Karma isn't going to get you.

The basic concept of karma is that if you do good things, good things will happen, if you do bad things, bad things happen. It's a bit more complicated than that of course, it is a religious concept after all. 

Now as a basic concept I can see the appeal. It's hard to deny the schadenfreude from seeing a shitty driver get pulled over. The thing is that is simply getting caught not some magical cosmic force. Good drivers don't get pulled over because they aren't doing anything wrong. Now of course cars, traffic weren't a thing in ancient India. So maybe the karma gods or whatever it is simply doesn't care about the little things. Karma might be more about how you treat other people. How you live your overall life. Once again though if you commit a crime and get caught is that really karma? I don't think so, too many crimes don't get solved. It could be that karma gets you in other ways. This is where it gets more complicated. Is there a score card? Does every action result in a reaction? It certainly doesn't seem so. If bad things happened to you after every bad action I would think the pattern would be pretty clear and you would stop doing bad things. Maybe karma is a bit more subtle, it doesn't control everything. It just steps in here and there. Lead a shitty life cheating and stealing from people maybe you get cancer one day. There is of course terrible people out there that have pretty good and healthy lives, so does karma just ignore them? 

Now to the other side of karma. Live a good life and good things will happen. This is the part where everything falls apart. Terrible things happen to good people everyday. Children are hurt, get sick, what could they have possibly done to deserve that? It's this that I simply can not accept. 

It really comes down to magical thinking. Sure it can be fun, I enjoy fun. What is life without some fun. Go ahead and hope that karma "gets" the guy who stole your wallet. I suspect that for many people they don't really believe. They just like the basic concept and never really think about it. It's when people really believe is such things that I get annoyed.  Do they think that people deserve the bad things that happen to them? Do they think that because karma hasn't gotten them that the shitty things they do aren't really that bad? Karma would have gotten them after all. Do they know someone who is hurting others? Are they actually doing anything to stop it or are they just hoping karma will get them? Are they less likely to help the unfortunate in our society? If they were good people karma would help them, they must have done something to deserve it. I much prefer to live in reality. karma just isn't real. I try to live a good life because it feels good to be good. Hurting others just isn't fun.