caabus

(Un)fortunately my job leaves my mind a lot of time to wander, and on occasion I have moments of improved clarity into my own beliefs and thought processes. While at work today I considered the ever-present possibility of doing "bad." By bad I mean doing something hurtful to another, everything from making a rude joke to murder. It occured to me that my views follow the same basic principle of karma, but in a much more active manner. Some people consider karma, from various eastern religions, to be some mystical force that gets revenge for those wronged, or destiny itself taking aim at an individual. My belief is much less magical. I think that all actions are self-perpetuating to a certain extent. For instance, it's been said about murder that the hardest murder is the first. With each successive murder it becomes easier until it's not the least bothersome to kill.
We all have barriers towards certain actions, most common among them are social taboos. But as we perform those actions those barriers slowly fade - either by repetition or just from passage of time. when the barrier is preventing us from doing something bad we actually harm ourselves in removing that barrier because we become worse people - as the murderer becomes worse the more easily he finds it to kill. Lacking these barriers causes us to perform these taboo actions more openly, and thereby make ourselves look bad. This in turn alienates us from others.

Other than my boss making an unneccessarilly rude and cruel joke at my co-worker's expense, it was a good night at work.