this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2026
556 points (98.6% liked)
memes
20654 readers
1060 users here now
Community rules
1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads/AI Slop
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live. We also consider AI slop to be spam in this community and is subject to removal.
A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
Sister communities
- !tenforward@lemmy.world : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
- !lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world : Linux themed memes
- !comicstrips@lemmy.world : for those who love comic stories.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Although I agree with your conclusions, I never said guilt = justice. I agree that people feel guilty all the time and it's not equal to the crime both ways.
Religions, parents, teachers, etc., use guilt to control. For example, if you're born with original sin, you're born in a deficit that you have to make up. You were born as a poor soul and another human has to be the go between in whether you're forgiven or not. They control your emotional lives.
Karma, I think, was originally a way to get people to do good deeds. Now it seems to be similar to the original sin crap.
IMO, guilt is in our repertoire of feelings so we don't do evil things when making choices. We tend to self harm when we feel guilty, like become an alcoholic, eat ourselves to the point of unhealthiness, take drugs, put ourselves in risky situations, etc. It's a self-inflicted karma, not justice.
Justice, to me, is different for each person and has more to do with the choices.
Your claim is that when people believe in karma it becomes real (through guilt). Karma is justice, it's a claim that justice is natural and will occur without human intervention - and also as an explanatory tool for why some people suffer and others are lucky. Without karma, you have to use human systems of justice because you can't rely on justice happening naturally. When I say justice, I'm talking about the process by which fairness is maintained through punishment or other resolution of harms done.
It's self-inflicted karma, so each person decides their own justice. I'm saying that karma is the concept that what you do has a cause and effect, justice is the punishment. I think we're agreeing, just saying it differently.