Is there an obverse to the rude "tl;dr?" Because your post was really long and I read it with enjoyment. ;)
At any rate, that was most interesting. I like your examples of Joe and Sigmund; you make it clear that this works inside one's own head.
What I am curious about is whether the current book does go so far as to be victim-bashing or not. I suppose I'd have to actually read it to find out (shudder) but I feel rather fond of my opinion that one reason it is popular is because it reinforces people's prejudices about social groups during an uncertain time in history. (And yes, I'm quite aware that this statement reinforces my own!)
Yeah, in fact, it is. (My mom got it as a present and made me read it.) It actually says stuff like, "People who are starving and people who died in the Holocaust subconsciously attracted their fate to them."
And that is when the book crossed my threshold from "silly" to "morally repellent."
This is what bothers me about the karma thing. While I know those who strongly follow beliefs in Karma/Law of Attraction, there are some people who you can't tell them. "Yes, you have no memory of doing this awful thing because it was a past life, but you deserve all the pain and suffering." Rather than giving them purpose/reason to the suffering to get through it, they just feel guilty and more ashamed/helpless.
I was just reading about karma in Insight Meditation by Joseph Goldstein. In his chapter Subtleties of Karma, he specifically addresses this issue. He believes that how we act in every moment, how we react to bad things, significantly affects how karma plays out. He uses the metaphor of a seed. An action in the past is a karmic seed. It will have an affect in the future. But if you feed bad actions with continued bad actions the effect will be more profound. You can also starve past bad actions by good actions. So, in his view, yes, you may deserve the pain and suffering, but you can always change your karma by how you react to pain and suffering. It actually sounds a lot like Siderea's argument about attitude.
Oh boy. That reminds me WAY too much of that 1970s-era encounter group they called "Lifespring." My parents participated in one of their seminars and I went to the kids' group (I was about five at the time). Same kind of deal: Everything that happens to you is your own fault.
Fortunately, my dad saw through that poison and we didn't return.
I see quantumkitty has been able to answer you more authoritatively that I could have (thanks!)
It doesn't surprise me, because one of the big attractions to that flavor of wishful thinking (and the variety "If I'm good, God will protect me from bad stuff") is the reassurance that Bad Things Only Happen To Bad People So I Can Protect Myself From Bad Stuff By Being Good. This requires believing that the bad stuff that happens to other people must have been brought on by them doing something one knows one is smarter/better than to do. Same thing with blaming rape victims for their clothing; convincing yourself that she got raped for wearing clothes you wouldn't be caught dead in is a way to convince yourself it can't happen to you. It's a psychological defense against contemplating one's own vulnerability.
At any rate, that was most interesting. I like your examples of Joe and Sigmund; you make it clear that this works inside one's own head.
What I am curious about is whether the current book does go so far as to be victim-bashing or not. I suppose I'd have to actually read it to find out (shudder) but I feel rather fond of my opinion that one reason it is popular is because it reinforces people's prejudices about social groups during an uncertain time in history. (And yes, I'm quite aware that this statement reinforces my own!)
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And that is when the book crossed my threshold from "silly" to "morally repellent."
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Fortunately, my dad saw through that poison and we didn't return.
I like siderea's framing of this far, far better.
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Me too.
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It doesn't surprise me, because one of the big attractions to that flavor of wishful thinking (and the variety "If I'm good, God will protect me from bad stuff") is the reassurance that Bad Things Only Happen To Bad People So I Can Protect Myself From Bad Stuff By Being Good. This requires believing that the bad stuff that happens to other people must have been brought on by them doing something one knows one is smarter/better than to do. Same thing with blaming rape victims for their clothing; convincing yourself that she got raped for wearing clothes you wouldn't be caught dead in is a way to convince yourself it can't happen to you. It's a psychological defense against contemplating one's own vulnerability.
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