Why be nice?

But it's all right now, I learned my lesson well.
You see, ya can't please everyone, so ya got to please yourself

-- Ricky Nelson, "Garden Party"

Came across a blog post on Tumblr the other day, the OP was bemoaning the fact that they'd been nice to people and didn't get the reaction they expected.

As they put it:

I don’t understand how I can be so nice to people and I STILL get the cold shoulder

I replied to the post thusly:

Hon, if you’re being nice just so people will like you you’re doomed to frequent disappointment.

People are tired, irritated, busy, distracted, preoccupied, bored, forgetful, it’s generally nothing personal nor malicious; and even when it is, it’s cause they’re just a**holes, nothing really to do with you.

Do it because that’s the kind of person you want to be.

I imagine this person is young, it's a hard lesson to learn that what you put out to the Cosmos may well not be reciprocated immediately or in the way you hope/expect. People aren't obliged to follow the Golden Rule (or even Kant's formalization the Categorical Imperative).

Of course this principle is also what lets assholes and sociopaths and dictators believe they get away with shit. Where the Hell is that infamous Karmic Backlash? 

Penelope has clearly told me (see earlier post A Vision...) there are no rules in the traditional religious sense of eternal/infinite Cosmic punishments in the afterlife for any amount of incarnate behavior (which is, by definition finite), no matter how monstrous or reprehensible it may seem to us incarnate beings embedded in time.

Rather re-entering Eternity is for us like waking up and realizing everything we did good or bad and all their consequences good and bad and the waves of cause and effect (good and bad) cresting and crashing outwards. 

And from all that we get to realize maybe we did OK all things considered; or maybe we come to realize we made a horrible mistake and feel determined to correct it at whatever cost. 

So, Karma isn't some abstract ethical principle that balances things out, it's not about some sort of Cosmic reckoning or evening things up, or about punishment imposed by some stern old man in the sky or lessons from some celestial guru.

We impose Karma on ourselves.