Sunday, February 15, 2009

Things They Should Invent: relative karmameter

I recently came up with the idea of a karmameter that tallies up all your virtues and vices and tells you how well you're doing in general. The idea behind this is that constantly trying to improve in every aspect of life is untenable, so I want to know when I'm doing okay in order to concentrate my stress and worrying in the areas where it is needed most.

There was an article in the Star last week about how they can get people to improve their environmental behaviour by telling them how they're doing in comparison to others.

This would totally work for the karmameter, and it would be way easier to make than an absolute karmameter. It would totally achieve the intended results too. For example, I know from statistics that my environmental footprint is significantly lower than the average person's, so I don't stress too much about environmental stuff. If we karmametered every aspect of life, I could then find areas where I'm not doing nearly as well as the average person and work on those areas without stressing about things that I don't need to stress about.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

But isn't karma about what you do to others? A lot of vices are merely self-destructive.

impudent strumpet said...

I don't mean karma literally in the religious sense, I just mean the general balance in life of things I'm doing well and things I'm doing badly. Karma's the best word I can think of for that so I've been using it as a generic, but I'm open to suggestions.