Poetic Justice

OR: What to do about karma?

I have a horrible constellation of zits on the left side of my face, arranging Orion’s belt onto my preferred cheekbone. Over the last month as one of these zits, then the next, then the next one cropped up, I shook my fist at the sky and cursed god or whatever else is going on up there. I can’t understand why I have these zits because I drink enough water (I think) and eat enough vegetables (probably) and am really good about washing my sheets especially my pillowcases (definitely, maybe, not sure exactly, but enough to not immediately think it makes sense that I’m reading braille on my face).

Returning to the fist being shaken at the sky, I wonder if maybe I do deserve the zits. I quickly catalogue my recent actions and sort them into mental pockets of morally justifiable, neutral, or totally indefensible. Because surely the awkward number of zits on my face has to be the product of some kind of moral shortcoming of mine- an ethical wrong somewhere in the barely catalogued history of my life that I’ve just overlooked. This bulbous trio of sebum and dead skin and blood pushing through my face with a scam caller’s persistence must be the product of karma.

I was raised to place stock in the idea of the universal balancing act. Like many traits that I feel complicated about, it’s something I get from my mother. I mentioned in an earlier newsletter that my family had an iconically pointless argument recently- an argument that could’ve been entered into the guinness book of world records for its pointlessness, or be featured in the Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum on Hollywood Boulevard as an example of an argument so pointless you might hardly believe that it was possible. Regardless, it happened, and as it resolved, my mother mentioned how she reconciled the feelings of sadness that might surround an experience like that with the belief that it occurred because of something within her karma. A negative experience she encounters must, in some way, be predestined because of an action from her past.

My religious upbringing was casually, performatively Hindu. I’m not uber familiar with the mythology and struggle to connect names to faces when dropped into a temple. Ask me to distinguish the regional differences within the religion, to diligently track the incarnations of one god or another, or differentiate between the mythic deities versus the gods representing celestial bodies and reader, I’m cooked. Luckily, keeping track of the figures of the Hindu Cinematic Universe never has and probably never will matter to my life. Sorry if y’all are reading this.

Karma, however, has remained infinitely relevant. Likely because it’s easy to explain to a child. If you do good things, the universe rewards you. If you do bad things, you are punished. It’s a powerfully intuitive concept that at this stage of life, has become almost indistinguishable to me from my instincts. What I didn’t realize as a child would follow my introduction to karma was the reflexive idea recently espoused by my mother: that the good that happens to you was set in place by previous actions, and thus everything that happens to you is deserved.

Questioning the belief systems you’re raised with as you grow up is as natural as developing them in the first place. I know many former catholics giving up their guilt, young jewish friends renouncing the label of “chosen people,” and muslims cherry-picking which practices help them find direction. I wonder what to do about karma.

The argument against karma is the same swinging hammer that shatters my faith in any higher power: it crumbles under the weight of justifying the immense suffering in the world. On karma’s terms, those experiencing the burdens of oppression must also bear the culpability. Those with poor fortune are being punished with their plight. I just don’t fuck with that. Like you’re telling me the people of Palestine are to blame for their own subjugation? In this sense, karma sounds like the words of an oppressor. It seems to echo the voice of the American Theocracy, that successful people are divinely chosen, and the less fortunate divinely punished. I don’t believe that many, if any stories of success were written with a moral mandate in mind.

My faith in karma crumbles when held against the structures of power that exist in this world. The very nature of global capitalism and imperialism, the interwoven practices of both, demand that those leading our institutions reap immense benefit from the exploitation and repression of others. It bestows upon me a crisis of faith, challenges the instincts of mine that are so basic I can trace their direct lineage from my mother’s mind to my own. It meets my optimism- which wants to echo that the arc of the moral universe is long, but bends towards justice- with a crushing sucker punch: declaring that there may be no cosmic balancing of the scales.

Embarrassingly, this is a topic that really germinated in my head after the election. Not that I think Trump winning was an act of karma one way or another. I was begrudgingly rooting for the Democrats, but in retrospect am not surprised by the loss. The drop off in enthusiasm to vote blue is couched comfortably in the lap of a slew of party decisions. In just the years that I’ve been old enough to vote, the party has stripped away everything from their platform that once made me excited to fill in their bubbles: Medicare for All, affordable college, and the Green New Deal. But, regardless, the election made me realize: there is not an inherently moral arc to the universe. Can anyone, even the most distracted audience member to the political theatre, look at how fortune fares in America and truly believe the world rewards good deeds?

you can’t tell me this is my fault. well maybe you can

I question my faith in karma, one of my earliest beliefs, with regret. The way a child might rue the realization that Santa Claus is an Amazon shopping cart. I wish there really was a naughty and a nice list.

