Button Button

One of the books I read recently was a collection of short stories by a writer called Richard Matheson. I'm assuming that I'm in good company when I confess that I had not really heard of the author. Interestingly, the book cover said that Matheson was one of Stephen King's great inspirations. While I'm not Stephen King's greatest fan, I'm not at all averse to the genre he specialises in. So, anyway, I picked up the book after the title caught my attention. It was called Button Button and other stories. Now, there's no way I'm putting down a book which has a story titled Button Button.
The story turned out to be most interesting. Without giving away the plot let me highlight the major issue the story tries to raise. Would you be willing to suffer a great indignity in order to achieve a noble (or in the story a not necessarily noble) goal? As written by the author in the preface, would you, for instance, be willing to walk naked down Times Square in exchange for World Peace? I'm sure that for most of us (excluding ofcourse all beauty pageant participants who honestly believe in their ability to bring about world peace) walking naked down Times Square is an absolute no-no, whether or not world peace hangs in the balance. And atleast from my perspective, walking down anywhere naked is a big no-no. But then we come to the issue of my body image and believe me that subject has enough material for multiple blog entries :) So, anyway, I tried to think about it...would I humiliate myself in order to achieve a noble objective? Without lying or trying to make myself seem a better person than I really am, I must say that I most likely would not. Which is not to say that I don't want to. I most certainly want to step out of my comfort zone and be humuliated (:))...unfortunately, it's just not something my highly protected life has prepared me for.