If you are in “save the whales” mode, stop and ask what the inner reality is that you’re trying to run away from. It’s ok, baby. Who hurt you? Let’s make it better.
Excessive concern about abstraction—externalities—tells me that something is wrong inside.
Look inside. Deal with the trauma you are avoiding. Then, if you want, go save the whales.
And by “save the whales” I am, of course, referencing any do-good feel-good amorphous bullshit. Example: “society is so racist!” Something’s going on inside you. Deal with it. Heal the inside man, not “society.” And if you’re truly concerned with racism, go be kind to one human being. Change the world retail-style, not wholesale.
And global warming. And microplastics. And communists. And suggestive lyrics in the music kids are listening to these days. And those gyrating hips on that young man, Elvis Presley. He is going to corrupt the youth. There oughta be a law. And everything else that alarms you.
It ain’t the outside stuff that you think needs fixing. Your reaction tells you that there’s something that needs attention inside you.
Greta Thunberg’s inner life just might be a shitshow. That doesn’t matter. She can live a shitshow-filled life if she wants. You do you.
It is a spiritual axiom that when we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us. Good quote, right? That sentence has stuck with me for decades.
Also reference Gurdjieff’s idea of people as machines, and how so many are broken machines. If you push the button on your coffee maker and it makes coffee, that’s one thing. But if you push the button and it starts throwing knives across the kitchen, that’s another.
The information is in your reaction, not in the thing you’re reacting to.
If you use the word “triggered” for any reason other than a joke, it’s time for introspection and inner healing.
And for that matter, remember Bob’s assertion: “There is no such thing as a joke.” Meaning that jokes are disguised spears of truth thrown straight at the heart of a hidden problem. Though he used it mostly in the tall poppy context, of seeing one person try to cut another person down by using a joke. “Just kidding, man! It’s a joke!” Yeah but it still hurts.
Put on your own oxygen mask first.
Save yourself and you’ll inadvertently save the whales. The reverse is false.