Bad karma

Poor Sharon Stone is no doubt embarrassed by her 'bad karma 'gaffe', which is not to say that she doesn't believe it (like Frank Field apologising for saying in public what he actually believes in private). But here are two kinds of belief, the belief that Gordon is unhappy in his body, whose truth or falsity can be established, and the belief that the recent earthquakes were a karmic consequence for China's monstrous injustices in Tibet. Stone would probably think that she was much more sophisticated than those fundamentalist evangelists who say that the recent hurricanoes were a sign of God's displeasure at human sinfulness, especially that of the gays. But her own comment is on the same logical footing and both of them give 'religious belief' a bad name. Perhaps I just don't want to think of 'religious beliefs' as providing the terms of a causal explanation of events. To the extent that they seek to do this they are merely superstitious and are precisely not religious beliefs which, if they explain anything, 'explain' no more than the human condition and as such are not causal at all.

Deleuze is done and dusted, the thesis read, examined and passed. As for Deleuze, as the Irishman said, I wouldn't start from here.