I was in full Olympics overload this evening so I decided to surf the net to see what I could find. I stubled my way onto America Rhetoric where I found a Commencement Address at Harvard, 2001 delivered by Bono. (much better that a commencement address by Buzz Hargrove, but that is a different story). A little background here. I love Bono, and the rest of U2 for that matter. Right up their with my love of Wayne Gretzky. U2 for being so good that the world ignores that they are Christian Rock and Gretzky for his excellence and class. I have loved U2 since I was 10 and I defined who I liked by who my older brother liked. Those were the days, so much easier to mimic your brother than to be someone yourself. Alas, I am all grown up now and as big a U2 fan as ever.
But to the point...here are some excerpts from the speech, similar in tone and content to the one Bono delivered at PM Paul Martin's Coronation (or whatever it is called in Canada).
Rock music to me is rebel music. But rebelling against what? In the 50's it was sexual mores and double standards. In the 60's it was the Vietnam War and racial and social inequality. What are we rebelling against now? If I am honest, I'm rebelling against my own indifference. I am rebelling against the idea that the world is the way the world is and there's not a damned thing I can do about it. So I'm trying to do a damned thing. But fighting my indifference is my own problem.
When people around the world hear about the burden of debt that crushes the poorest countries, when they hear that for every dollar of government aid we send to developing nations, nine dollars comes back to us in debt service payments -- did you hear that? For every one dollar in government aid we send to these nations, we receive nine in debt service payments -- when people hear that, they get angry.
When the history books (that some of you will write) make records of this moment in time, we will be remembered for two things: the Internet, probably, and the everyday holocaust that is Africa: 25 million HIV positives who will leave behind 40 million AIDS orphans by 2010 in sub-Saharan Africa alone. [Note: Speech delivered June 12, 2001]This is the biggest health threat since the Bubonic Plague wiped out a third of Europe. And this is happening right now in our time.It's an unsustainable problem for Africa and, unless we hermetically seal the continent and close our conscience, it's an unsustainable problem for the world. But it's hard to make this a popular cause. It's hard to make it pop, you know? And I guess that's what my job is; 'cause pop is often, sadly often, the oxygen of politics.
Didn't John and Robert Kennedy come to Harvard? Isn't equality a son of a bitch to follow through on. Isn't "Love thy neighbour" in the global village so inconvenient? God writes us these lines, but we have to sing them -- take them to the top of the charts. But its not what the radio is playing, is it? I know. I know.
But we've got to follow through on our ideals or we betray something at the heart of who we are. Outside these gates, and even within them, the culture of idealism is under siege, beset by materialism and narcissism and all the other "isms" of indifference -- and their defense mechanisms: knowingness, the smirk, the joke. Worse still, idealism is being reduced to a marketing tool. Civil Rights in America and Europe are bound to human rights in the rest of the world. Human rights: the right to live like a human. But these thoughts are expensive; they're going to cost us. Are we ready to pay the price?
It is exactly these "isms" of indifference that drive me crazy. The exact sentiment that drove me to write PM Martin asking him to do something about what is going on in Sudan. It is also, I fear, what is truly behind the Bush-bashing. To paraphrase Bono, President George W Bush's and partners missions in Afghanistan, in Iraq, hopefully in Sudan, Iran, North Korea are expensive. And not enough of us are willing to pay the price.
