Fred and Fred For Life

Unless you’ve been living under a very big rock this week – something the size of Mont Saint-Michel – you have not been able to escape Studio Brussels’ annual charity radio show called Music For Life. In fact, Music For Life is the Belgian counterpart of a Dutch initiative called Serious Request, a radio project organised to collect money for projects of the Red Cross, which has been picked up in Switzerland, Sweden and Kenya too. During the project, three DJs live in a house of glass for six days without eating anything, instead drinking special juice to stay fit.

Organised consistently to fix attention on one of the many forgotten humanitarian issues in the world (like malaria or clean drinking water), this year’s edition focuses on diarrhoea as one of the main causes of death in children worldwide. Indeed, Wikipedia tells me that ‘(i)n 2009 diarrhea was estimated to have caused 1.1 million deaths in people aged 5 and over and 1.5 million deaths in children under the age of 5’. And since Music For Life was first organised in Belgium in 2006, the show has grown immensely in popularity, which is also clear from the financial results of the project. Last year, for instance, Studio Brussels was able to amass a whopping € 5.020.747 to help the Red Cross in its struggle against AIDS.

So far, so good you would say, but alas, things are not that simple. Especially in more leftist-intellectual circles Music For Life is seriously frowned upon. In fact, I cannot tell you how many people have spontaneously told me over the last few days how much they’re annoyed by the ‘whole business with the Glass House’. And to be frank, I used to be one of them, but then I started thinking about the initiative.

To start, many people are sceptical of the way the money collected will be spent. How much does Studio Brussels keep to organise all this? How much will actually reach these poor people? Who are we supporting? Now these are valid questions, but still. The organisation involved with Serious Request is the Red Cross, founded in 1863 to protect human life and health, and an international humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million volunteers, members and staff worldwide. A trustworthy organisation if ever there was any, wouldn’t you agree? Sure, there will be some money that doesn’t reach the Red Cross or that the Red Cross will not manage to get into the right hands, but that’s an issue with all humanitarian help.

Furthermore, I notice that people find fault in the way Music For Life draws away attention from other organisations such as Oxfam, Médecins Sans Frontières or, more importantly, a huge amount of small but worthy NGOs that struggle to get any public attention and financial support. Again, there is some truth in this. But to use this argument to be against Music For Life is illogical. It’s like saying we shouldn’t focus our main medical research on cancer, because there are thousands of other diseases that need curing. It’s deplorable that we can’t support all causes, but does that mean we should stop supporting the Red Cross?

However, the biggest criticism against Music For Life is something more philosophical. Many people take issue with the ‘fun’ aspect of the show. Without really knowing why, they get annoyed by the insane popularity of the DJs (“I hate that Siska!”), the tacky Christmas atmosphere the Glass House oozes (“Those ugly red hats people wear!”) and the jolly-jumpy attitude of the people in front of the house (“Half of them are drunk!”). For some reason such behaviour seems unbefitting for the situation. Now why is that?

What really bothers people in this is the hypocrisy they perceive in the situation. And they are right: with an highly mediatised event like this – follow them on the radio, TV, webcams, Twitter, Facebook, etc.! – you quickly notice that the show is as much about the popularity of the DJs, about the artists playing support gigs and about the people coming along with donations, than about the cause the show is supporting. A good illustration of this is the reactions of people afterwards who are angry because in spite of collecting x-amount of Euros with their school, organisation, etc. they didn’t even get mentioned on the radio! Or the text messages of people you see on the screen: “Pff, this is my tenth SMS and I haven’t got through once!”.

Ergo: it’s more about everyone else than about the problem of diarrhoea.

However, if this is your reason not to support Music For Life, consider this. The famous French philosopher Jacques Derrida has a theory which is called l’aporie du don. It says that it is actually impossible to give a true gift. Indeed, a true gift should be unselfish, but still every gift to someone else is at the same time a gift to yourself. Think about it: when we give someone a gift, we want to make them happy. Now re-read the sentence: ‘we want to make them happy’. Giving a gift is always also about making yourself happy, and therefore every gift is, in a way, selfish. In fact, the happiness derived from giving a gift is even parasitical to the other person’s happiness. Indeed, we are only happy when the gift has succeeded in making the other party happy. So in essence, giving a gift implies stealing some of the happiness from the person who received the gift.

Hmm. Now that’s a buzz-killer, ain’t it? So much for the spirit of the season! Still, if Derrida teaches us anything, it’s that we shouldn't worry about such an aporie, because it’s inevitable. It’s not because we will never be able to be one hundred percent altruistic in giving a gift, that we should not give one.

Ergo: I see no reason not to support Music For Life and accordingly I will support it. So here’s my solemn vow: for every comment (just type SUPPORT) to this blog, Fred and Fred will donate €1 to Music For Life. So keep those comments coming!