The idea of karma is awful. Talk about victim blaming to the extreme. Sooo something awful happens like you're born disfigured or raped and it is your fault. Wtf. Christianity isn't much better. You're born a sinner and paying for something your great great great grandma did.
@leelah said in Let's talk about karma:
The idea of karma is awful. Talk about victim blaming to the extreme. Sooo something awful happens like you're born disfigured or raped and it is your fault. Wtf.
Yeah, that is quite horrible. I never realized that the idea of karma means actually that, but it does. What I think is much worse though, is that you're kind of stuck in this (Hindu people please correct me if I'm wrong here). E.g. there is no idea in the faith, that you should instead of blaming the victim, love them and help them recover from the bad karma they have "gotten themselves into" if we accept the idea of karma for a second. Instead you're branded by the bad karma. You're forever untouchable (if you are born into this caste), as long as you live. There is no way for you to get out of it, but to die and be reborn. It is quite a hellish thing to believe this about yourself and your own life...
Christianity isn't much better. You're born a sinner and paying for something your great great great grandma did.
Well, technically it's Adam, but it isn't so clear, that by Adam the bible means the individual that we all genetically descend from (The genetical adam however is very real btw.).
In christianity as well as in late Judaism it happens more than none, that the innocent suffer and do not pay for their sins or their parents sins. I mean Christ himself is the prime example of that :shrug:. So victim blaming is definitely something you are reading into christianity (excluding a few crazy sects who do actually blame the victim).
Hmmm.....@leelah Karma as defined by the "Bava Gheeta "(I realize I spelled the title wrong.) ;" you are born, you age, you die..there is nothing you can do to change this." Please note: no words are highlighted, capitalize or set apart. The Krishna book goes on to say "karma ( Ka of the Egyptians, Spirit of Many beliefs) is reborn on the Wheel of Life continues to turn. Karma is your debt, payed forward to reach Enlightenment. You will continue to be reborn on the Wheel of Life as an ant, a cow, a human..... until you do enough "good" to earn Enlightenment and be reborn as god/goddess and leave the Wheel of Life. (here GOOD is hard to define due to the English translation from the Hindi language)
@petrapark3r ......"karma is bad" Sadly, this is a Recent thing that the Christian /Catholic /large dominant religion has focused on in the last 20 years, based on a bad translation of Karma. Karma Only exists in Hindu belief, no such thing in other religions. Sin is NOT the same as Karma. <sigh>...chalk it up to believers seeing something get popular in media or even Pagen/Wiccan belief, and going "the have"x", i'my upset...why can'take we have it too <whining and boo-hooing, gnashing of teeth>!!"
@Sabo-go-thud to be completely fair to you I was not intending to focus about karma itself, but about the effects of this idea in real life to real people.
For you it might be a consolation, that good deads will bring people to enlightenment in a next life. But to me the problem of treating people like shit in this life still persists.
I don't say anything against the idea of karma itself, except that I don't believe. And to me it wouldn't have to have those effects, there would be no need to blame someone who has "bad karma". It could all be more reason to help them. But in real life, in indian society it doesn't.
And this is not being forced on you by any other religion. It is something done by your people (assuming you're in fact indian) and you haven't addressed the problem!
@petrapark3r you are very right. Treating others as less than you is barbaric. The Caste system of parts of India, bad...very bad. A holdover from the late 1600's. But, I must say you are doing the better option of bringing attention to it!
@Sabo-go-thud said in Let's talk about karma:
@petrapark3r you are very right. Treating others as less than you is barbaric. The Caste system of parts of India, bad...very bad. A holdover from the late 1600's. But, I must say you are doing the better option of bringing attention to it!
Thank you, you are right, the Caste system is propably the worst instance of victim blaming on a large scale in history. Maybe apart from blaming the jews for everything that went wrong in europe...
There are other instances however, and I couldn't stop myself from thinking about it this morning.
I've been told here on TWS by (reasonable) Hindus, that it's Jesus' own fault for being crucified. I personally have never studied Hindu faith, so I really couldn't say, wether victim blaming is something intrinsic to the idea itself. But the fact, that there was not a single Hindu disagreeing with blaming Jesus, suggests to me, that it might indeed be intrinsic. Or that the majority of Hindus is interpreting the concept in the wrong way.
You know I am glad, that my religion does not tell me, that I could even look for the fault with the person who something bad happens to. Simply because I am no saint. And if I had any reason to assume the victim (of a proven crime) was somehow at fault, I wouldn't be able to stop myself from thinking just that. I wouldn't be able to stop myself from judging them. So I am really glad that I don't believe in karma, because it would tempt me into thinking (and maybe doing) awful things. But that's just me. Maybe I am that bad a person :shrug:
