Exploring Justice, Karma, and Political Discontent

Exploring Just World Fallacy, Karma, and the Psychology of Victim Blaming

In this episode of the M3 BearCast, Malcolm Travers presents three segments from the M3 live broadcast on February 26, 2025. The topics discussed include the just world fallacy, the fallacy of 'fuck around and find out,' and the concept of fairness through a psychological experiment. The episode also delves into the rationale behind victim blaming, the Western adaptation of karma, and how these coping mechanisms shape our worldviews. Additionally, it touches on voting behaviors, particularly around the 2024 U.S. presidential election, and explores themes of spirituality and religion. The segment concludes with a discussion on consequences, accountability, and the resistance to change entrenched beliefs.

00:00 Introduction to the M3 BearCast
00:43 Exploring the Just World Fallacy
01:41 Blaming the Victim: A Deep Dive
02:34 The Concept of Karma and Spirituality
14:06 Fuck Around and Find Out: Behavioral Consequences
24:22 Psychological Insights and Social Commentary
30:33 Conclusion and Support for M3 BearCast

Transcript

  📍  📍  Hello, and welcome to the M3 BearCast. My name is Malcolm Travers. In this episode, I'm going to bring you three segments from the M3 live broadcast that was on February 26, 2025. And I'm trying to revamp the M3 BearCast. And one of the things that I've been trying to do is to use some of the same topics that I would use for the live stream for the podcast as well.

So what I have are three segments from TikTok videos, and both, all of them are somewhat related to the election and thinking about some of our worldviews, as well as something known as the just world fallacy. The just world fallacy is integral to people blaming victims in situations where we believe that is something.

bad happens to someone that they somehow deserved it. And then there's the idea of the just world fallacy.

The fallacy that of fuck around and find out will actually change someone's behavior. Thinking that if someone actually has to face consequences for their longstanding behavior, that they will actually think about it and change their behavior or recognize that they're incorrect about a certain point of view.

And the last one deals with the concept of fairness. A woman talks about a experiment that her psychology professor performed at the end of every semester. And basically talking about the idea that people will hurt themselves in the name of fairness. I think that pretty much sums up how a lot of people ended up voting for Trump



and then fucking around and finding out.

That he was talking about a lot more than just those people. All right, we're going to get to the first one. This one is about blaming the victim.

  

 

I got a few ideas I forgot to put in the book that I put for the book club, but I'm reading a book for the book club. That's a lot about rethinking spirituality and religion and things like that. And I found a few topics that kind of talk about some of the themes in the book. And one of the major things of the book had to deal with, like, why we structure religion the way that it is, right?

And one of those is about this idea that we seek a world that has justice or that, even when it's not Christianity we have twisted Eastern spirituality to fit our idea of a just world. Through karma. The funny thing is I've been thinking about, the idea of karma a little bit because people believe in it, but it's not, there's a westernized version of karma.

The original idea of karma is just that. There is a single deity breaks off pieces of itself to be human, and you do in that life is a calling from that larger entity, so if you do something to darken the karma of the world in your next life, you're are tasked with cleaning it up in some sort of way.

And also the idea that when something bad done in the world, it makes the world a darker, more, unjust place, but that doesn't necessarily means it's coming back to you as an individual, because in their point of view, everyone is one individual, in a sense, on the spiritual level, we don't see ourselves that way when we think of the soul, we think of ourselves as individual entities.

And so when we think of karma, we think, When bad people do things, bad things should come back to them. And when you do good things should come back to you. But I think on some level, if you are able to let go of that, it's easily, you can see that's not the way the world really works, but unfortunately, and so I'm going to play this right here.

This is a study that's talking about this just world fallacy. And it's not really talking about it in terms of spiritual practices, but just really in social and communications and yeah, just interpersonal relationships. We play this is Dr Soham Dawson. He recently did an online talk called do bad things only happen to bad people.

His focus was on the psychology of victim blaming. And he talked a lot about the psychological reasons on why someone would blame the victim. when something bad happens to them. In short, we victim blame because it helps us feel better about the world. Remember, our brains do not like to work. Our brains prefer to save the calories.

