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The Universe really does work in mysterious ways. No matter if you’re a super-skeptic who only believes what they see with their own two eyes or somebody who checks their horoscope every morning, you can’t deny that it’s spooky how quickly karma sometimes catches up to people. On rare occasions, it’s nearly instantaneous. And karma loves putting evildoers in their rightful place.
To show you what we mean, we’ve collected some of the best posts from the ‘Instant Karma’ subreddit that prove that Justice (yes, with a capital ‘J’) can sometimes strike like a bolt from the blue. As you’re scrolling down, upvote the pics where you agree with how karma dealt with people and let us know in the comments if you’ve ever seen any instant karma moments in your own life. Be sure to give r/instantkarma a follow if you like what they do.
According to Dr. Alex Lickerman on Psychology Today, Nichiren Buddhism teaches that everything that happens to us is “ultimately due to our own influence.” Whether intentional or quite the opposite. Meanwhile, coincidence is considered to be but an illusion. Or, in short, what goes around really does come around—but with everything that you think and do.
Bored Panda reached out to Lickerman, the author of The Ten Worlds and The Undefeated Mind, and spoke to him about humankind's hardwired sense of morality, as well as the benefits of taking responsibility for all of our actions. Read on for his insights.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Pretty Instant Karma
RELATED:
#2
I Love Karma
If we’re to believe the Buddhist perspective on life, it means that at the end of the day we’re all responsible for what happens to us. However, this doesn’t mean we’re to blame.
For example, we’re not to blame for being born into poverty or for having something awful happen to us. However, we’re responsible for how we deal with the situation, how we respond to things, and what our next steps will be. In other words, we have the power to better our situation and not just be flung about by the winds of fate (or, rather, by our own decisions).
Though some people would argue that morality is something that's learned through experience, Lickerman told Bored Panda that "our sense of morality may actually be neurologically wired into us." However, this doesn't mean that acting morally or responsibly is easy or the go-to decision for most of us.
#4
This Subreddit Never Said Bad Or Good Karma!
#5
Got What He Deserved
#6
Rip Him
Lickerman told Bored Panda that we tend to need some sort of push to make us act responsibly. "People, in general, need a motivation to accept responsibility for their actions," he said. That motivation could be pretty much anything, however, Lickerman suggests that accepting responsibility for our actions "may actually make us stronger, more resilient."
He added that it's difficult to say where the limits of our ability to change ourselves to match our own perceptions are. "Research shows our self-perception is a very powerful influencer of our behavior. Can’t say it’s been quantified. It won’t change immutable characteristics, like personality characteristics, but it will change behaviors," he said.
In his first book, The Undefeated Mind, Lickerman explains how research has begun to show that belief in good (what is just and fair) and evil (what is unjust and unfair) may be "far more universal than previously thought." Psychologist Marc Hauser and his colleagues conducted an internet study with 5,000 subjects in 120 countries, asking them to "render moral judgments and to justify them" in moral scenarios. One of them was the infamous trolley problem where you have to choose between killing one person and five.
#7
Just Mad I Tell You
#8
Goodbye, Monster
Diddlybop 4 years ago
@ Robert Catte it's because raping a five year old girl is wrong in so many ways, so it acceptable for the father to beat him up. I think any good parent would go that far to protect their kid
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Bacony Cakes 4 years ago
Nah, bury him, dig him up, hang-draw-quarter him, set him on fire, and then dump the charred remains into a superfund site.
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Baby Panda 4 years ago
Horrible monsters, demons, dirtbags, pieces of f*****g s**t that's who. I hate them all and hope they rot in f*****g hell
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Tom Susala 4 years ago
I would've beat the offender within an inch of his life and cut off his privates...
Bacony Cakes 4 years ago (edited)
Why stop at an INCH when you can stop at a NANOMETRE? Or not stop at all?
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Charity Amante 4 years ago
That is such a great law- you can kill someone in process of sexually assaulting or attacking someone- without going to jail for murder. Should be the law everywhere.
