My name is Bono, and I’m a rock star. Now, I say this, not
to boast but as a confession. Because the only thing worse than a rock star is
a rock star with a conscience—a placard-waving, knee-jerking activist who
drives a Lexus.
I owe more than my spoiled lifestyle to rock music. I owe my worldview.
Music was like an alarm clock for me as a teenager and still keeps me from falling
asleep in the comfort of my freedom.
Rock music to me is rebel music. 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 nothing I can do about it. So I’m
trying to do something. We all must learn to fight indifference and to make a
difference.
Some time ago, I became a student at Harvard and started working
with Professor Jeffrey Sachs to study the lack of development in third-world economies
due to the crushing weight of old debts.
The normal rules of bankruptcy don’t apply to sovereign states.
It would be harder for you to get a student loan than it was for President Mobutu
to stream billions of dollars into his Swiss bank account while his people starved
on the side of the road. Two generations later, the Congolese are still paying.
The debts of the fathers are now the debts of the sons and daughters. So, I represented
a group that believed that all such debts should be cancelled.
It was a new level of “unhip” for me, but it was really
cool. When people around the world heard about the burden of debt that crushes
the poorest countries, they took to the streets—in what was, without doubt,
the largest grassroots movement since the campaign to end apartheid. Politics
is normally the art of the possible, but this was something more interesting.
This was becoming the art of the impossible. We had priests going into pulpits,
pop stars into parliaments, the Pope put on my sunglasses, and finally, after
a floor fight in the House of Representatives, we got the money.
So where does that money go? Well, so far, 23 of the poorest countries
have managed to meet the sometimes over-stringent conditions to get their debt
payments reduced—and to spend the money on the people who need it most.
But I’m not one to brag or to take credit. I share these stories
to ask for your help. This is a big problem. We need smart people working on it.
I think this will be the defining moment of our age. In history, this moment will
be remembered for two things: the Internet and the everyday holocaust that is
Africa—25 million HIV positives who will leave behind 40 million AIDS orphans
by 2010. This is the biggest health threat since the Bubonic Plague wiped out
a third of Europe. It’s an unsustainable problem for Africa. And, unless
we 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.
Isn’t “Love thy neighbor” in the global village
so inconvenient? God writes us these lines, but it’s not what the radio
is playing, is it?
We’ve got to follow through on our ideals—or we betray
something at the heart of who we are. The culture of idealism is under siege beset
by materialism and narcissism and all the other “isms” of indifference.
Civil Rights in America and Europe are bound to human rights in the rest of the
world—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? Is America still a great idea
as well as a great country?
When I was a kid in Dublin, I watched in awe as America put a man
on the moon; and I thought, “Nothing is impossible in America!” Is
that still true? Tell me it’s true. If it isn’t, you can make it true
again. PE
