Not Quite Instant Karma
Being into yoga makes me something of a Hindu, I guess, and I admit there’s plenty of it I’m down with: non-violence, vegetarianism, many-limbed dancing deities. But there’s also plenty in the program I don’t buy: reincarnation, a panoply of gods and goddesses doing battle endlessly, that weird fetishism about semen.
And karma, too.
I just can’t get right with the idea that people are punished or rewarded in this life (of by this life) for what they did or didn’t do in previous ones. A basic tenet in ethics is that “ought implies can;” that is, you can’t be held morally responsible for something you’re unable to do. Nobody can wag their finger at me, for instance, simply because I can’t fly. So it seems unfair that, in this life, I ought to have done something differently in another one because, as far as I can tell, that’s way out of my control. (Unless, of course, reincarnation, but see above.)
On the other hand, I do believe that what goes around comes around and I’ve seen that many times in this very existence. Like when as a teenager working in the primate lab at the University of Pittsburgh, I made off with some of the methamphetamine the doctors were using in their experiments on monkeys, sold it, only to have our house broken into and my stereo stolen a week later.
Or the time I laughed at some guy being pulled over for drunk driving and then, drunkenly, rode into a parked car.
Or this one: a couple years ago, I forgot to take back a key I’d checked out from UW classroom services. They hounded me for a while with emails but I never got around to returning it, or paying the then, $5.00 lost key fee.
Two weeks ago, I lost one of their keys and to get a new one, it cost me $31.44.
Not exactly instant karma, but payback to be sure.
And karma, too.
I just can’t get right with the idea that people are punished or rewarded in this life (of by this life) for what they did or didn’t do in previous ones. A basic tenet in ethics is that “ought implies can;” that is, you can’t be held morally responsible for something you’re unable to do. Nobody can wag their finger at me, for instance, simply because I can’t fly. So it seems unfair that, in this life, I ought to have done something differently in another one because, as far as I can tell, that’s way out of my control. (Unless, of course, reincarnation, but see above.)
On the other hand, I do believe that what goes around comes around and I’ve seen that many times in this very existence. Like when as a teenager working in the primate lab at the University of Pittsburgh, I made off with some of the methamphetamine the doctors were using in their experiments on monkeys, sold it, only to have our house broken into and my stereo stolen a week later.
Or the time I laughed at some guy being pulled over for drunk driving and then, drunkenly, rode into a parked car.
Or this one: a couple years ago, I forgot to take back a key I’d checked out from UW classroom services. They hounded me for a while with emails but I never got around to returning it, or paying the then, $5.00 lost key fee.
Two weeks ago, I lost one of their keys and to get a new one, it cost me $31.44.
Not exactly instant karma, but payback to be sure.
posted by Professor Dave at 6:42 PM
1 Comments:
Karma makes more sense if you think of it not in terms of punishment or reward, but more along the lines of Newtonian physics.
But it makes even more sense as a set of speed bumps and guard rails that, while they may do some damage if we slam into them, prevent us from doing far greater damage, as in crashing into an oncoming car or careening off a cliff.
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