As Wolfgang wisely points out, karma is a "concept" that can be wildly abused. Idiocy is beyond the reach of language, generally -- those who are bent on distortion don't try to understand. Rape is a crime committed by one participant against another. It is a crime no matter how it gets rationalized.

I think that the term "karma" can also be abused by those who want to use it as a simplistic accounting method because they do not care to face the complex and subtle nature of the mechanism at work. Much easier to slap a half-understood datum up there and call it "karma".

The interactions between individuals, especially in dramatic stories like GUEST's alcoholic victim/criminal acquaintance, are case studies of the karmic principle working in complex interactions.

But nothing about the use of karma excuses the individual from the responsibility of choosing to be where he is, connected with those to whom he is connected, and reaping the consequences of "bad" decisions. A person who is deliberately uninformed or unwilling to learn about financial schemes may find themselves ripped off by a series of Ponzi promoters or other scam artists. An intelligent person will learn from experience how to discriminate, and learn to suspend the hunger for fantasy when dealing with reality. If he does not, it is his "karma" to be victimized again. Some lessons come more slowly to some learners.

The reason karma works its mysterious ways is not some external "force in the universe". It is a reflection of our own natures and the fact that we often shut out whole areas that we are aware of -- intuitively or however -- when taking actions of an ordinary sort. This involves reduction of responsibility, just like a reduction gear train or a step-down transformer cuts down on delivered force. But the things we shut out, in doing so, don't go away, any more than the passages of a book go away when you put it on the shelf for a while; they hang around reasserting the knowledge until they are faced up to .

We end up teaching ourselves lessons, quickly or slowly, and growing; or, we end up doing a series of ever-dwindling retreats and denials until we end up dead in an alley like GUEST's mechanic.

'Nuff said?

A