This is a long post, and its about the bloody ice bucket challenge. So please dont bother reading it if youre not good with the joined-up thinking and just want to say how much of a miserable killjoy I am. A lot of people have done the ice bucket ritual but donated the money to a different cause. Suggesting that raising awareness is good as a kind of abstract; that it doesnt actually matter what youre raising awareness OF, or what kind of awareness it is, or even what awareness really means. Of course, the justification given for the connection between the act and the charity was that apparently the numbness provoked by the icy water is like the feeling of having motor neuron disease/ALS. Now, I cant help feeling thats a bit patronising. If someone were to tell me they had MND, would it be OK for me to say I know exactly what that feels like, mate - I had a bucket of cold water chucked over me once? But, anyway, if youre not even giving to that charity, why do anything with ice? What does it raise awareness of except you chucking ice on yourself? Call me mad, but if I want to contribute to a cause, I do so, and if I think its a sufficiently worthwhile cause, Ill tell people about the cause itself and let them make their minds up rather than giving them 24 hours to do exactly the same thing I did with the implication that its their moral duty. For instance, I think we should all do whatever we can to register our support for the cancellation of third world debt and an end to rich drug companies having international monopolies on the production and sale of lifesaving medicine. And I really dont see how the ice bucket auto da fé will help explain how important that is. Of course these things are symbolic. The idea is that you raise money for charity by doing something that demonstrates how much it means to you. You put a lot of effort into something or subject yourself to something harsh, and that shows how much you care. But I reckon most people with boring jobs would rather do the ice bucket challenge every day than go to work. Because, really, assuming that you have a change of clothes and a hot water supply, its really not that terrible a thing to go through. I effectively did it to myself when we had no hot water in the house. Its this very interesting quality thats made the ice bucket conformity-enforcer so popular. Its not actually hard to do or terribly traumatic to undergo. Its not got anything to do with the cause really, so its infinitely adaptable, as cheeky Macmillan will tell you. And it has that wonderful quality: it allows us to pretend that were not flattering ourselves or that were subjecting ourselves to indignity for a cause, but actually half of it is a wet t-shirt contest and the other half is a lame stag night prank: like the no-make-up selfie or the standard doesnt this rather flattering photograph make me look fat?/Tell me I look beautiful or Ill get upset post. Except this is about moral character instead of looks. Were asking people to think were good people. Because were doing something. Raising awareness. Funding research. Whats particularly odd is the anger that greets all scepticism. People who moralise about how important it is suddenly to research new treatments for ALS (many of whom have apparently only just found out it exists and previously thought Stephen Hawking was just lazy) are utterly uninterested in the fact that, of every pound they give to the American charity theyre promoting, only 7p will actually go to such research. Thats not the point, apparently. Because its not actually the end result that matters. In a couple if years time, how many of the people who did the ice bucket challenge will be checking to see where their money has gone, getting upset about the six-figure salaries the charity executives earn or pointing out that the aggressive protection of patents by the very companies who are getting 7% of our donation money is costing more lives than wed save even if we could cure every single case of MND right now? Its not the consequence of the action that matters any more - its the symbolism. Its religious. We dont care whether the wafer really becomes the body of Christ. Were not even sure we want it to or what it would mean if it did. But the important thing is to look like we mean it. Pour encourager les autres. Like the prayer wheel that does the praying so you dont have to or the slaves you send to do your pilgrimage on you behalf, the ice bucket sacrament is a labour-saving device: it does the caring-about-suffering and putting-something-back for you, so you dont have to think about the issue of human suffering or your complicity in the unfairness of the world. You cant be part of the problem - youre a good person. Look, theres the evidence, in the form of a video of you getting wet and promising to give 35p to ALS research. Why 35p? Because thats what ALS research actually gets for every fiver the ALS foundation receives.
Posted on: Mon, 01 Sep 2014 13:29:22 +0000
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