Karma, Have you really thought about it? Options

I personally don't believe in karma for varying reasons which will be pointed out in the duration of your stay. I hope to get a clearer picture of the generalized belief being Karma, hopefully you can enlighten me.

Karma is a strange thing, have you thought about it? Let us first address this: we get "bad karma" or 'punished' by thoughts or actions. Now I feel this is a reasonable response to a bad action, but I am one of those who have a vested interest in ethics: so let's pick this apart. Bad actions. Do we get punished for harming animals? Generalized occult studies, basic animism, and modern science, all agree we are no different than another species of animal on this planet; but we're harvesting them for food, we cause global suffering for the worldwide animal population and most of us don't even realize half the extent of it. Now if we do get punished for harming animals, if it is an ethical 'wrong' then how far does it go? Do we get bad karma for killing a cockroach? Technically speaking this cockroach has basically the same right to life as you do, so you're intrinsically killing a being equal to that of yourself. So how far do we go? Do we take it to the microbial level? Do we get bad karma for fighting off a disease, "Sir, our antibodies killed thousands today. I'd suggest you donate to that starving-children in africa foundation" Or does our bodily karma have a sort of just war theory behind it? Now if karma exists on a universal scale: I very much doubt bad karma comes out of fighting and/or killing: not all animals always kill for food, nor do the harvest/use all of their kill. So either karma exists for all animals or it exists for humans only. This is a weird concept, why would it exist for humans only?

Maybe humans have a sort of psychic law enforcement behind all actions and things. Wow that's a bit eerie to think about. If this is true then karma would largely function on the cultural influence around it, it might not be karmatically wrong to eat beef in texas but if you even think about it in India you're fucked royal. Maybe it's even intrinsically wrong to not be racist in the south; bad things will happen to you if you do not submit to the surrounding cultural beliefs/taboos. This makes karma sound a bit like a perpetuation of an anthropological word "ethnocentrism."

The only time I've heard the word "karma" used is when someone doesn't get what they want from someone else, and it's a term used in a cursing fashion. "that karma will get to em, you wait and see. What goes around comes around." So this is closer to calling the furies on someone than anything else.

How about cultural gaps, is it wrong for a man to take up several wives? Is it intrinsically wrong to practice polyamory? How about consent age, it's 16 in the Netherlands.

Do we get punished for spending money on a shirt from a big brand-name clothing superstore who obviously gets their products from Indonesian sweatshops?

I could go on with examples but I think you get my point, karma is closer to a curse than anything else. Something like evoking the furies, or using the evil eye only in the guise of justice, quite possibly closer to evoking the rune Tyr.

I have thought about Karma. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/blablabla.gif)

Intent is a big part of it.
Did you intend to harm someone? OR did you accidentally harm them?
The difference is inside us, the way we vibrate with each action or thought.
Negative vibrations attract negative vibes back to you.
Positive vibes attract positive vibes.
Law of attraction is the way of the universe and KArma is a way of describing this.
Buddhists describe it as wheels that turn, which takes into account time.

Try it out, for an entire day or week think positive thoughts, do positive things and count how many positive things happen and how many negative things happen to you. Then try being negative........not too negative though, don't want to push the world over the edge. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/fie.gif)

I have thought about Karma. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/blablabla.gif)

Intent is a big part of it.
Did you intend to harm someone? OR did you accidentally harm them?
The difference is inside us, the way we vibrate with each action or thought.
Negative vibrations attract negative vibes back to you.
Positive vibes attract positive vibes.
Law of attraction is the way of the universe and KArma is a way of describing this.
Buddhists describe it as wheels that turn, which takes into account time.

Try it out, for an entire day or week think positive thoughts, do positive things and count how many positive things happen and how many negative things happen to you. Then try being negative........not too negative though, don't want to push the world over the edge. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/fie.gif)

I've gotten positive results from anger-workings and negative results from happy workings, and vice versa. Positivity and negativity are simply frames of mind, what is 'negative' about anger or happiness? I could see potentially negativity in either one, and of course vise-versa. These simplistic dualities impede progress: good, holy, positive, bad, evil, negative, etc. The cat knows when it's harming it's prey, perhaps it simply enjoys the act of killing; who knows.

Did you even read my post or did you write after reading the headline?

This post has been edited by Dancing Coyote: Feb 19 2010, 11:27 PM