Fairness

We have said that a person needs morality so that their existence does not become a threat to the community. We have also said that a person needs morality so that their presence brings peace and happiness to everyone around them.

Morality tends toward fairness. Someone who lives well deserves good fortune and happiness. Someone who lives cruelly deserves misfortune and suffering.

This fairness shows up at several levels. At the human level it is called law. People made laws because they wanted to put the fairness of morality into practice. Whoever commits a crime is punished, which is the work of the judiciary. Whoever has rendered service is rewarded, which is the work of the executive.

Theistic religions express fairness through the will of divine beings. Whoever lives well is rewarded by them, and whoever lives badly is punished. Divine reward and punishment are not as concrete as a court or a government. They are invisible, but in the end they still make a person suffer or be happy.

There is also a religion that presents the law of karmic cause and effect as a natural law of the universe. Like the gods, this law is invisible. It also works quietly, arranging each person's life with complete fairness according to the wrongdoing and merit that person accumulated in the past, in this life or an earlier one.

People who do not care for gods look for fairness in the law and the power of the state. In their view, it is people who deliver fair reward and punishment, and no other force.

People who believe in gods put all fairness in the hands of the gods. Sometimes they believe the gods will set fairness aside if they plead hard enough. They may not deserve it, but if they beg with enough desperation, the gods will answer.

Those who believe in the law of cause and effect try to understand how it works so that they can sow causes and reap results. If they want good health, they ask which good deeds to do and how to give their labor to the world. If they want wealth, they ask how to share their property with people who live usefully, and to avoid supporting those who cause harm. The law of cause and effect is as intricate as advanced mathematics, so it is a challenge for anyone with intelligence.

The strength of the law of cause and effect is that it is objective. It does not depend on anyone's personal will, and it does not depend on belief in gods. In the future, as society advances, people of high standing will choose the law of cause and effect as the basis for building a wise moral system of their own. Anyone who believes in it and understands it will be loved by the public.