Bono: "Let's Put Humanity Back on Earth"

By Bono, AlterNet. Posted October 25, 2008.

Bono addressed 14,000 women in Long Beach, Calif., this week at The Women's Conference 2008. The following is an excerpt from his speech.

Rock stars have two urges. (No, really, just two.) They want to change the world, and they want to have fun. And I believe we can't do one without the other. It's like music -- no one trusts music that lacks joy. It's the life force in rock and roll that we love. Especially in serious times, in traumatic times. We need to dig deep to find joy.

So let me repeat, we are here tonight because we want to change the world in a tiny way in our 'hoods or in a grand way in our global community and in so doing, find our joy. But we can't change the world without first changing the way we look at the world. The way you behave in the world depends entirely on the way you view the world. Weltanschauung is what the Germans call it.

Californians call it your attitude ... dude.

My worldview was shaped by rock and roll. Growing up in the depressed Dublin of the '70s, music was like an alarm clock for me. It woke me up out of suburban slumber. It made me believe that my life could have some purpose outside of 10 Cedarwood Road.

It was the time of punk rock. No more flowers in our hair ... no more flowers, period. I was weaned on the Clash. The Clash's music was like a public service announcement ... with guitars.

Three teenage boys and me, made some music of our own. That was the plan.

But in the mid '80s my life -- not just my hairdo -- changed in unexpected ways.

U2 became part of the phenomenon that was Live Aid, We Are the World, Feed the World ... do you remember that?

My young wife Ali and I went to Ethiopia to see for ourselves what was going on. We lived there for a month, working at a feeding camp and orphanage. The children had a name for me. They called me 'the Girl with the Beard.'

Don't ask.

Ali and I found Africa a magical place -- a place of big skies, big hearts, beautiful people, royal people. Ethiopia didn't just blow our minds, it opened our minds.

And it challenged our worldview.

A man begged us to take his son back with us to Ireland, because in Ireland he would live, and in Ethiopia, at that time, there was every chance he would die.

Ali and I have our own children now. Four of them. We could have had five.

Our daughters and sons mean more to us than any other thing.

They are the beauty that can take any pain away.

In my travels I have met kids the mirror image of my own and looked into their faces as they let go of life.

And it makes me even angrier that their eyes are always free of accusation. It humbles me beyond belief that they don't hold it against a world that couldn't spare the 20-cent immunization that would have them back in the bosom of their family.

Even their mothers and fathers ... their grief is pure. There's no blame, just acquiescence. ... I know my rage as a parent would have no end. In fact, it doesn't. I do hold it against a world that can accept such things as inevitable.

They're not inevitable. They're not acceptable. In fact, they're absurd.

History has a way of making ideas that are once acceptable, look ridiculous.

Let's not forget ... "no blacks, no Irish."

Let's not forget ... the back of the bus.

Let's not forget ... apartheid and Jim Crow.

Let's not forget ... women couldn't vote.

Ridiculous, all of it. Totally absurd. We know that now. Most people didn't back then. My trip to Ethiopia, considered in that context, told me what I needed to do. Not exactly what to do -- just something, anything, to end the absurdity of what I had seen. It changed my worldview.

That's how I became the least attractive thing in the world: a rock star with a cause.

Except this isn't a cause, is it?

Eight thousand Africans dying every day of AIDS, TB and malaria -- preventable, treatable diseases -- dying for lack of drugs we can buy at any drugstore. Twelve million AIDS orphans in Africa, 18 million by the end of the decade. A whole generation of active adults wiped out, children bringing up children.

That's not a cause, that's an emergency.

These are fires we know how to put out.

Yes. It's an absurdity. An absurdity. You know it couldn't happen here. If someone on our street was dying because they couldn't get medicine that we had in our cabinet, we'd get them the medicine. If a family was starving at the end of your block, you'd get them some food. You know you'd just do it. Because it was right.

You'd do it also because you can.

We can't fix every problem, but the ones we can we must.

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Bono is the lead singer of U2 and co-founder of The ONE Campaign and (RED). To watch the video of Bono's speech, or to sign the "Keep Our Commitments" petition, visit The ONE. For more about The Women's Conference, click here.

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