Karma is traditionally thought of as the universe rewarding or punishing you for your actions. This is a great system to teach people if you want to control how they behave. Teach them what the should and should not do, then convince them that if they do these things they will be punished/rewarded by the universe. There are different versions of it some have rebirth/reincarnation and others it comes back to us the current life.
Karma is real and its very simple to understand when you remove the mysticism from it. If you go around stealing classmates lunch money, and one of them tell their big brother and he comes back and punches you in the nose and take the money back, this is karma. Cause and effect. It goes a bit deeper than this though. If you go around lying, cheating, and stealing you are not going to be a happy person, and most likely going to be quite miserable. What bad things we do to others affects us on a deep level, and if we do enough bad we completely lose ourselves. This is also karma. The reverse is also true. When we can help others understand themselves and the world we are rewarded with a greater connection to our true selves. This can also be seen in other things, for example when we teach others we often learn as much from them as they learn from us.
So how do those in power avoid the karma of their actions? They don’t. They are completely disconnected from their true self. This could be called psychopathy. Hell could be thought of as completely cut off from the source of our humanity, and the psychopath is completely cut off from the nourishment that this connection gives us. They have to become good actors just to fit in with society as they have no genuine self to show the world, so they pretend. When you look at these people in candid moments when they are not wearing their public faces, you do not see happy healthy people. They are never fulfilled and must continue to chase power in order to try and fill the void left in their lives due to the lack of connection to their self.
On an individual level the farther away from truth we get the more unhappy we become, and the more we do to cope. Drinking, drugs, and other addiction are just one example but there are many others. All of these things are becoming more and more widespread as we lose our connection to our self and the truth (connection to one's self can only happen in the presence of truth). We put on our public faces and hide who we are from others for fear of rejection and to fit in. This is very harmful to our psyche, which you could think of as a karmic effect.
To be happier and more fulfilled both individually and as a society, we should start embracing who we are, seek out the truths of the objective world, and help others with their journey toward self-knowledge and truth. All the relativism, lies, and distractions we are constantly subjected to have a detrimental effect on our happiness and the more we fall for these things and spread them to others the more negative karma will come back on us until society ends up in the sorry state it is today. But, the only way to change it is to change yourself (change always starts with the man in the mirror), then help others change as well (but make sure you have truth to offer before you try and spread it to others).
Thanks for reading :)
Oz
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