That man has self-destructive inclinations is self-evident. The path to modernity has corpses strewn about it: macabre speed bumps along a dusty road like that memorable scene in Hotel Rwanda. Yet we continue our lives peering upwards toward the heavens waiting for a meteor to fall, not realizing that the cause for our demise will be terrestrial and within each of us.
Today's thoughts come from an article I read this morning relating to the increasing Sero-Prevalence of gay men (or Men who have Sex with Men: MSM) in a recently concluded decade long European study. As I have come to expect from studies of this nature it has revealed that after close to 3 decades of the AIDS epidemic and billions of dollars spent on prevention and treatment, with a now ubiquitous message reaching all corners of the globe, new HIV infections among gay men are increasing annually.
This paradoxical fact is but one of my frustrations with the AIDS prevention strategies of the past 30 years.
(I don't have any new ideas to pitch, no new programmes to write, and no new proposals to sell so don't be so quick to ask for my contribution as a qualification for me to criticize.)
I'm not even really that interested in prevention anymore as I'm at the point where I am beginning to wonder if those newly infected (with exceptions of course) were ever truly interested in prevention themselves.
I had a conversation a few years ago while at the Eastern Caribbean home of a very senior and influential advocate in the region that I will never forget, even if only for the irony of it all. As we sipped wine and bullshitted he shared that sometimes even he questioned the very message he was sending from his elevated platform of influence. He shared an anecdote of how much he and other senior advisers of his ilk despised the use of condoms for oral sex and how they knew when they looked into the eyes of the average Joe Blow street hustler on the Malecon in Santo Domingo while spreading the prevention message, that he knew they were hypocrites (probably because he might have sucked one of them off the night before).
He questioned just how effective and relevant the prevention campaigns can be in a world where sex, no matter where you are in the world, is just a click away. You can be in Timbuktu and once you have an internet connection you'll have a boy in your hotel lobby within 15 minutes.
This boy knows that a condom can save his life but for the promise of elevation from his current misery (ie the right price) he'll take that risk.
What does that say about the success that prevention advocates hope to achieve?
What is the point of it all?
I am sure the message sticks to most that hear it, but in that passionate moment when the satisfaction of sex becomes the motivation, the relevance of it is lost.
Is mankind to be left to its own devices to fuck itself into oblivion?
What is the purpose of advocacy in this environment of general awareness but infrequent compliance?
I'm sure I'll come to this point again and again. Perhaps a cure for AIDS will even exacerbate the problem as death will no longer be the ultimate penalty for risky behaviour.
At this moment however part of me is content to resign to the sidelines and watch what people do with the privilege that is the freedom to choose.
Perhaps that is the same frustration the creator has with mankind which is why he/she is not as physically present as in biblical tales.
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