#kharma

Challenge #04615-L231: No Expectation of Reward

You are an elf, why should you help us?

"It has been a millennia, and you still believe the war rages?"

After what WE suffered? Our people have kept hidden here since our ancestors came to flee your chains!

"I was not one who chained you, ones like me let you free."

You're going to have to prove it.

"I think my friend and I can help. Please, it's time to let the hate finally end and come back into the light. You've lived here, in fear and darkness, far too long." -- Anon Guest

It was one of those little places that had been isolated from the rest of the world for an uncertain amount of time. Peaceful, idyllic, and entirely undeserving of the impending disaster billowing towards them. Wraithvine got ahead of it in the nick of time, expending all hir magical capability to halt it before he could harm the little vale.

Viewed from a safe distance - say, the central marketspace of the main town - it was quite the lightshow.

Iminar had been trying to hustle hir children further from the literal cloud of doom. Ze could only carry two of them and had to hustle the rest along. Praying that the rest of the panicking crowd wouldn't step on anyone. She'd looked back to yell at Luda, who was dawdling, and slowed to goggle at it. Just like Luda had.

Challenge #04571-L187: As You Sow...

A corporate lawyer has made his fortune fighting worker regulations in Boston, breaking up union strikes in Sri Lanka, and sending Pinkertons to crack tree hugger heads in the rain-forest.

One day though he steps through the wrong, ethereal door and finds himself in the body of one of those he had fought, facing down the corporate guns.

[Twilight Zone Music Plays] -- Anon Guest

Presented for your approval, James Worpyington-Smythe III, council for the corporate persons and their rights to pursue profit. The little people are merely grist for the grinding gears of progress.

Employees got enough of a wage to eke out a living. If they dared fall sick, the could not afford James' services regarding their allegedly wrongful dismissal. Corporations, on the other hand, did not possess messy and unreliable biological processes, could not fall sick. Further, they had nearly bottomless pockets. It was clear which side James preferred to take. Under his direction, armed forces with similar motivations removed the "organic obstacles" to the multi-million-dollar greater good.

The only downside was that he was sometimes ordered to supervise the proceedings.

Great power demands an equally great moral compass; I feel the need to say that. Kharma was supposed to be a system of empowering those it deemed worthy, but it has long since stopped being a judge of character, instead being a judge of popularity. Popularity is not a measure of one's moral compass.

Unfortunately Kharma no longer serves the purpose it was made for. Souls were supposed to judge the moral quality of eachother, but instead they judge the superficial social mask of others. If Kharma is to be reformed, souls need to learn how to spot a strong moral compass behind a soul's actions.

Skills can be taught, but a moral compass is a quality of a soul that can only be earned. If Kharma wants to empower those who will wield power responsibly, it must seek those with a strong moral compass who already understand the responsibility of power. Actions may be loud, but morality is quiet. Actions can be deceiving, but morality is pure in nature. Actions are easy to see; morality is difficult to perceive.

Today is a, frustrating, day. I know I will get through it all the same, but I know the issues frustrating me will still remain all the same. This is going be a negatively tinged post, so feel free to leave it behind if you are not ready for such. This is going to be a long subject:

Although my topics to gripe about are quite vast right now, there is one root to the most of it that I need to put my thoughts to paper on: the state of Kharma right now. Kharma being my term for the sort of collective will made from these souls communicating. It’s in a bad place right now.

The “will” of Kharma is decided by the collective voices of each soul within it, but the system is not exactly fair, nor balanced, nor designed to resist exploitation and abuse. Those who speak the loudest, good or bad, have the most influence on Kharma.

Malice is born within Kharma, and it spreads readily at the command of those who speak the loudest. Some may think they are wielding it to silence the evil of the world, only to find themselves taking the very actions they claim to fight against. Innocents are targeted, perpetuating a cycle.

Kharma thinks itself a great adjudicator of justice, but its judgment is only as strong as the souls who think for Kharma, and that judgment is actively under siege by Malice, by the Harbingers of Deception, facilitated by the Harbingers of Complacency. The system is being corrupted from the inside.

It pains me to know there is nothing I can do about this. I walk the path Dharma. I only hear the cries of Kharma and answer them, but Kharma will not hear out my own, even for its own sake. Only Kharma can save itself, but the influence of Malice actively pulls it away from the answers it needs.

For Kharma to save itself, it must seek out the answers and push them to all of its souls, not just the souls it finds cooperative right now. Kharma needs to see the influence of ill voices and stop spreading it. Kharma needs to seek out the answers and amplify the voices of those that find them.

It needs to inform its own, so that it can correct its collective judgment. It needs to see its prejudices and correct them. Kharma is not going to be saved through hostile division and wars against itself. Kharma needs to empower those with the capacity to reform the lost, not wage war against them.