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