Good Karma is best seen as a fun book with a range of ideas and quotations about karma that is not meant to be taken very seriously.  It uses a blue and green color scheme, and uses different fonts in different sizes.  It is a little over 100 small pages, with 20 short chapters with titles such as "Emotions: Living Passionately" and "Karmic Payback: Balancing the Scales."  There are several pithy quotations in large print from well known figures such as Longfellow ("The best thing to do when it's raining it to let it rain") and well known texts such as the Talmud ("Who is rich?  He who rejoices in his portion").  Each chapter is in the form of a FAQ, with lots of straightforward questions ("What about sex and karma?  Is there a connection there?") and vague answers.  Oliver mixes together views from many different religions and ethical views, leaning to those from an Eastern perspective.  She encourages being kind, positive and thoughtful, and discourages getting too wrapped up in unimportant things or counterproductive ways of living.  But consider one question taken almost at random, from the "Earning Responsibly" chapter:

But isn't it hypocritical to sell a product I won't use myself?

If you have an aversion to what your company sells–nothing but fresh foods are welcome on your family table–then you might not be comfortable working there in the long run.  If you wish, start looking for a workplace more consonant with your values, but there's no need to quit in a karmic huff.

As this example makes apparent, Oliver's ideas are overgeneralized, simplistic, casual and not given with a great deal of thought.  That's not a problem so long as you don't expect to learn anything except the sketchiest ideas about karma from Good Karma. 

© 2007 Christian Perring. All rights reserved.

Christian Perring, Ph.D., is Academic Chair of the Arts & Humanities Division and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Dowling College, Long Island. He is also editor of Metapsychology Online Reviews.  His main research is on philosophical issues in medicine, psychiatry and psychology.

Categories: General