Two questions - Do you believe in Karma? Do believe that everything happens for a reason?

#1… No, I don’t believe in it. If you are a dick you shouldn’t be surprised when people treat you the same. Same thing if you are good and nice.

#2… Nope. Some shit is just random. Like if I am hungry and I see a five drop out of someones pocket. That is just a coincidence. I doubt god made me hungry and had this guy walk by and lose money so I could buy beer.

I’m a devoted Hindu, so everyone thinks I should believe in karma. I don’t. Bad people live rich, luxurious and happy lives pretty often. And there are good, kind, hardworking people whose lives are debilitated by tragedies. There are wastes of space like Paris Hilton, and then there are children in Iraq who just desperately want an education and a safe place to play. Karma is bullshit. The premise of karma is that wrongs will be righted in reincarnation, and I believe in reincarnation, but you can’t remember past lives (at least you’re not supposed to). If someone’s tabula rasa in this life who cares what their past life was like?

If everything happens for a reason than those reasons must be pretty sick.

No and no.

I think things happen and we give them reason or meaning.

Karma lived in my house at college. It was terrifying!

After a long night of poker in a mates room we all got up to leave and as I was walking out I flicked the cards all over the floor so he could play ‘52 card pick-up’. Laughing evilly I turned to step out of the room and walked straight into the door frame.

While I was having a shower someone decided to be funny and turned off the light in the bathroom. The next thing I heard was them falling down the stairs!

But seriously, I do believe what goes around comes around. Things must happen for a reason; an action causes other knock on effects. If you’re implying a more hypothetical meaning then no.

I think johnpowell’s karma answer is the root that the karmic tree grew from.

If everything does happen for a specific reason then our Great Cosmic Leader is one helluva choreographer.

@johnpowell…since that’s some random beer mind if ‘eye’ get some?

People have different notions of what karma involves, so I feel obliged to clarify.

It seems to me to be a demonstrable fact that our actions set in motion a chain of events that ripples out into the world. By our actions, we influence the character of the world we all live in. By a loose interpretation, this is karma. You can’t pee in the universal pool and think you won’t get any on you.

Whether or not there’s some cosmic mechanism at work, as some Eastern traditions suggest, that doles out quid pro quo retribution “A” for action “X”, I don’t think we could ever know. I wouldn’t say I believe in karma to that level of detail.

By the same token, if by “everything happens for a reason” you mean that there’s some overarching organizing principle that influences outcomes to achieve a grand design, then no, I don’t believe that. It’s a quirk of human psychology to attribute reason to even random processes.

It does seem probable, though, that we set the stage in our lives for certain outcomes by our mind set. If we strongly expect that things will work out a certain way, then we will, consciously or unconsciously, manipulate circumstances to favor that outcome. We may be more likely to recognize and seize opportunities that lead in that direction. Looking back, we may see some suggestion of a pattern, of things falling into place, as if events had led us by the hand. But I suspect that we’re just seeing the biases of our own subconscious at work

No on both. Just chaos.

Yes on both. Organized chaos.

Yes to both…sort of…

My belief in karma is rather more of a hope and I have seen what SEEMS to be karma at work…but it’s not always instant and so I have to hope that EVENTUALLY it will work out.

As for everything happening for a reason…I don’t think that EVERYTHING does…but I think that SOME things ARE meant to happen. I don’t believe in pre-destination, but I also can’t believe in the chaos theory; we have free will and make decisions that will determine where we go, but some things ARE meant to happen…it’s just how we get there that changes.

I believe in putting meaning into things that occur in life. Life is empty without it. Whether it’s labeled as Karma or “everything happens for a reason” type of shit..well that’s personal preference.

Yes and Yes.

Here’s Why. I had a rough HORRIBLE childhood up to the day I was kicked out two years ago. Since then I’ve traveled, met an amazing guy, finally figured out what I wanted to do in life, and I have become comfortable in my own skin.
If my mom never abused me I wouldn’t have needed to stand up to her the way I did, if I didn’t stand up for myself, I never would have gotten kicked out. If I didn’t get kicked out I never would have moved to Florida, met my current boyfriend, traveled to the Cayman Islands for 5 months.. ETC.

As for karma, she had to pay 30k or so in taxes this past year for using stocks to buy her house or some shit. giggles

No for both…sort of. lol

I think that bad things happen to bad people BECAUSE they are doing bad things and will probably eventually make a mistake or do something stupid and pay the consequence. It is not really because there is some force in the universe saying they’ll get what’s coming to them.

Also, I think that sort of the same goes for everything happens for a reason. (Philosophically, I do flop between believing in predestination and free will due to the way that the world seems to function but for this purpose I’m gonna leave that idea alone.) I think that more or less we try to make the best of bad situations and that is why we think things happen for a reason. I think we like to find meaning in situations and we assume that it happened for a reason because we made the best of a bad situation.

I’m not gonna lie tho. I’ve definitely had my share of situations where the thought that everything happens for a reason got me through it so maybe it’s a good thought overall just without any real empirical evidence for it. haha

Here’s an interesting article in Scientific American about the psychological basis for seeing patterns in randomness, and a possible explanation for the evolution of this trait.

I didn’t, but I do now. I have always believed there is some cosmic balance, but I never really saw it in practice (most people don’t, unless we find ourselves in extreme circumstances).

I have found myself in these circumstances recently, and all the good things that came to me were balanced by bad ones, and vice versa. I have managed to manipulate the karma around though, so that I hope that in the end it will all balance out to a new reality that I will be happy with.

It is what my book is more or less about, though I look at it from a much more simplistic perspective, as it is a children’s book.