Jonathan Safran Foer Webinar

Today we had a webinar session with famous author Jonathan Safran Foer who has impacted life with his novels such as Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. The webinar we had today was presented by Foer himself which talked about his most recent work, Eating Animals. I feel like this webinar session was persuasive, informative, and ingenious. There are many reasons as to where I believe so which leads me getting into the details.

One of the reasons I think this presentation was persuasive is because there was many talks about how being a vegetarian is a better lifestyle than feeding our bodies with any types of meat. One of the things that I heard Safran Foer say was “meat is murder”. The way I understood his quote is in the way of meat having a strong impact to our bodies, but in a non healthy way. Not only that, I feel like this quote also refers to the animals that have been brutally killed to be served on plates.

Another category I believe this webinar session falls into is informative. It was very informative because anytime someone would ask a question he would give many details and build up on it going into another significant topic. At some point throughout the conversation he was talking about the food industry and how farmers provide to it. He said, “farmers produce what people want.” This in my opinion was very clever of him to say because it is absolutely true. Why would farmers spend money on something that in the end won’t benefit them?

The final category I felt this discussion fell into is that it was ingenious. Foer was clearly clever and original as to they way he talked about the many different topics. He was concise answering all of the questions asked although for some he took longer because of all the detail being said. Those are some reasons why I believe this discussion was ingenious.

After this presentation, I feel that many of the topics talked about can relate to my life. I personally have always wanted to try to become a vegetarian but I’ve never really given it much thought until now. Safran Foer pointed out many things as to why becoming a vegetarian is better to the body and other different aspects. For example, when he said, “we can’t ignore meat so that’s why we still eat it although we hate animal cruelty.” His words really put it in perspective because it is true, we can’t avoid meat because it is constantly being presented to us everywhere we go. That is one of the things that have stopped me from becoming a vegetarian. Overall I think that this was one of the coolest experiences I’ve ever been through because these kinds of opportunities don’t come around every day.