On Karma; Are we the sum of what we do and is what we do the sum of what we are?

Do you believe that people will be judged by their actions and have their existence at some point altered accordingly? It’s a strange thing to wonder. While it’s easy for people to see others acting poorly and shrug their shoulders and say “they’ll get theirs” do we really believe that? Surely even the most blessed among us would find it hard to truly state that there is some sort of cosmic balance; a ledger between good and bad, between right and wrong that at some point, or points, has to be accounted for. It becomes even more problematic when you are talking in the past tense: when they’ll get theirs becomes ‘they got theirs’.

CS Lewis has wonderfully stated that :

“[E]very time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different than it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state of the other.” 

But then Lewis was a very strong Christian, and the one advantage that Christian metaphysics has over karma-based metaphysics is that the judgment, while it is to happen, it hasn’t happened yet. Karma is different. The theory of karma is about it happening, will happen but also has already happened. This is a separation from the idea that we are the sum of our actions and our actions are the sum of us, although there is no logical or metaphysical separation between the two points.

The reason that this has been on my mind recently is I really don’t feel comfortable with the concept. There have been two people that I vaguely knew a long time ago that have briefly reappeared in my life in bizarre circumstances that have forced me to ponder the existential of who we are and how. Who I am and why.

Firstly, there is this person that I used to know and never had much time for; I always thought she was a total brat and skeeze basically. I found out recently that life has basically provided for her equal to what it should, or to put it more simply, she got hers. One of the things that has happened to her is she has a disabled child and my first thoughts were of the horrible view that you reap what you sow, or, instant karma’s going to get you, but do we all shine on?

Imagine my disgust in my otherwise sunny disposition that I thought, even for the briefest moment, that her having a handicapped child was in some way punishment for actions. What does that say about the child? 

More importantly, what does it say about me? But isn’t that what we think of when we say “they’ll get theirs”? Isn’t that exactly what we wish for them; a life of servitude and restricted abilities brought on seemingly by fate itself; by an object that, no matter how many times she disgraces herself and those around her, she will never be able to break those bonds. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying the children with special needs are bad, but they are for her. The one thing that she has always run away from is accountability, and they’ll bring it in spades.

The second person that has me pondering this thought is a guy I barely knew, but used to work with many years ago. He is a druggy sinchelectual who you hope is a nice guy, because he doesn’t have much else going for him. You know the type don’t you? Passed over by friends and family, has a girlfriend and the mother of his child who treats him like crap and screws anyone and everyone she wants while he’s at home with the bub, amazingly unaware. I always quite arrogantly regarded him as someone that the modern tertiary education system has failed by not kicking out. He would make a decent bus driver or council worker, but he simply isn’t anywhere near smart enough to be in the professional arena. But the strangest thing happened: after not knowing him for about five years, he’s turned a little nasty. I guess that it was bound to happen.

I’m a big believer in the idea that a relationship of any kind, but in particular a work or business one can reach a point where there is no future between the parties. They hate each other, they mock each other and there is no use in reconciliation or compromise and there is only one thing left to do: Win...Win dirty if you can, but win...rub your opponent’s nose through so much horsepoop that you will never look back in anger or pity or anything. And they will learn from the experience too. They will learn that they are vulnerable, which is the starting point of all morality and character. I don’t believe that anyone will get to the end of their life and say “mmm the one thing I regret is going too far to ridicule that chump from XYZ”. Maybe we may. 

 If I will, it may well be about what I did to this guy’s bosses, my former supervisors. I may tell you about that at some stage in the future, but for now it’s a digression. Let’s just say they treated me poorly, they treated me like a dog, which gave me the perfect excuse to act like a jackal.

I guess it’s a long story, but the short of it is that I was happy to walk away from a life I didn’t want and make a mockery of all who made me not want that life. Then years and years later, this guy contacts me and starts trolling comments about me, most of which I couldn’t really understand. I think he was probably stoned when he was writing them. His aggression and attempt to rehash an old dispute was an attempt to set things straight in his eyes, but in reality, it did the opposite: it just proved that I was right to leave and that after all these years, they are still bamboozled by it all, putting me up on a pedestal to be contrasted or compared with, which is a worry.

Here’s the point though: he still works at the same place, filled with most of the same people, who have not progressed him at all even though they all seem to have progressed in their way. He is being used by them as a junior and lesser worker than he should. However, the lot in life that he has obtained there, for my mind at least, is greatly beyond his abilities. So there is this apparent contradiction. They are using him, but at the same time, he is getting more out of his life than he ever would be able to if they were not using him.

He is divorced from his actions by luck and ignorance, and they are divorced from their actions by some claim that they may be actually helping him up. So then is he the sum of his actions? Are the people using him accountable for doing a good thing or a bad thing? It becomes troublesome and one is tempted to just regard this as not a moral issue at all, it is amoral, it just is, it is not right or wrong.

There’s no wrong or right; no more or less right or wrong. So what is left? I wonder if so much of our understanding of the metaphysics of morality comes from a belie that there is right and there is wrong. But is this the case? How many of our actions do not have a right answer or a wrong answer?

Have you ever been on a crowded bus when a pregnant lady gets on? You get up and offer your seat don’t you dear reader (I know you do). What about a handicapped or very old person gets on? Maybe you would ask , maybe you would just stand up and offer it to them. But what about an older person who is not overtly incapable in any physical way? Offering them a seat can, and has in the past with me, been a type of insult. “you’re old and need special attention cause you are not fully capable, sit down before you die” Have you ever seen a gaggle of older ladies on a bus concern themselves as a young and fit mother with a pram enters. Should they give up the elderly, handicapped and pram seats? Does a pram beat age? Does rock beat paper?

I was driving along a freeway some time back when a car beside me and to my right put his indicator on. I slowed down a little to let him into the lane ahead of me. I wasn’t in a rush and certainly don’t drive in a proud or silly way. At least I don’t think I do. He gives me a slight wave, which I can’t help but judge as being too casual. I was a great deal nicer than this half-hearted wave from him would have you believe. I pondered what an appropriate wave would have been and can’t come up with an answer. An over-the-top wave would have been treated as mocking or sceptically, an underwhelmed wave would have been considered (as it was) as showing a clear lack of understanding of how nice I am. I don’t really know if there is an appropriate wave.

Then about two minutes later, the same thing happens to the car that I let in: a car to his right and slightly ahead puts her indicator on. What does he do? He speeds up.

I couldn’t believe it. The inhumanity of it, is he doing the wrong thing? Technically he is not breaking the law, but he is being totally rude. It occurs to be that I am judging him by a standard that I live up to (niceness), which he has recently and directly profited from, but he never consented to this standard, so who am I to judge him according to my own standards?

The one thing that unites us all as humans is that we all believe we are above average drivers.

This post’s lame Joke

A man was driving to work when his wife called.

“Be careful today sweetie, I just heard there was an idiot driving the wrong way up the freeway.” his wife says.

“One idiot,” replies the man, “there are hundreds of them.”

This post’s inappropriate over share: 

One of the main things they never tell you in parenting brochures, fathering brochures in particular is how to deal with kids needing something in that time just before you normally get up, when you’re already up. I find myself unable to hide or do anything at that time due to the nature of the male body at that time of the morning. This is partly due to a change in things lately as I’ve discovered that apparently having sex with a full bladder is really bad for men which was usually the solution to this problem. I guess I may have to start getting up a little earlier, or later, whichever way you look at it.