One of the annotations that I had made on Southan’s text is near the bottom of the first page. The article is discussing a hypothetical situation where a philosopher, Peter Singer, asks people if they would save a child drowning in a pool near them even if it would mean their clothes get wet or if it wasn’t your fault she’s drowning. The overwhelming response to this question is of course that they would save the child. Singer than equates ignoring the drowning child to the same thing as ignoring those dying of poverty and disease around the world. While I see what Singer is trying to get at, I firmly believe that there is a fundamental difference between the two situations. The drowning child is right by you and taking the child is a rather easy solution whereas helping those in poverty around the world is a tougher challenge because one, “people in poverty around the world” are AROUND the world and it becomes very difficult to directly help them in an efficient manor. The other problem is poverty is nowhere near as simple of an issue to fix as taking a child out of water. I therefore think it is unfair to equate the two scenarios.
Another annotation I made was on the middle of page 2. This annotation was in response to a part of the article where Southan explains that the EA’s see writing scripts and making movies demand resources that could have saved lives. I find this claim very ridiculous because while movie making is generally expensive, it doesn’t have to be. Also script writing just requires a computer or at the very least a pen and paper. I cannot fathom how either of those “resources” could have saved lives. I also feel like the EA’s are targeting the wrong people if they have a problem with wasting resources. Instead of attacking scriptwriters that are doing little to no harm, I feel it would be more effective to go after big corporations that waste more resources than the scriptwriter ever would in only a day.
P.S. The pictures of my annotations are in the above link in a PDF format. They are only half pages because the full page pictures kept coming out blurry.
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