As a begin to revise my first paper, my main goal it to argue the value and purpose of art in a clear and concise way. By using evidence from the text, my ideas should be well formed and supported. Having an idea of my main goal will help me begin to make smaller revisions in order to achieve it.

The First step I would like to take is to look over my notes from the original reading of the text. By going back through my notes I will be able to find quotes that stuck out to me. I will then be able to use these quotes as evidence in my essay in order to strengthen my main ideas. I see this step as my largest challenge because the size of the text makes it harder to quickly find specific quotes however, my summary and notes on eportfolio should help me go back and find ideas from the text.

Second, I am going to better describe the Peter Singer analogy in a way the reader will truly understand its purpose in my essay. Right now it feels as though it doesn’t truly fit in. In order to better utilize the analogy I will first go back an look at my notes to brush up on its argument. Next, I will write the analogy and my main argument on paper and brainstorm connections between the two. After that I should have a better idea on how to incorporate it into my essay.

Lastly, I am going to go through my essay and make sure all my connections, ideas, and sentences make sense and serve a purpose to my argument. My main tool here is going to be my peer reviews. My peers gave excellent feedback on sentences that didn’t quite fit in or sound right. By looking at their advice I should be able to correct most of these awkward sentences. I will then finish it up by proofreading multiple times and make sure my ideas don’t just make sense to me, but my audience as well.

During the revision process I may get stuck or run out of ideas. If that happens I have multiple tools to get me going again. The little seagull handbook is an excellent resource help me through the revision process. Another excellent source of help would be going to my teacher or peers. Overall, I am confident that I have the tools I need to revise and strengthen my essay.

Using the three main categories of ideas, evidence, and organization, I was able to give helpful feed back on my peer’s essays. First, for the idea category, I suggested my peer strengthen her thesis statement. While she had a general main idea, it wasn’t as concise as a thesis should be. Second, for the evidence category, I suggested that my peer should use less of the text because it started to become more of a summary than actual evidence. Lastly, for the category of organization, I suggested that my peer make a new paragraph because she tried to fit two big ideas into one paragraph. I felt like separating these ideas into two paragraphs would help it flow better.

I felt that being able to focus on global edits rather than local edits really helped me to understand my peer’s thoughts. Instead of being invested in superficial writing errors like grammar, I was able to really get into the message of the essay. This allowed me to understand my peer’s main ideas and in turn give big picture feedback instead of smaller feedback that could probably be easily caught by a quick proofread.

Being able to critique my peer’s writing was an interesting experience. In the process I was able to tell that many of my peers have views on art as me. It also felt like by critiquing their writing I will be more prepared to critique my own writing. I have also been able to look at the pros and cons of my peers writing and keep that in mind during my writing process. For an example I know that I need to make sure I’m writing about my opinion and not the opinions of the texts. I found that some of the writing I critiqued focused only on what the text was saying. I also was reminded to have a hook, summary, and thesis in my introduction. Overall, I felt like the critiquing process gave my peers and me some valuable feedback for our essays.

The Ted Talk I chose to summarize was “How painting can transform communities”. What Haas and Hahn argued in their TED Talk was that art can change people. Now they specifically used painting communities as an example. They start by acknowledging that cities across the world have problems from crime to poverty. As a result these cities get judge and judgment causes the people to react a certain way. This is a tragedy, but Haas and Hahn explain how these communities can goes through massive change. They use multiple examples to examine how art, more specifically painting these cities, can bring the community together and change their image in a positive way. During they’re trips, Haas and Hahn were able to use art to bring people together, change negative views, and build communities. Overall, Haas and Hahn demonstrate how they believe art is important.

Southan’s article “Is Art a Waste of Time”, mostly touches on the beliefs of the Effective Altruism organization. The EAs ( Effective altruists ) believe art has little to no place in todays world. They argue art is usually a self-indulgent act and therefore a waste of time. In the EA’s eyes, all time should be spent doing the greatest amount of good possible. The usually means getting the best job you can, and donating as much money as possible to charity. Any activities like hobbies and games are morally wrong because people are dying as you waste time. Art would most likely fall under this category because you aren’t making money and you aren’t saving lives. Therefore, in the EA’s world, art is not only a waste of time, but also morally wrong.