So we prefer to think of the world as ordered and just and fair and organized. So when something bad happens to a good person, it can send someone's brain reeling. Why would that happen? Is the world really that meaningless? Is it that random? And a lot of times what the brain will do to protect itself is convince itself.

that the person that happened to deserved it. This is called the Just World Hypothesis. And in that it states that bad things only happen to bad people and good things only happen to good people. So when I see something bad happen to somebody in order to believe in this just world, I have to assume that they did something to deserve that bad thing.

Does this justify victim blaming? Absolutely not. But it's a good reminder that when somebody participates in victim blaming, it's a coping mechanism for them. They haven't figured out how to cope with the randomness of the world yet. And that's a major thing that she's getting at is that, spirituality and religion is a coping mechanism, right?

The idea of karma, the idea of that You'll see justice in the afterlife or the bad things will come in this life or, to the next generation. These are all coping mechanisms to deal with an uncertain world. And to some degree they work, even when we have these negative byproducts like victim blaming or whatever religions and spirituality has been a really strong way of building community, it has been a really strong way of building identity.

It's one of the and especially when you're dealing around stories and histories and all that kind of thing most religions are not just principles, but they're stories that surround people and they're heroes and they go through trials and, you can identify with them, even those.

Religions where the deities are not even really human. They have human characteristics. They're, they have human foibles. They even are more human than, than humans, like even though they have they're humans with superpowers, a lot of time these gods and deities, one of the things I've been getting into recently was a lot of like African spirituality.

And there are a lot of interesting African deities that have been adopted or absorbed into different aspects of Christian and Western thought. One of those was like this spider deity called Anansi is like a a trickster demon, so to speak. And it's very identified with a lot of the.

Iconography and stories around like Satan and the snake in the garden and all that maybe have been, may have be even like, borrowed from it and it also gives you the idea that those sorts of deities were not necessarily. evil in the sense that they were just testing you in some way, and also showing you how, your decisions are connected, how other people are connected.

That was like a Nazi's thing. It's if you wished for certain things, it was the idea of these unforeseen consequences, The, the monkey's paw thing, where people would, that was also an African ancestral idea. It was always that you got what you asked for, but then there were always these unforeseen consequences tied to it.

That was also tight. But yeah. And it was just this idea that we're all connected, that the world is connected like a spiderweb. And yeah, I just think that we do need coping mechanisms. Because the world is fucking crazy, it is but we also have to be aware of the consequences of those coping mechanisms and one of those being victim blaming, right?

And it's. Easy to do. I think you just have to question, take a step back and do that. I was trying to think of an example. Honestly, I can't think of one. We're doing that now with the whole, FAFO it's these people are like, I can't believe that this is happening.

It's it's your fault. You did this to yourself. So why are you so surprised? We tried to tell you exactly. So I'm doing that now. It's like you are to blame for your own problems. Why are you crying to us? Yeah, no. And I actually do have a topic on that too.

I'm fucking around and find it. And I think there is something to it. I'll get into it when I got that video, but I was just thinking of Like a lesser one dealing with acceptable forms of discrimination. Go ahead. I'm sorry. I was going to say, one, one that I know is really bad.

If if a young lady, gets assaulted or whatever, people are quick to say if you dress like that. It's like you don't deserve to be treated that way just because of the way that you dress. It's like we constantly put the blame on the woman saying like you, you should address that way rather than saying like men need to learn not to assault women.

That's the lesson to be learned there. But, we're quick to blame women. Or people dressed a certain way. You asked for it. So you're saying, so you're saying I asked for those comments. Is that what you're saying? I did not say that. I'm not saying you deserve comments, John. What I am saying is that we live in a society where people will be like, I see the way you dress.

You asking for it. I'm not saying you're asking for it, but I can't control what the rest of the world decides to say to you. Especially when it has to spread them ease. Yeah, I would use me as an example. There is a truth to that, though. I remember there was this idea of catharsis in horror movies.

