Karma is a Big, Big B*tch
Don't be evil, and how to avoid the common pitfalls of bad behavior.
I’ve written versions of this before on other blogs, but it bears repeating: when we do evil stuff to other people, or put negativity into the world, we will get our comeuppance. I don’t mean in hell (although if you believe that sort of thing, probably true there too), I mean in this waking life, sooner or later.
I’m a perfect example. I’ve never been evil or mean, per se, despite my Slytherin soul, but every time I’ve been negligent or foolish, a big, big bitch named Karma has come calling. Not always right away—sometimes it takes time. But eventually, she’s going to come around if we continue our bad behavior.
The good news is that we’re protected by our good Karma. There’s enough Grace in this world that we can fuck up to some degree and still come out alright. Like, if the ledger of what we do in the world strikes a balance between good and bad, we’re likely to be left to our own devices. This is why most people don’t believe in Karma, or if they do, don’t experience it. Most people don’t go out of their way to be especially good, but they also aren’t evil enough to be especially bad. Most people are good and want to do and be good. To the extent we fail, it’s because we don’t know any better. Like, no one teaches this stuff—kinda the whole point of this project.
However, some people get themselves into bad situations where choosing to hurt others will lead to the most desirable outcome or benefit them materially, some commit wrongs because they think they can get away with it, some allow their emotions to prompt bad behavior, and then there are those who are just plain rotten from the get go. I should point out here: people aren’t evil, but sometimes they do evil. It’s the act, not a state of being. Likewise: mostly, people do good. The reason I say most people are good is that they do good most of the time, and when they do bad things, they feel bad because they know it’s wrong.
One of the key arguments CS Lewis makes in Mere Christianity—the book that finally and firmly convinced me to become a Christian, because it made sense of the cognitive dissonance I couldn’t resolve before—is that we all have an internal, inherent sense of right and wrong. We instinctually know the difference between good and evil…and we don’t like being evil. It makes us feel bad, even if we benefit materially. Like, this is how we know someone’s a sociopath or narcissist: because they either don’t understand what they are doing is evil, or they are so selfish they don’t care.1
Luckily there’s a in-built Fuck Around and Find Out (FAFO) system in the world called Karma. She’s absolutely wonderful. She doesn’t judge you based on anything other than your behavior, and she loves to fuck. If you do good stuff, she’ll be the sweetest lover you’ve ever known, and if you do bad stuff, she’ll FUCK you. Fuck Around with doing evil shit, and you will Find Out. Sooner or later, Karma will eventually show up to enforce the rules, because she doesn’t like it when people are evil.
For those who doubt this is true—I’m sure we could come up with a list of hundreds of people who seem to have gotten away with evil shit—understand that those people have to live with themselves, and that might be penalty enough. Like, Vladimir Putin can’t possibly sleep well at night, knowing he’s caused the deaths of millions of people. He also, like Trump, can’t possibly have any authentic relationships, because no one can tell him the truth or they’ll get disappeared. Perhaps they’re both sociopaths who don’t care, but then again, would you want to be a sociopath, who can’t feel love, can’t love others, and essentially lacks a soul? No.
And I won’t be surprise either if something bad does happen to those guys. I’ve seen Karma play out in real life to a person who wronged me, and their family, but out of respect for the person, who got cancer for fucking around, I won’t name names.2 For my part I’ve done my best to forgive them.
How to Avoid Bad Karma and be a Good & Happy Person
A) Don’t take advantage of another person’s weakness.3 Don’t do stuff where you’re using someone’s vulnerable position as a means to get something from them. A common example would be a man in power using his position to manipulate a woman into doing something sexual to get a job or advance her career. This is why #MeToo happened, and was necessary, although the moral panic that ensued did unfortunately ensnare a bunch of men who hadn’t done anything wrong.
Another example is when the police arrest someone they don’t have to, but they do, because they can, and the cruelty is the point.4 When someone takes advantage of another person’s weakness, the victim doesn’t really have any other choice. They’re at where they’re at and are where they are. Maybe part of that is their fault, but taking advantage of them makes their situation even worse, which is why it’s evil—not only for the perpetrator, but for their victim as well, because they’re then more likely to do something evil when faced with a desperate situation. So it’s evil, compounded.
