Wednesday 24 August 2011

Karma the wheel turns

Karma or Concern


Karma: The Wheel of Life
Karma is the concept of "action" or "deed", understood as that which causes the entire cycle of cause and effect. (wikipedia)
"neither a god nor a guru have any role in a person's karma—the individual is considered to be the sole doer and enjoyer of his karmas and their 'fruits'."
Simply put, Karma is: as you sow so shall you reap.  or in other words; what goes around comes around. It is the natural cycle of cause and effect.  We’re all part of one organic whole in which everything is interrelated and everything affects everything else.

Whether you subscribe to this belief, or whether you consider it no more than mystic nonsense, how often in life does a person's actions return full circle to bite them in the backside?

One persons attempts to explain a particularly unpleasant work related experience, at the hands of a business partner whose behaviour in the events described are at the least of a dubious nature, and to minimise the negative affect this other parties behaviour has had on this individuals life, have in the past week been the cause of threats of injunctions, accusations of 'untruths', 'defamation' and so on. Evidently both individuals discussed were equal partners in a company active in the publishing industry during the period the articles discuss.

Reading the series of articles, they describe this partner's actions, and both the short and medium term outcomes which resulted. It appears that the author of this series has provable evidence by way of documentation lodged with financial institutions and with government organisations supporting the claims, as well as a statement in the perpetrators own voice (recording) of this individuals willful intent to 'bypass' legal requirements.

Apparently, the series of articles had been returned in google searches for several sets of keyword phrases; the name of the business, the names of the people, and product brand names.

Once I heard about this search engine result, I decided to have a look into the actual results, and having access to Google Webmaster Tools, examined the results of 'hits' on the article pages. Over a period of three months, from May to today, the only keyword phrase, out of those mentioned, which resulted on a visit to the articles, was the trading name of the business of which both parties were evidently partners at the time of the events described.

Interestingly enough, it appears that this company has in the past couple of years been somewhat tardy in meeting delivery dates for at least one  the products (printed publication and web site) mentioned. As several regular recipients of the publication evidently have not yet received this year's edition which evidently should have been produced in March or April (whether or not the edition has been published is unknown to me at this time), and the fact that the most searches for information using the company name as a search term (from 'hits' on the articles), have been conducted since 21 June this year, the conclusion could be drawn that there are concerned customers out there in the marketplace.

Having personally been involved in the publishing industry some years ago, I know full well it is a fact that very often publications run late. Still being involved in the pre-press (desktop publishing and repro) sectors, I am fully aware how often material supplied to printers to produce any publication is faulty, and has to be returned to the customer for correction. (This is one of the very things I have aimed my own business at resolving - providing guaranteed press-ready material for customers to their printer.) Publishers more often than not run to tight deadlines, and printers have tight schedules. Faulty material often means the job has to be placed lower down in the queue, and there is a knock on effect.

However, a delay of 2 to 4 weeks or maybe even 6 weeks is marginally acceptable in an annually produced publication, but 3 or 4 months raises serious questions!

Website:


Similarly, as a website builder, I know full well problems can arise with site functionality. However, taking a web site fully off line for what appears to have been more than 4 months while it is being re-built or updated is totally unnecessary. In my own recent experience of converting my HTML based website graphicline.co.za to a Drupal CMS managed website is a good example of how totally unnecessary it is to take a site offline for more than brief periods.

In the case of graphicline.co.za, over a period of 6 weeks, the new CMS system was created on the live site, as a sub-site, with no disruption to the live availability of the pre-existing site. The only time the site was fully offline was last week when the CMS managed site was moved to become the 'live site'. For about 6 hours while the move was undertaken and tested, the site was down. Work continues on the site on a daily basis, and yes, the site does go offline for brief periods while the CMS system is upgraded or further functions are enabled and configured.

At this point I must mention that graphicline.co.za is my business online presence, and does not carry paid for advertising, hence the only person who would be affected should I take the site down, is me! No customer would suffer as a result.

There is absolutely no need to take an entire site 'down' for several months to build a new type of site. If I need to take the CMS

Sentient Creatures:

We as human beings are considered Sentient. Wiki on Sentience opens it's description with the words Sentience is the ability to feel, perceive or be conscious, or to have subjective experiences. Having a sentient ability to feel, perceive, or be conscious implies we are are aware of our surroundings, able to comprehend what we are doing and be conscious of the possible results of our actions. As sentient creatures, surely 'karma' will affect as more than it would a non sentient creature, or an object that by its nature cannot be considered sentient

Back to Karma

I will venture to say, considering this (individuals) claim that the articles were 'intended to cause loss of reputation', and similar considerations, that Karma has come full circle, and this individual is reaping the seeds that have been sown.

As business people (and as individuals), we are ultimately responsible for the impression we create with our customers and the general public and our friends; if we make promises we do not live up to in a timely and accurate manner, if we do not deliver what our customers have been led to believe they will receive for their money, if we choose to bend laws because they may not be convenient to adhere to, or if we cross the line of legal conduct into the shady world of criminality, we have only ourselves to blame when we are called to task for our actions.

Should our mis-behaviour have caused harm to another person, undoubtedly when the wheel of life turns, the repercussions that come back to haunt us will be in proportion to the harm caused. Where such mis-behaviour has harmed multiple other individuals, surely it is not unreasonable to expect that the turning of the wheel will result in us receiving back the effects of Karma multiplied in proportion to the effect our actions had on these 'multiple others'

Ultimately, we are all harvesters of what what we have sown; no amount of denial or obfuscation  can in the overall scheme of things - Karma - can diminish our responsibility as sentient creatures to be responsible for our own actions. Claiming we have 'No Idea' does not mitigate our Karma, if anything it exacerbates the extent of it's effect when the wheel rotates and our turn comes again to be scrutinised at the top of Karma's wheel



Sharksdonteatpeople:

Sharksdonteatpeople, however if we decide to stick our head into the moth of a shark, can we blame anyone but ourselves when the shark closes its jaws and bites off our head?

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