In tales of dread, a protagonist - usually not a very nice person - experiences retribution for their despicable behaviour, and this retribution is usually very fitting. So, for example, if they manufactured cars they knew were unsafe but ignored these dangers in pursuit of a fast buck, a tale of dread would no doubt end with them getting knocked down by a car. The very model that they refused to enforce safety features on. Its like a cruel irony, then. Or not so cruel, depending on the character and your idea of an eye for an eye.
Tales of dread are common in fiction, and sure, why not. Its good to read about people getting their comeuppance. It gives us hope and a sense of justice being dished up.
In life however, we seek the same thing.
Christians would turn to God for this cosmic sense of fair play. The Bible is riddled with stories of characters getting their rewards or punishments for doing or betraying God's work. Look to Adam and Eve for starters. Of all the fruit, on all the trees, they have to eat from that one. So God kicked their ass. And, if you buy into that stuff, we're all still paying the price for it.
Many people seem to want to believe in Karma for their serving of poetic justice. Now, I've spoken about Karma on here before, http://stevefarcue.blogspot.com/2010/12/feeling-karma.html
The true notion of Karma, is that of a sort of cosmic bank account, where your actions throughout life are logged and at the end of it, if you've been good you'll be reincarnated into a good life, and if you've been bad you'll be reincarnated into third world poverty. If someone tells you they believe in Karma but not reincarnation, you are allowed to tell them they're full of shit. You can't have one without the other.
Actually, if someone says they believe in Karma you're also allowed to tell them they're full of shit. Think about it. Who's logging this information? Who's keeping track of you? Who's so damn interested in what you're doing? Who says what's good and bad? Sometimes acts that have good intentions turn out horribly, so where does that fit in?
The need to believe that bad people get punished and good people get rewarded can be linked into something that's ingrained in us from a very early age. That is, the sense of what's fair.
We're taught to share, either through parenting or schooling, and we're taught to be concerned for each other...to some degree at least. We have a need to see the good rewarded and the bad punished, it helps us to believe the world is all right, and that if we keep ticking along trying our best to avoid being evil then the universe / God / Karma will see us right.
To this end, and despite me labelling them as bullshit, there is a need for adults to believe in some fairy tale sense of justice. Though we may be tempted to do evil things every day, to steal or lie to get ahead, we turn to tales of dread to make us think. Think that if we carry out these thoughts, we may well end up drenched in an ironical revenge. We wish to believe that it is in the nature of things that wrongs will be righted. Whichever method of cosmic police force you wish to believe in, the very fact that you do believe in it, prohibits you from doing a great number of things for fear of the consequences.
For me, living on this planet in the milky way, in a universe billions of light years across, I really don't believe there's anyone, or anything, that's keeping an eye on us. There's talk of asking the universe for things (Mr. Noel Edmonds, take a bow you plank), but that means giving the universe a conscious mind. A thing that has an idea of justice (remarkably similar to yours and no doubt completely different to someone on the other side of the world), and the means to carry out that justice as a lesson to others. The universe is a vacuum. It consists of...quite literally...nothing. Or at least, things we can't explain such as Dark Matter. To give the universe cognition is to behave like someone who is insane. Look at any random object and attribute an identity to it, and you run the risk of being carted off by men with big butterfly nets.
A sense of justice could be seen as completely subjective, and for every man a hippy might consider to be evil (polluting the planet, not being aware of a carbon footprint, slaughtering baby ducks to build a bridge), others might praise his tenacity and vision, and not least his business sense, for he may well provide jobs and a wage for people previously unemployed.
So it would be up to you to decide, and not some diabolical agency enforcing cosmic justice. Reading tales of dread to kids when they are impressionable is a fantastic idea, as it gives them a moral foothold as they grow into adults. But, once there, they need to discover that the right thing to do should be done for its own sake, and not the need to please the karmic boogeyman.
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