Live what?

Live 8, for anyone who has perhaps spent the past year in a yurt in northern Siberia, is of course the massive worldwide series of concerts, a continuation of sorts of the original Live Aid, meant to raise awareness of the poverty and otherwise desperate conditions in much (most?) of Africa today.

I think it's awesome as a concert, and wish like nothing else I didn't have work today. If I didn't, I'd be down on the Parkway in Philly now, jamming with the expected million or so other folks. It's free and there are some big names there. Also, locally speaking, this concert - and the 4th of July weekend in general - this year will be spectacular for the city of Philadelphia. They're expecting huge, huge, huge numbers in the city this year, and that's going to (one assumes) pump a metric crapload of money into the city. Always a good thing.

Coolness aside, though, I think that Live 8 represents what's wrong with a lot of purported 'activism' today. Okay: a concert saying poverty is bad. First of all, everyone knows this, and no one's really saying, "Yay poverty!" Secondly, it's not doing anything. The concert isn't for-profit. They're not, as far as I know, even organized in taking donations. A lot of other groups are piggybacking on the concert, however, the actual concert itself is possibly being counter-productive. "Oh, yeah, I'm all anti-globalization, anti-G8, anti-whatever. See? I have a Live 8 T-shirt, I was there. Proof that I care, you know?" But it's not proof of anything, other than that you went to a free concert. It's surface, feel-good activism.

On the other hand, there is the chance that it'll grab someone out there in the crowd. They'll go to a free concert, but something - something Will Smith says (of all the unlikely political activists!) - will hit them just the right way, and they'll do something real. Stranger things have happened.