I saw a call to action

Context
I was looking at my library's list of new audiobooks, when I came across Charles Moore's Plastic Ocean: How a Sea Captain's Chance Discovery Launched a Determined Quest to Save the Oceans. I don't plan to read the book, but I was horrified by the idea that there's a part of the ocean where plastic refuse has just taken over.

Commentary
Despite the fact that I haven't read this book, I'm still interested in its purpose. Not so much the environmental one, although cleaning up the oceans is a good and worthy cause, but the motivational one. This book probably contains accounts of both the sea captain's discovery and his quest, but I'm assuming the main purpose is to convince others to join him in the endeavor. In fact, if the description of the plastic-filled North Pacific Subtropical Gyre is horrifying enough, I'm thinking the author believes that will be a sufficient call to action.

It won't be, though.I've written before about how I see a great deal of information, care about only some of it and only act on a small portion of that. At the moment, just reading the basic premise of Plastic Ocean makes me care, but not enough to even take the action of reading the actual book.

Discouraging, no? You could have an epiphany, write a book about it, move people to care, even, and still get no tangible results from the effort. How can an experience that completely changed one person's life have little to no effect on another's? Quick! Hundreds of evangelical preachers are waiting for your answer!

Easy. People are different. Their priorities are different, their values are different, their very way of experiencing the same phenomenon are different. I am concerned about the amount of trash in the ocean. However, at the moment I am more concerned about taking care of my husband and the animals who live in our home, so I won't be changing careers in order to help refarm kelp. I'm concerned about saving time, so I'm not going to take the extraordinary measures necessary to create a zero waste household. And so on. Succinctly, it's not my thing.

And yet not so simple, because I believe our reactions to these differences cause the vast majority of conflicts in both our personal and societal relationships. In a bizarre combination of arrogance and insecurity, we believe if something is important to us, it must be important to everyone. Otherwise, they'll just be wrong. Or we'll be wrong. Or something. So we'll put a great deal of effort into changing others' minds, which is fine. But if that doesn't work, we'll decide to put a great deal of force into doing so. And preventing that IS my thing.

What did you see today?