On “Divine Retribution”

Hey Occulties,+

The other day, I was reading someone’s fantasy about a man who, despite having been gifted financially and in the looks department, had been felled by an “unfortunate” (implied: mystical and magical curse) health problem in his prime which destroyed him because he’d been unkind to women. Apparently “the cancer” took him down, which if you know about cursing isn’t the way a death curse is apt to take someone down in the prime of life (because a car accident, random violence, overdose or something similar is much more likely to kill someone in their prime.)

*sigh*

OK, how many nice people do you know who have been cut down in the prime of their days? I know a few. I know people who, despite being lovely people who would give you the shirt off of their back and they had no money to give you that shirt, died. They are dead. They were incredibly lovely, kind, beautiful souls – people who, in life, were the most amazing and wonderful people. They’re dead. They died before they probably even saw one frigging grey hair.

Now, how many shitty fucking people do you know who lived (or are living) despite being miserable, awful, selfish, mean, churlish fuckfaces? I know a few. I know people who, despite never having taken care of themselves, never having been very loving or empathetic towards others, never doing many things which we consider good or wise, have continued to persist well into old age (or lived to their 80’s.)

I know you wish that bad people had bad things happen, and good people had good things happen and that all things were equal before our eyes…from OUR perspective.

But you’re being stupid (probably) because humans, while quite intelligent COMPARED TO OTHER INCARNATE BEINGS, are still really really stupid when compared to something infinitely intelligent like the Universe/God/dess/Creator/Spirit/etc. You – as a primate who’s ancestors got smart enough to put some clothes on at some point, and learned to make fires and shit, – are not the one who says what happens to people. This is why nice people die, and mean people live, and nice people live on too, and then okay people get to live to like 90, but then not that OK person, they get to die at 25 in a fiery plane crash. The reason all of those people’s fates are completely NOT RELATED TO DIVINE RETRIBUTION is you are not the divine. You don’t get to say.

Now, I know, we all wanna scare the newbs into being good. Lord forbid they might get “power hungry,” and try to hurt someone,* by using all of this unlimited power of now finding out that being a sack of crap to others doesn’t mean a lightening bolt will strike at them out of the sky for it, but that’s not how we teach people in our “modern” world. People are only that dumb for a limited time, and your tall tales of “this bad person rotted away from the inside for being bad,” are only really going to appeal to the naive.

The reason, so far as I can tell, to be a “good person” in life is not a thing to do with worrying about the finger of God crushing you if you’re not. If I go through my whole life being a selfish shit, when I need help from the other humans of this world, I won’t find myself surrounded by friends but by enemies – it’s because, when I come to the end of my days, I want to be remembered well, or at least remembered (and not in infamy and hated,) by a lot of people. I don’t know what comes after this life, I do think we’re here to learn lessons, and to evolve our souls, but being “mean to women” or “being selfish with money” isn’t going to mark you for destruction…

I think we can all agree – kindness towards others is good. This is helpful to our species. When we are kind to others, when we help others, this is beneficial.

I think we can all agree – generosity is a good trait. When we share what we have with others, we help others which is beneficial to our species, and therefore good.

Loyalty is good. Friendship is good. Laughter is good. Helping is good. All of these are good. Being courageous, honest, merciful, and fair are all good.

Being a jerk, being selfish, lying, being unfair, being cruel – they all can be very bad. If in excess in someone’s personality, they can be horribly bad…but they are a product of self-preservation instincts. They are not there in you because you are trying to get into hell or because you’re the devil.

That fictitious dude the forum poster thought up? He probably “was cruel to women” because of some horrible stuff in his past. Maybe his mother sexually abused him, maybe another woman made a fool of him and robbed him blind as a young man. I’m not trying to make excuses to why it would be “right” for someone to be selfish and/or cruel (people rise above rough circumstances all of the time,) I’m saying that if this person was real (instead of an amusing caricature,) he was who he was for a reason. In that, if we do not have some sort of “mercy” or “compassion” for his state, we are no better than him. We do not get to choose that he die some awful slow death for being a meanie. There are reasons he’s a meanie.

And as much as we want people to pay for their “crimes” in this life that aren’t illegal (rejecting us, being cruel, being selfish, abandonment, not helping us, etc.,) the truth is most of us would be pretty upset if suddenly asked to pay for ours. The truth is we all know some wonderful person (or maybe even an innocent child,) who died (sometimes horribly) despite leading a good life, and we all know bad people who lived very long. Stop trying to add a mythology here to reassure yourself that good people get good things and bad people get bad things. The reality, from what I can tell, is that you get a set amount of time (you don’t know how long) and you should evolve your soul and your spirit. If you waste it on being petty and selfish, I don’t think you will be destroyed for this. I think you’ve wasted your time if you do that, I think you will be lonely and unloved and that is a miserable existence, but I don’t believe your creator hates you for it. Religion is a lovely thing – I’m a spiritual person, and I believe that my religion and spiritual beliefs have evolved me so that I want to give and want to help more than I ever did. However, I don’t think that in the end, if you’re a godless miserable fuck, that you will be much worse off than me, other than you being really confused about being dead (whereas I learned enough about death and being dead from the dead to not be so confused.)

I do think kindness and compassion for all things is right. I do not believe refusal to be one or the other will bring the ultimate outcome of you withering into a husk in your prime. You might, you might not. You could be awesome and die bad. Do what you can WHILE ALIVE to be a good person and the rewards IN THIS LIFE will be friends and happiness. I can’t tell you what happens when you die other than I do believe there is an afterlife.

I know this was a rant, but just avoid the people who tell you suspicious stories about how people who were awful in life found a just end (that sounds divine or magical.) My experience is that this is not so. Nice things happen to bad people. Bad things happen to good people. It has always been this way. Anyone trying to sell you on anything otherwise is not doing you any favors. There is a real this life reward in being kind and good – it’s the love of your peers.

And that’s coming from a very religious/spiritual person, so I obviously have some religion-beliefs I don’t feel the need to slap you in the face with. Everyone can use my message. 😛

Rant over.

~Cat

+Still adding my 2014 posts. Sorry. December was overwhelmingly busy – I was working 14+ hour days at the job, which wasn’t leaving much time for writing. 😦

*This idea that “power hungry newbs shall wreak destruction everywheres” is pretty hilarious. By the time most people are capable of spellcasting at a proficient level, they have spiritually and emotionally evolved past “I wanna curse someone for calling me a bitch.” If they haven’t, they will always be this much of an asshole, and just scaring them in their newb days won’t put them off of misusing what they know. If I teach 1000 people how to shoot, it doesn’t mean all 1000 of them will become murderers – in fact, the same amount of psychos will exist in that number regardless of whatever they are taught. “Scaring people straight” does not, in my experience, offset any bad behaviors very long.