For instance from the night, what is it from the Jason movies, I can't remember what it's called, Friday the 13th movies. Yeah. Most of the people who get killed are the ones who are having sex at the campsite. Yeah. It was the kind of idea that the world makes sense, right? That, you're evil, you've done this horrible thing you're a slut, you deserve to die.

I had sex at a wedlock, you deserve to die. But, while it's exciting, you don't feel that bad, because it also tells you that the world makes sense, and in a certain way. Even I think the Final Destination movies, for instance this idea that if you were supposed to die, the world was going to put itself In order.

Again, this is finish job. . The idea of justice or revenge is a major part of horror and that's also strangely comforting , but also with the fried going to the Friday the 13th movies. Yeah, the camp counselors that were usually having sex were usually the ones that got slashed.

But also could that also be a message there that you shouldn't be doing these type of things when your job is to watch the kids, not smash each other. Responsibility, accountability and responsibility. Yeah, no, exactly though. That's the idea that it makes us feel good in a certain way, even as we're watching something horrible happen.

We're like yeah, that's what should happen. You're, you got what you deserve. , yes. A spear in the head. Yes. I did 13 movies to this day, so well not once you get into the five, six, seven, eight. No, the first two or three. Yes, but Yeah, Jason in space. No, that's shit. No, Freddy. No, that terrible movie.

That was so Jason goes to Manhattan. No, see that kind of stuff. No. Yeah, that was more Jason on a boat. Anyway, it wasn't right. They got to Manhattan like 20 minutes before the movie was over, but I digress. But no, that was it. I just want I think I want people to be intentional about the sort of coping mechanisms that we use to deal with a chaotic world.

Cause I don't think it's good to live without any coping mechanisms. As I'm dealing with my own issues about what's going on in the world right now, I mentioned yesterday that I finally deleted all of my political podcasts, and I still sometimes use, my finger just goes to the phone.

When it's that time for the, news to drop, I said, what's the crazy shit that's going on in Washington now? I was like, you know what? I'm not, I can't do this no more. I can't really, I really, it's not most of the time, all of that is just trying to make you mad. I guess what I'm looking for are some solutions.

Or something. I did see something recently that there might be an app where you can mass text or fax your representative about certain things. I might do that. Something like that. Yeah, it was anyway, I don't want to get into that. Do we have any comments or questions? Let me see if I can. Yes, we have a couple of comments.

Sammy, welcome to the show. Sammy says, John, your glasses. Is going to read it's red shorts time going in.

Little update on my glasses. Why would a video was playing? I did go look for them. Y'all would not believe what they were in the freezer. Oh, no, . When I took something out, I must have put 'em down and . So here they're you. Frost . Yeah. Oh my goodness. I'm a go bird. Yes. I'm a I'm gonna let you read this next one then.

Yes. Mr. Red Choice. You asked for it all. Okay. Sam. Oh, no. Next comment,

Sammy. I'm just saying,

you are never gonna beat those red shore allegations, . It's my scarlet letter. It really is. Oh God. But I'm gonna be like Serena, and I'm going Crip. Walk outta here. Yeah, there you go. I did love that favorite part of the whole show.

  

 

Anyway. We are going to talk about fuck around and find out, and here's the deal.

And it's something that this person told me, or, put them in the video that resonated with me, which is, I don't think that the individuals themselves are going to find out because there's this thing called cognitive dissonance where, you, you don't want to admit when you're wrong, even when.

There's so much evidence to show that you're wrong. And there's this idea also that if you're the consequences don't follow quickly from your choices, especially if you've been making these choices for a long time, you'd, you'd have built in a defense system. To prevent yourself from changing your mind.

So this is also something on us, because this is true of all human beings, even those assholes who voted for Trump. We also over time resist changing our minds about things that we have gotten used to, like even simple, stupid stuff that no one cares about. Remember when we were talking about UFOs and they want to call them UAPs.

