--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues" <curtisdeltabl...@...> wrote: > [snip] > But in the case of the karmic thoery and its social manifestation in the > caste system the numbers are reversed. We have millions of people who > believe in this thoery outside India who may not be using it for repression. > But we have close to a billion people in India whose lives are oppressed by > this belief. [snip]
But not the SAME belief? Trying to follow this conversation... Seems to me that you are confusing a doctrine of fatalism with the doctrine of karma. You can be a fatalist without believing in karma - and vice versa. Karma is the idea that the world is a "just" system (as you said before). And the justice is believed to to consist in (essentially) "as you sow shall ye reap". That doctrine in itself carries no implication as to how one should act towards those more unfortunate than ourselves. That needs OTHER beliefs. The truth is that it is karma + fatalism that has produced the unfortunate "quietism" that has caused so much trouble in, say, India. As MMY often pointed out. Fatalism is the idea that how we find ourselves is somehow "how we are meant to be". And it fatally (!) lends itself to the thought that "if this is how it's meant to be, who am I to think I should do anything to change it?". It seems to me that that should be the correct target of your frustration? Belief in karma is something else. It is just the universalisation of a principle we use all the time (of responsibility). If I choose to take my sailboat out in appalling weather, I have myself to blame if I get into difficulties (my "karma"). Fortunately for me, seeing it that way is not enough to stop most folks from considering trying to rescue me if they can! Or, take a child born with deformities. If I believe in karma and reincarnation, then I am led to believe that, yes, this is the consequence of past actions. (or, another way of saying the same thing, there is in reality no such thing as "luck"). But to get the unpleasant attitude you are hostile to, we need to add an additional component into the mix: That this a "punishment" from *God* with which I must not interfere. And that's the fatalism, which in no way follows from the theory of karma. (And perhaps the real villain is not "fatalism", but something that lies behind that: religious hubris, the idea we can know the intentions of God. But personally I wouldn't think we moderns should get too smug about that, as hubris seems to be the sin of our age too!)
