“Is Art a Waste of Time?”

The Effective Altruism is the concept of doing all that you can in order to help the less fortunate.  In Rhys Southan’s article “Is Art a Waste of Time?”, he describes their movement as “working hard to earn money and then giving as much of it as you can to the needy”.  This resinated with me and really started to make me think about how fortunate I am to have been given the opportunities that I have.  Giving back to the community is needed in order to better society, if everyone was given the same amount of opportunities, then the people who work hard would succeed and the ones who don’t won’t.

Another part that stuck out to me was when Southan was describing the conversation he had with Hilton.  This conversation enlightened Southan to realize that to the EAs, the resources that his movie script will use are being wasted because they could be used to help the less fortunate.  However Southan still believes that if this movie turns out to be the best movie of all time, then it was worth the resources.  In my opinion, this completely contradicts everything that the EA stands for.  Peoples lives should always take precedent over a movie, and to believe otherwise is honestly ridiculous, regardless of how good the movie is.