KARMA

People sometimes get angry when someone does something to them that they don't like, and they say "Karma will get you" or "What comes around, goes around" or, the old version, "God will get you".

All of the variations are an attempt to invoke an application of universal, objective justice.   Additionally, this application of justice is supposed to be automatic.  

An examination of the issues involved, however, discloses many "discrepancies".  For one thing, it assumes a higher power, and it assumes that that power cares one way or the other about what living creatures do.   For those who don't believe in God or  "higher powers", the whole concept of karma is silly, just wishful thinking by aggrieved persons.  For those who do believe, it assumes that this power always magically sides with the person trying to invoke the application of "justice".  It is the embodiment of "God is on our side".   Amusingly, the people who desperately hope karma is real are the same people who made "God is on our side" a derogatory expression, trying to show that they were enlightened by believing in karma, while those who believe in formal, established Western religions were ignorant and superstitious.

In reality, it has been observed that, if God exists at all, God has no preference as to the outcome of any event.   It has also been observed that the only things that are objective are verifiable facts, such as "2+2=4" or the distance from earth to Alpha Centauri.  People's actions can never be objective under any circumstance.  Even such cultural agreements as "killing people is bad" are not objective; that's why the law allows capital punishment.  And even "universal" cultural beliefs are not objective - they tend to change over time.

Just as nothing is objective when it comes to the actions of living things, there is no good or bad.   And it should be pointed out that, if karma were to exist, it must include all living things, not just humans.

Killing a fellow person on a lifeboat so that others can eat shows the dilemma.  Killing the last polar bear so that an Eskimo doesn't starve to death is another quandary.  Less emotionally charged are the trillions of times per day that one living creature kills another, so that one creature can eat.  There are many trillions more episodes every day where some living creature does something to another living creature, but which doesn't result in a death.  So when you here some say "Karma will get you" or "What comes around, goes around", all you're hearing is the raving of someone who was in the way of someone else who was acting in their own best interest.  Attempts to invoke karma are really just sad, petty attempts by powerless little  people to have God get their revenge for them.  Worse, those people hoping for revenge are too lazy or incompetent to go out and do it on their own.  In fact, if karma was real, karma would be specifically precluded from being applied to these subjective disputes, because karma is supposed to be, and would have to be, objective.

Having said all this, though, there does seem to be a sort of karma, but it's applied much differently than the way in which self-centered revenge strivers envision.  Karma is an individual thing, totally self-contained.  It is applied to an individual depending on whether or not that person does what's right or wrong FOR THEM, and is totally unrelated to any consequences suffered or enjoyed by any other living creature as a result of your actions.  If you act properly in your own self interest, karma will actively reward you.   If you fail to act in your own self interest, karma will actively punish you.   Karma works in your favor when you're true to yourself, according to your own standards.  It works against you when you're not true to yourself, i.e. when you don't protect your own interests.  It has nothing to do with other's subjective standards or outlooks.   If it's right FOR YOU, do it, and karma will reward you.

Incidentally, this is not a concept or message that modern, crowded, inter-dependent societies want to spread.

As an example, you might feel that robbing a bank is "right" for you, that if there is money just sitting there and you want it, that you should have it.  That could mean that you should immediately go out and rob the bank.   However, part of the bank robbery package is the fact that you might get caught.  If robbing the benk is the wrong thing for you to do, then whatever the statistical chance of your getting caught is, the actual chance would be much greater.  If the robbery was the right thing to do, you would almost certainly get away with it, and you might also get some extra, unanticipated reward.

When I was younger, I was a non-believer in just about everything.  The only way that that has changed is that I have seen some things in action.   Karma, as I have described it, is one of those things.

I became aware of it, and of the positive side of it, around the time I turned 30.  I started a self improvement campaign.  Besides the obvious and intended benefits of doing things correctly and generally improving my circumstances,  I had many occurrences where I got an extra, unintended, out of the blue reward as a direct result of my starting to do something right.  After it happened a number of times (and it did), I realized that it was karma, and how karma works.  On the negative side, i.e. doing something wrong, or half assed, or failing to do something to protect my own interests, my personal observation is that I have been punished far beyond the statistical expectancy.  As an example, if I failed to protect my interests and there was a 10% chance that something could go horribly wrong, I found that, in those situations, it went wrong much more than 10% of the time.

Additionally, I found that when I tried to decide if an action was correct to do or not, I got some sort of a "feeling", an intuition, and ESP that told me ahead of time whether it was right or not.  This feeling is not necessarily connected to karma, but in my life I have discovered a sort of ESP that not only tells me whether I should take a contemplated action or not, it also warns me, often out of the blue, when there is some danger ahead.  That danger can be unanticipated, unexpected and/or disguised.  It could be a danger in a seemingly safe or normal activity or action.  As silly as it may sound, in my experience, when I ignore this danger signal, bad things seem to happen that would not have happened had I heeded the signal and changed my action, and good things happen when the signal tells me to do something I wouldn't have otherwise done.

Alex Wolf