Well first of all, bugs experience pain. You might only half hurt them, and then they could be doomed to walk around for some time with chronic pain and then die.

It seems like OP is amazed more so at the influential idea that humans are not superior to all other species. Why should this idea amaze you? We're not superior to any other species. If you look systematically at all the wonders of what other species are able to achieve this should be obvious to you. Let David Attenborough's voice guide you through the amazing lives of other species in one of his documentaries. There is nobility in other species. There is spirituality. There is culture, even civilization (such as in the case of some ants), to admire.

Plants don't have brains for introspection, or nerves to transmit pain signals. The more a brain develops the more it is conscious of its own thoughts and feelings, and the world it inhabits.

— Down The Rabbit Hole

Plants may generate consciousness differently. The complex nuanced features of their experience may have evolved in parallel, like flight in bats and birds.

I wonder this about this about computers and electronics. We spend all this time worrying about a future robot revolution, but I suspect all of our gadgets may already be conscious. They have a camera lens, they compute, they're structured on logic, et cetera.

On this, I myself am caught in between a quasi-solipsistic question and the question of "What is consciousness itself?"

Sure, such as "What is the environment itself?" "Is wilderness real or is it a construct?" "What is Nature itself?" and so on and so forth. The International Association for Environmental Philosophy regularly publishes their journal 'Environmental Philosophy' jointly through the University of Oregon.