Collective Karma

Westerners think karma means that if a person is assaulted, say, or born deformed, they must have deserved it due to something terrible they did in a previous life. This is a terrible oversimplification.

A lot of karma playing through our lives is actually not our personal karma at all. It's group karma. There's no underestimating the impact of the way our personal karmic flow blends with that of the people close to us, with our community, and with our culture as a whole.

Let's compare the collective karma of two prosperous first-world countries. The United States, where I live now, has an incredibly high tolerance for violence.

Violence is glamorized on television and in the movies, and firearms are readily available. In Norway, where I spent part of my childhood, there is zero tolerance for violence and firearms are carefully regulated. The karmic result is that the U.S.has the highest rate of violent crime among first-world countries. Norway has the lowest.

Now suppose it's your karma to have a bad day. In Norway, this might play out as slipping on your skies and breaking your leg. In the U.S., However, due to the power of collective karma, your bad day might involve getting mugged on the way back from Bingo game. It's just that the personally deserved to be assaulted. It's just that the bad karma of your culture is playing out through your bad day.

In a country where the old gods are no longer honored- the intelligent forces of nature are no longer recognized -companies may feel free to pollute the environment. A child who developed in utero in a particularly toxic neighborhood may be born handicapped due to high level of poisons the culture tolerates in its landfills and water. It's not necessarily that the child deserved to be born with a deformity. It's that a culture that poisons its environment has karmically invited the birth of genetically damaged children.