An Atheist Explains Karma
Karma is a belief that whatever you do will come back to you. It is also what you get by posting cat pictures on Reddit but that’s not what this post is about. By doing good deeds, one can collect good karma and expect good things to happen to them. Likewise, when you do bad deeds, it will come back to bite you.
It is not a surprise that this belief is so popular. We like the idea of divine justice. Of thinking that good things happen to good people. However, as an atheist, the thought of some guy up in the clouds keeping a balance sheet of every good and bad deed every person has done did not really sit right with me. I don’t believe there is some grand meaning to everything we do. Everything is completely accidental and random. It just seems like wishful thinking to want the good guys to win and the bad people to face consequences of their actions. After all, that is what Hollywood has taught us.
However, what if there is some substance to it?
Even as an atheist, there is no denying that your actions have consequences, not just to yourself, but to others around you as well. We are the sum of our experiences. Every person you interact with has an effect on you. With every Medium article you read or Facebook post you see, your perspective changes ever so slightly, some having a bigger effect than other. These small and big experiences shape who you are. Even if you don’t realize it, your actions today might be influenced by something that happened to you years ago. Even a small seemingly meaningless interaction with a stranger can become ingrained in your personality.
The human brain is quite similar to how Artificial Intelligence works. To build machine learning models, we provide it training data as input. There could be millions and billions of data points provided as input. For Medium, this can be every click that is made, every time you scroll, every person you follow, the time you spend on an article, etc. This data then defines the article suggestions you see. Every single data point affects the algorithm and changes the output in some small way. We can think of our mind as the AI model and all our experiences and interactions as the input data points. The actions we do are defined by these inputs.
Which is a long-winded way of saying that our personality and actions are shaped by our interactions with others. This means that when others are kind to us, we are more likely to be kind, not just to them but to people in general because that interaction shapes our personality. Similarly, when we meet a rude person, it makes us more likely to be rude to others. Before you say — Well, that’s not me! Think about it — one rude person will have a small effect. It’s like one data point among a million. But imagine if most people you met were rude and mean. It would make you meaner too. You would just think that’s how the world is.
Now how does this tie to Karma? Well, every time you are kind to others, it has a butterfly effect. You make them a slightly better person. You are one interaction that shapes their personality. And when you are rude to someone, you have the opposite effect. Now this person will interact with thousands of more people, who will each interact with thousands more. A lot of these interactions will be influenced by the interaction that person had with you. It may not be obvious, but remember that your interaction became a part of their personality. And some of these are people you might cross paths with someday in your life. If they are kind to you, you might have played a small part in it.
If it all seems too abstract, I will give you an example — Just last week, I was trying on a pair of shoes at Nordstrom. Another shopper looked at them and said “Wow, the shoes look great! What a fine design!”. This is something that had never happened to me before. I am someone who keeps my public interactions to a minimum when shopping. But it made my day. It made me realize that complimenting others when they are shopping is a perfectly normal thing to do that can make their day. And now, it is something I will start doing more often, which will hopefully influence others to start doing it too.
So by doing good deeds, we nudge society ever so slightly towards a positive direction. And since we are part of this same society, that kindness comes back to us. That is how Karma works. Of course, it is not a perfect system. There is no one keeping score and not every good or bad deed will have its consequences. But the general principle stands — Do good things and good things will happen to you.
