I have seen through the decades since the 1960's folks who for whatever reasoning or thinking that everything in their lives where not only of someone else's doing but that they did nothing to help either.
I have always been of the mindset that, yes, there is outside influence, BUT "look in the mirror" and see the problem, issues, be it good or bad.
I 1005 believe in karma, as I have through the decades seen it so VERY many times happen. Personally, I will give one example, back in 1983, the small town that I grew up in, I got a summer job there, so I moved there for the summer. One Saturday night 2 other guys that I got to know thought it was a great idea to go to the next town over, about 35 miles away for the evening and have a few beers and check out the ladies. When we stopped in a bar around 1:10am, I went to the bathroom in the back of the bar and told the other 2 lad that I would have the same beer that they were going to order.
When I got back to the front of the bar from the restroom, both of the guys were gone. I got a gut punch in my stomach and thought, I bet that they took off and dumped me in this town and that is why they mentioned coming to this town earlier this evening. I ran across the street, and YES, I was correct, they drove off and left me there. No cell phone in that day so I had 35 miles to walk back to my car.
I was about 1 mile out of town and a local cop pulled up behind me, I was walking on the gravel shoulder and asked me what I was doing out there. I told him and he was shocked that someone would do that "for laughs".
He drove me to the county line and radioed a cop from the town where I was living for the summer, and he gave me a ride to my car.
The one driving was busted for drunk driving a few weeks later and lost his driver's license for a long time and the other person was killed when he was going over 130MPH and lost control and crashed and died.
I have had since the 1960's other situations like this, and it ALWAYS comes full circle, ALWAYS.
We are OWN masters of our fate, HOWEVER, one aspect that I learned is to ALWAYS treat EVRYONE with respect, love helping others and if I get zinged because I am GULLIABLE, well in the end of things it always comes full circle, and the scales of life always balance
I make a tremendous number of mistakes, BUT I always take full responsibility and make amends and if someone wants to laugh at me, hurt me, whatever, it WILL balance, always does.
So hurt myself because of others, NEVER. I would never hurt anyone on purpose; it is NOT in my DNA.
Walter
Well I agree, in your situation I wouldn't say it was really karma, you were "apprehended" and left in another town by two dumb idiots who were too "zesty" for their own good and since that's how they were and they thought themselves to be invincible, they ended up paying for it because of their own volition and way of living.
The text I first described honestly comes from a place of bias because I , many times forget that when you meet someone who is worth hurting (talking about average people; NOT an Epstein like evil or some evil CEO who I'd pounce on like a panther if I ever saw them); most of the time they'll end up doing the job for you because people who hurt will eventually get hurt themselves. What I dealt in my childhood was systematic abusers who are smarter and better and because of my own bias I couldn't see that most people, even on here, will obviously say "No, of course I wouldn't hurt others", of course they wouldn't they don't have
internalized anger
When I wanted to talk about hurting others , I even said that it's either all of us or none of us because 99.999999999% of people did me no wrong (the all of us part comes from the fact that, even if I can't choose for others , I still think it would be better if there was no life at all and we all peacefully vanished one day), but the anger from the remaining 0.00000000000000000......1% of people still remains and it can, if left unchecked, manifest and seep into the lives of the ones who are undeserving of it, of course I personally noticed that happening years ago out of dumb luck honestly, I am surprised myself I didn't end up being a murderer; so now I'm fine and can control it to not hurt anyone around me, I can't make it go away.
But about 8-9 years ago I was really obsesed as a kid with revenge, with child killers who killed their abusers and took revenge, now after all this time, I saw news about a knife murder in germany and saw that the perpetrator was mentally ill and thought about it, I kind of projected maybe? used my own biases but I just wanted to see how others who were hurt and are hurting process their anger and if they find it justified to take it out on the ones that you hate and maybe even extend it beyond that or if they don't find it justified in any way shape or form;
And honestly, I don't find myself superior for getting to this conclusion or choosing not to act in anger, if you drop two of the exact same glass bottles, one can bounce and the other can break, that doesn't mean a bottle is superior to the other, it's just how you reacted to the world. Also, as a side note, the propaganda part is a true question, as in , I do believe that powerful people are "afraid" as they wouldn't build armies, guns, policeman otherwise. so they of course would want to keep us obedient and to pose no threat to them if push came to shove and we wanted to take out let's say an evil CEO or a rogue president that has many oligarchs at his side.
That's out of the question, as in, in my opinion it's just gaslighting made by powerful people so the person takes their lives in the end, instead of also taking the life of one evil bastard with them (as Luigi did, again I don't think of him as some sort of messiah but I do believe that for someone who killed another person, he did a fine job and while emotions were at play it was a justified outburst with no extra damage to anyone else, in fact it might have helped people, so I respect the way he went about it and honestly think he made a big breakthrough showing us that these people are not invincible and we can take them out if they make us normal folk suffer)