They're fucking UFOs, they're not UFOs. They're not UFOs. It's we want to call them phenomenon instead of objects because we don't know if they're objects or not. Unidentified aerial phenomena, because we don't know if they're actual objects, they could just be glare or hallucinations, so it's more accurate, but they're fucking UFOs.

That's my story. I'm sticking to it. So we all are resistant to change. Anyway, I'm going to say this, fuck around and find out. Quick little rant about F around and find out. I think it's a fantasy. People who compulsively F around. They don't find out. No matter how their life crashes down, they don't find out.

Now the exception is, do you F around like once or twice, and pretty quickly the universe does you the solid of giving you negative feedback right away. In that situation, you may be found out. Cause you weren't reliant on your BS yet, right? If you're young, and you forget about changing your oil and your car overheats.

You probably found out. You probably took it to heart. Oh yeah, this is why it's important I change my oil. But when it's longer term effing around, when people's bullshit works for them for a while, they do not just go right into self reflection once everything crashes down. They need the bullshit too much for that, right?

So if you're maybe like a highly successful rapper who like, that's not enough validation. You also need romantic relationships with people under 18 to feel okay about yourself. And that's what you're doing again and again, right? If it's working for you for a while, no matter how much the world crashes down around you, no matter the Grammys and the Super Bowl and blah, blah, blah.

I guarantee you, you're not going to flip right into Oh yeah, I guess I really like, I guess that was BS that I was doing that to kids. No, you're going right to I'm just doing what everyone does. Tyga did it to kill to that Kardashian like this is just because people are jealous of like how many records I sold and how much money I made like people go right from hero to victim to villain and they bypass any like maybe I could take a lesson from this You have to do so much healing To be able to get to a point where your brain can look at things and be like maybe I can take a lesson from this You need a foundation of feeling pretty okay about yourself in the first place.

You need some daily self care where you're regulating your nervous system. The work that it takes to get to a point where you can look at your life and be like, Maybe I could stop that BS. And that would make my life better and other people's lives better. That takes so much. And for someone who's reliant on BS to feel good about themselves, like reliant on BS enough that it's making other people upset, they don't have that foundation.

They don't have that foundation of daily self care or feeling baseline okay. So the fantasy that things are going to crash down around them. big enough that they're going to wake up and be like I could do better. Fantasy. It's a fantasy we tell ourselves pretty much to justify us poking at them.

And that's fine. It's fine to poke at people who do bad things. I don't care. I'm just saying don't think that schadenfreude is somehow going to propel self reflection. On the person doing the effing around. And I just need to clarify, I still believe in making an example out of people. It's not about whether that highly successful rapper ever self reflects.

I think it's about scaring the other highly successful rappers. I think it's about making an example of people so that all the people watching and considering doing BS are like, that could turn around for me, and I believe in that. I think that's a fine way to enforce positive social norms. Yeah, so that was the point that I agreed with at the end, maybe the bright sign at the end is that there are those people who want to think about fucking around and they see someone else finding out.

That does justify the the poking at people. But I think most of the time when we were poking at MAGA people who found out like, Oh, they canceled my contract. Oh, they're not gonna, give me my whatever storm aid, like all these things, they go online and we snicker at them.

There was something in the back of my head. There was just like, but they're still going to vote for the next Trump. And they're still going to think that they're right. And they're still going to go to the next, whoever rally, I don't know who the next Trump would be, but. They haven't found shit out because they still think these bigoted things are just, but on the other hand, it's okay to just feel good for the sake of feeling good.

So I'm trying to feel good. Like I'm that person who shits on my own fun. I shouldn't do that because you got to get it where you can get it. And I think the, I guess the joy that I thought about at the end of her video was that it may stop the next person from doing that when they, the ones who are not totally indoctrinated into the bullshit, to be like, there are consequences for this shit, that maybe voting does matter, because.

I don't care whatever thing you had in your mind that you thought Kamala was, a corporate shield or whatever, that is not the equivalent, I know that there are probably still a lot of liberal people. Those are the people I really fucking hate. I gotta be honest. The people I really fucking hate are the ones who had anti Kamala memes.

