Blog #4

After reading Rhys Southan’s article, Is art a waste of time? and watching Titus Kaphar’s Ted talk, How Can We Address Centuries Of Racism in Art? I’ve come to a conclusion about how I feel about art. Overall I agreed more with Kaphar than with the members of Effective Altruism, in that I feel that art is not a waste of time. I think art has an amazing ability to change the culture it’s made in, for better or for worse. By visiting the EA website, I learned that they care about righting injustices and inequality in the world, but I don’t think that that’s possible without changing the mindset of the culture that is perpetuating those injustices. I think that art can do good beyond that as well, such as for education or mental wellbeing, but for the topic of my first real essay, I think I will talk about how art can affect prejudice in culture. Kaphar’s talk was mostly about racism in art, but I’d like to expand to other forms of prejudice as well in my essay.

Through my brainstorming session, I came to realize that artists like Kaphar and Effective Altruism are essentially working for the same thing: people living better lives. This realization made it especially weird to think back on Southan’s article, where the EAs portrayed artists as distant and uncaring for the state of the world. Many artists are actively trying to make the world better, in one aspect or another, they just go about it in a way that EAs don’t approve of. I think that if EAs could understand the effect that art has on culture and the power it has to do good, they would be more reluctant to think of artists as completely useless.