Original 1: They believe that artists are in a whole other world just “paint[ing] beautiful landscapes in front of them while the rest of the world burns”. The EA wants artists to give up their dream of being an artist for a job with “higher expected returns”

Revised 1: The EA believe that artists are in a whole other world just “paint[ing] beautiful landscapes in front of them while the rest of the world burns”. I strongly disagree with this statement because the beautiful landscapes that artists create help bring joy and light to the world which is slowly burning. Without these artists, the world would look more like hell and not so much of heaven.

Added Quote 1: These brazilian people and favelas, were assumed to be “unwelcoming, dangerous, ugly places”. Haas and Hahn turned the favelas of Rio into a tourist attraction and changed the perspective of the people in their to be more valued and treasured.

Added Quote 2: Effective Altruism states that “the only good that counts is what you accomplish over and above what the next person would have done in your place”.

Before Revisions of Body Paragraph 1 and 2:

In the short essay, Is Art a Waste of Time, Rhy Southan talks about many different views and opinions of being an artist. He starts off by introducing himself as a movie script writer whose focus is on very dark comedies. This tells me right away that Southan is an artists himself. He then introduces the Effective Altruism group, or EA for short. The EA have dedicated their lives to helping people in need all over the world in hopes to cure poverty. The EA believe that there is no room for art in the world and that artists could be doing other things that could actually benefit society. They believe that artists are in a whole other world just “paint[ing] beautiful landscapes in front of them while the rest of the world burns”. The EA wants artists to give up their dream of being an artist for a job with “higher expected returns” so that the person can donate more money or 10% of their earnings to the less fortunate. Southan however, does not feel the same way that Effective Altruism group does. He believes that “the world would be unlivable without art” and that art does have a positive impact in society. The EA does make Southan feel guilty for being an artist, but he comes to the conclusion that he is not willing to give up on art which he loves and holds dear to his heart for something that will ultimately make him unhappy.

On the other side of the argument, there are these two guys named Haas and Hahn, who have this amazing story about how art can change the perspective of favelas and rough cities. Their journey started when Jeroen Koolhaas won a competition to make a documentary for MTV. The documentary was originally on Brazilian hip-hop music in the favelas of Rio but during their time in Brazil, the word image was always lingering around the slums. Haas and Hahn saw this and wanted a change to happen so they put a plan in place. The plan was to create a massive mural that would cover many buildings and would be able to be seen from far distances. This experience brought together the whole community in a way like no other. Haas and Hahn completely changed the perspective of favelas and basically forced people to think of favelas differently by the actions of two people. Now that is truly unbelievable. Haas and Hahn quickly got famous and started getting requests from all over the world. They then took a gig in North Philly which is one of the poorest neighborhoods in the United States. They worked with the whole community to get this project done and it took about two full years to transform this neighborhood. Koolhaas and Urhahn even went a step further this time and trained kids from the streets to paint and hired them so they could help out with this amazing project while getting paid for it. Not only did these guys change the community, but they changed these kids lives by giving them purpose and a way to get away from the violence. Even now after the project has been over with, Koolhaas and Urhahn still stay in contact with some of the people from Philly which is proof of how these two guys really changed the community. They couldn’t believe how much of an impact they could possibly have on one neighborhood by using nothing but paint and a few brushes.

After Revisions:

The true power of art is to give rise to hope, promote change, and bring communities together. However, some individuals have drastically different opinions that will contradict mine. Some believe that art is a waste of time and should be removed from society all together. Rhys Southan’s essay, “Is Art a Waste of Time”, explores these opposing opinions. Southan, an artist himself, goes on vacation to have a peaceful set of mind to finish writing his play. Along his journey he meets a group of people affiliated with Effective Altruism. The Effective Altruism, or EA for short, have dedicated their lives to helping people in need all over the world to help cure poverty. The EA wants artists to give up their dream for a job with “higher expected returns” so that the person can donate more money or 10% of their earnings to the less fortunate. I agree that the idea of making more money to be able to donate more does sound amazing, but giving up art altogether to make it happen is not worth it. The EA believe that artists are in a whole other world just “paint[ing] beautiful landscapes in front of them while the rest of the world burns”. I strongly disagree with this statement because the beautiful landscapes that artists create help bring joy and light to the world which is slowly burning. Without these artists, the world would look more like hell and not so much of heaven.

