Karma Without the Mysticism

I grew up in a Buddhist family, so karma was always framed a certain way: mystical, cosmic, spiritual. Do bad things and the universe keeps score. Some ledger somewhere, settled in this life or the next.

Then I heard Naval talk about it on a podcast, and it clicked: karma might just be cause and effect, played out over a long enough time.

Take something mundane. If we don't keep our room clean, it gets dirty. Dust and grime build up, and over time we're more likely to get sick. Nothing cosmic happened. The consequence was baked into the action; it just needed time to show up.

Or take a scammer. Every scam leaves behind a victim, someone who remembers, and a story that gets told. Most of us spend decades in the same circles, the same industry, the same city, so word gets around. Some people do get away with it. So karma isn't a guarantee, more like a probability. Over a long enough time, the odds tend to catch up.

It works in the other direction too. Someone who keeps their word and helps people without keeping count might see nothing come of it for years. Then opportunities start arriving through people who remember them.

So maybe karma isn't the universe punishing or rewarding us. It's compounding. Our actions feed into our health, our relationships, and our reputation, and those tend to pay back later, with interest, in the same direction we paid in.

This makes me wonder: what else is like this? What other ideas did we wrap in mysticism simply because it was the best explanation available at the time?