Karmically Craptacular!

What do King Joffrey and Justin Beiber have in common? Not just that I want to punch both of them in the face, and not just that Justin Beiber is the King Joffrey of music, and King Joffrey is the Justin Beiber of… er… Game of Thrones? It’s the simple fact that, well, I just want to punch both of them in the face. That's pretty much it. Although, when I watch Game of Thrones, I really just hate Joffrey the character, and of course wish him ill will. I accept the simple, archetypal emotional response to the archetypal fictional character meant to conjure such natural, yet entertaining feelings. When it comes to Justin Beiber, on the other hand, with his stupid hair and his wannabe crooked ball cap, and ink yo; the smarmy expression and zero body fat physique; his vapid, boring grunts and puffs that pass for utterances or language; the arrogant, entitled, self-important air he emits all around himself, like a Pig Pen covered in skunk juice and bus exhaust, is that I just want to gouge my own eyes out when I accidentally catch even a glimpse of him.  

When tricked or forced involuntarily into a prolonged acknowledgment of the... Biebs, I want to burn my clothing, and scrub myself clean, and as fast as I can, try to banish the very thought of Justin Beiber from my existence altogether. I would even be willing to marathon listen to my great grandpa's scratched-up vinyl copy of Victory At Sea while stuffing myself with Arbys while watching Bobby Fischer play chess on an endless loop, if just for a minute, I could forget that we live in a world that didn’t drown Justin Beiber at birth, but instead, gave him a medium in which to torture us all endlessly. A horrible reality in which inept and churlish shenanigans pass for talent, are creatively compelling, and are historically and culturally relevant. It’s some kind of sick karmic joke I guess: precious human birth… but with Justin Beiber. Unthinkable. 

Why do so many of us reasonable, non-preteen and non-teen girl adults find people like Justin Beiber so socially repugnant? Is it the same paradigm, or an extension thereof, that makes us hate fictional archetypes like King Joffrey, also despise actual talent challenged troglodytes like Beiber? Am I being a hater? Maybe. Am I being ironic? No, not really. I just want to kill King Joffrey in TV Land, bring his bloated corpse into reality, tear off one of his arms... and use it to punch Justin Beiber right in the face. A karmic catharsis that brings closure to the people I love to hate. Its that simple.

Karma. It must be karma. On every level, it's karma for sure. It's the only way to explain such travesty. If karma is truly real, and I come back as a Justin Beiber of the future, I will be sure to punch myself in the face. Will I cancel myself out? We won't know until it happens. Will I love myself so much that I will be utterly incapable of hating myself? Probably? Will I be so stupid that I will sabotage my own career, however tenuous in the first place? Just watch JB's life unfold and you will see karma hard at work.

And by the way... if karma is indeed real, what actions could one possibly choose to take in the first place that would lead one into becoming such a total douchebag anyway? And what action lead to that choice paradigm to begin with? Wow, karma is hard bro!

Why do people, especially the little informed American, so easily, and glibly throw around terms like karma? They love to use complicated, out-of-context Eastern religious terms in a way that defies, or even denies the deep, complicated metaphysical implications loaded within the concepts. You know, the way I just used one. If I use the word karma to easily explain away an incident that really has no deep philosophical, metaphysical, or religious explanation, it’s just stuff that unexpectedly happens in life, am I really considering the thought process that compels me to just make shit up instead of accepting things at face value? As humans, we are hardwired to find patterns and solve problems. Karma is one of those devices we use to explain away, well... everything. A philosophical panacea to cure all those pesky question wounds.

Where does karma begin and end anyway? How could one possibly know what karma is or isn't? If for instance, I run out into the street and push a little girl out from the path of a speeding UPS truck, is it "good" Karma? What if I get hit by the truck instead, gazing up at those ridiculous fashioned challenged brown shorts as I chortle and gasp my final last few breaths? It’s good for her, but not for me? So, is it good karma or bad karma? What if the little girl lands on the sidewalk, narrowly escaping death by Big Brown Crap Delivery Vehicle, only to be cartoonishly crushed by a falling grand piano? Based on the assertions of the Law of Karma, wouldn’t that event be the result of a bad karmic seed planted in the past, now used up and gone forever? Isn’t that a good thing? And if she was tossed to the sidewalk as I am run down instead, and she fell on top of a hundred dollar bill as I entered the tunnel of light, is it bad karma for me to die horribly, but good karma points for me saving her? Or vice versa? Because what if she saves that hundred dollar bill, invests it later in life, ultimately makes millions of dollars from said investment, then proceeds to use that wealth to commit horrible acts on a scale that simply would not be possible on minimum wage? Good? Bad? Or just total bullshit?

The answer is of course bullshit. That is, it’s all total bullshit. I mean, even if, on the remote chance that karma is a real law that governs all things, and it would have to govern all things, not just conveniently unexplainable in the moment things, but every single thing, how could some non-committal middle aged middle class nitwit who once received a Kalachakra empowerment from the Dalai Lama in Bloomington Indiana 15 years ago, read a 300 page Deepak Chopra screed during a trip to Italy last summer, and wears jade for the “medicinal” benefits, know anything whatsoever about karma? And even if such a person completely understood karma and all its nuances, the question then becomes: how could an arbitrary yet insensate law of cause and effect possibly work in a non-judgmental judging way, anyway?

