Expanding the Thread
The article “Is Art a Waste of Time?”, by Rhys Southan, sparked a lot of deep thoughts. I didn’t think that my first english assignment would make me ponder all of my life choices and influence my future choices.
The first ‘thread’ that stood out to me was when Sam Hilton and Southan went for a walk in the woods after settling into their cottage. Hilton began by asking if Southan’s script would be one of the best scripts ever written. Hilton asked this to try and convince Southan that if it’s not the best then he should consider pursuing other ways to elicit change in the world. Hilton brought funding into the equation to say that the amount of money it would take to make a movie could have a substantially larger impact saving lives, instead of just entertaining people. This whole interaction made me think about how aggressive Hilton is, and potentially, how aggressive the whole EA community is. Talking about people dying around the world, while most Americans are living comfortably (and striving to be MORE comfortable), it may justify a reason to give it all of your energy. I wonder how this aggressiveness helps recruiting new people or hinders it. Some may see him and be inspired by his passion and the cause, when others would listen to his antagonistic rant and tell him to shove off. In my opinion I think art would be a great in between for raising awareness and not being too assertive.
My second thread arose after reading the observation made by the australian writer, Chris Rodley. Chris was pointing out how the ‘magic utilitarian consequence calculator’ usually comes with hidden repercussions. He brought up how some movies and TV series had the intention of raising awareness to social problems, but subsequently made a whole new set of stereotypes. This led me to think about how every action has a consequence, and what you choose to spend your time doing has a huge impact on the world. There are consequences for your actions AND your inactions. They also bring up the point that if you’re not doing any harm, then you’re still not helping. Overall, this Effective Altruism movement has an overwhelming effect. It makes me feel as though there’s an infinite number of things I could be doing to save humanity, but instead I’m writing an english blog post. If you went through life questioning every act you do, you would go mad, and then wouldn’t be doing any good for anyone. So, I think EA’s should invite the idea of moderation into their practice. A ‘one step at a time’ mindset perhaps. I’ll start doing more good in the world, but I’m gonna start small. Sorry Peter Singer, I’m keeping both of my kidneys for now.
Some of my messy annotations