Most, like me, believe that art is something that is essential to everyday life. Without it, life would be plain and colorless. Art is a powerful tool that, if used wisely, can do countless possibilities to the eyes of the individuals. These are the ideals that two artists named Haas and Hahn believe. Haas and Hahn create massive murals in rough cities and favelas. These masterpieces are so beautiful that it changes the perspective of the culture in the area. A great example of this was the time that Haas and Hahn spent in the favelas of Rio. The artwork that they made there was so magical, that it changed the perspective and image of favelas. The image of favelas was more along the lines of slums and Haas and Hahn turned the favelas of Rio into a tourist attraction. This changed the individuals in the favelas mental state from thinking that they were worthless to something that people valued and treasured. Not only did this project change the perspective of the community, but it also brought the community together as a whole. The community came together by all pitching in money for supplies and paint for the artists to work. Now if art is so useless, then why would a very poor region of Brazil raise as much money as 100,000 dollars when they could have used that money for their own well being?

Changes: I made some drastic changes to these two body paragraphs. Before the revisions, I was mainly summarizing the two pieces of literature we had. I got a lot of feedback on how I should be using my own ideas and supporting or contradicting those ideas with the two pieces of literature. In order to do that, I deleted the paragraphs and completely re-wrote the two paragraphs to have more of my ideas involved in my text. I do think that writing it more of around my ideas helped my essay sound better overall.

As I am revising my first essay on whether art is a waste of time or not, my main objective is to stray from the traditional 5 paragraph essay that I am so accustom to. My body paragraphs are mainly summary, summary, idea and I need to reorganize that around my own ideas. I can’t just reiterate what everyone say’s from their texts but instead I need to use my own ideas and use the text more as just supporting evidence or contradicting evidence. If it is contradicting evidence, I need to make sure that I have points to disagree with the argument.

The steps I plan to take to achieve this goal is to first cut out my main 2 body paragraphs that really summarize both of the texts instead of having my own ideas. Its going to be hard because I spent a lot of time creating this rough draft and now I am basically just deleting my two body paragraphs but it has to be done to better my text. I will still be using the same ideas from the body paragraphs but I need to make sure that i’m not just summarizing the two pieces of literature. The next step I plan on taking to better my text is adding a paragraph about the Peter Singer pond analogy. I did not see that the analogy had to be included into the text that was on the syllabus so I really need to make sure that I include a paragraph about how the pond analogy relates to the EA’s theory of replaceability.

The biggest challenge that I will face is cutting my two paragraphs. I believe it will be very hard because I put so much time into them. Another challenge is going to be how I summarize the text around my own idea’s. This is going to be hard because normally in high school, you summarize the text to make sure the reader knows what you as the author are talking about and then putting your ideas into the essay that either supports or contradicts the literature.

If a challenge arrises that proves too difficult for me to solve on my own then my first source of reference to be looked at will be the book, The Little Seagull. If that doesn’t help me out, then my next resource will be to set up an appointment with SASC so they can help me out.

The three categories of comments are ideas, evidence, and organization. In the idea category talks about your thesis and suggestions that would make it stronger. It also talks about your claims in the paragraphs and the relationships between ideas. The evidence category is pretty self explanatory. Does the evidence support the claim that you as the author has made. Finally, you have the organization category. This category is talking about the sentence fluency. If a sentence doesn’t fit in with the essay, it should be cut.

Idea comment: “I really like this intro but I do think that you should add your views on what you think about art not only just the two pieces of literature. I also think you should add a thesis statement for your final sentence.” This comment is giving the idea of using different methods to make the introduction paragraph better which is why it fits in the idea category.

