Everyone and no one wants to save the world

Everyone and no one wants to save the world	On Finding Private Motivations for the Public Good
When the world extended to one’s surrounding hills and mountains and over them was only legend, saving the world was approchable and a natural activity to all of independent character.	In the era when local geography defined a person’s conception of the world, itinerant traders given to wandering oer hills and vales to trade with foreign villages were able to see they had gained a certain independence of mind – a contemplative mind fashioned as a result of the travel. Put simply: Travel broadens the mind.
You do not need to justify the possession of these noble instincts. Such attributes are normally distributed. You have a constellation of these attributes and that makes you who you are. Recognise that the substantial ones are invariant.	If you are the the traveller type now bereft of the parochialisms of people who have never travelled, accept your nature. Note how you can now recognise fellow travellers. Put simply: some folks get wanderlust.
You must satisfy your invariant instincts or you will be at odds with your own character. It is only when we are not at odds with our basic makeup that we can find life meaningful.	If you are find yourself associating with those who travel, accept that contemplation is part of your makeup; otherwise accept unhappiness.   Put Simply: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness (for all).
To exercise your instinct for saving the world, requires saving what you perceive to be the world.	Being self aware of the happiness that comes from being able to see the world, consider how infectious this state of mind can be. Concerning the virus that enabled you to perceive your former ignorance, now spread this virus to save the world. No Simple summary. Assange is aphorising about wordliness versus the state of being mindfull of the world.
Being modern, educated and wordly, the world you perceive is immense and this is disempowering compared to the valley world of your ancestors where your feelings were forged and where saving 10 people saved 10% of the “world“‘s population.	If you feel like you originated in Australian backwater towns and you find yourself now feeling liberated from those limits – having encountered the sophisticated conversation of European drawing rooms –  go contemplate how social amplification enables one to expend the same joules on saving the planet as one would previously have expended merely saving a backwater town from ignorance.   Simply stated: Much of Australian youth of his generation contemplated a wider future for the nation, being somewhat embarrassed by the limitations of the old country.
Here lays the difficulty in actualising your character. Your perception is of a world so vast that that you can not envisage your actions making a meaningful difference.	Since you were taught to have implicit limits on your expectations of what you might personally accomplish, recognize now the blinders are removed that your limits are actually limited only by your will.   Stated simply:- Nietzschen will versus lemmings and cliffs.
People try to fool themselves and others into believing that one can “think globally and act locally’, however to anyone with a sense of proportion (not most people, btw) thinking globaly makes acting locally seem to be a marginal activity. It’s not setting the world to rights.	Having appreciated that will exists and one can leverage one’s own empowerment to offer persuasive arguments on big issues facing the populace as a whole, be aware of how pretentious you may sound, particularly if you show a lack of respect for local issue that would lose you the support of the country yokels back home in the village.   Put simply: if you must now speak with a plummy accent on issues of state, try not to put down the squire trying to keep the cows herders from blocking mainstreet on market day.
To meaningfully interact with the world, you have to either constrain your perception of what it is back to valley proportions by eschewing all global information (most of us here have engaged on just the opposite course which is what has provoked this discussion), losing your sense of perspective, or start seriously engaging with the modern perception of the world.	Since I’m an Australian with an inherently, relatively-provincial and non-plummy accent (and given I’ve learned to express my will), now let me leverage the self-effacing nature of my countrymen to eschew the nectar of all global indulgencies.   Simply put: don’t become a pompous Pom – the race that imposed on Australians their small town complex in the first place.
That latter path can be hard to find, because it is only satisfied by creating ideas or inventions that have a global impact. Perhaps I have found one, and there’s others out there, but for most people of your character a combination of eschewing knowledge of those parts of the world they can’t change, and robust engagement with the parts they can is probably optimal.	It can be hard to find the breakthroughs; or find a device such as the phonograph that takes a small action and amplifies it to have global impact (like a stirring national anthem, or the language of emancipation). So focus on that which you do know well, and leverage it. Don’t be afraid of your talents and your own skills. With the application of will, they can have global relevance.   Simply put: I’m a small scale hacker by nature, used to making hay for others. It’s enthralling to see the impact.
Do not be concerned about when one is to do good, who defines good, etc. Act in the way you do because to do otherwise would to be at odds would to be at odds with yourself. Being on a path true to your character carries with it a state of flow, where the thoughts about your next step come upon waking, unbidden, but welcome.	We know it’s wrong, but what the hell. It’s all ultimately legitimate since it reveals one’s nature and one can be true to one’s self –  providing you impose a code of conduct that limits the harm to a cascade of mere embarrassments.   Simply put: petty criminality is really ok; we all speed, after all.
I support similarly minded people, not because they are moral agents, but because they have common cause with my own feelings and dreams.	I like people who participate in sub-cultures, of dubious morality in many cases. Hacking is a sub-culture, and through it those of use who manifest this particular gene get to participate in the re-definition of morality.   Shortly put: Ergo sum.