Karma.

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Do you believe in karma?
I kind of believe in it.

There's far too much evidence against it. I believe more in the neutral and uncaring universe of Lovecraft or Camus.

^

If you do bad things to people, it's more likely they'll want to get back to you and make bad things happen. Otherwise, it's pretty much like Jory said, I believe.

Yes I do believe in Karma and I have experienced it plenty of times.

Karma is cause and effect, so, nothing left to believe or not believe really..

Depends on whether you mean Karma in the traditional, spiritual sense. Karma as cause-and-effect (do bad stuff and people will generally punish you for it, do good stuff and they'll pat you on the back) ceases to be a meaningful concept in and of itself — that's just social sanctioning, and there's nothing to believe in there, no.

I don't believe in Karma. The concept is interesting, but I do not believe in it.

moved from Random Discussion to Politics, Philosophy, and Religion

I don't believe in Karma in the mystical sense, but I try to live as if I did. I particularly enjoy acting as an agent of Karma, as in when I'm brought into contact with people deserving of my full devious attention.

That, coupled with your avatar, has a vaguely ominous ring to it. Sharpshooting wrongdoers, are we?

That's a pretty good philosophy there, I suppose; living as if Karma exists. I guess I would consider myself to do the same, but I wouldn't think of it in those terms.

Ideally, one can behave ethically without believing in Karma. The problem with the belief in Karma, is that those people who are impoverished, or downtrodden for any reason, can be written off as deserving their situation because they did something bad in a previous life, for example.

This is my primary issue with it. It is often used as a justification for one's own existence as contrasted with the suffering of others. There's a man I know who believes everything bad that happens to everyone else is a result of Karma. He once told me an anecdote about the man he considers an incarnation of God (or somesuch thing; he was an Indian guru named Sai Baba who died recently). In this anecdote, a man looked out his window and saw two young children fighting with a stray dog over a scrap of food. Despairing, he called out to God, asking why such suffering was allowed to exist. He was visited by a vision of Sai Baba, who said simply: "Karma." That is the end of the story.

This same man once said that if someone physically attacked his three-year-old-son, he would not fend them off, because if something bad happened to his son it must be repercussion for a past life, and is not to be interfered with. Of course, what you say and what you do are two very different things -- but what a thing to say!

"What goes around comes around."

I got no arguement with that.

Well, if you are nice, friendly, helpful and generous to others -- and if you're neurotypical, well-socialized, and not particularly ugly looking, so that people don't perceive you as threatening, disgusting or weird -- others tend to be nice and friendly in return. Although they might as well exploit your generosity and take advantage of you.

However, this simple "be nice to others and they're nice to you" dynamic doesn't mean that those who are treated like crap by society have brought it on themselves.

I think the modern concept of Karma (what goes around, comes around) is largely flawed and more of a platitude that we tend to use to comfort ourselves. It only makes sense of a superficial level, for instance someone who is prone to provoking fights is likely to at some point get their ass kicked, or someone who goes around with a pissy attitude is likely to get that in return. However, when it comes to "the big stuff" its much like I believe Stalin put it, "1 murder is a tragedy, 1 million is a statistic".

Karma is the belief in a just world, however, we don't live in one.

My impression is that the more negative we act outwardly, then the more negative people who experience us will be negative, and the more positive we act, the more positive people who experience us will be. As we share the same world as those people, that can come back to us, unless you can find a way to isolate, or prevent contact with those who you are negative towards.

If you live within the system of your society accordingly, then you should have good karma, or at least a base of karma that can't be tarnished. But exceptions do exists.

In other words, no.