Makayla Rhodes 4 years ago
I feel him, I’m not a dad (I’m 13 year old girl actually) but one time this high schooler touched me. I’ll leave it at that
KombatBunni 4 years ago
Honey, if I’d seen it he wouldn’t be touching anything else for a very long time *hugs* Next time break his hand or get someone to break it for him xxx
Load More Replies... Bored Broad 4 years ago
God Bless the State of Texas. Wish Australian laws cared about the victims more.
Megzymonsta 4 years ago
First time I think I've been glad a guy who straight-up beat someone to death gets away with it. The ultimate justice for his little girl
IlovemydogShilo 4 years ago
😊 Good 😊. Here in the UK he would have probably got twice as long than the rapist
Kathryn Baylis 4 years ago (edited)
I generally think it’s better to leave it up to law enforcement and the courts to handle. But rape, especially of a child, is an exception, where I am in total favor of vigilante justice. I sure wouldn’t find him guilty of anything but protecting his child. It’s a travesty of justice if the hero is punished more than the pedo.
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Friedlander Rosenzweig 4 years ago
Um, just a question here. What happens if the father mistakenly finds out later he beat up the wrong man because he hit now and asked more questions later? I need more info before blindly giving him an “atta boy.”
Jasmine Hufflepuff Henderson 4 years ago
The father caught the man in the act. He heard his daughter screaming and ran to save her.
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BabaBizzle 4 years ago
Father is a hero. His daughter will always know how loved and protected she is. I wish more scum rapist pedophiles could be shot on the spot. They’re a waste of air.
Joyce Berman 4 years ago
He should get a medal. That creep who raped his daughter will not rape anyone else's child.
suzanne werbiski 4 years ago
I read every article I could find on this, and I'm sure I would have reacted the same way as this dad. He did call for an ambulance after, when he saw that his blows would likely kill the rapist. This was not a vigilante killing and was not premeditated
M Kate McCulloch 4 years ago
Well, he should face charges for killing a man, but manslaughter, time served maybe. Although, I can't say I blame him one bit. And I hope the girl heals and never thinks of herself as a victim - that's crippling. It happened, it's over, learn how to deal and move on. For those of you who are gonna bitch, now... I had a bad babysitter when I was four and was repeatedly the ...object of unwanted sexual attention. I hope they got some help, the sick f***s.
Ryan Deschanel 4 years ago
I whish my father did that instead of just coming home drunk, slaping me in the face, and yelling "get over it you little f****t".
Vicky Zar 4 years ago
I think he wouldn't even face charges in Germany. You can get charges if you harm an assailer. (Can't explain the concept fully but it has it's reasons). BUT the father called 911. Thats all you need to do, to NOT get charges.
Tiari 4 years ago
He would face charges because the courts would have to clarify if his reaction was proportional to the crime or not.
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Nora 4 years ago
I sincerely hope your heart doesn't have any bones in it.. But I get your point, and I fully agree. Sorry for the silly pun.
Load More Replies... Tom Susala 4 years ago
But I am in total agreement that the victim's Father faced no charges..
Anne Reid 4 years ago
I agree, but he caught the bastard in the act! So it wasn’t just based on allegations, he heard his daughter screaming and reacted.
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chi-wei shen 4 years ago
I'm conflicted at stories like this. I do understand the anger but but there is still a legal way to bring a rapist to justice and you should always think about the possibility of wrong identifications. Justice is more than simple revenge.
Wendillon 4 years ago
I tend to lean toward the circumstances change the outlook. If this guy had caught the sicko in the act of raping his daughter and beat him to death immediately I'd say it was fair. You saw a threat and you eliminated it. But yes, if you hunt down the guy after the act there's always the risk that it was misidentification.
