How Visual Arts Can Drive
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But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing of a pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful.
Incomprehensibility or readability? That is the question.
Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure
when our power of choice is untrammeled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.
Solving the plastic pollution problem is more complex than I initially expected. Recycling marine plastic is extremely difficult. Retracting ghost nets from the sea is both costly and requires experienced divers. Meanwhile, convincing industries to exchange plastic for sustainable alternatives interweaves a complex web of decision-makers: politicians, lobbyists, judiciaries, scientific institutes, and legal establishments.
Visual arts can serve numerous purposes in supporting conservation initiatives. Primarily, film and photography are conversation-starters and eye-openers, which help to shine a light on a particular issue. By documenting the problem at hand, scientific research is made accessible to a broader audience. The public is invited to connect to the topic on an emotional level, rather than being presented with dreary facts. Hence, one could say that visual art is the “middleman” between science and public understanding.