B) Don’t seek revenge. It’s unnecessary—remember, Karma will take care of them. When someone wrongs, it’s perfectly natural to want to inflict pain on them, because they have inflicted pain on us. But as Jesus teaches—and you’ll find this in almost any religious or ethical philosophy—turn the other cheek. Gandhi is perhaps the most famous example of this. Through non-violent protest, he showed the world that the British were wrong, and eventually they had to stop. Same is true of the Civil Rights Movement. Black Americans and their allies didn’t violently fight against their racist oppressors—they showed them they were wrong by not fighting. Mel Robbins has lately become famous for her Let Them philosophy, which is a version of this. There is no doubt that sometimes we have to fight, but a just fight is for survival, not revenge, and sometimes even then it’s best to resist spiritually, not violently.
C) Don’t steal, or take what is not given. Taking something from someone without their consent is an act of evil—this is true of material possessions, but it is also true in relationships. Indeed, robbing someone of their relationship with others, I’d argue, is even worse.
This is why suicide is so awful, and selfish. I have tremendous sympathy for anyone who commits this act—my best friend took his own life in 2016. But in doing so he robbed us of the opportunity to love and help him. He was an incredible guy, and I miss him every day!
Another common situation where this happens is when parents fight over the custody of their children. Most of life is not zero sum, but time with our kids is. We only have so much. And when a mother takes her children away from their father, or deprives him of equal parenting time for no good reason other than she can—as is most common and the legal norm, because courts overwhelmingly decide in favor of women when it comes to divorce and children—it is fucking evil.5 It is stealing time away from his children, the most grievous sin I can imagine, other than murder or rape. Of course, those are also examples of stealing, whether life, or sexual consent.
D) Don’t be negligent in ways that can harm others. This is where I’ve fucked up, and why Karma has showed up a few times in my own life—because though I’ve never been intentionally evil to others, through my own carelessness, I’ve put other people in bad situations, and though Karma has made me pay for my sins, I can only hope that God forgives me. I also have to be certain not to let it happen again.
This is probably the most common error we make, because most people, like me, aren’t doing evil stuff just because, but through negligence they fail to do what is necessary to prevent bad stuff from happening. This is very common in relationships. When we stop showing up for our partner, or friends, or family members, we may not mean to cause them harm, but we do by not providing them the value they deserve in return for the value they are providing us. Leaving a toxic relationship is totally understandable. But abandoning people when they need us most, is not.
There is also a negligence by omission that’s become ubiquitous, and that’s when we don’t communicate with someone who’s expecting us to hear from us. A good example is when you apply for a job, but they don’t send you a receipt they got your application, or if they do, don’t let you know what happened. They don’t have to, so they don’t. Same is true of flaking and ghosting, whether it’s dating, family, or friends. No one has to go on a date with anyone they don’t want to—but if you’ve committed to going, you really ought to at least tell them you can’t anymore, whatever the reason. Likewise, no one has a right to a relationship with us because we went on a date with them or hooked up, but they do have the right to be told this via text or a phone call vs. radio silence.
Trust me, Karma fucking HATES these people. And she does it sneaky, because there appear to be no immediate consequences. The victim is just gone. But the ghoul will finds he gets fewer matches, women are more apprehensive around him, and then BAM! he meets the girl he thinks is the one: time to stop being a fuckboi and have a family…but lo and behold! She ghosts him. Same type of thing happens to girls who flake a lot, because some of the guys they flake on are the going to be the very sort of man they’re looking for…and it’s funny, because all the dates she does go on lead to dead ends. I wonder why?6
E) Don’t lie, or use your voice to promote hate. This is the most common sin of all. Everyone lies sometimes, but I don’t mean white lies, like “no you’re not fat”, or lies of omission, or that you have to tell to protect yourself. I don’t blame anyone who’s lied to their boss or the police or some other authority figure who is likely to use that information against them. It’s not ideal, but it’s also not wrong, and I’m pretty sure neither God nor Karma cares about that stuff.
What’s wrong is when we lie on purpose to create a perception of reality that isn’t real, whether we to get away with bad behavior, or manipulate people into believing something that isn’t true. For instance, if I tell a person to jump off bridge, because a net will catch him, but there isn’t a net, they will get seriously injured or die. When we promote a false reality and other people believe us, we are harming them, whether directly or indirectly. Remember: we have to fight against the lies we believe as long as we believe them. Reality is reality, and to the extent we deny reality, we commit unforced errors, because what we believe isn’t true.
This is why people hate politics: because people lie all the time. Like, what Steve Bannon does, or what they’ve been doing over at Fox News 24 hours a day since their inception. Same is true of the identity politicians on the Left—they are promoting a view of the world that’s false, and then penalizing people who rightly assert it’s bullshit. The cruel reality of the propaganda surrounding anti-racism, is that its effect was to make some people more racist.
