Scan barcode
A review by gadicohen93
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
5.0
I finished this book a few hours ago. When I started it, and while gushing through the first hundred or so pages of it, I constantly asked myself, "Would this book have the power to convert me to vegetarianism?"
At this point in time, I think it has. Everything about its research and information and the way Foer presented it and found meaning in it made me want to stop whoring my body to the American standard of the factory farm system and start building within myself a (as clichéd as it sounds) better person, one that knows, and acts on this knowledge. And really, it’s not that I didn’t have access to some of these horrifying, horrifying facts or that I’ve never seen videos of chickens being smashed into walls and, even worse, videos/images of their lives in perpetual gridlock of unnaturally humongous bodies with shit all around them, etc.; it’s that those little facts and things came across as propaganda when not delivered in this book form.
Even before reading this book, I never eat at KFC, ever, ever, ever. Never at McDonald’s. It started when I led my own investigation into PETA videos and witnessed the kinds of attacks on these corporations that really made me conscious of my ability to choose what to eat. I might’ve flirted with pescatarianism or whatever, but veg is just so difficult-sounding. Until reading this book, however, I haven't realized how truly pathetic I am for convincing myself that I'm kinda for animal "rights" (possibly one of the biggest lies I've ever perpetuated ever.)
At times it felt like Foer was on his way to conclusions that were so safe as to sound almost banal: Stop eating meat. It hurt the writing, I think. But by the end those rough places all reached their conclusions by painting a powerfully original picture. Overall, I feel like I don’t ever want to eat animals again, whether it’s because I don’t want them to experience any kind of suffering, or because I want to make this world more sustainable so that living here on earth could still be a future possibility, or because I just don’t want to put corpses into my mouth.
More than anything else, though, this quote exemplifies the rewards I’d collect by skipping meat:
“What kind of world would we create if three times a day we activated our compassion and reason as we sat down to eat … ?” Taking those moments out of life to be compassionate is truly a goal I wish to strive for.
At this point in time, I think it has. Everything about its research and information and the way Foer presented it and found meaning in it made me want to stop whoring my body to the American standard of the factory farm system and start building within myself a (as clichéd as it sounds) better person, one that knows, and acts on this knowledge. And really, it’s not that I didn’t have access to some of these horrifying, horrifying facts or that I’ve never seen videos of chickens being smashed into walls and, even worse, videos/images of their lives in perpetual gridlock of unnaturally humongous bodies with shit all around them, etc.; it’s that those little facts and things came across as propaganda when not delivered in this book form.
Even before reading this book, I never eat at KFC, ever, ever, ever. Never at McDonald’s. It started when I led my own investigation into PETA videos and witnessed the kinds of attacks on these corporations that really made me conscious of my ability to choose what to eat. I might’ve flirted with pescatarianism or whatever, but veg is just so difficult-sounding. Until reading this book, however, I haven't realized how truly pathetic I am for convincing myself that I'm kinda for animal "rights" (possibly one of the biggest lies I've ever perpetuated ever.)
At times it felt like Foer was on his way to conclusions that were so safe as to sound almost banal: Stop eating meat. It hurt the writing, I think. But by the end those rough places all reached their conclusions by painting a powerfully original picture. Overall, I feel like I don’t ever want to eat animals again, whether it’s because I don’t want them to experience any kind of suffering, or because I want to make this world more sustainable so that living here on earth could still be a future possibility, or because I just don’t want to put corpses into my mouth.
More than anything else, though, this quote exemplifies the rewards I’d collect by skipping meat:
“What kind of world would we create if three times a day we activated our compassion and reason as we sat down to eat … ?” Taking those moments out of life to be compassionate is truly a goal I wish to strive for.