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1

Snooze

Your embarrassing envy of those with a measure of resources and financial success and/or the symbols thereof, is getting quite old Erica.

Just cause you can't afford a stretch SUV limo, doesn't mean they are the root of all evil.

Posted by ecce homo | July 21, 2008 11:36 AM
2

ecb, i agree. a close friend spent the last few years flipping houses. she began by vulturing on foreclosed homes. i said to her at the time: don't you think this is a sad way to make a buck? tragic? karmically disasterous? well. now HER home is in foreclosure. her business? bankrupt. bad karma indeed.

Posted by adrian | July 21, 2008 11:38 AM
3

I'm not sure how I feel about this. I mean, okay. The stretch SUV limo is a bit much. But there are LOTS of houses available out there, and if one way to get them sold is to provide bus tours for interested buyers, then so be it. Someone's going to buy them eventually, right?

Real estate agents want to get as many eyes as possible on these houses. Should the tours be parties on wheels? No. It still has a vulture-ish feel to it, though. But I can't get angry at some folks for wanting to get a good deal on a house. . .

Posted by Balt-O-Matt | July 21, 2008 11:47 AM
4

adrian, you can't attribute something as speculative and risky as flipping houses going completely down the tubes to karma. Unless you're a superstitious dingbat.

think about all the supposedly immoral at worst, amoral at best, businesses in the world and how successful some of them are.

Maybe I should start selling karma scanners that are just souped up theremins to the "follow where the light goes" crowd.

Posted by Bellevue Ave | July 21, 2008 11:51 AM
5

Karma is every bit as bullshit as Ken Hutcherson's Christianity. More.

Posted by Fnarf | July 21, 2008 11:57 AM
6

So, ECB, what (exactly) is an acceptable use of a stretch SUV limo is your notoriously anti SUV book?

Posted by You_Gotta_Be_Kidding_Me | July 21, 2008 12:01 PM
7

@5: people don't get what Karma is. its not bullshit. but it's also not "what goes around, comes around".

Posted by max solomon | July 21, 2008 12:13 PM
8

i agree with fnarf. karma is bullshit just like praying and communion. the religious are weak.

Posted by peter paul | July 21, 2008 12:13 PM
9

Maybe I should have been more precise. Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Jainism are bullshit, especially for Americans not descended from the Indian subcontinent.

Posted by Fnarf | July 21, 2008 12:19 PM
10

This has nothing to do with being a fucking vulture. Most homebuyers in 2008 are people who want to house their families or are long-term investors. It's neither criminal nor unethical to buy when the market is reasonable.

I feel sorry for people who bought at the top of the bubble, but they don't have any moral superiority to people who come in after their loans fail. After all, the owners who went into foreclosure probably bought the house thinking it would provide them future security as well, not to join an army of economic martyrs.

Posted by oljb | July 21, 2008 12:30 PM
11

Fnarf said it first, but I'll say it again.

Karma is a primitive religious superstition right up there with virgin birth. If it were a Christian concept, ECB would be ridiculing it mercilessly, calling it creepy and oppressive. But because it's from a third-world, eastern religion, it's all hip and cool.

Posted by David Wright | July 21, 2008 1:05 PM
12

My karma ran over your virgin birth cord.

Posted by Will in Seattle | July 21, 2008 2:09 PM
13

Wow, Fnarf ... that was really weird and totally not cool.

It's fine if you want to bash all religion in general. I don't have a problem with that. But to single out specific religions like that is really insensitive.

I'm an agnostic, and at best a cultural Hindu. But I respect the religion that the rest of my family practices. I respect the Christian religion that most of America practices.

Seriously, that was out of line and not like you at all.

Posted by arduous | July 21, 2008 2:12 PM
14

Also, at David, I remembered you as someone with a lot more respect for other cultures. Weren't you the one I was discussing the South American tribal people with?

I am really shocked then that you would call karma a "primitive religious superstition."

Yes, karma as it pertains to the caste system is perhaps, "primitive," but there is more to the concept of karma than just that. I don't mean to pick on you. I'm just surprised that two people who I really value on Slog, you and Fnarf, would be as dismissive as you are being.

Posted by arduous | July 21, 2008 2:18 PM
15

wheres your waffle god now arduous?

Posted by Bellevue Ave | July 21, 2008 2:33 PM
16

It's OK to bash Chistians but not anyone else.

Try bashing Jews and see how far THAT gets you.

Posted by ecce homo | July 21, 2008 2:37 PM
17

What's uncool about it, arduous? I didn't single any religion out; I named four. For the record, Presbyterianism and Lutheranism and Roman Catholicism and Seventh Day Adventism are a load of superstitious nonsense as well. Better?

