Karma

An interesting term, typically associated in intellectual circles with a kind of getting what you give. In other words if you do bad stuff, you will have bad stuff happen to you. Whether you are Buddhist or a Nihilist the "bringing on of inevitable events" (which is by and large the definition) seems to be a statement of direct contradiction. Here is why -

If an event, or events are in fact inevitable, then by definition they are going to occur regardless of what you, me or the asshole down the road does.That's what inevitable fucking means!

The more "American" interpretation (or at least out here in California) is your deeds (good or bad) will come back to you. This also is a crock of shit in my humble opinion.  Here is why -

The world is littered with a plethora of religions. Each one lays claim on the afterlife, or at least what one must do to either get to the afterlife, or next life, or celestial level, or planet or whatever.

This premise of religion makes somebody right, and in this universe effect always follows cause, hence someone must be wrong. Therefore there is an alternate place to whatever the optimum place is. Hell, Hades or a condo on the river Styx come to mind. To further my argument, consider a 20 year old Muslim raised at some sandbox KOA in the middle east somewhere. Let's call him Esama.

Now Esama has been indoctrinated to love Allah his entire life. He has read and studied the Koran at length as part of his education AND religion. However, his future prospects are for shit so dude decides to trek over to Osamaland in Afghanistan wherein he learns to load and shoot Russian automatic assault rifles, well. While continuing his terrorist education he is again indoctrinated with a radical version of Islam, you know, the version that says kill infidels? Same book, same deity, different instructions - which is a nice way of saying "interpretation".

After a few months of training in Osamaland, Esama is instructed by his cleric (Islamic dude that is what you get when you cross a narcissistic asshole with a religious leader) to go west and kill infidels. This is what Esama has to do, in accordance with his religion to be a good Muslim.

Herein lies the problem....... if dude kills an infidel, who is let's say for the sake of this discussion a Baptist, then he is a hero who will get 72 virgins in the afterlife when the Birmingham police blow his head off. But who is right?

If Esama were to get away with the slaughter of infidels, wouldn't the act of committing murder be generating bad karma? So by definition he would be proper fucked regardless - right?

I have also heard that karma is nothing more than a collective consciousness of common thought. If that is the case America is fucked on sheer numbers alone.

In order for karma to be valid, there has to be someone or something keeping score, and to a certain degree caring about the daily happenings of our lives. God keeps score, but using which unit of measure? Or what metric?

The real question, or the meaning of life should be to figure out who or what is right, and conversely wrong. Good luck with that Esama.