We're all far too selfish
We are a fundamentally selfish people. It's not just when it comes to giving up our hard-fought seats on trains, helping old people across the road or not letting the filling from our blisteringly hot steak pies drip down the backs of the people in front of us at football matches (man in the tan jacket, I have not forgotten you). It's on bigger issues too, like the environment, fair trade and Africa.
The problem with issues like these is not that we don't all mostly agree that they are Good Things, Very Important and that Something Must Be Done – it's that on the most part we don't do nearly enough about them. We blame other people instead.
On the environment it's America's fault for not signing up to Kyoto (which they should), or the factory on the hill's fault for dumping glowing yellow toxic waste in the river (which they shouldn't), or the man down the road's fault for playing T-rex at an ear-shatteringly loud volume for his Monday evening party (which would have been fine if he'd invited me).
On fair trade it's the supermarkets' fault for pricing organic free-range bananas from Venezuela at £3 more than the usual fare, the EU's fault for building beef mountains and lakes of jelly that nobody wants to fish in, or even the fair trade farmer's fault for making his coffee taste not quite as good as that Lidl Extra Cheapo you bought while you were waiting for your loan to come through.
Of course, in reality there are many things we could do. We could recycle more; we could write to our MPs, MEPs, MSPs and Points of View; we could even spend a little more money on fair trade produce and a little less money on 1000-megawatt speakers that make the floor vibrate.
The same is true of Africa, insofar as 'Africa' is an identifiable issue. It took the promise of Madonna and The Who wandering about on stage to get 200,000 people to Hyde Park, and even then a lot of them seemed to be standing around like Muppets. Asked live on television if he had just come for the music, one man said yes and then hurriedly tried to explain that he was actually there to support Africa, or whatever. But if you'd asked any one of them there if they cared about poverty in Africa, very few would have confessed that they didn't – and most of them would have been the ones who had filled up their bags with hotel miniatures beforehand.
We do all care about the homeless, the starving and the dying in Africa – or at least we say we do. We just don't do enough to help them. The Live8 concerts were not so much a demonstration of people's anger as they were a way of drawing the world's attention to the problem. A lot of the 200,000 in London would have come to watch U2 and Robbie Williams for free if the event had been put on by the Cat Stranglers' Fascist Alliance. What is needed now is for the people who really believe in making poverty history – all of them – to show the world that.
None of it may make the blindest bit of difference. The only time foreign policy has an impact on the electoral fortunes of governments is when they decide to invade somewhere and it goes badly. If all those people who said they thought Something Must Be Done about Africa voted on that basis then we might not have been in this situation now. Self-interest, as ever, got in the way.
But at least a huge demonstration would show that people do care, that the threat is there that they might one day vote according to their consciences, and that they aren't just interested when Sir Paul McCartney is headlining.
People who care, people who aren't selfish – and you're neither, are you, dear reader? – should get out on to the streets and show that they care, even if they don't think it will change anything. Do it now, in fact. Go on. I'll join you. Right after I've seen a man about some loud music.
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