But white westerners professing a belief in karma -- or any other non-traditional eastern religious belief -- is MORE offensive than just being stupid and wrong. They are culturally ignorant. If an Indian, or an Indian-American, wants to practice their family's traditional Jainism, that has cultural validity; they OWN it. If some nimrod who went to Evergreen wants to practice it, or some kind of bastardized pot-befuddled version of it, that's culturally ignorant. It's NOT YOUR CULTURE. It's cool to study it, but not to adopt it; you look like a fool.

You also look like a fool when you casually blurt out vague concepts that have their origin in other cultures but have been so deflated as to have no meaning at all -- concepts like karma. People say "karma" who have zero interest in or understanding of the belief systems or the cultures that produced the word and the idea. That's dumb.

But not as dumb as genuine spiritual travelers, who are the dumbest of all people.

Posted by Fnarf | July 21, 2008 2:47 PM
18

Damn,

I NEVER thought that I would agree with Fnarf, but man, you are SO RIGHT on this one.

I have a special hatred for white people who call themselves "Tibeten Buddhists", for the exact reasons you just laid out.

Kudos

Posted by ecce homo | July 21, 2008 3:12 PM
19

@ Fnarf, what I took exception to was your comment that "Karma is every bit as bullshit as Ken Hutcherson's Christianity. More."

If you think all religions are bullshit, fine. But then I'd argue they are equally bullshit. Karma is no more nor less bullshit as Christianity. If you want to argue that people with no cultural and ancestral understanding of a religion shouldn't be spouting off that religion's precepts, fine.

I don't necessarily share your contempt for westerners who adopt Eastern religions. I don't particularly care either way. I do understand your point now, but it was inelegantly phrased to the point where I found it was disrespectful of those of us who were born into those religions you mentioned.

Like I said, I'm an agnostic, and I'm not a fan of organized religion. But I respect my grandmother's practice all the same.

Posted by arduous | July 21, 2008 3:26 PM
20

yeah, its wiki, but how is this bullshit?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma_in_Buddhism

In the (Anguttara Nikaya Nibbedhika Sutta) the Buddha said :

"Intention (cetana), monks, is kamma, I say. Having willed, one acts through body, speech and mind".
Every time a person acts there is some quality of intention at the base of the mind and it is that quality rather than the outward appearance of the action that determines the effect. If a person professes piety and virtue but nonetheless acts with greed, anger or hatred (veiled behind an outward display of well-meaning intent) then the fruit of those actions will bear testimony to the fundamental intention that lay behind them and will be a cause for future unhappiness. The Buddha spoke of wholesome actions (kusala-kamma) -- that result in happiness, and unwholesome actions (akusala-kamma) -- that result in unhappiness.

Karma is thus used as an ethical principle and a cosmological explanation for the world. Buddhists believe that the actions of beings determine their own future, and because of this there are no private actions: all actions have a consequence. The emphasis of karma in Buddhism is on mindful action, not on blaming someone else for whatever happens to oneself.

Posted by max solomon | July 21, 2008 3:47 PM
21

Arduous, I absolutely respect your grandmother's practices, just as I respect my own grandmother's Presbyterianism, because they are rooted in their culture. You could say that your grandmother, and mine, know (knew) who they are (were). But if some little dreadlocked hippie says "karma" to me, no matter how sincere he is, well, I disrespect that. In fact, my respect LESSENS with increasing sincerity.

Your grandmother didn't make this post, notice, and she is not who or what I was objecting to.

Posted by Fnarf | July 21, 2008 4:07 PM
22

Max: that does, in fact, read like bullshit to me. The cosmological explanation described is just plain wrong -- it's not true.

Posted by Fnarf | July 21, 2008 4:10 PM
23

Fnarf, you are being way too literal about a word that's worked its way pretty well into the vernacular by now.

Posted by ECB | July 21, 2008 4:19 PM
24

ECB @ 23: Entered the vernacular meaning what?

Meaning that the Univerise accounts for the good and the bad to ensure cosmic justice and equality? In which case, it's just the sort of wierd superstition you make fun of in Christians.

Or meaning that its bad form for people with money to buy up distressed assets? In which case, that's just wrong.

Most likely, meaning that it's bad form to be wealthy when other people are not, a problem you are doing your best to address by engineering a society in which nobody gets wealth, ever.

Or perhaps, meaning nothing at all, in which case you are just a poor writer.

Posted by David Wright | July 21, 2008 4:34 PM
25

ECB, it ain't in MY vernacular.

And I think we can both agree that being way too literal is kinda my bag.

Posted by Fnarf | July 21, 2008 4:50 PM
26

fnarf: methinks you would really like the book 'are you experienced', author forgotten (it's on amazon). ecce, so would you. i'm serious.

Posted by pretentious | July 21, 2008 7:26 PM
27

All religion is bullshit.

And so are people riding around in stretch SUV's to view foreclosed homes - it's definitely asking for rotten SOMETHING, Erica, but karma isn't what I have in mind. For that, I'd have to get out the sealed plastic bucket full of vegetable scraps I keep under the kitchen sink.

Posted by COMTE | July 22, 2008 10:36 AM

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