From a scientific standpoint, we have come to be what we are based on hundreds of millions of years of evolutionary trial and error. Although fascinating, the origins of man seems to be a let down for all of us humans doesn't it? It just isn't enough although it makes perfect sense. We have a need for everything to fit nicely together, like a mathematical equation. This idea that the forces that govern our lives are random and chaotic rather than perfectly designed is usually rejected by the human. Take religion for example. The Catholic church still believes that the Earth is only around 600,000 years old. We have proven this to be false with math, the undisputed debate champion. How? We have mathematically proven carbon dating to be accurate, and as a corollary we have also carbon dated dinosaur bones from 250 million years ago.
What I am trying to get at is that the human's need for his/her existence to be ordered and meaningful overwhelms his/her logical reasoning, and this has been a common theme in human history and still is causing countless deaths through religious wars.
How does this relate to Karma? The idea of Karma is similar to the idea of fate, and destiny. I chose the word Karma, however, because it is slightly different. It is more intertwined with the idea that what goes around comes around.
As we accept the idea that we are not governed by a higher order, the actions of humans become more and more selfish and reckless. The idea of heaven and hell is not only a deterrent for wrong doers to abstain, but more importantly it is a means to settle the conscious of the good people who get taken advantage of by the wrong doer. The idea that he will suffer in hell makes the good person feel better about the evil that the wrong doer has inflicted in his life. This is the overlooked, and very profound, utility of heaven and hell. As we start to believe less and less that heaven and hell exist as a culture, the good people get fed up with the idea that they are finishing last and eventually snap and become wrong doers.
This is what seems to be what would happen, but it has been a long time since Darwin's On the Origin of Species, and people still behave nicely to one another, don't they? The fall of religion has come, for the most part, and we are all still civil to each other aren't we? There is more to this random chaotic existence isn't there?
When studying fractals and chaotic mathematics, the scholar soon realizes that our existence is highly ordered. We maintain balance and order through chaos. In other words we exist because of the stable environment, which has been created by chaotic order. This term "chaotic order" is an oxymoron isn't it? This goes to show you that there is much more to this idea of "randomness" than the human originally thought when creating these words.
Although our evolution, is driven by chaotic randomness, and should seem unordered and cold, why did it somehow produce the human? If you have never thought outside yourself than this wont make much sense to you, but the majority of us have questioned our existence, whether by taking psicodellic drugs or sitting in biology class a little too long. Isn't our existence weird? everything about it is pretty weird isn't it? Especially sex.
Although the universe is ordered through randomness, it has produced the human. Now if we take this idea of ordered randomness and apply it to the human social network, we see that although human actions are in some sense unpredictable and random, and a human could do anything at any given time if he/she wanted, our human network is highly ordered and even predictable, similar to the universe around us. Humans do things for reasons don't we. Even the idea of doing something to be random and unpredictable was done for the purpose of being funny most of the time, because unpredictability can be very funny.
Do things that go around come back around? Absolutely, but it is not as complicated as people make it out to be. Karma is a force in the universe, however it exists not how we typically perceive it. There is not a godlike creature behind some piece of equipment that looks like the control panel for the Death Star's death beam. Karma exists in the human mind network. It exists in the minds of the humans that your actions effect. What goes around comes around because people constantly underestimate the perceptiveness of other people.
We think that nobody notices selfish acts that we do because nobody brings it to our attention. We are all the same species. We understand each other more than we give each other credit for.
Your common sense tells you that you shouldn't steal your friends car because he will know it was you. These selfish acts we know will come around. But when I am faced with the decision of whether or not to take one of my friend's cans of soda, it is different. I think to myself, he wont notice because he isn't keeping count of how many he has left in his 12 pack. I think to myself, there will be no consequences because no one will ever know, and if the universe does get me back for this, then it is unrelated to the human mind network (in other words, my friend getting me back because he knew it was me), and must be some godlike creature controlling everything. Later that day my friend comes home and notices that there aren't as many cans of soda in his 12 pack as he thought there was, even though he wasn't keeping count, and goes into my room and sees the empty soda can in my trash that I left there because I never thought he would suspect me enough to go into my room. He never confronts me about the soda, but he does tell people that I stole his soda and my image in the human mind network has declined slightly. I never know why it declined slightly either, but I sense that it has and I think to myself "there must be some kind of mysterious force governing the universe". This force does exist but it isn't so mysterious.
This is karma. This is how it works. Karma exists because people constantly underestimate the perceptiveness of other people. Next time someone is telling you a story of something that someone did, be it good or bad, remember that this is karma. It is simple and makes sense. We all know that people love to talk about other people and specifically about other people's actions. This is how karma exists in our universe. It is a force and it exists, but not through some mystical Godlike being, but rather through the consciousness of the human beings involved with your actions. If there is a godlike being, it is the human mind network itself.
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