deconversion

Recently we were talking about the earthquakes in Haiti at work and one of my co-workers said that she often wondered why there were some people and countries that always seemed to have it worse off than others.  Her conclusion was that it must be "karma."  That these people must have done something in a past life and that is why they were going through these things now. 

Now, none of us would be considered well-off by American standards.  Most of us are barely getting by.  But by Haitian standards, we are all pretty wealthy.  As I am writing this, I am sitting in a warm house, I have food in the refrigerator, running water, lights,  and whatever worries I have are trivial compared to those of the people of Port-au-Prince.  And I would say that is true of my fellow workers.  We are pretty sheltered, insulated.  And so we can afford to dismiss others' sufferings as "karma".

Karma, I told her, is a cruel doctrine.  It requires no real analysis of the situation.  It requires no real action.  In fact, its very logic demands inaction.  For if someone's ill-fortune is a result of something they did in a past life, wouldn't it be interfering with their karma, their destiny, and possibly depriving them of a better life next time around, if we actually tried to do something for them?  Better to let things work out on their own.  I suggested that if she wanted some answers to why some societies and individuals are well-off and others are not, she should start with Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel."  Haiti, I told her, has never had a chance from the very beginning when the slaves overthrew their French rulers.   Slaveowners in the US and Europe correctly saw this as a threat to their own lifestyle and so they refused to help the new republic and it has been that way ever since.  She didn't know anything about that history.  But hey, if you want to talk about karma, it seems to me that there is a very powerful nation that is long, long overdue for some really bad stuff, based upon its history.  And Pat Robertson better pray that he or his loved ones aren't anywhere near the New Madrid fault if/when that ever lets loose again.  (Google it, sometime.  The thing is a ticking time bomb right through the heart of the US, worse than the San Andreas)  Oh, yes, he can talk so smugly about the Haitians' deserving their fate, but no one on this earth is immune to disaster.  No one.

Basically, karma is meaningless.  The thing about this past life business that I don't get, is if we are being endlessly recycled and each life is dedicated to correcting the mistakes of the past one, why is it that we all have to struggle and play guessing games as to what it is we need to learn this time around so that the next will be better?  I don't know anyone who says that they know for a fact that the reason they are the way they are is because of some specific thing that happened in their past life.  Instead, it is "well, it must be because", or "I probably was".  Must be and probably isn't good enough.  Karma doesn't tell us how to solve the problem.  It just absolves us from taking stock.