Revisions in red
Notes in blue
Effective altruism is about answering one question: how can we use our resources to help others the most? Defined by the EA’s website. To better understand the opposition, let’s look at an analogy Southan used in his essay ‘Is It OK to Make Art?’ from Peter Singer’s ‘Famine, Affluence, and Morality’:
suppose you saw a child drowning in a pond: would you jump in and rescue her, even if you hadn’t pushed her in? Even if it meant ruining your clothes? It would be highly controversial to say ‘no’- and yet most of us ignore those dying of poverty and preventable disease all over the world, though we can easily help them.
EA’s effectively adopted this philosophy. The majority of the world ignores the child in the pond, while the EA’s do their civic duty. This brings up the question of whether or not spending time and money to make art is wasted time and money that could be used to help the impoverished. Each EA goes out of their way to help others, they gave up on their dreams and lives to give back to those in need. When an EA sees and artist there first thought’s may be ‘what are they doing to positively affect the world.’. Can artist effectively practice an EA’s utilitarianism way of thinking to do what is most beneficial to the majority? Dre Urhahns and Jeroen Koolhaas believe so.
I’m not sure if I like the second sentence I added, feels a little out of place to me, could you let me know if it makes sense to be there or if I should just try and reword it.
EA’s may provide immediate care to poor towns, but the connection of a community through improving their neighborhood visually for years to come is something more. The art projects aren’t a program the local government is pushing on the people to improve the look of the neighborhood. The inspiration and enthusiasm about the painting blossoms from with in the community “they’re even printing t-shirts, they’re putting up banners explaining everything to everybody, and talking to the press.” (TED talk ‘How Painting Can Transform Communities’ by Haas and Hahn). The fevela took it into their own hands to finish the project now that Urhahns and Koolhaas have moved on to other projects in haiti and elsewhere. The original murals inspired enough people so the project can continue to grow and the favela can be improved on years to come.
This quote needed some more introduction, it came out of nowhere when I was reading it.
Answer to question 1: What if you connected your new sentence into the sentence that follows it, like this: “The majority of the world ignores the child in the pond, while the EA’s do their civic duty to save it, which means they bypass seeming privileges such as spending time and money to make art”?
Quite often a lack of “flow” can be fixed via “bridges.” Make those conceptual connections and the flow continues seamlessly. Does that make sense?
I LOVE the addition that you made to your second quote. I think it’s just wonderful.