After learning about what the Effective Altruism (EA) actually does and want and learning about them in class and in discussion, I reread Southan’s essay even more critically than I did before. I made many comments expressing my confusion about where the author stood and what he was talking about. But after reading about what the Effective Altruism stands to do, I finally understood what Southan was aiming to talk about. My confusion, however, turned into taking a stand on him being hypocritical and still somewhat confusing. At first he believes in what he is writing and just elaborates on what the EA is planning to do. Later on in the essay, however, all he can talk about are examples of what the EA does and he hints at now agreeing with them. Also, after learning that Southan’s background is in philosophy, I can more easily see the points in which he relates to philosophers and their objectives. My reactions to his claims now seemed even more complex, but then again, isn’t that what a philosopher is supposed to do? Southan challenges me greatly here. There’s a part of me that says he is a straight up hypocrite for his views on the topic; but the other part of me says that with all these philosophical references buried deep, there must be something I cannot see. My new conclusion is based on both sides of me reaching a compromise I feel.

This did tie directly into glossing the text. Having an index of some words and then looking up others helped me greatly to better understand what a sentence was saying and how it tied into the text as a whole. Or it just gave me more to question/think about. Previously, based on what I was reading and the ‘gist’ of the essay, you could say I came up with my own definition for the word. Without glossing the text, I believe that my conclusion of the compromise would not exist. There may not have been a lot of words compared to the text as a whole; but it only takes a few words to change a perspective. Overall, I feel Southan states his opinion but leaves it up to us to believe what we want. He gives us all the information we need to know and then simply leaves it up to us, which doesn’t happen that often. Of course I could be totally wrong, but something about this guy says otherwise to me, that there’s a lot more than meets the eye.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid