Maybe there is hope for young people!

It's all about Faith when you discuss things that can't be proven or dis-proven. You either have faith or you don't. I have faith that when I do something good it makes the world a better place and it is more likely that positive things can happen from my actions. If I do something bad it has a negative affect and I may be put in a postion where there may be negative repercussions. It is never an instant balance. In my life experience the more good things I do the happier I am. That doesn't mean that bad things don't happen to me. In the grand scheme of things, I feel that the affect we have on others in life is what is most important. Just do your best to make a positive impact on someone else and don't count how many times you did something good vs. how many bad things may have happened.

I agree with Lalabird.

I don't know about "Karma". Good things happen to "bad" people, and bad things happen to "good" people all the time. How do we know when it's Karma and when it's not? Shouldn't we just try to be the best we can be without the fear of "What goes around, comes around" attidudes or being "good" in hopes of attracting favorable reciprocations? All I know is that I feel BAD when I've wronged someone and I feel GREAT when I've done something nice for them. Lala

I believe that honorable living has several benefits to the individual and society, but none of which are metaphysical. 1. People who are honorable usually surround themselves with similar people. Therefore, the people around them are more likely to be generous and honorable. They may have a tendency to be on the receiving end more than people who surround themselves with greedy selfish people. 2. Helping another person often inspires them to either help the person who helped them, or help others. This is because they are grateful for how it made them feel and naturally want to pass that on. Compassion is an instinctual drive that promotes cooperation and survival of the species. 3. Helping people can cause a ripple effect where those helped help other people. There is eventually a net gain in the overall helpfulness of society over time. If just one person is doing this, the effect might go unnoticed, but generally there are lots of people being altruistic. So by helping others and being a good person, there are effects that can result in the reciprocation of one's actions without the need for magical forces. It's just logic. Not to say there aren't magical forces, but by definition they aren't able to be observed. If they could, they wouldn't be magical, they'd just be science. Eric

Since few of us are likely important enough or significant enough to even discuss matters of the infinite universe, let's get "down to Earth" and land on some reasonable benefits to being honorable instead of fighting the unexplainable. Do any of you believe that honorable living & honorable acts are remembered in some unexplainable way or simply have a "tendency" to be reciprocated by people who you have interacted with honorably in the past?

Karma is the string of life which in hindu countries talks of the connection between the cosmos and the individual . Our karma on earth is connected to the cosmos.. wellness

Actually, if you consider there are 100 billion galaxies, each with 100 billion or more star systems (10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or more stars!), I think sentient beings are quite an insignificant part of the universe. I suppose it's a matter of perspective. If we weren't here, there would be no one to appreciate the beauty of nature. So in that fact we are important. We have no evidence to suggest that the universe cares about us like we care about our children. In fact, quite the opposite. The universe gives us disease, famine, and eventually death. It requires us to kill other living things just to survive. Of course there are lots of great things about life that outweigh the negatives, but I don't feel loved by some master creator. I used to, but I realized it was just my imagination. Now I feel an awe and reverence for every moment of my life and nature. It's wonderful that I'm even here at all to ponder these things. There didn't even need to be a universe, but there is. To me God is the sum total of all laws of all universes; totally impartial. At least that's how I feel lately. It's all a matter of preference of how we want to see the universe. They are all metaphors for the unexplainable. Interesting things to think about.

If you consider "people" a significant part of the universe, then it doesn't seem like a far stretch to consider that the universe could care about people.

I'd like to think that the universe cares about people, but more evidence supports the opposite. I used to believe in that though.

I've experienced; "what goes around...(usually-eventually)... comes around." The alternative would suck, wouldn't it?