So then, without karma on the table, how are we to act? A worse admission than my crisis of faith, is that even against my own rationality, some still lingers. Even if it no longer stands up against one philosophical critique, an ingrained belief is still hard to shake. “Goodness” is still a compelling concept. Say there is no macro, cosmic enforcer of justice. Our institutions are not built with ethics in mind. Even so, there are figurative bonds between people. A relationship is a kind of consequence. I’ve felt relationships strengthen or weaken with a “good” choice or a “bad” one.

The current of opportunity or power does not bend to the scales of moral justice, but people still place their weight on the plates anyway. Communities form around shared, personal ideas about right and wrong. I’m grateful for the idea of karma, for inspiring me to throw my weight behind people and actions that I think are good, and not bad. Staying closer to people who I think are a little less selfish, a little more principled, who also prefer to do more good things than bad ones, has benefited my life. Perhaps, that’s karma.

Like, the intrinsic belief I’ve had, that I think easily falls apart when held to this critique, is that if I were to act with as much integrity as I possibly could, the universe would reward me with the things I desire. But let’s be real, I work in Hollywood, and self-righteousness does not propel you upwards- it maybe does the opposite. However, broadcasting and thus connecting upon values of integrity has brought me closer to people who share those ideals, and thus onto sets, for example, where I am treated with more kindness than I might have found amongst those with different values.

If anything, the true conflict here might be from a really obvious epistemic misstep of conflating a spiritual concept with the language of the market (an act that feels pretty distinctly “Indian-American” if you think about it for long enough). I confess to thinking about karma as a transactional relationship: with good behavior, comes a reward. I confess to assuming those rewards, sometimes, would come in material form, like economic and career opportunities. I’m embarrassed that, if ever I pray, maybe half the time it’s for shit like that. But that is futile. A different system runs shit like that: one that might require inputs of hard work, talent, or audacity, and maybe sometimes Goodness, but definitely not always. And maybe it’s better that way. Maybe “goodness” should defy transaction and subvert reward.

I’d rather it be that way, than treat my relationships with that sense of mercantilism. I don’t wish to be settling scores with people I care about, keeping any tallies of how much goodness I showed them versus how much I got in return. I don’t want to calculate if both sides of the equation representing our love makes sure to cancel out to Zero. I don’t want to be left with Zero.

Being taught about karma as a kid might have gotten me to start considering the impact of my actions, in a way that was a little more grounded than “coal versus christmas presents” and a little less dramatic than the promise of being sentenced to heaven or hell. But growing up, I find it harder to rely on the cosmos to right any wrongs, and know that justice is mine to contemplate. Thus, the same healthy doubt that I place on the moral universe or global institutions of power, I deserve as well.

As an adult I wonder, oftentimes, if I’m moving with integrity or self-righteousness. I treat those I trust very well, but I don’t always treat everyone well. My empathy is infinite, but my kindness is admittedly not. I get annoyed, I’m critical, and I can be short with people. Someone else could be right to tip their scale of justice against me.

I, like many other hip-hop fans, have been thinking a lot about Kendrick Lamar this year. He and I share a birthday, and my mother’s passive curiosity about astrology, possibly inherited by me, has trouble letting go of that fact. I admit to feeling a sense of kinship with my GOAT. For much of this year, I saw his run of diss tracks as a sort of pursuit of justice against Drake and what he represented: Kendrick is an artist who interrogates himself through his work, challenges himself to experiment with his form and technique, and makes work that uplifts and represents his family and community. Drake is an artist who pursues only the inflation of his own ego and power through the accumulation of money and streaming numbers. He, for a long time, has avoided making work that reflected on his own interiority, or even demonstrated an improvement in skill. And most importantly, he very publicly pursues minors.

For a lot of this year, I moralized constantly about my respect for Kendrick Lamar. His release of GNX last week was like Christmas for me- it’s one of my favorite albums… ever. It did also, however, prompt me to revisit his other work, for example, his last album: Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers. On this album, Kendrick addresses his reputation as a flawed, self-righteous figure in his community. He admits to personal wrongdoing, describes his work in therapy, and discusses inherited beliefs of his own. He plainly states newfound convictions: like calling men to action to undo their own patriarchal thinking and to treat women and queer people with more respect. At the same time, Kodak Black is featured all over the album, who pled guilty to assaulting a minor in April of 2021. So what the fuck?

Putting Kodak on that album immediately throws a grenade into his body of work, and his image as the steward of integrity within the music industry. Which ironically or maybe even appropriately, is also the central message of the album itself. But what I take from this is that despite the coincidence of our shared date of birth, it’s clear to me that our moral compass is not always so aligned (another unfortunate blow to an ancestral belief system.) Evidently, justice is decided by the individual.

Whether called God, Santa Claus, or Karma, it seems any belief system’s moral value can be assessed only second to the actions of its agent. In the cosmic court of law, we are each judge, jury, executioner, plaintiff, defendant, stenographer, and the camera crew putting it all on cheaply produced daytime television.

I’ve ruled that I very well might deserve these three zits on my face.