After being able to read and connect to “is it OK to make art” by Rhys Southan, there were certain ideas in the text that happened to stick out to me. My first major connection in the text was when Rhys mentioned the US documentary Searching for the Sugar Man (2012) about how Sixto Rodriguez helped t inspire anti-apartheid protestors in South Africa. However, this was kind of confusing to me how someone’s music could help protestors in Africa. Then, I began to look deeper into the text to see that with the right words people can be moved. The anti-apartheid protestors where moved by accident and had a serendipitous side effect rather than Sixto Rodriguez consciously trying to set out to change them. ‘By definition, most artists are mediocre, and their art doesn’t really please many people, if any.’ When looking at this quote it is completely clear what Rhys is trying to say. He’s trying to say that although many celebrities have money to burn or give away if they wanted too many to do give what they are able too. There are people in the world who aren’t able to listen to their music due to the state of poverty that they’re in, so making music and being able to make such a significant amount of money, but just spending it on luxuries that other people on this planet couldn’t even dream of is tragic.
The other connection that I was able to make was when Rhys mentioned the child drowning in a pond. In 1972 , a Australian moral philosopher Peter Singer published an essay called ‘Famine, Affluence, and Morality” which mentioned a certain experiment that for me made me feel a bunch of different emotions. The experiment was to imagine you saw a child drowning in a pond, would you save the child even thought you weren’t the one that pushed that child in or if saving that child meant your clothes were now ruined. When people first read about this experiment their first thought is probably “well of course I would save the child.” ; however that’s not the case when it comes to children suffering and dying from poverty and preventable diseases all over the world. When it comes to being the hero of a single child everybody wants to be seen as such. Sadly, hen it comes to children who sincerely need help in other parts of the world we ignore them because “we weren’t the ones that put them in those situations, its not our fault that they’re suffering, or we cant do anything about it.” Those excuses need to stop and we need to be able to step up and help the children suffering from situations that they DIDNT put themselves in. They didn’t choose to suffer, and go hungry everyday, or get sick nd have n vaccine or cure to help. They need people like us to help them because all we have is each other in this world. If we don’t start changing and helping other people then our race… the human race will die off.