I received a fax the other day from Dorothea Bailey. It was a copy of a New York Times editorial about how police in Humboldt County zapped some anti-logging protesters in the face with pepper spray to break up an otherwise peaceful sit-in. In the margin, Ms. Bailey (as the Times would refer to her) wrote, "And last week, the U.S. was concerned with human rights in China."

Now I don't know exactly why Dorothea (as The Islander News refers to her) would send me this article, knowing full well that our paper is primarily concerned with things that happen on this side of Bear Cut. The last time I looked, Humboldt County was located in northern California and China as far away as the moon (at least if you follow my wife's directions on how to get there).

I suppose Dorothea was hoping that her fax would inspire me to write a column about human rights, or perhaps human wrongs. But discounting its penchant for forcing Village staff and community reporters to sit through occasionally torturous Council meetings, Key Biscayne itself doesn't appear to be a hotbed for human rights violations.

So the question is: Why should we care?

The answer is: Most of us don't care. So long as no one violates our inalienable rights to come and go as we please, speak freely, buy unlimited annual passes to the Rickenbacker Causeway, drink beer and watch cable TV, we're content to let the rest of the world work out its problems. Maybe we'll curse mass murderers like Pol Pot and Radovan Karadzic or old reliable despots like Saddam and Fidel when we see them on the evening news, but soon we'll be more engrossed with Vanna White's gown-de-jour or dirt about a tarnished Hollywood star on Hard Copy.

The sad truth is that most of us get more upset about a bad call in a football game than we do about genocide in Africa and other atrocities where the human right that is most commonly violated is the basic human right to stay alive.

We think sweat shops in foreign lands are despicable, but for some reason they're even more despicable when they produce Kathie Lee Gifford's line of clothing.

We're obsessed with the high and mighty. A princess dies in a car accident and the world stops turning for a week. Thousands are slaughtered like animals in Uganda and it's business as usual.

Maybe the question should be: Why don't we care? We don't care because these things aren't real to us. Hordes of starving Rwandians fill a 30-second spot on CNN, and they might as well be Lasmarians from the Planet Galzor. We feel more sympathy for a lost puppy than we do a civil war orphan. These things--mass murder, epidemic disease, catastrophic destruction--seem so far removed from our cozy little world. In a way, we don't want to let them invade our lives. Hindus believe that we suffer through many lives of abject misery to get to a life of relative luxury. They say that the higher castes have already paid their dues and now it's just the other guy's turn.

That's one way of looking at it, of rationalizing why we shouldn't care.

But we do care. Don't we? Don't we donate money to good causes? The Red Cross? United Way? Easter Seals? Don't we give the homeless guy at the light a quarter when we drive by? Are we really digging into our pockets to help others or merely to relieve our own feelings of guilt? Does it matter what our motivation is so long as the end result benefits the needy?

I raise these questions because I know no answers. I know only that if you ask enough questions, sometimes you get lucky and find one answer that really means something.

Assuming that we all agree that pepper-spraying peaceful demonstrators, imprisoning people without due process and slaughtering Muslims or Jews, Croats or Serbs, blacks or whites, just because they are what they are is wrong, the next question is: What can we do about it?

Or maybe: What can you do about it?

I suppose the first thing you can do to make the world a better place is to take care of your kids. Teach them how to love by loving them. Teach them to respect all life by respecting life yourself. Throw back the little puffer fish rather than tossing it aside in the weeds. Shoo the pesky fly out of the house rather than smashing it with glee. All life is sacred, and just because we're bigger, stronger and/or smarter than the rest of the animal kingdom doesn't give us the right to annihilate bits and pieces of it on a whim.

Be nice. I know, it sounds easy. But believe it or not, some people have a hard time smiling. Others would just as soon cut off a finger than let you merge in front of their car in a traffic jam. Anger breeds anger. Aggression breeds aggression. Don't start the ball rolling. Stop it with a smile or laugh, and you'll find that being nice has a rippling effect.

The only other thing I can think of is to do something if you can. Whether it's sponsoring a Third World kid for $15 a month, taking a turn at feeding the homeless, being a big brother, teaching illiterates to read--the choices are almost limitless. The important thing is to make one. Give it a whirl. See how rewarding it is to help someone less fortunate than yourself. Opening your wallet is great, but opening your arms and heart is even better.

So to Dorothea, I say that while I have thoughts about human rights and wrongs throughout the world, I have no answers. I don't know how we can stop badged bullies from pepper-spraying peaceful demonstrators. I don't know how we can keep Chinese authorities from throwing dissidents into jail.

All I know is that we are the lucky ones here, and the only way to spread the wealth is to do good deeds. On small scale or large, it doesn't matter so long as the feeling is there. As Bobby Kennedy once said: "Each time a man stands up for an ideal or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, which collectively can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression."

Cast your pebble into the pond of hope and maybe someday your children or children's children won't have to worry about pepper spray or land mines or sweat shops or ethnic cleansing. Maybe someday, the human race will evolve beyond brutality, if we don't kill each other first.