I say art has importance in our world. Art has a very big importance. It can change perspectives, inspire others, and better lives. All of this is perfectly shown in the TED Talk I summarized above. While the EA may say art is a waste of time, I say that they don’t truly understand the power of art. Art is so diverse, filled with countless different forms, that it can reach anyone and everyone. A few of the many things art is capable of is communication, bonding, inspiring, teaching, reminding, helping, etc. This is why art is absolutely not a waste of time. If anything art is a necessity and plays a huge role in the human race. Overall I think the TED Talk perfectly rebuttals the EA’s argument of art being wasteful.

While reading Southan’s article a second time didn’t change my views on effective altruism, it allowed me to pick up on more subtle details in the text. I still find effective altruism much too radical for their own good and contradictory to their beliefs on increasing happiness. However it did increase my passion against the EA and changed my views on Southan himself. For starters, I noticed the belief of net positive calculations. It didn’t really hit me how ridiculous this idea was until now. It diminishes the value of peoples good deeds, because somewhere there is an imaginary person who’s good deeds negate yours. It sounds twisted to me to tell someone that only the good they achieve over this imaginary person actually counts. Second, the section comparing the EA to a utilitarian system were eerily similar. It seems like the only sacred thing to the EA is the lives they are saving. For me it sparked an image of a tyrannical society were the quality of life was of no concern. It seems like the EA has no respect to the quality of life of their workers, they just care about the money they bring in. Lastly, I really began to notice how Southan seems to react to the EA’s beliefs. As an artist I would have suspected him to push back against the EA’s beliefs. Instead it seems like although he isn’t ready to act upon them, he accepts their beliefs. Overall, the second reading really opened my eyes to details I had previously glossed over and not given much thought.

A word I didn’t understand from the reading was Ubermensch. However after a brief search I discovered Ubermensch was a philosophical German concept meaning superhuman or beyond-human. Ubermensch was commonly used to as a goal for humanity to strive for.

After reading Rhys Southan’s “Is Art a Waste of Time?” it is extremely hard to choose which two ideas I want to expand on. Through out every paragraph I couldn’t help but find myself extremely frustrated with the Effective Altruism movement. It was not the general idea of “doing good” that upset me, but rather the manner is which they do it.

First, I’ll start with my note on survival versus living. When I first wrote this note my thought was humans can just survive and worry about their basic needs and forget about art. Their lifespan would not be hindered by lack of art. Alternatively, they could “live” and enjoy life to its fullest including luxuries such as art, sports, games. But then I realized the significance of “living” rather than surviving. The latter choice would produce happiness, in turn this happiness would help us come together as a society. For an example, the Olympics games are not required for survival, but it brings the whole world together for friendly competition. These connections are important to get along as a globally connected society. The EAs, or Effective Altruists, would suggest we revert back to “surviving” and use any free time or extra resources on helping others “survive”. Yes more people might end up surviving, but there are major implications to that choice. Communication, understanding, and happiness once found in the luxuries of living would vanish. As a result I can only predict a rise in fights and depression.

Second, I underlined, circled, and even wrote down the word “Radical” numerous times. I agree that acts of kindness help the world go around. I feel when you have extra you should donate to charity, pay for someone’s meal, spend time building homes for the homeless, etc. However, EAs take this idea to a whole new level. They want people to devote their lives to helping others, with the goal of increased lifespan and happiness. This seems ridiculous. First off, this radicalism turns so many people away. If they reeled back their extremism they could target a much larger crowd and in turn, actually get more done. Second, having people stop doing what makes them happy and focus on donating everything they can, seems to contradict the rise in happiness the EA stand for. How am I suppose to be happy if all my dreams are crushed? The EA seems too radical. I would go far enough to say how radical they are is actually doing more damage than good to their cause.

Overall, it was hard to refine my thoughts on this article to two ideas and 300 words so if you have any questions, or any confusion to clear up, please leave a reply.