A is for Activism

High school is a time for self invention. Our brains are developed enough, we think, to allow us the freedom to cast aside the silly notions of our parent's generation and craft a new tomorrow, unfettered by the moral restraints of yesterday! The fact that every generation since the dawn of sentience has believed this same thing to be true doesn't occur to us, but that's a good thing; it would only retard inevitable Progress!

Progress, schmogress. All high school is a time for is people taking on causes to look ttly awesum d00d! How many people in all the cause clubs even give a crap about the club beyond some generic platitude like "I support literacy" or "World peace would be cool"? Not everyone is like this; some people care, and that's awesome. More people should care about stuff like Chechan independence or the ineffectiveness of the UN, but that stuff isn't popular right now. Remember when every other celebrity was talking about Darfur? I sure do, and I thought, "Great, let's help the Sudanese get a working and non-repressive government together." Instead, all that happened was a bunch of celebrities and e-activists got together, had a big group hug, sent some money to the Sudan and then nothing happened. Hopefully, the money they sent got used more efficiently than the Oil For Food money (look it up), but who knows? More accurately, who gives a crap now (except maybe Anderson Cooper) about Darfur, since all the celebrities stopped talking about it?

The best cause currently is, of course, global warming or climate change or whatever increasingly generic name they give it now. While I agree with science (which shows that climates are changing, causing deadlier storms and harming ecosystems the world over), I don't like the movement that surrounds it. It all started with An Inconvenient Truth and Al Gore's Magical Graphs About Carbon Monoxide Emissions and Stuff... I guess I missed the part of the movie where he reconciled his love of science with his summary dismissal of scientific principles by using graphs without labels and scalar units. Oops! Must've been a deleted scene.

Currently, the target of my RAGE over global warming/climate change is the new music video by every celebrity I'm apparently supposed to care about but don't where they do a cover of "Beds Are Burning" by Midnight Oil. Midnight Oil is an awesome band (just like Peter Garrett is an awesome dancer) and to see this song get High School Musical'd by this bunch of losers stirs unspeakable thoughts deep within my psyche. If this was Minority Report, Tom Cruise would be all over me like celebrities on, well, an unnecessary, pretentious and trashy cover of an amazing song. The best part is, by rewriting the lyrics to make them more "applicable" (read: twisted) to their cause, they're completely negating the message of the original lyrics. These people wouldn't know Aboriginal rights if it bit them on the face. Amazingly, this is even worse than all the musicians on iTunes who covered "After the Gold Rush" as an environmentalist anthem by singing "Look at Mother Nature on the run / in the twenty-first century." Not only does it sound forced in context, but it completely contradicts the overall themes of the song (war, space travel, drug use, general melancholy and the continuing importance of french horn solos in popular music).

As far as environmentalism goes, I'm a traditionalist. Teddy Roosevelt liked the outdoors and so do I. Notwithstanding, he'd probably use his oft-quoted "big stick" (HUH HUH HUH) to beat the crap out of environmentalist groups like Earth First!, the Sea Shepherds and the Earth Liberation Front. Hey, Earth First! You think the optimum human population of the Earth should be under a million people? Well, an hero and make it happen faster. How the Sea Shepherds got a show on Animal Planet, I'll never know. Pretty much every country except the Netherlands has labeled them a terrorist organization, which if you do some research on their exploits, is pretty well corroborated. Also, the ELF tried to protest SUV's by burning a bunch of them at some dealerships in California a while back. Think about that- to protest cars which pollute a lot, they lit a bunch of them on fire, petrochemicals and all. Seriously. Like a hundred of them. Counterintuitive, much?

Don't get me wrong, there are goods causes as well. Music Rising, for instance, is good. It has a specific goal- raising money to buy instruments for musicians who lost theirs because of Hurricane Katrina- with a clearly outlined plan as to how they'll get the money. I don't mind that they sell merchandise, because that's how they fund their goal. However, (Product) RED and the generic "Darfur" cause are the worst offenders I can think of. Now, I normally think Bono's activism is alright; he's supported and campaigned for pretty much the same organizations his entire career. However, (Product) RED has devolved into a fashion statement rather than an awareness statement. Like "Oh, look, I got the new (Product) RED iPod!" or "How do you like my new (Product) RED Armani watch?" How about some (Product) RED duct tape so I don't have to listen to you go on and on about something you don't care about above a non-specific statement made through trendy fashion accessories? "But I don't like AIDS, tuberculosis or malaria!" Surprise! No one does. Well, unless you happen to believe that AIDS- or GRID (Gay-Related Immunodeficiency Disorder) if you're up on your 80's lingo- was created by the Reagan administration to rid the world of black people and gays, because then you'd likely believe that Reagan liked AIDS. However, there really isn't any evidence for this hypothesis to be found on anything more reputable than a conspiracy website, so it's a silly hypothesis at best. Just for laughs, check out the ratio of advertising funds by participating (Product) RED corporations to the amount donated per item or purchase of applicable products. Oh, Starbucks! Look how silly you are, telling me you care about AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria while only donating $0.05 per sale from only three limited-run beverages! It's almost like you're inspiring me to maybe semi-care. Check these guys out to see what organizations you can donate to without having to shell out a couple thousand bucks for some Armani sunglasses or having to wonder why the sale of a $1200 Dell PC only contributes around $80 to the Global Fund.