Perhaps Birth Rebirth cycles work this way
the Entire Journey of your Soul from the most base consciousness to Human and Beyond in all your past life's leads to your current one's from rise to fall and again the dashas there experiences a person has in their life is a smaller version or fractal of each life they have lived
the Karma or decisions one takes in each such period to cope with the situations that arise at these times determines whether bad patterns start to loose hold and good patterns begin to expand or the opposite
so this single life is a smaller fractal of all your previous live's and each phase of life to the most tiny division of time reflects it in experiences and situations thus your past can never leave you unless you resolve it in the present and avoid or increase the repetition in the future life and moments

Karma is in essence about Effort Hardwork hence Shani dev is attached to the entire issue
it is not flowery or sweet it takes toil , people who keep talking about the world being bad including me myself can never enjoy our dreams because we want to have what does not exist or we do not want to put in effort and have not earned it
the only other thing one can do then is to quietly put up with it all
secretly whining at times being a bigot at other times giving up faith and being an opportunist

Love is trust respect affection
Knowledge is to understand the Truth accept Reality
Freedom is to do your Karma for Right for God for Bhagwaan
and avoid being enslaved by negative ideas feelings lies within and outside

The idea is the universe and all that is gives each soul a path a Highway which they are to share with other similar one's like cars on a wide road there are many lanes many Bends many under and over bridges 
every soul has a fixed path to the destination lanes are the degree of choices god has granted and you may switch as per your intent the influence of the three gunas and by triggering or being triggered by the fellow souls who share some distance with you while they get off the detour which you did not take,the only choice granted is to give way or try to overtake other souls as it benefits you within your mind and feelings to go sideways on either direction while continuing to go forward 
perhaps those damning decisions or those painful but great choices people make are going beyond switching lanes and rather taking new turns and new bridges it takes more effort but it is worth the hassle
or atleast you think it is an end up crashing

Karma is the only Merit no one is better by Default 

Manipulation is to temporarily satisfy people and give them what they want or Need at the moment
then trap them and Exploit them in the future

The desire to Submit to Surrender to give in give up to believe and have faith is the real vulnerability
its all about making the victim bow down once and make them feel peace Joy Pleasure in that moment to Violate their Solitude and make them accept you in their Comfort Zone
then from that point on wards you just fiddle with their faith their emotions knowledge psychology and Necessity  and enslave them
leaving the option of freedom and breaking free distant and painfully out of reach

people make a science of these things

The public Masses Deserve the exploitation oppression and suffering they endure on a day to day basis
they have earned it by being Individually Selfish and as a Whole Arrogant and their desires to give into mob mentality has brought this upon them

Tides of Time will move forward as they are supposed to as they ought to
every individual and every higher group is stuck in the flow
every one is locked in the kalchakra
Karma is merely the degree of Options the cosmos has granted
but they are limited to your being 

the more connected people are to each other with Love
it is about Empathy and Sympathy for other people
directly decreases or increases the capacity of society to be fair stable and balanced
distinction categorization should denote what people chose choose and what they find comfort in life through it should never lead to animosity but co-existence

the demoniac tamasic focus on ego and every other aspect of a normal person is either absent or out of orbit within such people
they feed off the suffering of the divine or sattwic to bolster their own Idea of self and belif of being stronger and superior

the sattwic oppress and control the tamasic but have the tendency to get too lost in their own good live's and start to drop the downtrodden the fringes of society to keep their own core of purity rather than helping them gain direction

In all Ancient cultures including ours the Idea of Age's Exist the numbers may vary but there has always been a categorization of the Ethical and Spiritual Decline of Human beings and the scaling back up
in Sat they where all Gods because Spirituality was perfected to a new Level and Material Technological dependency was Removed from day to day life and for grand endeavours
it is the power of Faith and less reliance on the technological Material Aspects
it was the same for Norse and Greeks perhaps even for other parts of the world
Polytheism was in essence to understand and Identify Various Attributes which match within a Human and in Nature
again it is the same Fractal patterns when you worship a aparticular God you are relating to his or her presence within yourself
Monotheistic religions are simply trying to Explain all the confusion which the mortal mind suffers in a simple Direct way
because people cannot grasp the complexities of faith and spirituality anymore
so to simplify faith a new set of rules is generated or commandments
but because the Human mind seeks answers which these path's cannot give Atheistic views gain Strength
the dogma or the fixed rules make it difficult to modify such views according to time and place
besides most such path's Sink down to Conquest and Slavery Eventually or from the get go and onset
In the modern age with technological advancement Political Ideas have taken over and people simply avoid Faith altogether
but without the Idea of Afterlife they do not fear Judgement for things which go Unnoticed by others
Still the Hunger to Believe and to make sense of things is even more so when Life is difficult in one manner or the other ,people end up following some kind of religion or Religious Leader searching for meaning to Life

It is about certainty being sure of things what you know about yourself the world what you define as reality and truth
it is about Strength Inner strength a Strong Mind which you function off
in the real world . People find it through Knowledge Faith Physical Strength Money Position Qualification Fame Following what they believe to be Ability Capability
Their words are meaningless Views Pointless and Civility a Farce
they seek only to Impose themselves as a Name & face to be the Bully rather than the Bullied.They have either achieved a certain finesse in their Ignorance and pretend to be Ethical at least in public whereas the Ethical face transforms into "this is how the world is" face in Privacy
Or
a Method to their Deceit and Shameless Self Promotion
Above all else they Lack Goodwill and by Them I mean Most people who have achieved any kind of success in any field
Ambition is a Sin because it is for Self through Self it does not bring the Society into play within the Loop

It will play out in either of these two ways

the True thinkers they who seek to Understand Truth and Accept Reality who have what it takes to Jump into the Abyss and derive Knowledge piece together Society Dharma karma back while risking their own live's and Sanity will Succeed for Love and a Safe Dignified Life 

Or

it will disintegrate into deeper lack of order Chance and Confusion will take over.the Bar will disappear maybe some Nukes would be involved the Entrepreneur's who seek Order to keep the market going would become Obsolete the Ability to Loot instead to produce will become Norm

which is already being done by powerful nations groups and has been going on for centuries only the charade of Businessmen would not be needed anymore and the Punchline of Justice would be pointless the collective consciousness would not need the comfort zone of patriotism religion and other Social Ideas it is when the average person would make peace with the idea that it is how it is the strong prey on the weak it is this idea which makes people give up Higher principles for the lower one's closer to bestial survival .The more ingrained this mentality is among the masses the worse living standards get and will continue to do so

Right is Might is society Ascending

Might is Right is society Descending

whatever every Individual believes would alter Narayan or Truth's perspective whether the World should get better or Worse

Santana Dharma is eternal Truth in all forms of Reality