Where Did All the Good People Go?
Jack Johnson asked me a question this morning that felt wildly inappropriate for the state of the world. Soft voice, gentle guitar, emotional sunscreen. The kind of song I listened to twenty years ago in an old VW bus, convinced that life would somehow sort itself out as long as you stayed open-hearted, barefoot, and committed to your dreams.
And there he was, with surfer melancholy and impeccable timing, asking: Where did all the good people go? It’s not a question you want to meet before you’ve fully arrived in your body.
Still, it landed — and refused to leave. Because this question isn’t just about politicians who read like badly written villains, late-stage capitalism’s collapse, or family members fluent in conspiracy theories. People were asking this long before misinformation became a lifestyle hack and fascism learned to be your neighbor. Which is both comforting and depressing at the same time.
I carried the question through my morning like a splinter in my foot. Persistent and unimpressed by denial.
So naturally, I considered doing what my spiritual path trained me to do when reality gets uncomfortable. Go inward. Feel the body. Observe the thoughts. Roll out the mat and see if the answer is hiding in my left hip. Or my right earlobe. Meditate. Long. Visualize cosmic light tidying up my nervous system. Or, more practical, book a flight to Bali — where existential questions are answered somewhere between coconut water and cacao ceremonies.
This is what New Age spirituality taught us best: turning collective crises into private emotional projects.
When questions become structurally urgent, we’re trained to regulate, soften, and surrender. If something feels unbearable, it’s always internal, never political, historical, or material. Breathe through it. Transcend it. Heal your relationship to it. Preferably without looking too closely at what caused the imbalance in the first place.
And yet, no amount of self-regulation, retreats, affirmations, chakra balancing, angels, frequencies, cosmic downloads, or plant medicine stories dissolves the urgent question. It waits. Like your tax return. With late fees accumulating.
You see, our dilemma is: there is no safe distance anymore. We can’t hide.
The world’s disasters don’t happen “over there.” They are omnipresent. Delivered straight into our palms, our nervous systems, our daily lives. This isn’t about someone else’s suffering anymore. Not some unlucky stranger on the other side of the planet. It’s about our lives, our ecosystems, our species, our hope, our very beliefs. The line between their crisis and ours is almost gone.
And now the question is unavoidable. Where did the good people go?
And maybe even more important: Are there enough of them?
Enough people willing to stay present when retreating into private healing and individualism would be easier. Enough who understand that ethics don’t end where discomfort begins. Enough who see that we must change our lifestyles and systems to sustain the earth and our future. Enough who can sit with complexity.
Distraction used to work when consequences felt distant. Now even the most committed escapists keep circling back to the unease. You can’t meditate your way out of a burning house. You just can’t.
You can talk about acceptance, trust the process, or tell yourself the universe will magically take care of things — until it doesn’t.
Pain has a way of interrupting denial.
If this resonated with you, moved you, or made you pause and reflect – consider this your cue. I’ve set up a virtual tip jar via Buy Me a Coffee. No monthly commitments, no strings, no memberships required.
Your sweet kindness helps keep the thoughts flowing, the energy exchange intact, and the glow of my inner goddess alive. It won’t fix capitalism, but it might buy me five minutes of joy (or at least a cortado).
Gracias. Thank you. Jërëjëf. Merci. Obrigada. Danke. Arigatō. Medaase. Grazie. Hvala. Tack. Asante. Shukran. Teşekkürler. Dziękuję.
