Why karma being bullshit shouldn’t stop you being a good person

Karma eh?

If the nicest person you’ve ever met whose had an impossibly hard life won the lottery you’d probably say that there was no-one more deserving of it

And if someone who liked putting kittens on train tracks to watch them die got hit by a train you probably wouldn’t say they deserved what they got. But you might well think it (I’m not judging you.)

I think that as humans it can be quite nice for us to see “bad things” happening to “bad people” and “good things” happening to “good people.” 

Please excuse the overuse of “ in that sentence.

The problem is that it simply doesn’t happen that way at all.

One of the nicest most genuine people I’ve ever met, who I knew basically my whole life was struck down with oesophageal cancer. Died 30+ years too soon.

Sadly I’m sure you can easily think of times where life has been wholly cruel to someone genuinely wonderful.

Bad things happen, good things happen, this is irrespective of the saintliness of a person. Put simply there is no such thing as people deserving life’s events.

But this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be a good person because good stuff can happen to good people.
The thing is though, it’s got nothing to do with Karma whatsoever.

The one question on karma that you need to ask yourself

If you read that first section and thought:

“Jesus Christ this guy sounds bitter and twisted” you’d be forgiven.
It kinda sounds like I am but also you’d also be wrong.

It would be awesome if the universe equated the good you’re outputting in life with good stuff happening to you. The same would apply to bad as well, obviously.

The idea is childish at best though and doesn’t represent real life at all.

The question that I feel like you need to ask yourself about Karma is this:

“What makes you possibly think that the universe is keeping count?”

Do you have any proof whatsoever that it does? Or do you just like the idea that the universe keeping count means that if you keep doing good things then things will come good for you.

I’m sorry, but we have absolutely no evidence to suggest that the universe is counting anything at all. Bad stuff happens to good people every bloody sadly.

Things that if there were someone keeping score these people would in no way deserve.

What does deserve even mean?

Deserve is a weird thing.

“They didn’t deserve that.”
“Oh, don’t worry, they’ll get what they deserve.”
“You’re such a great person, you deserve to be with someone amazing.”

It’s also pretty common for people to say that “people get what they deserve”. This is normally in reference to bad things happening to people who have done something “bad”.

But what does deserve even mean?

When anyone speaks about what someone deserves what they’re really doing is projecting their desires onto the world.

“I like this person, they’re nice, they should have something good to happen to them” or vice-versa.
It’s just as possible that someone really dislikes this person and thinks they deserve bad things to happen.

The very idea of someone deserving something is entirely subjective and that’s where the whole thing falls apart.

If you and someone else disagree entirely on whether a person deserves good or bad things in their life who is right?

You can’t both be right, you can however both be wrong.

The simplest explanation for this is that “things” will happen to said person. But whether they’ve been “good” or “bad” has had no bearing on it whatsoever.

So the idea of people deserving stuff is just you projecting your thoughts.

Does that mean we should just stop being good people?

Karma isn’t a bitch because “karma” isn’t real

Karma is an Eastern philosophical idea that Westerners seem to have completely butchered and misunderstood.

Westerners interpret it as “what goes around comes around” but it isn’t that at all.

The idea in Buddhism is that karma is in fact an “energy”. 
(The last thing I want to do is to go off on some “fluffy” tangent about energy right now.)

More-or-less the idea of Karma is that it is an action that you take. It is not a switch you turn on and off and certainly not a universe level balancing act.

If you spend a day litter-picking you’re not going to increase your odds of winning the lottery.

If you spend the morning punching kittens then you’re not increasing your chances of getting hit by a bus.

The actual belief is that karma shapes you by the actions you’re taking. The more good deeds you complete the more of a “good” person you become.
The counter of this is also true if you were a naughty human.

What comes next is in two parts, which are both my opinion rather than fact.

Part 1) No matter how good or bad a person you are the universe doesn’t give a single shit.

If the meteorite hitting earth is scheduled to hit a certain place at a certain time it’s going to hit you if you’re stood there. That’s even if your actions in life put Mother Teresa to shame.

Part 2) Your “goodness” as a person will help to shape the relationships you have with other people.
THIS is where karma can come into play, so let’s talk about video games.

