someone once told me that he believes in karma, that what goes around comes around. i didn't reply then, but i do not believe in that.
the philosophy that i'm more inclined to agree with is aristotle's view of causality, of cause and effect.
i'm not particularly convinced that there is a superior consciousness that goes around bestowing blessings according to the 'good' that one has accumulated, and conversely, to mete out retribution with respect to the 'bad' that one has committed.
now this might seem contradictory to my christian faith of there being a supreme God of omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence, but i believe that aristotle's philosophy actually reconciles the free will of man to such a all-powerful God.
what we will become, is actually determined by the choices that we make.
a simple example would be a drug trafficker who got caught and is consequentially sentenced to death.
one way to explain this would be that for the countless lives that he had destroyed by fueling and exploiting the enslavement of the addicts for his own gain, karma has finally caught up with him and thus deemed it justice to deal a death sentence. but the flaw of such a line of reasoning, in my humble opinion is that it take away free will of the trafficker. yes, he chose to traffic drugs, but the situation that he ultimately finds himself in is not his to decide. it was imposed upon him by a higher being berefting him of free will.
instead, i choose to look at this is terms of cause, and effect. action, and consequence, with the two inherent in each other, tightly wound around each other that it is impossible to separate the 2. ergo, the ultimate consequence of the trafficker being hanged is intrinsic in the choice to traffic drugs itself. hence, in choosing to traffic drugs, actually chose his own end as well. cause , and effect.
now this is not to say that all drug traffickers would be hanged, the world is not as clear-cut as that. nonetheless, there is a consequence to our every action, they are all significant, and while the effects may be conspicuous at times, at others, they are much less apparent.
therefore, the way that we exercises our free will actually determines our destiny. simple cause and effect.
i'm going on so much about this because i've been trying to constantly remind myself to make the right choices. despite appearances, despite how all good and well one might appear, it means nothing if one mkes bad choices, because bad choices are the causes of bad effects. well one can reason to say that he'd find happiness if he were to steal something from someone else, and the immediate effect of his actions is that he finds happiness. but what of the consequences that are slower to come?
the drug trafficker would have enjoyed years of prosperity before finally getting caught.
take for example wayne rooney. let's turn back the clock to 6 months ago, maybe a little more. he was THE MAN. rooney was the man who simply could not stop scoring (when the press gave him the title, they weren't quit talking about his exploits with a particular miss thompson i do think), he is married to his childhood sweetheart, his firstborn - a son named kai - had just been born, he was tipped for the ballon d'or and he was earning ton lots of money.
i mean, what more could you ask for?
now, rooney is struggling for form, and is one of the most chastised man probably in the world for his affair with a prostitute while his wife was pregnant.
this is probably too simplistic a view, but it does essentially dipicts the law of cause and effect. despite how things might have appeared 6 months ago, by making bad choices, we're actually choosing bad effects for ourselves.
and this is why i've been reminding myself to be mindful of my actions and choices even when it might appear that i'm fighting a losing battle at a mighty disadvantage, always trying to the best of my ability to be a nice guy, meek and gentle.
so what if the club can't even handle me RIGHT NOW? because in case you have not noticed, right now is transient. and the thing about transient is that it does not last.