Revolutionary Optimism and the Law of Karma

Revolution is Inevitable and Unstoppable

I’ve been coming across this term “revolutionary optimism” recently. I don’t know if I fully grasp the concept yet, but it does remind me of the Law of Karma which I do have a good understanding of. And viewing the current state of the world through the lens of Karma I’m actually optimistic because revolution and change is an inevitability, not just wishful thinking.

Revolutionary optimism is a belief that fundamental societal change is not only possible but also achievable through collective action and a commitment to love and justice. It emphasizes the power of individual actions, even small ones, to spark significant positive change within communities and beyond, fostering a future built on empathy and justice.

Optimism would seem to be counterintuitive given the many crises facing millions of people in the U.S. and around the world. But optimism backed up by revolutionary thinking is just what is needed in this moment.

The most immediate antidote to nihilism is revolutionary optimism. Revolutionary optimism isn’t rooted in a blind hope that change will come at some unknown point in the future. It is cultivated by the acknowledgement that only through participation in the struggle to liberate the people can the lives of the people be transformed. Revolutionary optimism is bolstered by a deep curiosity in and knowledge of the history of class struggle.

Revolutionary optimism is not merely a mindset, but a duty to fulfill our commitment to liberation of the masses from an outmoded system in decline. And it isn’t simply reacting to a hope for a better future, either. Revolutionary optimism is realizable when a concrete analysis of concrete conditions leads to a higher level of consciousness that a better world is not just possible, but a process that is very much alive in the here and now.

https://www.centreforoptimism.com/blog/danny-haiphong-puts-the-case-for-revolutionary-optimism

Karma is Not Punishment

The most common misunderstanding of Karma is that it’s a system of divine judgement, that Karma punishes evildoers and rewards good deeds. That is a misunderstanding of Karma which conflates the Eastern idea with Judeo-Christian teachings of heaven and hell.

The most accurate way to describe Karma in English is cause and effect. For every cause there is an effect. For every action there is a reaction. Nothing in this reality is random. You can trace an unbroken line of cause and effect all the way back to the beginning of this universe.

This is not mystical or woo-woo. It is logical and observable. Take any human living today, you can trace an unbroken line of ancestors all the way back to the first human, and then back through apes from which humans evolved, and then back to the single-celled organisms, and then back to the early formation of Earth, and then back into the debris and dust that coalesced to become the Earth, and back and back and back until you arrive at the Big Bang.

You could do this for every grain of sand, for every tree, for every blade of grass. There is an unbroken line of cause and effect that stretches from the beginning of the universe until the present moment for every single piece of existence. The molecules that make up the water in your faucet have traveled countless eons to arrive at that exact moment when you needed a drink. The air you breathe has circulated on this Earth for billions of years and passed through the lungs of trillions of animals.

Every action you take has an effect. Every thought you think has an effect. Every piece of sensation that you cling to or have aversion for has an effect. Every idea you are attached to has an effect. This is the teaching of Vipassana. This is the true teaching of the Law of Karma.

We create our own heaven and hell right here in this moment through our thoughts and actions, because every thought and every action produces an effect. There’s a deep sense of hopelessness and nihilism in the modern world. We’ve been propagandized into believing that our votes don’t matter, that our voices don’t matter, and that our actions don’t matter.

An age old conspiracy is that the “elite” hide occult knowledge from the rest of us. I think if there’s any merit to such an idea, the hidden knowledge is this simple fact: all of our thoughts and actions have real and tangible effects on our reality. What “they” want is to keep the actions of the peasant population chaotic and disorganized. Unfocused and un-energized.

Fenced in By Illusions

We are in a time of great upheaval and turmoil. This is undeniable. But we are also in a period of great awakening and unveiling. And once your eyes are open, once you are awake, you cannot go back to sleep. That is another law of nature.

This law really fucked up my life after I hiked the Appalachian Trail for the first time. I tried to go back to my “normal life” in Missouri. I tried to go back to working my accounting job and to numb my dissatisfaction and discontent with video games and weed but I just couldn’t. I had seen that there was a different and better way to live. A way to live outside of the status-quo. We must step outside of our cage to see it clearly for what it is; cages we have built out of fear. Cages that we maintain for ourselves. Cages whose bars we reinforce daily with our fears of poverty, of homelessness, of suffering, of death.

In the Tobacco Root mountains in Montana during my first hike of the Continental Divide Trail I walked by three horses. They were “fenced in” between trees on a patch of grassland with pink and white plastic construction flagging tape. These thousand pound animals were fenced in to this small patch of grass by plastic flagging tape that a child could break. But they’d been conditioned their whole lives to stay inside the fence and so these horses placidly grazed within the boundaries of their makeshift enclosure.

It struck me then that this was the perfect analogy for how we are fenced in and caged in our lives. We could at any moment rise up and overthrow this tyranny and change our systems. It is absurd and indefensible that upwards of 45,000 people die each year in the US due to lack of insurance and that there’s 550,000 medical bankruptcies each year. The wealth of billionaires has more than doubled since 2020, grown by 14 trillion dollars while the average American struggles more than ever.

We are billions. There’s only a few thousand of them. And yet we are like the horses. Bound by our conditioning and our lack of understanding of our true power.

The illusion that if we stay in line, that if we don’t rock the boat and just go along we can have a comfortable and good life is falling away now. We are all having to face the harsh reality that things are bad, and they’re only going to get worse. We are being forced to face the things we feared, poverty, homelessness, suffering, death, the pink construction flagging that kept us fenced in.

This is good. This is forcing us to confront reality. And only when we see reality for reality can we change.

Revolution is Inevitable

I don’t know how long it will take to change our systems. I don’t know if it will be in my lifetime. I think my future, our immediate future is going to be fraught and perilous. Realistically I think a lot of us aren’t going to survive what is to come.

But I am still optimistic. Because every action has an effect. Every thought has an effect. Every word I write today will affect the reader’s consciousness. Every video I make will affect the viewer’s consciousness. These effects will cascade out through our society and world. I see this change and shift in consciousness daily in my work.

I am learning about the “Boomerang of Imperialism” and “Revolutionary Optimism” from Gen Z creators online. My videos have been viewed more than 26 million times in the last month alone by 8.1 million different individual accounts from all around the world.

And you don’t need a big platform to make a difference. Every word you speak creates an effect. Every action you take, every person you help, every time you volunteer, every time you stand up and speak out. It all has an effect.

The universe is vast and complicated. We know intellectually that there’s an un-ending series of cause and effect that leads from the beginning of the universe to our present moment but that’s simply too much information for our minds to comprehend. Similarly we don’t have the capacity to comprehend how our actions will echo into the future and through eternity.

Sophie Scholl was 21 years old when she was executed. Her name stands for resistance against the Nazi regime like hardly any other.

Education and studies: In 1940 Sophie begins training as a kindergarten teacher. A short time later, the National Socialists conscripted her into labor and war relief service. In 1942 Sophie begins to study biology and philosophy in Munich.

Resistance: Together with her brother Hans and other students, Sophie joins the White Rose resistance group against the National Socialists. On February 18, 1943, the students distribute leaflets directly at the university. The house locksmith observes and betrays them.

Died: Sophie, Hans and Christoph Probst, another member of the White Rose, are arrested after the leafleting action. After three days of interrogation, the Nazis sentence the three to death. They are executed on February 22, 1943.

Quote: “What we said and wrote is what so many think. Only they do not dare to say it.”

I take heart and courage from the bravery of Sophie, Hans, and Christoph who stood up to the Nazis. Members of the White Rose resistance organization dared to print resistance leaflets and were executed by the Nazi regime for their act of resistance. It would have been easy at the time to think that their efforts were futile, that they died in vain. But look how their story echoes through history. It gives me courage for the struggle against fascism today.

No action is inconsequential. No action is in vain. All of our thoughts, words, and actions have an impact and that’s what gives me peace and keeps me optimistic.

We don’t need to win today. Or this year. Or in 2026 or 2028. We don’t need to win in my lifetime. This fight might take decades, centuries, millennia. But the seeds of revolution have been planted. People are waking up to the class war at hand. The illusions are being shattered. And it will continue, it is inevitable.

The snowball has been pushed from top of the mountain. Now it rolls downhill, gathering momentum, gathering mass. It is inevitable and unstoppable. And one day it will crash over the tyrants in a unstoppable tide of awakened humans.

This is the Law of Karma. We, the people, will continue to fight for what is right. What is moral. What is just. Change will come. This is inevitable.