Do you believe in Karma, why or why not?
I'm taking the popular definition instead of Hindu or Buddhist thoughts.
Karma: What goes around comes around.
Here are some examples of why I believe in Karma.
Hegel thought everything was conflict. There was a Thesis and an Antithesis that came into conflict and produced a Synthesis. The Synthesis then became the Thesis which produced an antithesis resulting in another conflict and so on ad nauseum.
Taken this way it becomes a dog chasing it tail as it becomes circular to the point that the original thesis becomes a synthesis, and you repeat the process.
B) In Pearl Buck's The Good Earth you have a Chinese peasant who gets married, takes over his father's rice paddy and with hard work and children to help him he buys more land and then more land until he becomes very wealthy. In old age he tells his children to never sell the land, but at the end of the story his children are planning on doing just that. The cycle of Chinese wealth.
1. Start as peasant, gain land. 2. Get rich. 3. Children sell land. 4 Grandchildren live off the wealth. 5. Great-grandchildren back to peasant.
C) History is about the rise and fall of empires. With the technology the size and scope of the empires grow in size, but what causes them to all fall is that the desires of the military exceed the capacity of the empire to meet it.
12 comments:
It’s interesting how history keeps repeating itself!
I found this really interesting, Patrick.
Wasn't expecting Hegel in this week's comments!
I don't think the rise and fall of civilizations is necessarily predicated on their militaries, though. The "Good times create weak men / Weak men create bad times / Bad times create strong men / Strong men create good times" pattern seems fairly consistent, though.
Lydia, human nature doesn't' change just the technology.
Thank you, George.
Good way to put it, Stephen.
I always learn something new when I visit your blog. I'd never heard of Hegel!
Man, I haven't thought about Hegel in a lonnnnng time. That's a very interesting answer, and I think it also presents a different take on Karma than what I was thinking about. Thanks!
Everyone seems to agree that what goes around, comes around, to some extent. In a broad sense I suppose it is applicable to nations, but I hadn't thought of it in that sense before.
Glad I can enlighten you, Marianne.
You're welcome, Michael.
Thanks for coming by Priscilla.
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