Evidence comment:”good quote to support your ideas. I like how you explained further the importance of that quote.” This is in the evidence category because it is talking about how she used a great quote and explained it further in depth.

Organization comment:”I think you should cut this and put “like the year” because the dash was confusing, I think : would have made more sense.” This belongs in the organization category because it is talking about how the sentence did not make sense and how it needs to be either cut from the text all together or changed to make it sound better.

Truthfully, I did not really enjoy reading other people’s essay’s because I feel like I would have rather been focusing more on my essay in the time provided. It was nice to see the other people’s ideas and perspective’s but I also didn’t have time at all to work on my essay. I was focusing on other people’s essay which to me didn’t make sense. I think in the future, we should only have to peer review one essay instead of three so we have enough time to work on our essays too.

I really enjoyed reading others introduction paragraphs because it gave me insight on how to critique my own writing. It gave me ideas about what I can do to make my introduction better. I peer reviewed Anthony’s introduction and it gave me insight on what I need to do better in my own introduction for the essay to come. I really liked how he brought both of the texts available in his introduction. I thought it was a good idea to introduce both texts and there views. It will help the reader understand what I am going to be arguing for and what texts I am going to use to support my claims.

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Blog 3

The TED talk I chose to write about was Koolhaas and Urhahn’s story about how art can change the perspective of favelas and rough cities. Their journey started when Jeroen Koolhaas won a competition to make a documentary for MTV. The documentary was originally on Brazilian hip-hop music in the favelas of Rio but during their time in Brazil, the word image was always lingering around the slums. Koolhaas and Urhahn saw this and wanted a change to happen so they put a plan in place. The plan that was put in place was to create a massive mural that would cover many buildings and would be able to be seen from far distances. This experience brought together the whole community in a way like no other. Koolhaas and Urhahn completely changed the perspective of favelas and basically forced people to think of favelas differently by the actions of two people. Now that is truly unbelievable. Koolhaas and Urhahn quickly got famous and started getting requests from all over the world. They then took a gig in North Philly which is one of the poorest neighborhoods in the United States. They worked with the whole community to get this project done. It took about two full years to transform this neighborhood. Koolhaas and Urhahn even went a step further this time and trained kids from the streets to paint and hired them so they could help out with this amazing project while getting paid for it. Even now after the project has been over with, Koolhaas and Urhahn still stay in contact with some of the people from Philly. They couldn’t believe how much of an impact they could possibly have on one neighborhood.

In the short essay, Is Art a Waste of Time, by Rhy Southan talks about many different views and opinions of being an artist. He starts off by introducing himself as a movie script writer whose focus is on very dark comedies. He then introduces the Effective Altruism, or EA for short. The EA believe that there is no room for art in the world and that artists could be doing other things that could actually benefit society. They believe that artists are in a whole other world just “paint[ing] beautiful landscapes in front of them while the rest of the world burns”. The EA wants artists to give up their dream of being an artist for a job with higher expected returns so that the person can donate more money to kids who are in need. The EA really tries to guilt trip the audience into agreeing with their beliefs by comparing not donating to charity to not saving a kid’s life drowning in a pond right in front of you. Southan on the other hand, believes that “the world would be unlivable without art” and that art does indeed have a positive impact in society. In the middle of the essay, Southan does seem to feel a little guilty for not doing his part in society to his fullest potential because he is doing art instead of higher paying jobs. He eventually comes to the conclusion though that he is not willing to give up on art which he loves and holds dear to his heart for something that will ultimately make him unhappy.

I was able to make a few connections between Southan’s essay and the TED talk. The main connection was that both believe that art has a positive influence in society and that art makes a difference in people lives all over the world to the point where art is unlivable without. Another connection that I made between the two is that both like to help the poor.    Southan will mainly help the poor by donating money to charity and from the pleasure that his scripts give to people. The TED talk likes to build something so spectacular that it gives the community and everyone around the community hope and joy.