You Can't Save The World

There's a fascinating post and discussion at CoyoteBebop's blog about, among other things, dealing with disaster and helping the helpless. The metaspiritual fight between saving someone or saving yourself.
It's a complex question, and many people have differing views, none of which in their own rights is the wrong answer- the nature of such difficult and overwhelming discourses.
As for me, I'm of the belief that you can't save the whole world. It doesn't mean you should try to save someone, or help someone- so if you read it that way you are off the mark.
There is no way really to discuss it rationally without sounding cold (as I've tried for the last 15 minutes to write and rewrite a few paragraphs). The point is that rather than trying to end every suffering, harness the energy you have (the emotional, physical, spiritual well) and use it to make better those things which you have control over.
The immediacy of the cases that Coyote spells out are compelling. Confronted with the given situation of disaster or human tragedy right before one's eyes is difficult to understand not actually being that specific person in that specific place- thus judging someone for acting (or non-acting) is difficult for me as an individual. To see a child starving before your eyes with vultures looming is a spritually crushing vision- and it is no wonder the photographer eventually took his life, unable to deal with, we must assume in part, of what his non-action.
But his suicide merely points out the futility of the engagement, in the most devastating of ways.
Yes there are things that as whole socities we 'could' conceivably harness enough resources to make a grand change- but every action has its cost. If I sold all my possessions and gave the money to the poor, how does that help? It merely shifts the equation- it doesn't make it better.
So how *could* I make it better?
For starters I could be a good citizen. I can follow the laws so as to not put a strain on others- my family, my community, my government. I can be a good husband and father so that I can pass on proper values, and hopefully propagate a lineage of the like thus exponentially reducing the strain on society. I can be a good steward of my small arc of the world.
These may sound simplistic, or even obvious- but ask yourself how many people AREN'T observing these simple and obvious tasks.

Too often we can become locked inside the infinite paradox of the butterfly effect. But that really isn't a healthy course I recommend you travel. It sure wasn't healthy I believe for the photographer Coyote tells us of, and I don't think it is healthy for the rest of us either. We do not have the infinite grasp of the universe. No matter how enlightened we believe ourselves to be. We are human.
It doesn't mean we shouldn't care, or feel, or empathize- for doing so would make us LESS human. What it does mean is that we must realistically and honestly evaluate our simple role in the complex chaos, and make, as much as is possible, rational choices. We think and we feel. Two completely differing processes designed to give us balance. If we lean too much to one, we risk losing the other, and ultimately both.