EMPATHY / ALTRUISM
Created at Ox-Bow School of Art, Saugatuck, MI in July 2018.Special thanks to Daniel Tucker and Dan S. Wang.
This poster series was spawned from a conversation regarding the absence of ethics and altruism in STEM-focused fields. Going to a magnet university for computer science, engineering, math, and more, it is astonishing to see the high percentage of students striving to work for military contractors and other organizations that profit off of violence. 40% of Carnegie Mellon’s research funding is provided by the US military, and it is very normative to graduate from this prestigious university to engineer weapons. In fact, CMU has a history of fabricating weapons such as the gladiator tank for the military, with little to no discourse surrounding the fact that our school creates objects of death.
Absent from our consciousness is the part we play in the future. Fragmentation makes us feel powerless and individualism makes us forget our empathy, if only to fulfill neoliberal ideas that what we are doing currently is okay. We must always question the institutions that surround us. Freedom is a constant struggle, and love is a radical act that must be reiterated time after time after time. Do better, live better, love better.
