Starfishin'

I'm still in meaning-of-life mode, wondering a lot about what things I can do to make the world a better place, and whether it's even worth it to try when so many other people are just going to go in the other direction and cancel out my good deeds.

A friend who read my last little post said my concern with the preservation of the immediate area around me -- and my lack of concern for the doomed, consume-themselves-to-death idiots in the areas outside my niche -- reminded her of what she calls the starfish analogy.

In the analogy, someone is walking on the beach and sees a starfish. Worried that's it's going to die, our hero casts the starfish into the ocean, and feels good to have done something positive. But then he looks up and sees millions of starfish strewn across the beach -- and realizes he'll never be able to single-handedly solve the starfish problem.

I like the starfish analogy. To take it even further, I think we live in the kind of nation where the majority of people think dead starfish look neat in the sand. Some people will ignore a dying starfish, and some will even find ways of getting starfish out of the ocean and onto the land, just for the cool visual.

But here's the thing about the starfish analogy: it's one of those things where the glass is either one-hundredth full or ninety-nine-hundredths empty. Maybe 99 starfish are going to bake on the beach for every one we save, but the ones we save are going to be very glad that we saved them.

So yes, we do go through life surrounded by idiots and bastards. And they do make the world an often-crappy place. But if we can thwart their stupidity and assholishness one time in a hundred, we should feel good about that much. And then go for two times in a hundred.

Next: The difference between helping starfish because it helps starfish, and helping starfish because we think it's cool. I'm talking to you, hippies.