The Karma of a Nation

The Sanskrit word karma has essentially become part of the English lexicon, taking on a “what goes around comes around” sort of meaning in everyday parlance. That’s not too bad a definition, as far as it goes, but there’s actually quite a range of thought about the nature of this thing we call karma. On one hand, for instance, we have the very precise definition that karma is the result of action done with intention. On the other hand, we have the metaphysical implications of what one’s accumulated karma means for their subsequent rebirth.

Karma is also sometimes referred to rather simply as a law of cause and effect. Every thought or action helps create the ground or causes and conditions from which the next thought or action arises. Which brings us to patterns of thought or action. The word karma derives from the Sanskrit root kri, which carries with it connotations of doing, making, and creating. And where there is doing, making, and creating there are patterns of doing, making, and creating. Thus, it’s possible to move beyond thinking of karma in purely individualistic terms. We can also speak of the karma of human life itself.

Flag on the street near the memorial to Michael Brown

Each of us is a creation based upon a pattern (evolving as it is) passed down via a genetic code created anew each time sperm meets egg. Families have their own unique genetic karma—tendencies toward health or disease. But parents also pass down to their offspring ways of being in the world that arise from various parenting styles (patterns) as well as the values and ideas they instill in their children.

Likewise, institutions have their own accumulated karma, and communities have theirs. Have you ever felt the weight of negative karma while visiting a new city or town? It can be palpable at times. And, yes, as the title of this post indicates, nations have karma as well.

What is our karma here in the United States? What is the ground from which our nation will be born anew in the very next moment? Is it good? Will we enjoy a “favorable rebirth,” as Buddhists sometimes say? What if we still have a lifetime or two (or more) during which to make things right? This will require a little “soul-searching.” And we won’t make any real progress if we allow ourselves to become lost in misty-eyed reverie of patriotic imagery and “American exceptionalism.”

There’s no doubt that this nation has accumulated an abundance of good karma. Our founders forged a democratic nation that has been a beacon of freedom and righteousness in the world for close to two and a half centuries. Our peaceful transitions of power based on the will of the majority (mitigated by that pesky electoral college, of course) have shown the world what civilized and enlightened government can look like. We’ve kept despotism from overtaking the world. We’ve helped fight disease and hunger. We’ve created educational institutions that have nurtured some of the world’s greatest scientific and creative minds. We’ve helped raise the standard of living of much of the world, thereby alleviating suffering for untold numbers of people.

Ah, but we also can’t deny that this nation was built on land stolen from indigenous peoples via means ranging from deceit and broken treaties to genocidal violence. Is it really in keeping with the natural order of things that such karma simply dissipates with the passage of time? And what about the wealth that so many of us enjoy today that was accumulated through the stolen labor and stolen lives of all those men, women, and children who were enslaved on this nation’s soil using this nation’s laws? Don’t we kid ourselves thinking we’ve reckoned with this evil past?

We might soothe our troubled minds for a time with such platitudes as “nobody alive today was born either a master or a slave,” but the karma lives on. Civil Rights legislation has helped, Affirmative Action has helped, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives have helped, but the karma of our racist past still lives on in this moment, in all of us, in some way, shape, or form, both individually and collectively.

And what a tangled and confused nest of karma it is! The election of a Black president would seem to have been a good sign, would it not? But then the racist backlash began, with many legislators absolutely determined to deny him any victories whatsoever and many constituents unwilling to show him even a modicum of respect. Affirmative Action in college admissions, long considered by its detractors to be a racist solution to a nonexistent problem, was declared unconstitutional. And then a new POTUS was elected who gave others like him the permission to be as racist as they apparently always wanted to be. DEI programs have now largely been eviscerated or abandoned—an early spring cleaning intended to clear the “stench” of all things “woke.”

But what does “woke” mean, anyway?  According to Merriam-Webster, being woke is being “aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).” Unless you don’t feel the need for racial and social justice, how can wokeness possibly be considered a bad thing?

And that is precisely the situation we find ourselves in today, with a sizable portion of the electorate feeling that there’s no need for racial and social justice. Books that increase awareness of diversity or shed light on injustice are being banned. Teachers are being prohibited from teaching on these subjects. Women and minoritized individuals in positions of power are assumed by some to be unqualified “DEI hires.” And evidence of the contributions of individuals who are not White and not male is being deleted from the public record or relegated to the basement.

We know from the field of psychology that an individual who’s not ready to deal with something traumatic in their past will repress all memory of that trauma—making it unavailable to his or her conscious mind. This is much like the situation we’re presently in as a nation. But those who have been most directly affected are not the ones repressing all memory of their trauma. They’ve long been forced to deal directly with its consequences. It’s those of us whose ancestors perpetrated the trauma who are repressing it. It’s those of us whose ancestors profited from it and those of us who are still profiting from it who are repressing it. It’s those of us who have lived lives of privilege because of this injustice who are repressing this trauma. But just as our individual psychological health requires that we ultimately reckon with our repressed trauma in a fully conscious way in order that it not haunt our lives in ways impossible to understand, so our nation’s health requires that we ultimately reckon with the lives we’ve stolen from others for the enrichment of ourselves.

The tangled karma of our nation roils in each of as we speak. It plays out in our White House, the halls of Congress, and the Supreme Court. It swirls on the airwaves and out in the streets. The karma of our nation pits some of our highest strivings and ideals against some of our most entitled, greedy, violent, abusive, and self-interested urges. How will it ultimately play out? Will past harm and the harm still being inflicted on people of color ever be fully acknowledged and addressed? Will the moral injury inflicted on those impugned by whiteness ever truly heal without a complete reckoning of what our nation has done? How will it ultimately play out?

 

This post is the latest iteration of one first published on October 1, 2020. The second iteration was published sometime just prior to the 2024 election. I suppose it’s batting .500 then! You may use the Wayback Machine to read those earlier versions if you so choose.  

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This post is in the Power, Practice, and Peace series.

Find a running list of all posts in this series by clicking here.

Image

Flag on the street near the memorial to Michael Brown,

an unarmed Black man killed at the hands of a White police officer.

Photo taken August 9, 2015

  

Copyright 2020, 2024, and 2025 by Mark Robert Frank