Video games have closer karma models to real life than us

On October 26th 2018 Rockstar Games released the highly anticipated game Red Dead Redemption 2 (RDR2).
I remember because one of the people highly anticipated it. Yes, I even pre-ordered it.

If you’re not into gaming then fear not, there’s no insider knowledge required.

In RDR2 you play a cowboy outlaw and gang member at the turn of the previous century, 1899.

In this game you can do pretty much anything.

Want to run off into the wilderness, hunt animals and make clothes from them, go!

Fancy helping the sheriff track down criminals and bring them to jail, awesome.

Or perhaps you want to ride into town and shoot as many people as you can. Then hogtie someone and leave them on the train tracks and wait for…….you get the picture.

You can do anything.

But why on earth am I talking about this? Because RDR2 has what’s known as an “honour system”. 

If you help out lawmen and are generally a decent human being then they will pay you more for bounties, store owners will give you discounts, and lawmen will sometimes turn a blind eye to some of your future minor misdemeanours. 

The converse, well, that’s pretty obvious.

It’s more or less the opposite.

It means that the bounty on your head is higher so you’re more likely to have gangs after you. Shopkeepers won’t give you discounts and might refuse to let you in, you’ll be barred from taverns.

The benefits being that eyewitnesses to your crimes are scared of you they can be bribed for less money.

But, being good or bad doesn’t change anything about the likelihood of a bear attacking when out hunting.

Or your horse throwing you off in panic after it encounters a snake.

This is much closer to real life than any childish fantasy about the universe balancing things. 

Art imitating life in video game karma

What you’re witnessing in RDR2 is “people” in the game reacting directly to what they’ve seen or heard about you as a person.
They’ll give you a pleasant greeting in the street if they recognise you as the good Samaritan that stopped a robbery a few days ago OR they’ll cross the street and keep their head down if perhaps you were the person that robbed the store.

I appreciate this is an extreme version to compare to real life but I hope you’re getting my point on this.

Put simply.

I don’t think there is anything controlling a balance and the amount of good energy being output needing to be in balance with what comes back in.

BUT

Real life people tend to be kinder, give more time and generally be more generous to people they consider to be good people.

The final nail in the coffin of “karma”

Let’s pretend for argument’s sake that karma does exist and what goes and comes around.

If that were true then surely that would mean that no matter how much of a “goodie” you were no “baddie” could ever come and spoil things. 

Because if karma did exist then the universe would stop that from happening.

Sadly I can think of countless examples again where this isn’t true, the universe isn’t like a film and it doesn’t provide “deus ex machina” to stop the “baddie” from hurting, stealing from or even killing, the goodie.

Karma existing falls apart as soon as you realise that human beings have free will and full control over their actions.

Why you should still be a good person

On the 10th August this year whilst paying for parking at a supermarket I was met by a woman and her daughter who couldn’t find change for the meter.

I simply handed her the 70p needed and wished her a good day.

She insisted on giving me a £1 for the change I’d given her.

After a small disagreement I happily accepted…..

…..and handed the pound straight to her daughter.

The woman smiled, her daughter smiled, I smiled. It was a light and bright couple of minutes.

I didn’t do it for any other reason than just to help out and I don’t think it will have impacted anything that will happen in the future in my life.

The money made no difference whatsoever to either of us; it was a simple and random act of kindness which cost me 70p.

Good deeds like this shouldn’t ever be done because of some sort of expectation of recompense from the other person and certainly not the universe either.

My hope is that the little girl got herself something nice with her new found riches and her mum told the story later on to someone and they smiled about there “still being good things happening in the world.”

I don’t write this to show off about my heroic 70p donation, I wanted to share with you a personal story of how being kind is its own reward.

That small and relatively insignificant act makes me a slightly better person not in comparison to anyone else but just in relation to myself.

Continuously being the best version of ourselves and enacting true karma is only ever going to be of benefit to us and the world so there’s never a reason not to do it.

So that’s it no matter how bad or good you decide to be in your life the universe isn’t going to  treat you any differently at all. You could possibly view this as a carte blanche to go and do whatever you like – go ahead, nothing is stopping you except you.

So what’s the point in being good if you’re not going to get rewarded?

Doing good things makes you a good person, the more good things you do the better a person you become, the better a person you are the more loved, valued and respected you will be. 

That love, value and respect is something that the universe can never provide, that can only ever come from other people.

That is your reward.