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The more I learn about history and the rest of the world, the more I realize how absurdly, staggeringly lucky I am.

24 million people in North Korea live under the heel of an all-consuming, utterly repressive regime. 10 million people in Somalia face the opposite problem, with no functioning government at all, plagued by waves of lawless violence as a matter of course.

80% of the world – that’s over five billion people – lives on less than $10 a day, less than $4,000 a year.

Meanwhile, my main worries in life are the flat tire I got yesterday morning (which I switched for a donut but still need to replace), the pressures of my job, and what I’m going to post on the blog.

It’s crazy when you think about it. It’s crazy when you don’t.

The phrase “first world problems” evolved to describe exactly this situation. It’s partly a joke, and partly a real awareness of the place that some of us occupy in the world. It’s a way of saying, “Wow, your remote control is broken and you’re out of batteries? How sad for you.”

For me, the question has always been: what now? What am I supposed to do with the information that most of my problems are trivial compared to the rest of the planet? What am I supposed to think about myself? What should I do?

Here’s what I’ve found so far.

To start with: as with nearly all other aspects of life, worry doesn’t help. Neither does guilt. Stewing in anxiety is worse than useless. One of my favorite quotes from the Bible is “Whatever your hand findeth to do, do it with all your might.” If you’re worried, either do something about it or let it go.

With that in mind, there are two separate but parallel courses to take.

First: solve your own problems. Deal with your own life. The knowledge that your troubles are relatively minor for the most part, doesn’t actually make them disappear. Fix it. This one’s a no-brainer.

And second: if you really care about the larger issues out there, do something about it. Volunteer. Give to a group like Doctors Without Borders. Make a difference.

And if you have to feel something about that yawning gulf between yourself and everyone else? Feel gratitude, and feel compassion.

The world doesn’t need your pity, but it needs your help.

If I’m coming across as preachy right now, understand that I’m largely preaching to myself. Talking things over on the blog is my way of figuring them out. My brain still hasn’t figured out quite what to make of this world map hanging on my wall.

Do you ever think about this kind of stuff? Where have those thoughts taken you?

So my latest obsession is geography. As I write this, I have a giant world map sitting over my computer here at home, a beautiful first-anniversary present from my wife. (To be clear, it is not the map pictured above. I just thought that one looked cool, is all. I’m allowed.)

I’ve spent way too much time over the past four days learning the names of every little speck of land that Google or Wikipedia can tell me anything about. And of course, geography plus curiosity equals history, so there’s that, too.

Here’s the deal: the world is crazy. Did you know…

• Ethiopia and Liberia are the only two countries in Africa that were not formerly European colonies.
• Liberia (not to be confused with Libya) was actually run by ex-slaves from America for a while, with a government modeled after the U.S. government. Hence the capital, Monrovia, named after President James Monroe.
• Ethiopia, meanwhile, got invaded by Italians during the so-called Scramble For Africa in the late 19th century. The Ethiopians gave them the boot. By the way, Ethiopia – the most mountainous nation in Africa – was an early adopter of Christianity, and today remains as a pocket of Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity in a sea of Islam.
• Indonesia used to be a Dutch colony, which is not half as crazy as the fact that the Democratic Republic of the Congo used to be a Belgian colony. Where do these little countries get that much land?
• The tiny, mostly-uninhabited island of Bouvet, in the south Atlantic, belongs to Norway but actually has its own Internet Top-Level Domain: “.bv”. Nobody’s using it, which seems like a massive missed opportunity. Wikipedia also claims Bouvet is the most remote island in the world.
• A whole nation called Nauru sits entirely on a single island in the Pacific, occupying just 21 square kilometers and containing only about ten thousand people. I’m not sure which blows my mind more: that a country can be that small, or that it’s still only the third-smallest nation in the world, after the Vatican and Monaco.
• The Maldives, a tiny island chain off the coast of India, sit at an extremely low elevation above the sea, and are predicted to be the first country in the world eradicated by rising sea levels due to global warming. I mean, eradicated. Wow.

I’ve been trying to find good documentaries on some of these countries (the Maldives, for instance), and it’s harder than I expected. Anyone know any good websites for free (or cheap) documentaries, on this topic or any other?

Do you think I’m special?
Do you think I’m nice?
Am I bright enough to shine in your spaces?
-OneRepublic, “All the Right Moves”

I worry about what people think of me. I get a high from compliments, and really strong praise leaves me floating on air all day. Insults and criticisms can be devastating, their effects lingering sometimes for months, with aftershocks even years later.

Most everyone does worry, but I worry excessively. I guess a lot of writers do.

Worrying even has its advantages. For one thing, it makes you highly aware of people’s little cues, their tones and gestures and phrases that indicate slight pleasure or annoyance. That can be useful: as a writer, as a teacher, as a husband or a friend.

It also makes you listen carefully to people, give them the benefit of the doubt. Rarely is anyone so wrong that they don’t have at least a kernel of truth in their opinion, and focusing on that truth as a starting point makes debate and dialogue more fruitful.

And of course, there’s a basic rationality to caring what others think. If you believe something, and five other people believe you’re wrong, well, there’s a good chance that the problem is you, not them. That rationality is why evolution gave us the trait in the first place.

But this usefulness has its borders, and I’ve wandered beyond them most of my life. I care past the limits of rationality. I find myself happier with mediocre work that people praise, than excellent work that goes unnoticed.

Sometimes when you believe something, and five other people say you’re wrong, you’re still right. I can and do stick to my guns in situations like that. But I wish it didn’t make me feel like a lizard had crawled into my stomach and laid its eggs there.

