A year after the first confirmed outbreak, progress is being made in the Ebola crisis in west Africa. The situation’s far from perfect, but the news is tentatively good.
So I hope you’ll all join me in a hearty chorus of “Thank you, Bob Geldof!”
You may have noticed he re-re-recorded that song even he thinks is terrible against last year, with another new crowd of young poptastic faces helping to raise lots of money to fix another foreign country where everything’s terrible. It sold well, probably, and pooled some cash that made some sort of a difference to people trying to fight a horrible disease, I imagine.
But I think I may have figured out what it is about his recurring Band Aid obsession that makes him so irritating:
The whole thing is classic Gryffindor.
The whole purpose of the narrative is to put him on display as the Hero who boldly leaps into action to save someone in distress. And when you’re the Hero, there are certain things the narrative requires you to do, like Stick To Your Guns, and Stand Up For The Victim, and other things that perpetuate an idea of black-and-white morality and can best be achieved through posturing. Little things like critical scientific analysis of your methodology don’t fit with the model at all.
I’m not sure if Geldof’s ever heard of effective altruism, but there’s none of it present in his obsession with re-treading old ground over and over again, and I suspect he’d dismiss it as something for smart-arse tossers to feel high-and-mighty about while people like him are out there actually doing the work and raising the money.
It’s an unfair characterisation, I don’t know the man nearly well enough to guess how he might respond to new ideas, but frankly given how little curiosity he displays for improving or reassessing his methods he deserves no benefit of the doubt.
His narrative requires that buying the song is the way you show that you care about diseased Africans, whether or not you like it, as if buying a single on iTunes for 99p as many times as it takes was a remotely efficient way to contribute financially to an international relief effort.
Being a Gryffindor, Geldof jumps at the chance to be selfless and self-sacrificing in pursuit of the greater good, in a way that just so happens to make him look dashing and noble, and it wouldn’t occur to him that maybe a genuinely selfless path wouldn’t put him at the focal point, or that helping other people might leave his ego bruised or ignored rather than elevated. After all, if he doesn’t get to take a messianic role, how can he be saving everyone?
Meanwhile the Hufflepuffs of the world are buying the single in their hundreds of thousands, because they’re kind and decent people who are presented with an easy way they can make some sort of difference. They were also texting their donations a few months before, to an appeal for funds that would improve the medical infrastructure in countries preparing for an outbreak like this, but before such an outbreak gets out of control, at a point when much more harm reduction can be achieved and lives saved at a much smaller expense.
The Ravenclaws have been working on these improvements to infrastructure for a while, but haven’t really gained much serious traction with the public because the Gryffindors keep distracting their potential supporters with grand heroic gestures that end up hurting the cause more than they help.
I’m not sure what Slytherin are up to. I’ve never had a good grip on how that lot think. Patenting an Ebola vaccine?
But however the hat sorted you, don’t let fucking Bob Geldof lecture you on where your ethical responsibilities lie with regard to charitable giving. Try to give more of a shit about the practical end result of a suggested action than how much feel-good cheerleading you get to do about it. Consider donating directly to organisations you know will do real good. Read some folk who live and work in Africa telling Bob Geldof to fuck off, though far more eloquently than you’ll get from me. Cross your fingers we don’t hear another celebrity chorus later this year asking whether they know it’s Christmas in Nepal.
Happy Christmas. War is over.
Or something.
Cubik's Rube 