Where does karma reside?

July 2023

Last changed August 2023

First off, what is karma? It's the mess for you to clean after you've let the poop hit the proverbial fan. It's you get out what you put in. It's what goes around comes around. It's intentional actions and their effects, consequences. It's doing everything selflessly with good intent. It's dealing with an asshole who's assholer to you than you've been to others. It's the universal law of cause and effect. It's probably somewhere there in between, karma.

I sort of believe in karma, but it is perhaps more exact to say that I believe in reciprocity. You loan something to somebody, you expect to get it back someday in some form. You throw a party and you expect to be invited to at least some of the parties your invitees will throw in some near future. You take, you take, you do nothing but take, well, soon you won't be too liked by many a body. You give, you give, you keep splashing goodies all around you, you're probably a political candidate in the final innings of an election campaign.

But let's say that there is this thing called karma. Is there anything in the universe that demands it? Is there a law in the universe that states that if you do something bad, something bad will get back at you and, conversely, if you are a beacon of good deeds, you will be eternally showered with love and bliss from all sides. I am not sure. There's gravity out there and there's the law of an action being always met with an equal but opposing reaction, but action and reaction are not the same as cause and effect. Action and reaction are not causally related, they're just two sides of the same coin, and beside that this dynamic duo doesn't give a bat's ass about whether something is good or bad and also can't keep score or read intents.

Well, is then anything in nature that demands karma? Like, bad tiger for eating that innocent antelope, you just wait and see how you'll step into a big fresh pile of elephant dung around the corner. Or, bad cuckoo bird for planting your egg to that tiny marsh warbler, I sure hope you're ashamed of yourself. Well, not really. That's what cuckoo birds evolved to do (and some birds evolved strategies to counter them) and carnivores have always hunted prey (and the prey are very well aware of that or they occasionally get eaten). It's a free-for-all with no one judging anyone, with perhaps no cases of consequence for bad intent (if anything like a bad intent even exists in the ex-sapiens natural world). There sure are cause and effect situations in nature, like when a cow eats some plant that's toxic to it and gets poisoned, but there is no karmic action involved here, at least I do not see it (and the cow probably didn't either, as it never did anything bad).

So, if there is nothing in the universe and there is nothing in nature that demands and operates karma, where does it reside?

Maybe it is in our own views we have of ourselves, so finally in our brain or in our psychology. You do something bad, your brain remembers it and mulls about it and when there is a chance to rectify, it drives your actions (without you noticing this cunning plan) so that the result of these actions you yourself perform placates the original wrongdoing performed by you in the past. And for another person, who always goes the extra mile to be kind, generous, respectful, considerate, her or his brain, abiding by the law of reciprocity (that would probably take a whole another story to consider where that comes from, what are the principles on which that rests), feels open and deserving to receiving good and so there is more chance that something good manifests in the end. Or maybe, in addition to that, the karmic score is kept by the net of inter-subjective connections between all (or at least physically or interactively relatively close) people and so somehow everybody gets what they deserve more or less in due time because this score won't stand excesses for too long.

Perhaps karma is like gravity. Gravity exists, it is absolutely omnipresent, inescapable, its quantities and effects exactly predictable and knowable in any situation where that is needed - and yet we know schlick of what causes gravity. All the scientists, all the bright minds, but we are still searching for a definitive answer as to what is the mechanism through which gravity operates - is it a particle we have yet to discover (the graviton), is it a by-effect of interaction of the other forces that exist in nature, is it due to space-time curvature, is it through a type of wave… This open issue notwithstanding, nobody questions gravity. (Just go ahead and try, your nose or your finest porcelain won't thank you.) So maybe it's the same for karma, that - in some yet unknown fashion - everything is connected to everything else, but in this case there are also intents and ethics and whatnot weaved in and voila, you can't escape it, you are a bitch to your neighbor and the next day a rock falls from space and smashes your brand-new car parked in your driveway into oblivion.

This ramble that's been going on for too long and has yet to prove that it isn't leading nowhere could just as well be some random concoction computed by some fashionable AI. But to be truthful, in wanting to write anything I wouldn't dare to do so. It's you reap what you sow.

In the end, I must actually admit that I do believe in karma. I sort of feel that if you do good, you will get good (but I wouldn't cry my eyes out for not getting the good back) and I am just curious on where do the underpinnings of its functioning originate and who/what is it who keeps the score?

Whatever the answer, go ahead and do that good deed of the day (or better, of the moment), it's worth it. For everybody involved.

Ivo Makuc, 2023
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