Tried With Fire

I did an Internet search for the meaning of karma . Most of the results had the same basic definition -  cause and effect. You control the outcome by your actions, temporally and even eternally. At face value, there is a small grain of truth to this. If I live heedlessly beyond my means, there are serious consequences for my actions. I will run out of money and be impoverished. But I could be very frugal and save as much as I can. What if the stock market and banks collapse as they did in the 1920s? My frugality will not overcome the bad decisions of both people and institutions. My responsible actions don't have the power to overcome the irresponsibility of others especially those who wield more power and authority to begin with. Thus simplistic cause and effect doesn't take other players and forces into account. Job's friends fell into karma-like thinking. To them, Job's suffering was obviously the result of something he did that displeased God. Therefore, the ...

Nearly a year ago, I wrote a post on the Just World Phenomena and its relation to victim blaming. In the light of the Abedini situation and other cases of abuse that have come to light, this theory is worth revisiting. In a nutshell, we assume the world is a just system that runs according to a set of rules. Therefore if we follow the rules correctly, we will achieve the desired outcome and get what we deserve. But what happens when the system fails? How do we respond when we witness injustice and in particular, when we witness people getting what they do  not deserve? 1 According to this theory. injustice causes the victim to suffer. But it also causes a sense of suffering in the viewer. To alleviate our discomfort, we can go to the aid of the victim or we can revise our opinion of the victim to maintain our belief that the world is "just." 2  If condition A prevents consequence B, but B happened to the victim, then she did not follow the rules. She brought it on hers...