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Faith Nicole 4 years ago
I pray that this girl is alright. And I'm glad her dad wasn't arrested, he didn't do anything wrong, and he saved his daughter so ya, he deserves an award not punishment. My heart bleeds for this little girl, I can't even imagine being that young and experiencing something NOBODY should ever endure
Gilda Farrell 4 years ago
I don't know about this. I can understand the rage, but we are not supposed to mete out deadly punishment, or revenge. Should everyone be allowed to go out and punish perps on their own, depending on what punishment they think is deserved? Courts and the law were invented so that people do not do that kind of thing on their own.
Toasty 4 years ago
He was literally beaten to death, so yeah, I'd say he felt it.
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Bacony Cakes 4 years ago
We finally know what comes out of Texas. Holy cow.
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2 years ago
That's all? Shoulda gotten beaten to death AND the father should get about 100k or something.
ANNA ANDERSON 3 years ago
i read it wrong ;-; i thought HE did both of the bad things i simply read it wrong :')
ANNA ANDERSON 3 years ago
p.s.- i'm glad the father of the girl faced no charges aswell :D
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Dark Pearl 3 years ago
My dad says that if anyone ever does that stuff to me, he'll cook and eat them
PARIS ROYAL 3 years ago
woooooooooww the body should also be burned and sell his soul to the spawns of hell
Joyce Deering 4 years ago
Amazing. Texas finally got a part of their criminal justice system right!
InfectedVoice 4 years ago
Don't have kids but if that happened to my niece or any of my friend's daughters, I would put that monster in the ground, and take any punishment that came with it.
Dawn Jordan 4 years ago
Can he also beat the mother and father,who raised that worthless s**t stain?
dandelion moon 4 years ago
Who knows what would've happened to her if he hadn't caught him, and imagine how many other little girls this could've happened to if he didn't kill him
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Bob Belcher 4 years ago
I remember this and felt the same way. That little girl had her whole youth stripped away. Good for the father.
Tiari 4 years ago
England is part of Europe. And no, in Germany for example he would not have been tried for murder.
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Lexi Mitchell 4 years ago
As long as he actually raped her (uh, you know what I mean) and it wasn’t in front of the rapist’s family.
Bernd Herbert 4 years ago
Straight up NO. He murdered someone, he should be facing consuquences. But this is what you get in a Wild-West Christian society
lazy panda 4 years ago
A 5 year old got raped but yeah, be pissy about a rapist being killed. Idiot.
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Charlotte 4 years ago
I agree that Justice shouldn't be taken into our own hands. But in this situation he interrupted a violent crime of the worst nature. He wasn't a vigilante going out seeking vengeance. He was defending his child from an ongoing attack and making damn sure that attack didn't continue. That's rationally and logically (and legally) the correct action in those circumstances even ignoring the obvious rage that anyone would naturally be feeling in that moment.
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Mette Olsen Douglas 4 years ago
It literally says he was caught in the act of raping a 5 year old girl - that's guilty my friend!!
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Jasmine Hufflepuff Henderson 4 years ago
He caught the man IN the act raping the five year old. He heard his daughters screams and ran out to save her.
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Watching 4 years ago
Sorry if I caught a man raping my 5 year old, I'd kill him too.
Load More Replies... #9
Well This Says Something
EA 4 years ago
Not sure if this is funnier cos of the irony, or when he had to either come out to his congregation to not look like a liar, or apologise to his conversation and look like a total TWAT. Sincerely hope those followers left his church and used the donations to help those in need, rather than pay this guy’s wages.
Lickerman writes: "The subjects agreed about which actions were moral and which weren’t in most of the scenarios, delineating in the process a set of moral principles that seem to be shared by members of all cultures—namely, that it’s less morally permissible to intentionally harm someone than to allow them to be harmed, that it’s less morally permissible to invent a way to cause harm than to cause harm with an existing threat, and that it’s less morally permissible to cause harm directly than to cause it indirectly. Yet the vast majority of subjects couldn’t name these reasons as their underlying justification for judging the actions in each scenario as they did."
