I once heard someone say that local optimizations do not work, but I believe this to be wrong. Only recently, I optimized the programming for generating this website by focusing on only the part that build the crosslinks in the pages. It went from over two minutes to mere seconds.
Similarly, the world around us may seem to not be easily optimizable in one localized location, but then you are forgetting that there are many of us making their particular corner of the world better. And that is basically all we can and need to do. Because believe it or not, the Grand Overall Design is doing the very same thing for us!
