It's common for the "Barnes and Noble Intelligensia" to use the term "karma" to describe justice..and since a popular television show called "My Name Is Earl" has contributed to the western misunderstanding of the concept of karma, the fallacy has become wide spread.
In the post-modern era, Karma has attracted the mish-mash religious types..you know, those types who are just non-conformist enough to reject the big 3 religions but not so non-conformist that are capable of rejecting religion altogether..they like to call themselves "spiritual" but they are really just mistaking what is exotic with what is compelling. They like eastern religion, but usually don't spend enough time investigating it before running out to Barnes and Noble to snatch up the lastest book on Taoist Tea Ceremonies.
As these fuckers understand it, Karma is a kind of providential justice. It works like this...you do something bad, then bad things will happen to you. You do something good, then good things will happen to you. There is a providence running the universe that recognizes and rewards/punishes various actions based on their moral values..and ironically those moral factors tend to be judeo christian in nature as a result of the western worlds religious history. I personally feel that this comes out our media structure too..after all, after decades of sitcoms and movies in which the good guy MUST win and the bad guy MUST be punished or the audience freaks out, people start to belive this karma shit IS true.
Unfortuneatly, this is not "Karma" at all.
Karma is a Hindu concept tied in with their belief in re-incarnation. Karma is not the rewarding of good acts with goodness or bad acts with badness...rather, it is a currency that one accumulates in the current life and all lives after it..it is reviewed AFTER death in determining what the next life will be..up a level in caste or down a level in caste... Funnily enough, the best Karma is supposed to come from being devoutly religious and praying to the right gods, not necessarily helping little old ladies across the street..most of it is about adherence to Hindu practice.
So helping a little old lady across the street and finding 20 bucks later is not "Karma"..they are unrelated acts. As we all know, the "good" get bad things happen to them and the "bad" have good things happen to them quite frequently.
We have to stop butchering far off religious concepts and stop applying our entertainment narratives of justice onto the real world.
In the post-modern era, Karma has attracted the mish-mash religious types..you know, those types who are just non-conformist enough to reject the big 3 religions but not so non-conformist that are capable of rejecting religion altogether..they like to call themselves "spiritual" but they are really just mistaking what is exotic with what is compelling. They like eastern religion, but usually don't spend enough time investigating it before running out to Barnes and Noble to snatch up the lastest book on Taoist Tea Ceremonies.
As these fuckers understand it, Karma is a kind of providential justice. It works like this...you do something bad, then bad things will happen to you. You do something good, then good things will happen to you. There is a providence running the universe that recognizes and rewards/punishes various actions based on their moral values..and ironically those moral factors tend to be judeo christian in nature as a result of the western worlds religious history. I personally feel that this comes out our media structure too..after all, after decades of sitcoms and movies in which the good guy MUST win and the bad guy MUST be punished or the audience freaks out, people start to belive this karma shit IS true.
Unfortuneatly, this is not "Karma" at all.
Karma is a Hindu concept tied in with their belief in re-incarnation. Karma is not the rewarding of good acts with goodness or bad acts with badness...rather, it is a currency that one accumulates in the current life and all lives after it..it is reviewed AFTER death in determining what the next life will be..up a level in caste or down a level in caste... Funnily enough, the best Karma is supposed to come from being devoutly religious and praying to the right gods, not necessarily helping little old ladies across the street..most of it is about adherence to Hindu practice.
So helping a little old lady across the street and finding 20 bucks later is not "Karma"..they are unrelated acts. As we all know, the "good" get bad things happen to them and the "bad" have good things happen to them quite frequently.
We have to stop butchering far off religious concepts and stop applying our entertainment narratives of justice onto the real world.
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