JOURNAL #18- “Against Meat” by Jonathan Safran Foer

Help explain what is lost by giving up meat and what is gained for Foer
Foer believes that without meat her will lose family memories. As a child Foer’s happiest memories were when he was eating meat. While if meat was not on the menu, he still would have not had the same experiences with cooking and how he learned to cook. Foer describes it as a, “cultural loss” meaning without those meals he might not have had a good of an understanding of where he came from. Even though he losses part of his culture and history, Foer gains his values as a human being. At the end of the article Foer mentions how his grandmother didn’t eat pork when she was starving because it was not kosher. She said, “If nothing matters, there’s nothing to save” meaning if you give up everything you value, how can you live with yourself after the fact. Maintaining values and your morality makes you who you are, so eating meat would have made Foer lose his sense of self.
What do you make of the question Foer presents
Pleasure is difficult to compare in taste verses no taste. I agree with Foer when he says, “I don’t love them without limit” because you need to know what you can handle within your morality. Even though Foer loves to eat meat, he values the lives of the animals more. It reminds me of the saying if you love something let it go, Foer loved eating meat so he let it go to allow the animals to live their lives in peace. The other question you need to ask yourself is if it ethical to kill and torture animals all for our taste. Just because we can have something doesn’t mean we should. So just because humans have the ability to kill doesn’t mean it is our right or duty to kill animals. There are many other alternatives to animals which humans have access to at any point, yet animals are still on the menu.