So hypothetically, (and this is purely hypothetical, I swear) by the dictates of karma, let’s say that when I was a teenager, hopped up on I-know-everything-there-is-to-know-hubris and testosterone and sporting a newly acquired coveted driver’s license, I bully my hapless single parent mother into letting me drive her fairly new Toyota Corolla, (Phantom Gray), and I proceed to commit bloody Road Warrior terror for the next few years, rarely seen without the car and requisite gas can and hose on board (a few of you will get the gas can reference). I utilize the car to commit various petty crimes, partying, and general unchecked mayhem. Then, let’s say that we fast forward into the distant future, when I myself have kids. Then by all accounts, karma’s mysterious, inexorable law, would dictate that when it was time for me to purchase a new car, I would inexplicably, by my own ignorant account, be drawn to, and purchase, a new Phantom Gray Toyota Corolla (that is if that model and color were still available). Well, we know that that scenario rarely, if ever occurs. But let’s say that it does occur, and I purchase said vehicle, whether it is by the exact previous karma, or some other aspect of karma that would have me follow, slave-like into the purchase. And then, let’s say that my son, now turning 16, acquiring a driver’s license of this own, wants to borrow the car? The stage is set and the conditions are perfect; the karmic seed exists... so… 

Why the hell didn’t my son destroy my car like I destroyed my mother’s car? By the flippant way the word and its accompanying concept are so easily thrown around, karma would have me suffer the reality of a wild, hops and bong-water for blood wayward son, replete with the exact make and model car as my own parent, and her very own apparently “bad karma.” That's how it works, right?

Yet, my mother never had a youth involving wild driving and drunken mischief. In fact, I don’t think my mother ever did anything remotely similar to what I did as a teen. And she certainly never had access to a car at that age. She suffered the karma though, big time. I committed the karma, and didn’t suffer the consequences a bit.

What happened then? Was it some other events or actions that lead to those results? For the life of me, I can’t see anything I did in my youth that would have mitigated the bad karma I committed. The only way this could possibly be explained, is by reincarnation and past lives, which is exactly how karma is supposed to work originally. A concept a majority of the people who so easily throw the word karma around reject outright anyway. But reincarnation doesn’t explain it either, simply because there is no way to explain reincarnation because there is no way to test the reincarnation hypothesis. Something can’t be used to explain a phenomena when it itself can’t even be demonstrated to exist in the first place.

Suffice it to say, now having teenagers myself, there is no supposed karmic correlation to actions I committed when I was their age, to their choices and subsequent consequences I experience now that I am of the age of my mother when I was a young monster. Thank the god I don’t believe exists either for that tidbit of good news.

I'm guessing that when properly understood, the concept of karma is a beautiful, meaningful concept that may lead one to a deeper understanding, if not of the world, but at least of oneself. It certainly seems like a more tenable explanation than the zero effort assertion that "God's way is just a mystery," which is even more of a pussy way out. And in that way, it doesn’t much matter if karma is ultimately true or not, or that it, like the god concept, is an untestable hypothesis that defies any kind of authentic scientific investigation. After all, people have believed in false notions as long as there have been people, and despite the utter falsity of those beliefs, maybe even because of those beliefs, people have become great people, and have created and contributed great things impacting all of humanity. But the “concept” of karma in the hands of a superficial boob with nothing better to do, or think, is like an un-loaded gun in the hands of a baby: he can't shoot himself, or anyone for that matter, but he might drop it accidentally on his own foot. Probably just karma.

Well, we know that the imaginary King Joffrey received his imaginary yet viewer-cathartic karmic comeuppance. Most of us felt quite justified in relishing in the shocking image of Joffrey’s gaging, bloated, blood venting, violaceous, tortured death face. It was Shakespearean. But we felt that way because of Make Believe Land’s formulaically perverse, precise, and ineluctable rule of cause and effect: evil guy does evil, and Justice requites him in kind. The inevitable Hand of Fate that cannot be blocked, parried, jammed, or cuffed. The opposite of real life. That’s one of the beauties of fiction’s various avenues of expression, be it film, theatre, or literature, one can make any reality “real,” any illusion a vision. And no one ever mistakes creativity for actuality. We always know it’s just fantasy, and that we require and crave it, simply because we also know, somewhere deep inside, that actual justice is usually only an accident.

So, if Justin Beiber is such an asshat, and deserves gratuitous face punching, is it karma  that he suffers this fate? Should I then go to jail for facilitating the payment of his karmic debt? What then is my pay-off? Punishment? Indeed, if Justin Beiber receives his just desserts, realizes the error of his ways, and reforms himself, taking up, say, more karmically appropriate employment at Taco Bell, should I not only be released from jail, but hardily rewarded for my service to humanity?

The whole idea is utterly ridiculous, and itself deserves a karmic punch in the face.