Not long ago, I was telling all this to somebody, and as we talked, he did something really odd. He abbreviated it: What People Think, WPT.

I love this, because calling it WPT pulls it out of the fuzzy anxiety cloud and makes it a Thing, a noun, something to include in your strategies.

Something that can be defeated.

I haven’t conquered WPT yet, and maybe I never will. But by treating it as a known adversary, I can start to deal with it.

Are you bothered by WPT? What do you do about it?

Here’s something you may not know: TIME actually publishes four different versions of its magazine, for the U.S., European, Asian, and South Pacific markets. Sometimes the covers are all the same. And sometimes they’re different.

Now, here’s an eye-opener: check out these TIME magazine covers for the October 24, 2011 issue.

Screenshot from TIME's official website.

The covers for Europe, Asia, and South Pacific all say the same thing: “WHY THE U.S. WILL NEVER SAVE AFGHANISTAN.” Hm…seems like an issue that might concern their U.S. market, right? But the American cover doesn’t even mention Afghanistan. It’s a story about “the return of the silent majority” in the U.S., along with headlines about Occupy Wall Street, and why George Clooney isn’t running for President. (I’m going to guess, because he’s an actor. Not that it stopped Ronald Reagan.)

The message is clear. The rest of the world can handle the truth about the international stage. Americans would prefer to stay wrapped in their bubble.

Now, this isn’t entirely fair to TIME. The very next issue has a story about China’s economy on the U.S. cover, while the rest of the world gets an inside look at the animated movie Tintin. And there’s no question that TIME does cover substantial, international issues, which is why I subscribe to it. But scrolling through their archive, you find enough cases like the one I highlighted above, that you start to get a little worried.

Are Americans blinded by a veil of ignorance about the rest of the world?

Frankly: yes.

Go to ABCNews.com and look at the top headlines. I’ll do it right now. Here’s a sampling:

• America’s Top Ten Trashiest Spring Break Destinations
• Who’ll Win Oscar? Nominee Scorecard
• 7 Oscar-Worthy Animals
• Celine Dion’s Onstage ‘Oops’
• Nixon Clarifies Bisexuality Comments
• Beware of ‘Fake’ Shopping Sales
• Baltic Mystery Object: Millennium Falcon?
• The Car of the Future?
• WATCH: Super Bowl Ads Preview

Even slightly more substantial stories, like “Rick Santorum Says Daughter Is ‘Out of the Woods'” and “[Ron] Paul’s Nevada Strategy Called ‘Odd,'” focus more on the theatrics and maneuvering of the campaigns than on the real debate about which (if any) of these people are qualified to be the most powerful human being on the planet.

Americans talk a lot about the comparative quality of their various news sources, but the debate tends to focus on conservative vs. liberal bias, Fox News vs. NPR. I think we miss the bigger issue with our news: it is myopic, focusing us inward, shutting out all the rest of the world except for what happens to be most entertaining, most graphic, most shiny right now.

So what’s the solution?

Well, personally, I get my news from several websites. I read MSNBC.com, which does have some “fluff,” but overall does a pretty decent job of covering real stories, both inside and outside the U.S.

But more importantly, I also read two other, less “mainstream” news sites: Radio Liberty and Al Jazeera. The former is funded by the U.S. government, and the latter by the Qatari government, so you do have to watch for bias – but they’re different biases, and they seem to agree with each other pretty well in spite of all that. They talk about international issues, political unrest in countries you wouldn’t otherwise hear about, the state of democracy in the world, and what the world really thinks about American power.

Besides those, I also subscribe to TIME, which (as I said) has a lot of great content in spite of the cover thing. And I listen to NPR on the radio while I’m driving, whose program “All Things Considered” does a remarkable job of living up to its ambitious name.

Do you think American news has a problem? Where do you get your news?

I’m still playing Batman: Arkham City on the PC. I’ve long since beaten the game, and now I’m chasing down side quests in pursuit of 100% completion. After countless hours, it hasn’t yet stopped being fun.

As I’ve said before, Arkham‘s main strength is that it really does make you feel like Batman as you play. And the mind of the Batman is a pretty cool place to hang out. It gets you thinking about who he is – and what he is.

After all, who’s tougher than Batman? Who’s darker, grittier? He’s seen it all: the very depths of human depravity. Hell, he lives in the underworld. And he owns it. Nobody, but nobody, messes with the Dark Knight.

Yet this fierce darkness, this supreme mastery of combat, this obsession with his personal quest, are only part of what defines him. He’s defined equally, if not more so, by another aspect of his character: compassion.

And not just compassion for the innocent people he’s saving, but compassion even for the bad guys, the thugs and the supervillains. Though he’s driven by the murder of his parents, he is not – like the Punisher – out for revenge. He’s violent but nonlethal, using the minimum necessary force, sending his enemies back to prison over and over when their death would be so much easier. He isn’t just fighting on the opposite side. He’s fighting a different kind of war.

I find this dual aspect of his nature, this idea of hardness and kindness at once, very striking. I think many people believe that kindness is a form of weakness, that to care about your enemies is to coddle them. Certainly, in this age of political theater and fearmongering, the kindness-as-weakness trope is often implied if not outright stated. I think it’s important to see this idea for exactly what it is: a lie.

Batman is fictional (blasphemy, I know!) but the philosophy isn’t. Hallowed names like Gandhi and Martin Luther King are revered for the same reason. We admire them not just for their absolute conviction and steel resolve (which both men followed all the way to death), but for their self-restraint, their insistence on hating no one, not even the ones they fought.

If you’re a Christian, this is part of your doctrine. If you’re an atheist, this is common sense. Hate begets hate.

What have you learned from watching heroes – super or otherwise?