Cheating and fair play

Limerick on narrow self-interest
With all immediate interests in a balance weighed,
Your job matters less to you than the money you're paid.
    It's less that you get thine
    And more that I get mine.
Doesn't matter who the girl is, so long as youth gets laid.

One of the fish served up in my new Friday feature column has provoked a challenge.
    Lyndia Storey, in the "Friends of the Sea" excerpt, called on people to take the simple action of signing a petition "to stop the deliberate killing and maiming of our sea life."
    A reader challenged us to do more than just wait and hope for a petition to have impact: He challenges us to stop eating shrimp.
    How many people who currently eat shrimp would stop eating shrimp if the challenge reached them? Or, less theoretically, what percentage of people whom the challenge does reach (and who currently eat shrimp) will stop eating shrimp as a result?
    Of course we don't know. I couldn't poll everybody who viewed the page, and not everyone would respond. But I'm almost certain it wouldn't be everyone, and I'm not entirely confident that it wouldn't be zero. After all, not everyone who received Lyndia Storey's email to simply sign a petition responded by signing the petition. Not everyone forwarded the plea to their friends. I didn't. The only thing I did was excerpt her plea for my new feature.
    Today, though, upon receiving Ms. Storey's follow-up appeal for the final day before submitting her petition (and maybe feeling guilty?), I did share her final call on my Facebook page and on the pages of a few of my Facebook friends.

But many will not do anything. And I may not do more. Why is that?
    There are many reasons, some of them specific to the person involved, such as he or she was called to help a child and got distracted. Any number of things like that. Lots of things are going on in everyone's life today.
    Deeper, underlying reasons affect everyone. Humans (and other organisms) evolved to act in their own perceived self interest or in the perceived self interest of people who are related to them, by degree of relatedness, whether biological or social. Children first, cousins second...your pet before strangers, neighbors before solicitors.
    Acting in your own best interest leads you sometimes to cheat. Some species of bird cheat by laying their eggs in other birds' nests, so the other birds will expend their energy feeding the young. Can you tell me you've never cheated? I can't tell you I haven't.
    Sometimes a challenge to help (to sign a petition) provokes the thought,

I'm busy, let other people who have the time sign it. Why does it have to be me? I'll just cheat this time.

    I've thought that more than a few times.
    And we want fair play. We know that good things affecting everyone rarely happen without the involvement of many or even nearly all. A challenge to help can provoke the thought,

Not enough people are going to get involved in this, they don't care enough, they're going to go on cheating, taking care of their own. A few trying to play fair and getting involved won't be nearly enough to turn the tide. So why bother?

    I've occasionally had that despairing thought.

I could say that wanting fair play and cheating are two sides of the same coin, except that a better metaphor might be two edges of the sharp sword of non-involvement.
    The sword is sharp and dangerous because it kills the chances of our forming a comprehension of self-interest deep enough to include our dependence on the well-being of other people and other species of life on the planet, and the well-being of Mother Earth herself, that she may continue to be capable of nurturing all life here.