This is why I’ve almost never voted for a Republican, except at the local level on a few occasions. Because ever since I became politically aware in high school, they have been the worst fucking liars on the planet. I hold some conservative values, but the baseline level of dishonesty and calumny on the political Right is so cringe and toxic, I can’t take anything they say seriously. And if you don’t believe me, consider what Fox News and other conservative maoists told us about the recent tariffs. First, they were great and wonderful, even though the stock market plummeted, and then, when Trump paused them, that was also great and wonderful, because the stock market recovered. Can’t be both.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting Democrats never lie or do stuff I don’t like—I mean, the cover up about Biden’s cognitive decline was criminal. And, when the Left went crazy in 2017 and especially in 2020, I said so. It’s one of the reasons I left teaching—because I lost respect for the profession when I saw so many people I’d respected go crazy.
But it’s never been to the level of what they do on conservative media. Like, way more Republicans died from COVID than Democrats, because huge numbers of people lied about the vaccine. There’s a measles outbreak in Texas now, with over 700 cases nationwide, and two children dead as a result. That’s really fucking bad. And the parents who decided not to get their children vaccinated FAFO in the worst way possible, because they believed the lies of a bunch of morons who were “doing their own research.”
“Anger Leads to Hate, and Hate Leads to Suffering”
Master Yoda is right. It’s not that we will never be angry. It’s a common emotion we are likely to feel almost every day, even if it’s just because we stub our toe or learn some bad news. But we have to let go of that anger. This is something I’m working on in therapy right now—I’m not a particularly angry person, but because of some of the wrongs others have done to me, and some I’ve done to myself through the negligence I mentioned above, I’m carrying a few wounds that need healing. I’m working to let go of that anger, and to forgive both myself and the others who caused it.
This is why I wrote that apology and forgiveness are super powers. Through apology, we can right our wrongs. All we need to do is ask for it, and then follow through with better behavior going forward. Through forgiveness, we can let go of the anger we feel when we are wronged by others—even if they don’t ask to be forgiven because they can’t admit their fault. Don’t worry, Karma will take care of them. But in the meantime we can take care of ourselves by forgiving them and letting go of that anger and hate, so that we don’t have to suffer the burden it creates.
Nothing I’ve written here is new. We all know it’s wrong to hurt other people, steal, lie, or neglect our responsibilities. But our condition, as humans who are flawed, is to make mistakes, and perhaps the worst thing of all is that many people go around pretending they’re never wrong about anything—that they’re infallable. I remember one time a woman was backing up her car super fast and she was clearly going to hit me, so I honked my horn. Then she got mad—at me. We can’t fix something that isn’t broken, so all of us need to examine our actions and investigate to see what is broken so we can improve.
Yet another way to GetBetterSoon. As always, I appreciate your support. Namaste my friends.
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People being selfish, or doing stuff we don’t like, doesn’t make them a narcissist. All people are selfish to some extent, because survival is selfish. It’s not narcissistic to do what’s in our own best interests. It might be cold. It might be mean. It might even be evil. But a narcissist is someone who is so truly selfish that they’re willing to intentionally and consistently hurt people for their own benefit. That word is thrown around way too casually and has lost it’s meaning, so there you go.
Unfortunately, this person has not learned their lesson, and I will not be at all surprised when Karma comes calling again.
Unless it’s sports and the stronger, better person/team is supposed to win.
It’s extremely unfortunate that our justice system is as cruel and vindictive as possible. Wasn’t always that way. Before the War on Crime by Lyndon Johnson, and Reagan’s War on Drugs, police were fairly lenient (to be clear, for white people), and wouldn’t arrest someone unless they were dangerous—if they pulled someone over for drunk driving, more often than not they’d take the guy home warn him strongly not to do it again, and move on. Now they “throw the book” at anyone who’s accused of a crime, which is why we have the largest prison population in the world per capita, and a contributing factor to why we have so many homeless people.
Zero fucks. And if it happens in reverse where the father takes children away from the mother, it is equally evil!
Finding the right person for you is akin to finding a needle in a haystack. It can be done, and sometimes you find the needle right away, but flaking on dates is like leaving large lumps of hay un-searched. Ghosting because you’re embarrassed you had sex too quick, or because you’re not ready is the same thing—that person may have been the needle, but now you’ll never know.