Is Art a Waste of Time?

Part 2

After reviewing and going over Rhys Southan’s text one more time, I gathered much more information about the text compared to the first time reading his essay on art. Reading his essay for the first time was very confusing to me. It was confusing to me because it seemed like he was going back and forth about deciding if art was useful to society or not. He had stated “I think this world would be unlivable without art” which made me think that he was on the side of all the artists in the world. He states a couple things like this, so I have no doubt that the essay is going to about how art in necessary in life and without it, life would be boring. Then out of nowhere, Southan’s states “Artists, meanwhile, paint the beautiful landscape in front of them while the rest of the world burns”. He also stated, “Perhaps they should think about ditching their dreams” for a job “with higher expected returns”. This is saying how artists should quite their dream of being artists and should get a job that can actually pay to support one and his/her family.

Once I read the essay for the second time, I really tried to dig deep in the text so I could truly understand and I think I figured it out. I realized when Southan seemed like he was truly talking bad about artists, he was telling the EA’s view on how they see artists role in society. Rhys Southan is an artist himself who writes very dark comedy scripts. I also came to the conclusion that Southan’s true belief on artists role in society is whenever the text is praising artists and the effects they have.

Truthfully, glossing the text of this essay didn’t help benefit me in any way. When I was reading, I could normally figure out the meaning of words that I didn’t know off the top of my head by reading the surrounding text. What truly benefitted me was reading the essay for a second time. The second time reading the essay, I could really focus in on specifics unlike the first time reading the essay when I was oblivious to those specifics and who was truly talking at that time. Discussing the text in class also helped me out significantly because when I was confused about some parts of the essay, my partners could help me out and vice versa. I think discussing in class is one of the best ways to truly understand something because who have the perspective of so many others.                                       ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism )

Is Art a Waste of Time?

This article by Rhys Southan is very controversial to me and what I believe. Personally, I did not like to hear his opinion on things because it was so drastic compared to my beliefs. For example, Southan states “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?”. In my mind, I’m screaming why the hell wouldn’t I go help an innocent girl from drowning in a pond? I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I just purposely let a child drown knowing that I could have saved her life. I believe that goes for everyone unless the person was mentally unstable. Then he relates this situation to poverty and how we ignore the people suffering from poverty as he calls a “preventable disease all over the world”. I have never really thought about poverty in that way because it is such a drastic comparison. It blew me away how he could remotely compare these two scenarios. Poverty is something that can be preventable or not. One can decide to gamble his or her life away with many things that puts their family and themselves on the streets. Everyone can decide to get a job instead of sleeping on a sidewalk. Ord and MacAskill, co-founders of Giving What We Can, suggests that everyone should donate 10 percent of your income to charity. My question is, why should hard-working people have to donate 10 percent of their income to those who might not even care about themselves and given up.

Rhys Southan also states that if you “have little to contribute to the cause. Perhaps they should think about ditching their dreams for what Caleiro call ‘an area with higher expected returns’ .” I agree that if life isn’t going the way you want it to go, and you are unable to be financially stable for yourself and if you have a family, then you should be thinking about maybe getting into a new career. However, if you are already financially stable and can support yourself and your family, I believe that you should never give up on your dreams. You should never give up on your dreams because life wouldn’t be fun or interesting if you hated your job. Some people have the luxury of doing what they love and getting paid for it. That is the ultimate life to me even if the job doesn’t contribute to the cause.

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