Make Poverty History: Preemptive Kindness (A Bono Moment)
Merry Christmas to all, Steve here. I’m aware that I usually come across as fairly cynical on this thing, but that’s misleading. I’m actually an optimist, in that I believe that people have the capacity to work for positive change, but more of a realist in that I think most of us hardly ever do. I have to admit, the Christmas spirit hasn’t really got me this season and I think it’s because I’ve been preoccupied with thinking about the state of the world. Since the world is pretty much a mess, it makes it hard to concentrate on feeling festive. Someone sat down and figured out that in recorded history, about 7000 years, give or take a week or two, there have been 7 days of peace. That’s one day every 1000 years. That’s not much of a record. If war is politics by other means and politics is temporary and very often silly, then you have to wonder: What was the point of all that fighting?
You could look at this statistic negatively, and say that we’re not doing very well in the peace department, or positively, and say that, at least, we’re really good at killing each other. In fact, it seems to be what we do best.
If war is the result of want and greed (it is) and if we now have the technology and the infrastructure to possibly eliminate want (we do), which would take away the root of greed, then doesn’t it make sense that if we eliminated want, then war might become unnecessary, that regular old politics, rather than politics by other means, would suffice for working out problems? There’s a crazy idea, preemptive kindness, rather than preemptive war.
Here’s a Christmas thought, speaking of politics: (To paraphrase Douglas Adams) 2000 years after some guy got nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be for everybody to be nice to each other for a change, our fearless leaders in Ottawa have decided to hold a Christmas time election, which has been greeted by a huge wave of indifference. Give out a free Christmas gift and send them a message about stupid poverty. If they can afford to have an election every 18 months, maybe they could spare a few dollars. Those non-Canadians among you shouldn’t feel left out: Feel free to harass your politicians as well. They like it when people talk to them. And you never know, preemptive kindness might just catch on as an alternative. You never know, it certainly hasn’t been tried yet.
Merry Christmas people:)