Karma: the pure horseshit concept

In My Humble Opinion
1

Bad enough no one uses it in a positive context anymore. (Seriously - remember the last time someone referred to “good karma”?)
I have only one example to back up my thesis statement, but it is so egregiously blankety-blank-blank-blanking awful that it suffices perfectly for my view.

A long-time friend of my mom’s - Dorothy Livingston - was almost something of a legend among everybody who knew her. She started off by putting in about ten years co-working with mom in social work; branched into psychiatric care as director of one of our municipal mental health agencies; for years a chaplain at a Unitarian church where she married shitloads of couples including many LGBT; innovated many new crisis counseling programs (with a strong emphasis on rehabilitation/helping people make personal changes and learn positive life skills); and was an absolutely indefatigable crusader for the disenfranchised by providing ad-hoc legal support and guidance in so many different arenas, that, well, I’ll have to fucking footnote* it.

Every time mom talked about this mother of six (and always with a tone of wonder) it was - “she’s doing this now”, “she’s doing that now”, and I’d be like - “oh there goes Mother Teresa again”. Folks - this woman so seriously fucking gave and gave and gave - a paragon of selflessness of the most supreme order. Her warmth and kindness just put a bow on it all. When they built her, they definitely threw the mould away.

And so…for all this giving, for all that she gave back to the community for over 70 years, for everything that she had to (at times) sacrifice…for all of this…“karma” decided to “reward” her with a stroke so severe, so debilitating, that for that last eight fucking years of her life, she was confined to a bed, c-o-m-p-l-e-t-e-l-y paralyzed, so that the only thing she could move were her eyelids.

When mom visited her and read the newspaper to her and stuff, Dotty was able to mumble the odd emotion/reaction through her closed mouth, and eventually became adept at expressing things using just her eyes, but it was still ridiculously tough slogging. Sometimes a tear or two would roll down, out of nothing. Just the thought of being imprisoned in this frozen cocoon of a shell for your final eight years, unable to move anything…manoman. Why the fuck couldn’t this have been dealt to, say, John Wayne Gacy, or Stalin, huh, karma, you useless fucking piece of shit?

Not sure how many thoughts/opinions can come out of this (I definitely don’t expect this to be a multi-pager) - just basically putting it out there.

*In 1978 the Lieutenant Governor appointed Dorothy to the Senate of the University of Victoria and in 1998 she was made an Honorary Citizen of Victoria. Social programs of which Dorothy was a founding member include the Clauhowsick Club 1965, Victoria Native Friendship Center 1970, Victoria Chapter of the Council of Canadians, Victoria Status of Women, Victoria Schizophrenic Society, Together Against Poverty Society (TAPS) 1989-1999, Universal Hot Lunch Program for school children, Girls Alternative Program (GAP). Memberships include Victoria Social Planning and Housing Advisory Committee, federal and provincial NDP, Human Rights Coalition, End Legislative Poverty", Fairfield Community Association, Capital Families", Victoria Youth Advocacy project, Low cost housing initiatives, BC Mortgage and Housing Authority and Victoria Voice of Women.

2

Ignoring for a moment the anecdotal fallacy, a single incident proving wrong a widely accepted doctrine.

Given my choice, I’d put my eggs in the Karma basket, before I’d pray to the almighty Christian God-figure and assume all would thereafter be rosy. Go around to the nursing homes and check out the well-being of those who depended upon prayer, buttressed by others who pray daily for them. Most of them have loved ones who pray that they will mercifully die, and even those calls go unanswered.

3

One of the nicest, most decent person I know, fantastic patient parent and hard-working provider for the family was afflicted with ALS.

And here I am, still kickin’.

World ain’t fair, Man.

4

I fully agree. Believing in/espousing “karma” is ignorant magical thinking, no better than belief in a sky god. “Everything happens for a reason” and “What goes around, comes around” may as well be idol worship.

Please tell us more about Dorothy. What a glorious description of her you’ve written.

5

Yeah I get it it’s not setting out to be an all-encompassing, empirical shake-down with multiple cites.

