Poll: Do You Believe In Karma?

[TrulyBritish]

Yes I do believe in cause and effect. Karma, eh, not so much. Then again, maybe Hitler was reincarnated as a tape-worm or something. Who knows.

Tape worms have pretty sheltered lives

A battery hen then? Maybe factory salmon.

By extension, though, those people mistreating reincarnated Hitler and being cruel to animals, and have something nasty happen to them in their next life. Presumably Hitler's victims had done something in a previous life to deserve what he did.

Yeah, not a fan of that way of thinking.

So really Hitler was punishing bad people? or punishing people who had been bad people?
I can see why this line of thinking sucks.
OT: Karma is some kind of universal/ cosmic force to better the lives of the good and worsen the lives of the bad? Nah, sounds a bit to Disney for me. Karma as in if you're a jerk to people and they're jerks back, that's a bit more in line with me.

 

[Xdeser2]

I believe in Karma, yes, but not in a literal "law of the universe" sort of way. To me its a nice way of summing up that if your a dick to people, you're probobly not going to be treated very well back (in a grossly oversimplified way)

 

[SmokingBomber465]

If someone fucks me over with no remorse,

...then it is clearly the result of you being a jerk earlier, right?

That's what it is if Karma is real, of course

 

[Jadak]

As some sort of mystical balancing force that cares about individuals? No, that's nonsense.

In the general sense that your negative actions will make the net status of the world more negative and thus increases the odds that something negative will come back to you. Sure, that's just common sense, but could still be utterly trivial and in no way is guaranteed to punish you for doing something bad.

 

[Jacques Joseph]

-snip-

Thank you. Succinct, clear, so very much like how I see it, yet worded better.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

If someone fucks me over with no remorse,

...then it is clearly the result of you being a jerk earlier, right?

That's what it is if Karma is real, of course

Why would I do that?

Unless you said that you liked Michael Bay's Transformers.

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

I don't believe in karma. I don't think there is some force that rewards those that do good and punishes those that do bad. I try to do good (or at least not do bad) because there are usually consequences for actions, just not divinely enforced.

 

[mitchell271]

I don't Karma is a universal law, or something like that. I believe in reciprocity. As in, being a asshole/saint to someone will result in them being a asshole/saint back.

 

[Hawk of Battle]

No, as I do not believe in any kind of higher power/divine cosmic force/guiding will/fate/take your pick. The universe is far too chaotic and disordered and cruel to care about our shitty little backwater planet lost in the endless void amongst the countless septillions of other shitty little backwater planets, or any of the infintessimally small and irrelevent lifeforms that happen to cling to its surface, all of which blink out and die in a microsecond compared to the endless lifespan of the universe itself. We are all nothing and the universe doesn't give a shit about any of us.

But hey, I'm an optimist.

 

[Sunrider]

No. There's no evidence for anything of the sort. It's about as trustworthy as astrology.

 

[Snotnarok]

There's nothing to believe in, you could walk someone across the street and help them, decline payment and you both walk off smiles till you get hit by a car "Oh but that's for a previous negative thing that happened!"
Okay, okay or the more likely story you did something nice then someone was texting and didn't see you as they smashed their bumper into your knee caps at 60 miles an hour.

My mom took care of her siblings for years and then her father who had altzhimers and I was there every time as a kid seeing him wander, the pain it caused her. Today? She's got asphasia and wanders around much like her father before her, can't speak and requires aid to make sure she doesn't wander off, or get angry at the person in the mirror.

There's no such thing as karma, it's mental to believe otherwise because there's no links.

Yes this struck a cord with me because some of her family are pieces of shit and live on and don't even visit the one who once took care of her and aided them in need. Now all that help has stopped and we see one of them a few times every now and again and get phone calls from another. Where were they when we were fighting legal battles for 3 years trying to get an aid because the fees without insurance would bankrupt us?

Yeah struck a cord, but in the end there's no scientific evidence so no there's no such thing.

 

[Laser Priest]

No, and I absolutely hate what most people have taken it to mean now. They act as if bad things happening to someone who did something bad is karmic retribution and then choose to entirely ignore whoever is giving out the retribution, no matter how much worse they are. Then even worse, it seems a whole bunch of childish people use it to justify revenge and say it's just the way of the world and then once again act as though they can just go out and punish anyone they delusionally accuse of "wronging" them and then act as if any criticism they get is just unfair.

Really, I think it's an stupid concept that's been made even worse due to increasingly demented interpretations of it.

 

[DanielBrown]

I'm not sure when karma became what people think it is today. As far as I've learned(though it might be my learning that's flawed) hinduism and buddhism say karma is all about what happenes after your death. Good deeds = a step up in the rebirth ladder, bad deeds = a step down.

Anyways, no, I don't believe in either version. Neither do I believe in fate or luck.
Soooo I guess I believe in coincidence.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

I see it as negative thoughts and action brings more negativity, doesn't necessarily means bad things happen to you but rather that your life will be more negative as a result. Someone mentioned Hitler, Mao, etc. I seriously doubt those guys were living a rich and full life and enjoying everything they did. Most of them were paranoid up to the day they died and thats not a good life.
Positive thought and action breeds a more positive life. That doesn't mean something bad won't happen, but it does mean that you can find the silver lining of a bad event easier than you could with negative thoughts/actions. Its a perspective thing. Its not necessarily a force that judges you on whether or not you shoplifted that twinkie last week (I SAW YOU!!!), but rather the nagging thought later that pervades your mind. Guilt is the biggest form of negative "karma". It will kill you in the end, and make your life miserable unless you do something to change it and that involves a positive action, even if the consequences aren't necessarily pleasant at the time.
What you look for is what you find, what you do will reflect back on you and affect your life.
And hey if you can believe that your actions don't matter and you can do whatever the fuck you want, go ahead.

 

[Not Matt]

Nope. Wish it was real though, because I know a lot of bad people I wish a lot of bad things would happen to.