After rereading Southans essay “Is it OK to make art?” and visiting the Effective Altruism website I was able to have a new perspective while reading the text, and also create new observations. When reading this a second time I noticed different details that I did not the first time. After having the class discussion and getting into small groups and having a discussion it made understanding the main points in the essay lot easier. When decoding the text there were many words that I did not understand. One word was coalescing, which means to come together and form one mass or whole. Another word that I did not know was utilitarianism. I was able to go onto “Dictionary.com” to find these definitions. Rereading also helped to strengthen the annotations that I had made the first time and I was able to annotate more important ideas and pay attention to the more important details. This helped me to better grasp the overall concept of the essay. One thing that I noticed was when Southan claimed that an EA Michael Bitton stated “‘is that nothing is sacred.'” I disagree with this statement because the EAs consider helping people as their main goal. Therefore they do hold helping people sacred, because this is something that is very important and meaningful to them. Rereading helped me to better understand the overall main points of the essay and after visiting the website it helped give me a different mindset while reading.
I’m so happy that rereading the essay helped you notice more details and achieve a new perspective. Continue to challenge yourself to use specifics as much as possible. Revisit your second and third sentences above–they sound very similar, and yet they express very different ideas. You can accentuate how different these comments are, use specifics. For example, what details did you notice? What main points did you better understand? Onward! You’re doing great! 🙂