Who were liberal or something, and I saw them come up on my page and say, black fucking fast . I don't, and otherwise, I'm sure they're speaking real, things that I would like. Now, all that anti Democrat, antia antibi bullshit is right, nowhere to sound anymore. They shoulda a better message.

They shoulda had a better message. Fuck y'all. I'm telling you, it could have been a potato and I still would have voted for the potato. I know, right? What are you talking about, bud? I know. Yeah, I get that. And what you're saying makes sense. Yeah, if your actions Come back at you like right away.

Then you're like, Oh, maybe I shouldn't have done that. But yeah, but for the people who like, yeah, they, they don't know yet what's coming, it's it might happen five years from now, 10 years from now, and also if there's like public embarrassment involved. People are much more likely to dig in, that's true.

That's true. But yeah, nobody wants to admit that they were wrong. Nobody wants to admit that. I don't really want to give them respect, but I do give the few that have said yeah I thought this was not going to turn out the way that it did. And I wholeheartedly know that I regret what I did.

I want to give him a little bit of grace, but at the same time, it's but you still fucked up, you still did this, so I don't know if I want to tribute that grace or not, there's a lot of other people who are just like, I ain't saying shit, ain't nobody going to say nothing to me, I ain't going to confess my sins cause they're embarrassed and they shouldn't be.

Yeah, so on that level, I do hope that people continue to call people out. I hope I can take more joy in it because I don't know there was something it was always changed with like defeatism whenever I saw it was like, you're not really going to change, but that's exactly. At the same time, that's fucking up my joy.

Like, why am I doing that? I should be happy that they're miserable. I think you're the one that really got me. God, I can't remember. It was like someone who was he was so hypocritical in the sense that he was first against, someone had it on their page where he was against Biden's inflationary act, right?

Whatever it was in 2022. There was supposed to be his bill back better or whatever, but they cut it down to be just the inflation act reduction act. And so he was against the act, took the money, was happy to take the money for whatever projects that he did. Now that he's expecting his money, he doesn't get it.

And he is this is gonna bankrupt me. I can't, and he is just going on and on about how you can't trust the government and stuff like that. I'm like, you voted for this shit . Like you voted for you deserve every bit of it. I did. I love the and there. But there was no self-awareness there.

There was no fucking self-awareness that it never is. It brought to the lie about Biden's, bill being bad. And then you took the money anyway, and then you voted for the guy who killed it. And you want us to feel sorry for you. So stupid,

  

 

So this one is like a little story that this woman had.

That is, I think very illustrative as to why people voted for Trump. All right, I'm going to play this. Make sure this, it's 11 years ago, I'm in a massive university, intro psychology class. Everybody in my 250 person lecture is freaking out because it's the last class before the exams and none of us are ready.

Professor says, you know what? You guys seem stressed. I'm just going to give all of you a 95 percent blanket across the board, but you have to vote unanimously on it. He puts the poll on the board. We vote. 20 people say, nope, I don't want the guaranteed 95%. He puts another poll up. That's just like, why? So option a is I selected the 95 percent because I want it.

B, I think I could do better. C, I don't want a grade I didn't deserve. And D, I don't want somebody else to get the same grade as me, even if they didn't study as much. And all 20 people who didn't want the 95 percent didn't want it for that last reason. The professor said, this is the most important psychological lesson I will teach you this semester.

I've been doing this experiment on classes. For the past 10 years, and not one class has agreed unanimously because there's always somebody who doesn't want someone to have what they have because they don't think they deserve it. Statistically, only 10 of you will get a 95 percent or above because in life, greed will always hurt you more than it helps you.

But it is true. There's so many times where white people would rather lose their coverage, lose their tax money. Lose whatever it is. So as long as you can take it from black people. Yes. Yes. Immigrants. So many videos. There are so many videos on tick tock right now of people saying, yeah. I voted because I wanted lower grocery prices.

And yeah, the grocery prices are going up higher, but I don't care. Cause Trump is doing what he said it was going to do. And it's just like that. That's proof right there. It's it was never about the grocery price. It's just, I have always said this. I've said voting for Trump for majority of people was that I want him to go after the people that I don't like.

I want him to go after the poor, the immigrants, black people, whoever's not me, I want him to go after them. And I think that's, that, I hate that shit works, but it works. Us against their mentality. And like I say, I, and I think I told you this one time before, I know I'm not saying it but it's like people who have 700 million are convincing people who make 17 an hour that their enemy is people who make 7 an hour.

Yeah, I got you. Yeah, it's true. And it's not all because people think that one day they might become a billionaire or whatever, although that delusion does exist for whatever reason especially. Like it doesn't make any sense in, in, in a reality, like where you've been, how do you know a single human being who went from being middle class to being a billionaire at all in your life ever?

No, that's not the way the real world works. Although I'm sure those people exist. Obviously they do, but it's I think there's a certain amount of delusion when it comes to ourselves that we think we could be the exception to that rule, even though we know that's the way the world doesn't work that way.

But also, I think the one thing about that experiment that the psychology teacher was talking about is, even outside of, the social construct of race or class. Or immigrants or whatever, I think it is just any other, someone undeserving. It doesn't even really matter. It's part of human nature to want to make sure that there's a certain amount of fairness kind of goes back to that idea of the just world.

Like we, we don't, we want to enforce some sort of fairness on the world that doesn't exist in reality. And it is completely unfair in the sense that. The perceptions that white people have of others is unjustly pejorative, right? Like it's hyper fixated on equity plans and things to give people advantages that don't really exist that they think that are undeserved.

But even if that wasn't, even if that didn't exist, even if you lived in More homogenous culture, like in a European place, wherever, where there aren't that many immigrants or whatever the case may be, say, maybe even a good example might be in Japan, for instance, it's almost homogenous and it's very few immigrants.

Most people are Japanese. modern state, there's always, there's still others, there's still like this idea that although they do much better, I should say there are more collectivist society, but whatever, you know what I'm saying? Probably a bad example, but still even in cultures that are more collectivist and so forth it'd be hard pressed to get everyone on board in a sort of unanimous way to get a good grade, for instance, in a class, because it just feels unfair.

And I'm taking the 95 free. That was a dumb ass question. I'm taking the 95. We just can't have nice things. Cause that one person I don't want y'all having 95, right? And then if they probably took it, they probably would have got like a 70 or something. Yeah, it is. You could have got a 95 dummy, right?

University classes, they grade on a curve anyway. So by definition, people, yeah, like you said, 10 percent are going to get the 95 or above because, I don't think it's based on pure percentages, right? It's great based on the distribution of those percentages. By definition, only the top 10 percent are going to get this and you're not in it.

You're stupid. Anyway, if you do that, you're definitely stupid.

But no, I guess that's just my pet peeve. I'm going to move on now and see if we have any comments. Oh, yes, we do. Let's see. Sammy says, folks, usually rappers and athletes because that's our lane as opposed to everything is a D. I. Hi sorry. Acknowledge rappers and athletes. Gotcha. That poll the teacher gave reminds me of a poll that's given after every game on squid game.

All the players get a choice to quit and walk away with the money split evenly. Absolutely. Oh, you never do. They never do. Yeah, family says I've seen Jordan Klepper from the Daily Show interview some trumpers who felt gay marriage was giving us more rights. Even though we were asking for equal rights.

Exactly. We never asked for more than how do you get more married to somebody else? I don't know.



  📍 And all right. And that'll do it for this episode of the M3 Bearcast. I'd like to thank John and Swag who joined me for the live stream on Wednesday. And if you would like to support Mail Media Mind, you can go to patreon. com slash mail media mind, become a patron. You'll get access to this podcast early, which I am moving the publishing date.

to Fridays. So patrons will get it early on Thursday evenings. And they also get access to groups on telegram actually starting a book club as well. Come join us at patreon. com slash remedy mine. Of course, you can support us on any podcatcher that you listen to this on shared on social media, and subscribe.

And we'll catch you in the next episode. Peace.