I confess I don’t see how original sin being “fixable” in this life makes things better - it makes demands on “fixing” that simply living one’s life don’t. And the victim-blaming is still quite in effect. A karmic retribution of the sort you’re talking about is through no choice of the victim. But a believer in original sin could well point to a person - with, as you say, free will - choosing not to “pay back” their debt as compounding it.
And I’m highly uncomfortable with the idea that it is a good thing that I am able to make recompense in this life for something someone else did once. It’s sort of like saying I got a parking ticket erroneously credited to me - but don’t worry, I can pay by credit card over the phone! Being more easily able to pay for someone else’s crime is not laudable.
The Hindu caste system is not a “mistaken interpretation,” it’s an inherent part of the religion. The reluctance to try to end poverty instead of viewing it as accuring points through noble suffering is DIRECTLY related to the values of the society in which the poverty exists.
I’m not a big fan of the whole Original Sin concept, but compared to most reincarnation myths, it at least has a solid populist appeal to it: we’re all sinners equally, regardless of social station, from the king to a beggar. I find that more appealing, and less open to abuse, than the idea that your current social station is a direct reflection of how much you sinned in a previous life.
I mean, it’s still a shitty idea, for exactly the reasons you described, but it’s a little less shitty than reincarnation.
There’s a lot of scholarly debate on this point actually. Recent studies suggest it’s likely that the caste system of India as we know it is an artefact of British colonial rule rather than a truly Hindu/Indian phenomenon ; or rather that the British rigidified and systematized a “system” that used to be mostly informal and loose. The point, of course, would have been to divide and conquer.
It’s a fair point. On the other hand, With reincarnation, you’re not “done” until you’re dead. While there are certainly plenty of sects that would say original sin isn’t a thing that can be done away with in life, there’s enough out there who have some equivalent of considering some people “saved” that means there are outs for them to escape that social equivalency.
Besides the point, but are there Beatles songs that refer to Asia? I’m really not familiar with all their work. The only one I could think of was Back in the USSR, but that doesn’t really mention anything east of Moscow.