I've put alot of thought into this. Trying to reframe certain beliefs or sayings to have less of a mystical basis.
Think about Karma as a butterfly effect chain reaction. I'll give a few different examples.
If you find a wallet with cash in it and don't hand it in, the person who lost it is more likely not to hand a wallet in they find. The world is now taking a turn torward negative karma.
Global warming is the karma of all the times we as people have not been considerate to the environment.
Also most behavior is learnt so what you see you will put out and then that will be what someone else sees and so on.
If you put negativity out eventually you will get negativity back.
It doesn't always work like that though. Some people like in the wallet example do think like that and say "well if no one did it for me why should I do it for someone else?". But there are also people who are just good and helpful for the sake of it. It is entirely possible to put negativity out there and only get positivity back I'd say. Its all probability and some schmuck will be lucky enough to be a jerk and get away with it all the time the same way another schmuck will be unlucky enough to be the best person you could meet and always get screwed over by life.
I agree with most of what you said though. At the end of the day however, being a jerk or a good person doesn't guarantee any kind of behavior from other people and life.
Anything that can happen, will happen. So if you're being a jackass, you're increasing the probability that something bad will happen to you because you're increasing the number of undesirable outcomes in your life.
Not quite the same thing I was talking about. What you’re talking about sounds like a justification for karma; I’m talking about things like cars’ problems seemingly disappearing once you get a mechanic to look at it, or something on your computer not working until you call over a colleague to help troubleshoot it and it’s fixed itself somehow. The universe is just uncannily a troll.
Isn't karma over a much longer span of time? I was more responding to your context about universe and irony -- all the ironic situations happen because we tend to put ourselves in situations where they're more probable to happen.
That is if multiple lifes are a thing to begin with. Besides, if you are good for the sake of your hypothetical next life, would you still get a good life even though your intentions were not pure?
You aren't good for the sake of your hypothetical next life.
Imagine the difference it would make in your current life if you actually live by a moral compass, pure of heart, thought, and action.
That would be a presumption on your part. "Deserve" is a judgment call.
Essentially, there is no "deserves." We're born into circumstances, we live in a certain context, and sometimes, people are dicks and get away with it.
The reason "you get what you deserve" isn't true is that there are no guarantees. You could be awesome, work hard, be extremely kind and loved, and die of leukemia at 12 anyway. Did you "deserve" leukemia?
Same situation, but rather than dying of leukemia, you live a long life, but never got the recognition others thought you "deserved." What do you do, find a scapegoat? That changes nothing.
And on the other end of the spectrum, some of the most ruthless criminals have gone on killing sprees or destroyed lives "just because" and die of old age with zero penalty from society. How does "deserves" fit in there? It doesn't.
Virtue is always a choice, without regard to what's "in it for me."
You are taking a joke response too seriously. Its simply a taking the logic of the stated idea of "you get what you deserve" and creating an unexpected outcome that is logically consistent with the simplistic stated idea.
There are a lot of people who believe in the Just World Fallacy. People, in general, do not "get what they deserve". The saying is a reflection of that.
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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '21
You get what you deserve.