Pro Bono. An example that there can be hope even in the most desperate cases

In a recent interview with the New York Times, under the pretext of publishing a kind of autobiography (“Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story”), Paul David Hewson, better known as Bono Vox, leader of the band U2, showed a surprising maturity and realism that, being to be expected in a 62-year-old man, is surprising in a rocker better known as an "anti-system" activist. Here are some excerpts from his responses to an interviewer who barely disguises his displeasure with such developments and who only doesn't call him a traitor because it would be politically incorrect.

«I ended up as an activist in a very different place from where I started. I thought that if we just redistributed resources, then we could solve every problem. I now know that’s not true. There’s a funny moment when you realize that as an activist: The off-ramp out of extreme poverty is, ugh, commerce, it’s entrepreneurial capitalism. I spend a lot of time in countries all over Africa, and they’re like, Eh, we wouldn’t mind a little more globalization actually. 

Be careful to placard the poorest of the poor on politics when they are fighting for their lives. It’s very easy to become patronizing. Capitalism is a wild beast. We need to tame it. But globalization has brought more people out of poverty than any other-ism. If somebody comes to me with a better idea, I’ll sign up. I didn’t grow up to like the idea that we’ve made heroes out of businesspeople, but if you’re bringing jobs to a community and treating people well, then you are a hero. That’s where I’ve ended up. God spare us from lyricists who quote themselves, but if I wrote only one lyric that was any good, it might have been: Choose your enemies carefully because they will define you. Turning the establishment into the enemy — it’s a little easy, isn’t it? 

I often instead use the word “actualist,” because activists sometimes like to stay on the outside and criticize, whereas the “actualist” wants to get [expletive] done. I found that if I was ready to drop some biases, coming from the left to work with the right, we could get stuff done. I know it will lose some music fans, but it was important for me to have that in there.»