Are we karmically responsible for work that later leads to unknowing harmful consequence?

Answer Podcast:

If we do a particular activity which later on leads to ample consequences without our knowledge then are we responsible is our intelligence considered important or is the consequence considered important we are not ultimately in control of our own consequences there is no pollution so for example I’ll take three different examples one by one say parents they expect to be responsible for their children but up to a particular limit now after the children become mature they become 18 the children are citizens of their own right before that if they break the law, the police will trouble the parents so after that there is some amount of complicated entanglement the child does something wrong the grown up man does something wrong the parents may also pay the misdeed the parents may also pay the consequence but the parents are not considered legally responsible the child is a person on their own so as long as the person is minor the parents are legally responsible after that they are not so even in our daily sense in a normal legal sense responsibility extends only so far it doesn’t extend infinitely we see that Maharaja Angad, they got way and Veda turned out to be a devotee Maharaja Angad, what did he do? he tried his best to reform but that didn’t work out but the Bhagavatam is non-judgmental about the morality of Angad’s action someone could say for a king to abandon his once royal responsibility and to entrust the kingdom to a person who is known to be barbarian that is irresponsible I am going to look at that today and if he had done his duty he had done his duty and he misannounced the world he does what he can’t he can’t, but he doesn’t know what his Vedas are so he misannounced the world and it is said that the the non-demotional, the anti-demotional the demoniac nature of Veda actually awakened a certain detachment in Angad and he saw that as an opportunity to detach himself from the world so that he detached himself from the world, that is talking about a positive in the Bhagavatam but specifically whether that, the consequence of that the consequence of that Veda became the ruler and I don’t see anywhere Bhagavatam considering that Angad was responsible for Veda’s barbaric activities the responsibility of that is the sages come and intervene so we should know that the purpose of Krishna is not to catch us when we do wrong Krishna is not a qualifying hey you did this, that happened therefore I have to catch you and punish you Krishna is not a qualifying no, Krishna’s purpose is not to catch us when we do wrong the purpose is to catch us when we fall the purpose is to catch us when we fall Krishna said in 9.31 that I will take that then my duty is to consider even if it involves some wrong activity, we must do wrong activity also Krishna is not talking about the later consequence Krishna is talking about the action itself So, we don’t have to become paranoid about that or what will lead to what. At the same time, while, so this is a second example from scripture.
First example is that legal responsibility so far. Shastra says that father is not directly responsible son does something wrong. The third is we all have a social responsibility.
And Guru Duryodhana, although he is the identity, Dhritarashtra is Prabhupada’s name in the first chapter of the Bhagavad Gita. Dhritarashtra is responsible for the Patricide war. Because he did not control Duryodhana.
So now similarly, there are many weapons of mass destruction started getting developed in science. Especially from the first world war to second world war. First world war, technology did not play such a decisive role.
Second world war, technology started developing. Airplanes were developed. Airplanes, bombs could be dropped.
Earlier, you attacked the opium, you had to go there, there were few cannons. So, when weapons of mass destruction started getting developed, many scientists resigned from their positions. They said, we, we are not going to use our intelligence to monitor and control the others.
Take others in mass. But of course, they were not socially responsible scientists. But there are others who built up their career.
There was a money in that, in researching the weapons. So, what I have heard is that, Einstein, who suggested that, that I am going to write a letter to Eisenhower, which letter did I write? The elephant that I am going to write. And later on, when the atom bomb was used in Japan, and made a huge amount of money, Einstein had to model this whole thing.
And he said that the biggest mistake of my life was sending a letter. But still, he said, that literally, my intention was, that if Germany got the weapon in atom bomb, before the Allies, Einstein himself was a Jew. And he had seen what Germans had done to Jews.
Hitler, Nazi regime had done to Jews. He said, my fear was that they might get the weapon first. And that would have drastically changed the course of the war, and the course of history.
But later on, he found that although he had got, although Hitler had got some uranium, which could later be used to develop weapons, he was not so close to developing weapons actually. So, anyway, the point is that, there were real consequences. He felt himself responsible for it.
So, as a matter of individual responsibility, especially if we are involved in something which is potentially misusable, we have to be careful when we are using it. But, by some long stretch, if something has gone out of context, it will be applied wrongly. And that can happen for anything and anyone.
And that I don’t think we have to worry too much. So, we have to focus on the consequences that we can think of. And we try to make sure that we don’t spin off, we don’t lead to things which are going to have obvious wrong consequences.
But, beyond that, we focus on our intent and our intent, and the conceivable consequences anyway.