karmic payback: really?

so at dinner the other night a couple of people were talking about somebody shitty doing shitty things and someone said, "oh, he'll get his karmic payback eventually." to which there was general assent except for me, who said, no, i don't really think that happens. i think we just like to tell ourselves that. my case in point: dick cheney will die rich and happy and never believe he did anything wrong. this caused a great deal of consternation around the table.

and, i mean, sometimes bad things do happen to bad people. if you do enough of certain kinds of bad things, you can easily end up dead, in jail, friendless, etc. so i'm not saying there's no such thing as consequences to negative actions. i just think the whole "karma" thing has become a default setting for certain kinds of secular types who have long since given up on notions of hell or direct divine retribution, but still want some kind of moral solace for whatever injustices or petty bullshit they see being perpetrated around them.

so, anwyay: karmic payback, y/n? i personally feel like the record is pretty clear that you can in fact do a lot of shitty things to a lot of people and not necessarily suffer for it in any way. which doesn't mean that you should, just that the "universe" doesn't really appear to give much of a shit.

it's comforting to think that "karmic payback" exists, but it doesn't.

one common refrain is, "oh, but they're tormented in the middle of the night." i don't think that's true either. or at least, no more likely than "good" people being tormented in the middle of the night. and even if it were true that your average wall street asshole banker has an occasional bout of 3 a.m. conscience--which, again, i doubt--that hardly seems like any sort of scale-balancing.

yeah, the comfort part is the important thing, i guess. i mean, some of the people i was having dinner with, it clearly really bothered them to think that Bad People might not actually suffer. and i understand that. but it seems better to me to just face up to it.

(xp) people who are arseholes are not tormented in the middle of the night about their arseholism - if they were tormented, they'd stop being arseholes.

The existence of sociopaths kind of disproves the idea. Not only are they not tormented at night, etc., they're incapable of being so, because they don't experience conscience/empathy the way that others do. It very literally doesn't exist. Not that all bad people are sociopaths, obviously, but even the baddest people don't generally believe they're doing anything wrong.

the universe couldn't give a fuck what we do. the universe is like "meh".

traditions which postulate karma explain away things in a manner that i think many people here would find overreaching. i.e., a very bad sort's karma will eventually ripen in a future lifetime, or good things happen to bad people b/c they are exhausting their store of good karma and after that is depleted they will be fucked.

basically, if you only believe in this one life then karma won't make any sense. if you believe in endless births and deaths, then it becomes easy to conceive of being a horrible tyrant in a past life, just as we sometimes can't remember behaving awfully a couple of years back or even what we ate for lunch yesterday

i dunno where i'm at with this stuff.

the universe couldn't give a fuck what we do. the universe is like "meh".

traditions that karma came out of are non-dualistic, so it's not a case of the universe punishing people or whatever. the idea is that there is no separation anywhere whatsoever.

pretty sure it's been verified by scientists that the sins of the father shall be visited upon their sons and upon the sons of their sons even unto the tenth generation, hasn't it? can't find the link but I think I read it on Slate or something

it's been way too long since i last stoned somebody

one variation offered the other night was, "well, their kids will be miserable." which is probably true in some cases, but i'm not sure that counts as payback for the actual perpetrator.

the universe couldn't give a fuck what we do. the universe is like "meh".

― max arrrrrgh, Sunday, 19 September 2010 15:12 (42 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

tb for the ages.

one day my sins committed on ILX will come back to me

one day my sins committed on ILX will come back to me

― dayo, Sunday, 19 September 2010 15:57 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i think the tshirt slogan thread gives you immunity. like jesus got from being kind 'n shit.

The universe is fully self-correcting, in that it has many physical laws that must be followed and attempts to break those laws always fail. Life also has a strong tendency to self-correction, in that ill-adapted behavior carries a certain penalty in terms of survival or reproductive success, or simply in wasted energy.

Ethics follows this general pattern, but much more loosely than physics or evolution.

The assertion that Dick Cheney will die rich and happy and never believing he did anything wrong is at least two-thirds correct. His happiness has been compromised in many profound ways, due to his own angry and combative nature, and his willingness to do harm to countless people. He no doubt views these personal failings as a necessary price he was willing to pay in return for wealth and power, but he has impoverished his spirit in the process and is less happy than you think, however strongly he believes his self-justifications.

This explanation of karmic payback is not going to satisfy anyone who thirsts for Dick Cheney to be miserable, or to die in anguish over his lost soul, but it is the true and exact meaning of karma. The more simplistic version is inevitably going to be the more popular version, since it is better adapted to a simple understanding of cosmic justice, but in that it bears a resemblance to the simple-minded belief in gods as people who sit in thrones.

Do you believe in cosmic retribution?

haha, holy shit

i think my favorite posters of all time are vich, momus. no joke.

That thread turned into a meltdown imo.
I forgot how sad I was when I started it. I was so sad.

i guess i believe in cosmic retribution to the extent that i would not test the waters as it were, b/c i have found myself in too many situations where it seemed like bummer experiences or conversely, great ones, were connected to things that i had put out in the past

that being said, i think it is telling that religious traditions talk about grace, or living without being motivated by thoughts of the fruit of our labors, or ideas along those lines. if i approach life as being some kind of business transaction with good/bad deeds as currency it seems kind of insulting to, well, just about everything.

so i think it's best not to dwell on results particularly, but to do as little harm as possible and to benefit others as much as possible

Your encounters and actions create a sort of "charge." This can be positive or negative put ultimately all of this energy, or karma, must be discharged for you to be free from the wheel of reincarnation and/or stuck in the physical, "hylic," realm.

Obviously having positive karmic energy is better because as this is discharged, the result is good stuff happening to you. The point is not to have good karma though, the point is to become free from your karmic entanglements.

agree, also thank you for teaching me the word "hylic"!

the karmic stuff happens all the time, though, and doesn't all have to be discharged, nor is that even possible. according to non-dualistic schools, upon realization outstanding karmic tendencies collapse along with all other illusory edifices.

you jackass.

:D

Pedantry is not the way to enlightenment! ;P

I'm doomed, then.

Nah. Just hobbled. ;-)