The Person I’m Next to has Created a Strange Logical Model of the Universe

I’m next to this guy. He is sitting on a bench next to a crutch. He has unruly grey hair shoved under a faded baseball cap, several days of a beard, and his clothing is obviously well worn.

He is asking folks that pass by if they can help out with some change. In turn, folks that pass by are deliberately not looking at him. I don't have any cash, but this ignoring-the-guy shit tugs on certain heartstrings. I do have the vaguest sketch of a conscience. So, when it’s my turn to turn him down, I look his way and say, “Sorry man, good luck though.”

This angers the man, “Really dude,” he replies, “well I’ll tell you a secret. Karma is a bitch.” He then asks the next person for some change.

I pass by, feeling weird. He wasn’t yelling at the people who ignored him, should I have just done that? I am unsure. I contemplate my route back from lunch and how best to cowardly avoid the street he is posted upon, and suddenly something bothers me.

His karma curse doesn’t make sense.

First off, I assume he is referencing the colloquial pop culture karma, right? I mean, neither of us are theologians (presumably), so he probably means karma outside of Buddhism, Hinduism, or any of the other practices that espouse that cycle. I could be wrong though if I am, then sorry dude.

But if I am right, then he is saying because I didn’t give him a hand, that I (in this lifetime) will get a stubbed toe, hit by a bus, or some such.

Ok, I can get down with that, I should probably help more. If I did have any cash would I have offered it? I dunno. Although, today I didn’t have any, and I was trying to be polite.

But then I think, so what did he do? I mean I don’t think that being down on your luck means you’re a bad person, that’s some foul social math. But that is what he is suggesting, right? He has obviously had some rough days, so in his logic chain was that the result of karmatic debt?

He is suggesting that the world is a giant engine churning out near-immediate payback for moral slights. So is he saying that he must have been a real jerk to wind up there? If that's true, and I had helped him out would I have interfered with some un-personified divine mandate that has cast him down? Would an exercise of free will like throwing this guy a buck, in turn, throw a wrench in the spinning cogs of the cosmos? Would this one act break the intergalactic camel’s back and sound the klaxon horns of the capital E end? Would we see some catastrophic final days, or just a gradual but hasty heat death of the universe because I broke our metaphysical clockwork? Could I have just narrowly avoided being He That Will Be, and finally cleansed existence of itself?

I think, maybe, I’m not qualified for this discussion.

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