Thanks - unfortunately that’s about all I can flesh out on this amazing woman.
I guess what really rankles my drankle to the point of posting this, in the first place, is the extremity in divergence between Dotty’s actions throughout her life, and, a fate that is about hellish, as prolonged, as the one she ended up with.
Oh - I forgot - as well as her eyelids, she could also move her eyes around.
Other than that - board stiff, like a cadaver, for her final eight years.
I never visited her, myself, by that point, and I didn’t get finer details viz a viz her basic care, but I would imagine all the ingesting/voiding stuff would’ve been less than ideal.

6

If you combine the concept of karma with the concept of reincarnation then it makes more sense.

Karma from this life may only come back in a future life, and karma coming back now may be from a past life. The interval of karma returning varies, and you may get a partial return of the same karma at different times, like echoes in a canyon.

7

… making it even less verifiable. Since there would be no way to track a personality across reincarnations, including by the object themself, all that could be said would be generalities. There’s good actions and bad actions, good consequences and bad consequences, and some claim there’s a link between them. All we could hope to measure is the global average over multiple generations (which won’t happen of course).

In other words: “Shit happens”, which goes with the thread title.

8

No, that just means that they were a horrible person in their previous life. In their next life, they’ll be good to go!

9

Widely accepted?

Karma is completely wishful thinking bullshit. The idea that there are multiple lives is complete bullshit. The idea that karma caries over from one life to another is double bullshit with a pile of rationalized sadistic feelings on top of it.

Curious that it’s always “that person must have been shitty in another life, so they deserve childhood leukemia, fuck them” and never “I must have been shitty in another life, I’m glad I have flesh eating bacteria. Cosmic debt must be paid.”

10

There’s an alternate version of Karma that seems to fit reality better. Basically, there needs to be a perfect balance between good stuff and bad stuff, and causing too much of one will cause the opposite to befall you. That is to say, doing good things will cause bad things to happen to you, while doing bad things will cause good things to happen to you. And thus light/dark energy is conserved.

Not sure how much of that I believe, but like I said, it does seem to fit reality better.

11

Another interpretation: Karma was saying to this woman: “Hey, you’ve been going and going, doing and doing, for so long; now it’s time to stop all of that and just be.”

Not saying I actually believe that, though.

12

I don’t think it’s widely accepted. Or even widely believed. Most people, I think, don’t believe it so much as wish it was true. All I hear them talk of karma is as what they hope will happen.

13

Karma, like most other religions, is simply wishful thinking on the part of the downtrodden that somehow, somewhere, the folks trodding upon them will get their comeuppance.

In fact the human universe seems to work the other way. By and large the rich and powerful get moreso and the poor and powerless also get moreso. On average.

Human minds are carefully designed to ignore the normal and fasten upon the abnormal. The fact various societies over history have created karma or similar ideas is pretty well proof that its premise / promise of cosmic fairness is actually an exception that proves the opposite rule.

Bottom line: life ain’t fair and we have proof.

14

Not wishing to start an argument, but all my therapists over the years have tried to pound into my head that a) life is exactly fair, or b) “fair” (as a concept) needs to be discarded in order to achieve happiness.

Wish they’d make up their minds.

15

It’s not so much that it’s a true, proven fact but simply that Karma helps some get through this life. It’s a paradigm to keep things in perspective and help make the bad times not so bad. If it works for you, then embrace it. If you think it’s horseshit, it won’t work for you.

But as mentioned by GreenWyvern, the theory only works when you include multiple lifetimes of filling and emptying one’s karma bucket.

16

I’m reminded of that character in Bablyon five…the assistant to the woman ambassador Delean? He took great comfort in the fact the universe was NOT fair but random…otherwise that would mean we somehow deserved all the misery we got…one of the great scenes of Sci Fi IMO

17

About reincarnation - there is nothing more bothersome, even when someone says it to you half in jest, when something shitty happens to you and they moronically quip “hm, you must have done wrong in a previous life”. What if something good happens to me…I certainly never hear anything about my having done something good in a previous life. I understand, yeah, being good isn’t sexy enough, but when something shitty happens to me, the first thought sure isn’t “oh…damn - I shouldn’t have driven back and forth over that family of four in my Model T.”

18

Sounds like what happened to the late, beloved Doper Blinkie.

Do not click on that link unless you have some time and are well-hydrated.

19

Well, then FUCK THEM!

:smiley:

20

The only karmic balance, as it were, is the jerks die in the end as well. No one here gets out alive. But since there is no aftrerlife, they’ll never know.

It fits Star Wars even better. :slight_smile: