I didn’t resonate very much with this essay. His thesis is: Every part is half of a whole: good and evil, pleasure and pain, etc etc. You can’t have one without the other. There exists divine karma and good will be returned to the good.
I think this is hard to swallow as someone living in 2026 where the richest, most powerful men of the world shit on laws and bend the world to their will. Where is the karmic justice for Epsteins’ friends? No one connected with him has been prosecuted except Maxine who was just moved to a better, more comfortable prison. Where is the justice for the people profiting off Trump’s wars, using the stock market like an insta-win slot machine, extracting from people’s pensions and 401ks to make themselves rich? Where is the justice for ICE agents, and Trump’s cruel administrators, for all the pain and suffering caused by legislators bending over to let him have his way?
I suppose we shall see if there is any karmic justice, but the US has a long, long history of breaking and trampling rules, and stealing from smaller countries to enrich a few on top. Just look at South America, and what continues to happen to Venezuela. I heard the US just stole $100 million dollars of Venezuelan gold, which they feel entitled to now that they control the country.
In Emerson’s day, you didn’t know all the corrupt and horrible things going on all over the world every day. Now we are inundated with them constantly.