He continues: "When we take moral action, we seem to rely not so much on moral reasoning as on moral intuition and then work backward to rationalize the judgments we’ve already made. (Which isn’t to say our moral intuition can’t and shouldn’t be influenced by reason, but rather that our moral intuition remains the primary driver of our moral decision making.)." However, where our moral intuition comes from is still unclear. However, our conception of good, the desire to provide help and prevent harm might be "rooted [...] in the psychological and perhaps even neurological processes of the human mind."
#10
Karmadillo
#11
Got What They Deserved
#12
Kid Refuses To Move His Legs, Guy Sits On Them Instead
Serial pacifist 4 years ago
If that's the kids mom to his right, she needs disciplining way more than the kid.
Meanwhile, becoming responsible for our actions can have the added benefit of making us stronger and more resilient. In his book, Lickerman alludes to a study led by psychologist Kurt Gray where participants would hold up a 5-pound weight, would be given a dollar, and half of then would be given the opportunity to donate it to charity. Donating the money made the participants able to hold up the weight 7 seconds longer than the control group.
"Why? According to Gray, because doing good increases our sense of agency, or potency, a phenomenon he terms moral transformation. (Interestingly, this effect wasn’t seen only with acts of charity but also with acts of villainy.) [...] Which all suggests a reason that action in the moral sphere, whether good or evil, makes us strong: it requires us to be. Or, at least, that’s what we think people who take moral action are: research shows that we’re cognitively biased to 'typecast' people who take such action as resilient—-a bias, it turns out, that affects not only our perception of others but also of ourselves," Lickerman writes.
"And when we perceive ourselves to be endowed with a particular quality, we have a tendency to conform to that perception. All of which implies that performing or even attempting to perform moral action may increase our resilience because it causes us to perceive ourselves as more resilient. This then makes us act, and therefore feel, as if we were."
#13
Amazing. Impeccable
#14
Instant Karma
Dr Nostromo 4 years ago
I remember this one. If I recall correctly, the clerk wasn't sure whether to report it as they didn't know if a crime had been committed.
#15
Guy Is A Jerk To A Police Officer In An Unmarked Car
With nearly 1.9 million members and 8.5 years of getting their show on the road, the ‘Instant Karma’ community is one of the leviathans of Reddit. However, don’t think that they’re just about seeing only unethical people get punished. They also urge their members to post examples of folks getting rewarded for good behavior as well.
Examples of delayed karma or scripted events are, obviously, not permitted on this subreddit. The name of the community is pretty self-explanatory. What’s more, r/instantkarma’s moderators have pointed out that they have no tolerance for calls to violence.
Just because somebody deserves to be punished doesn’t mean that redditors should pour hatred and vile language online. Of course, discussions are encouraged, but they have to be civil. Exactly like people ought to be in real life.
#16
I Don’t Know If It Belongs Here!
#17
Respect Your Mother
troufaki13 4 years ago
Children need discipline, I don't understand why parents just give in and don't set boundaries
#18
Gave Him The Express Shipping Option For Free
Dr Nostromo 4 years ago
So glad the driver wasn't charged. As one who was in the delivery business for 30 years, I was in fear of my life on a couple of occasions. Not as easy a job as one my think.
#19
Snowman 1, Driver 0
#20
Bye Bye
#21
One Plate Of Karma Coming Up
#22
Mayor Dishes Out Karma On Litterer
#23
Just Play Defence
#24
Reverse Brick
#25
Oh How The Tables Have Turned
#27
All's Well, It Ends Well
#28
Hit And Run Driver Forgot Something
#29
Anti-Gay Politician Caught Fleeing A 25-Man Orgy
#30
Goddamn Hypocrites
#31
Revenge At Its Finest
#32
Politicians Get A Taste Of Their Legislations
#33
Actually Happened Instantaneously, At The Moment Of Impact
#34
This Is Venice City Hall Right After The Approval Of A Climate Change Denial Amendment
#35
Karma
Dre Mosley 4 years ago
This jerk and his jerk brother tried to capitalize off the pandemic by buying up all the sanitizer supplies they could find to sell at a profit until Amazon and eBay forbid it.
#37
Order Them To Stop
#39
Block An Electric Charging Station... Get Towed
#40
Firefighters Had To Smash The Window Of This Illegally Parked Vehicle On My Street
wandile dludlu 4 years ago
People don't understand that those pipes don't bend when water is flowing
#41
What Goes Around Comes Around
#42
Lil Coke
#43
That's Great
#45
Woman Tried To Acid Attack Her Former Lover
#46
Guy Parks On Stripes To Avoid Freezing Rain, Happens To Be Under A Leaky Pipe
Serial pacifist 4 years ago
I kinda feel sorry for this one. He just wanted to get out of the rain and didn't really obstruct any free passage.
#47
Just Remember The Quote, “ If I Get Corona, I Get Corona. It’s Not Gonna Stop Me From Partying”
pusheen buttercup 4 years ago
it's not even about if you get corona- what about the people around you?!
#48
Deserved It
#49
Taxi Driver Took A Much Longer Route Than We Agreed To. We Told Him To Stop The Car And Let Us Take Another Taxi. The Police Immediately Saw Him Stop And Fined Him
Add New Image
What do you think ?
Rick 4 years ago
“Got a spare century to spare? Let me tell you about 2020...”
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Lynne Stark 4 years ago
We once managed an apartment building with underground parking. Thieves had stolen one of our landscape hoses. They cut the hose up and several cars had hose pieces hanging out of their gas tanks. But no gas was siphoned in that they chose a "soaker" hose. A hose with holes won't siphon!
Cynthia Gonzales 4 years ago
I went to Walmart one day with my mother because we needed groceries and a shipping box. I was by myself in the back of the store where the boxes were. I was going to the shipping box section when all of a sudden I heard the word "slut" yelled out. I turned around to see a smiling middle aged woman with her smiling elderly mother both whom were staring at me. I got the feeling the middle aged woman was the one who called me a slut. My response to the middle age woman was "So is your mother." They both stopped smiling.
Terilee Bruyere 4 years ago
My niece's youngest daughter tried to whacked my son during the last get together. My son ducked his head and she whacked the table instead, hurting her hand. Instant karma.
surprised pikachu 4 years ago
i remember when i was in elementary school, my mom picked me up and walked me to the parking lot to our car, only to find out some lady had HIT OUR FRICKING CAR, and then went to pick up her kid. Well karma got her because as we were leaving, she had called AAA or something because her car door wouldn't close.
BookCrazyTeen 4 years ago
I had a friend named Karma...no I’m actually not kidding, somebody I used to be friends with was named Karma (nickname I think)
Rick 4 years ago
“Got a spare century to spare? Let me tell you about 2020...”
Load More Replies... Lynne Stark 4 years ago
We once managed an apartment building with underground parking. Thieves had stolen one of our landscape hoses. They cut the hose up and several cars had hose pieces hanging out of their gas tanks. But no gas was siphoned in that they chose a "soaker" hose. A hose with holes won't siphon!
Cynthia Gonzales 4 years ago
I went to Walmart one day with my mother because we needed groceries and a shipping box. I was by myself in the back of the store where the boxes were. I was going to the shipping box section when all of a sudden I heard the word "slut" yelled out. I turned around to see a smiling middle aged woman with her smiling elderly mother both whom were staring at me. I got the feeling the middle aged woman was the one who called me a slut. My response to the middle age woman was "So is your mother." They both stopped smiling.
Terilee Bruyere 4 years ago
My niece's youngest daughter tried to whacked my son during the last get together. My son ducked his head and she whacked the table instead, hurting her hand. Instant karma.
surprised pikachu 4 years ago
i remember when i was in elementary school, my mom picked me up and walked me to the parking lot to our car, only to find out some lady had HIT OUR FRICKING CAR, and then went to pick up her kid. Well karma got her because as we were leaving, she had called AAA or something because her car door wouldn't close.
BookCrazyTeen 4 years ago
I had a friend named Karma...no I’m actually not kidding, somebody I used to be friends with was named Karma (nickname I think)
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