Progress is possible - don't doubt it |
During a free-flowing Christmas Day chat across the dinner table, it was put to me that the Live Aid concerts 40 years ago had done Africa more economic harm than good.
Login or signup to continue reading
The 16-hour marathon (the concert, not the lunch) which occurred simultaneously in London's Wembley Stadium and JFK stadium in Philadelphia in July, 1985, attracted a huge global television viewership estimated at between one and two billion. Many millions of dollars were raised by the world's leading musicians and countless others, all working for free.
It had felt like one of the high points of humanitarian progress - a hinge-moment where dire need was elevated above minority greed. A rare case of into sight, into mind.
Apparently, however, subsequent modelling indicated that by showing war-torn Ethiopia's famine and the gaping inequality between countries, Live Aid also had the effect of cooling both tourism and business investment by the wealthy West over the longer term.
Even assuming this is true, does it make Bob Geldof's (Boomtown Rats) and Midge Ure's (Ultravox) determination to save as many African lives as possible, wrong?
To be even more precise, could that perverse outcome have been predicted as a consequence of urgently delivering food aid and care to starving people during an acute human emergency?
And, if that possibility were somehow knowable, should that risk rule out action to feed and shelter millions? Of course not.
For me, though, the concern about such observations taking hold in the public mind is that they foster an already pervasive sense of doubt which in the end can become paralysing.
Doubt is the scourge of our information-saturated public discourse because its creation is among the easiest assignments there is. Just look at how it has been injected and weaponised against the overwhelming evidence of human-induced global........