As a metaphysical thing, I don’t think karma makes sense. If I murder Bob, then karma would dictate that I need to be murdered to receive justice. So John comes along and murders me. Justice has been served. But now John is a murderer and karma dictates that he also now needs to be murdered. So Dave murders him. And it just goes on and on, neverending. Also can these people be said to be guilty when karma needed them to do this? It’s like how Judas gets blamed for betraying Jesus, but god needed Jesus to be betrayed to get his plan to work! It’s all just nonsense.

Karma is supposed to be about ethical causality more than anything else. Per Wikipedia:

The theory of karma as causation holds that: (1) executed actions of an individual affects the individual and the life he or she lives, and (2) the intentions of an individual affects the individual and the life he or she lives. Disinterested actions, or unintentional actions do not have the same positive or negative karmic effect, as interested and intentional actions. In Buddhism, for example, actions that are performed, or arise, or originate without any bad intent, such as covetousness, are considered non-existent in karmic impact or neutral in influence to the individual.[24]

Another causality characteristic, shared by karmic theories, is that like deeds lead to like effects. Thus, good karma produces good effect on the actor, while bad karma produces bad effect. This effect may be material, moral, or emotional – that is, one’s karma affects both one’s happiness and unhappiness.[21] The effect of karma need not be immediate; the effect of karma can be later in one’s current life, and in some schools it extends to future lives.[25]

The consequence or effects of one’s karma can be described in two forms: phala and samskara. A phala (lit. ‘fruit’ or ‘result’) is the visible or invisible effect that is typically immediate or within the current life. In contrast, a samskara (Sanskrit: संस्कार) is an invisible effect, produced inside the actor because of the karma, transforming the agent and affecting their ability to be happy or unhappy in their current and future lives. The theory of karma is often presented in the context of samskaras.[21][26]

Karl Potter and Harold Coward suggest that karmic principle can also be understood as a principle of psychology and habit.[17][27][note 2] Karma seeds habits (vāsanā), and habits create the nature of man. Karma also seeds self perception, and perception influences how one experiences life-events. Both habits and self perception affect the course of one’s life. Breaking bad habits is not easy: it requires conscious karmic effort.[17][29] Thus, psyche and habit, according to Potter and Coward, link karma to causality in ancient Indian literature.[17][27] The idea of karma may be compared to the notion of a person’s ‘character’, as both are an assessment of the person and determined by that person’s habitual thinking and acting.[10]

With this in mind, karma is actually fairly materialist if you ignore the parts about future lives. Intentionally doing good deeds which results in good deeds being materially actualized leads to positive change within the person which further incentivized that person to continue doing good deeds. Almost all virtue ethical systems like Confucianism would agree with this formulation. Doing good deeds (as defined by that particular virtue ethical system) leads to cultivation of virtues (as defined by that particular virtue ethical system), which leads to further good deeds, which leads to further cultivation and so on.

There’s multiple dialectical relationships:

1. The dialectic between an individual’s intention and an individual’s good deed (good intentions vs good works)
2. The dialectic between the performance of the good deed and the good deed’s actual impact on the material world
3. The dialectic between the good deed’s impact on the material world and the individual being transformed by the good deed as well

Karma mischaracterized as some cosmic force that rewards good deeds and punishes bad deeds is just orientalizing Westerners shoehorning their familiar conception of God into something that has nothing to do with it at all.

I don’t believe in karma being a boomerang that comes around again, but i believe that a negative stone thrown in the pond of life will lead to negative waves rippling through it and getting caught by the resulting wave should at least be no surprise to the stone thrower.

Of course not.

no because if we deserve the bad things that happen to us it means children deserve cancer

I believe in ‘Fuck around and Find out’.

Yes, but more metaphorically - to put it simply I think people are their own Karma. People carry around the consequences of their own actions.

That manifests in how they treat interpersonal relationships which in turn shapes reality.

The Marx quote about social beings creating social reality is appropriate here however, what is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ isnt universal truth but one that exists within the social reality of a time period.

Yes, its a wider application of newtons third law, which is that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Karma is like seeds tho; not all actions have the correct conditions for them to ripen, and sometimes they take many years to ripen, sometimes even more than a lifetime. So it can’t be said that all actions bring results, because the conditions might not be right.

In the therevada tradition, karma actually means volitional action. People often mis-define karma as the result/fruit of the action. So a distinction is made between karma, and the fruits of karma.

I believe in certain instances “eye for an eye” punishment can be appropriate. If you want you can view that as restoring “karmic balance”.

As materialists we should deny superstition and beliefs in gods. Our little monkey brains try to connect the dots way too much just to make sense of the immensity of information that the world provides through day to day life.

I don’t know how one can look around at the world today and think that any of this shit is somehow balanced. Or that people are getting what they deserve. Both proletarian and bourgeois people.

no, not in the sense that every good or bad thing is a tally that is rewarded or punished. i think in broad terms sure it points towards how things evolve to some degree