I mean, come on! Sorry to not offer a photo to illustrate my point, but I felt that it would just be one more layer of exploitation to heap upon the poor flowers, who some government landscaper planted in a small plot on the left-hand side of the the freeway offramp I take to get to my house.
So, apologies for the title, which is somewhat misleading, since the plants I am talking about are not in the median strip of a boulevard. The effect is the same, however. Am I overreacting? Maybe. Maybe these plants are quite indifferent to the sound and noise pollution caused by hundreds of thousands of cars passing them everyday. But I doubt it. Furthermore, I am sure that no one would think twice about seeing a dead plant that had been relegated to a roadside plot, even though it would be the very conditions of that treatment that caused its demise. Would the observer regard the scene the same way were the entity a kitten? Of course not.
I can only hope that improved scientific understanding of the lives and sensibilities of plants will change our cultural attitudes toward and treatment of them.
So, apologies for the title, which is somewhat misleading, since the plants I am talking about are not in the median strip of a boulevard. The effect is the same, however. Am I overreacting? Maybe. Maybe these plants are quite indifferent to the sound and noise pollution caused by hundreds of thousands of cars passing them everyday. But I doubt it. Furthermore, I am sure that no one would think twice about seeing a dead plant that had been relegated to a roadside plot, even though it would be the very conditions of that treatment that caused its demise. Would the observer regard the scene the same way were the entity a kitten? Of course not.
I can only hope that improved scientific understanding of the lives and sensibilities of plants will change our cultural attitudes toward and treatment of them.
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