doesn't Claim:

• You can achieve perfect moral purity
• You'll never cause any harm to any being
• Vegans are morally superior in all ways
• Minor unavoidable harms are equivalent to major avoidable harms

Conclusion

When someone says "you can't be perfect, so why try," what they're really saying is "I don't want to change my behavior, so I'm going to pretend that trying to do better is somehow wrong unless you can do everything perfectly."

The fact that you can't eliminate all harm doesn't justify intentionally causing massive, unnecessary harm to billions of sentient beings when you have clear alternatives.