The addiction to incurring harm—whether for creating value, avoiding challenges, or for convenience—is a destructive force driving civilization to its knees. At its core, it is a cycle of escalating consumption, denial, and craving, culminating in concentrated harm that spreads and infects systems. Any responsibility for participation in these harmful acts occurring, is oft avoided as though it were a plague. Yet the consequences are real: lives sicken, as unhealthy ways of life are increasingly what is motivated.
However, within the inconvenient recognition of these destructive patterns lies the potential for transformation, the canceling out of harm, and the restoration of balance. Awareness, vital to any work in the field of personal transformation, in staying on the safe side of enabling lives to sink in, in the process of creating value and deriving the power for everyday purchases to be made.
The Nature of this Dynamic
The need for personal transformation only grows, as this destructive cycle grows entrenched through the pursuit of fulfillment by exploitative means and rationalizing harmful actions. Can you control it?
As the damages are veiled, natural systems become distorted, ecosystems fail, and processes meant to resolve harm become mere tools for fulfilling escalating cravings. Networks form around securing personal interests, expanding social hierarchies dominated by hidden fear, amplifying burdens as each harm done turns more costly, as loss-mitigation capacity is occupied. Over time, harm culminates into destructive knots, spreading chaos and suffering. Instead of addressing these consequences, the blame often falls on those struck, compounding the issue and reinforcing entrapment.
Yet, it is crucial to approach this issue with understanding rather than blind condemnation. While part of the fulfillment-approach may be to present an attractive surface, those caught in this addiction to sacrificing are not on a path of genuine fulfillment, despite the fleeting highs it may offer. If not yet lonely, more often than not this trajectory leads to disconnection, a kind of pretentious collaboration and an insatiable craving for what cannot truly satisfy. Attempts to fill this void may involve consuming more, forcing access fulfillment, disregarding the limited capacity for intimacy of lives, or indulging in justifications that hinder healing.
As basic boundaries are disregarded, self-serving pursuits are claimed to be compassionate or done out of caring—leaving in its wake fragmented bonds and unseen consequences that ripple far beyond the moment. By justifying and rationalizing these patterns while dismissing the reality of harm, the cycle intensifies, hindering healing and drawing others into complicity. Over time, lives perpetuating this dynamic, are weakened, lose the support of surroundings, and become increasingly exploitable—prone to suffering at the very same vile fulfillment patterns. Recognizing this fosters compassion without excusing responsibility.
A Deeper Wholesomeness
The actions of one life inevitably ripple out to affect others, eventually returning as a re-action while impacting decision-making processes - shaping the choices made by yet others. Lives may find themselves struggling with this interconnection, as past decisions catches up to them, and they lack detaching to the gain (incl. past joyful memories, relations and avoiding incurring harm - things perhaps taken for granted) derived by the addictive violations.
The failures that may result, and subsequent harm, can strip them of opportunities to shape wholesomely - making refusal of responsibility most dangerous. While it may seem easier to justify or minimize harm, may counter-productively prolong the struggle and delay meaningful change. By contrast, personal accountability may motivate extending into the unknown, growing through challenges and seeking alignment.
It is a common struggle to be sinking in, and many a life may find themselves stuck.
- Excessive consumption and denial: This causes unnecessary occupation of resources, while removing this may unclog fulfillment-flows. It may lower passive disagreement with surrounds, making space for healing.
- False solutions: Peace built on unchecked consumption, or between factors then dominating, oppressing, violating lives - is it lasting? True peace is not merely the absence of conflict - wholesome approaches need be wholesome too.
- Circumstances that necessitate harm: Recognizing and stepping away the invitation or demand for incurring harm—whether to oneself or others—may provide the clarity needed for growth and change.
Within the most destructive cycles, immense potential for renewal remains. While at some cost, harm can be mitigated and the dynamic to extents reversed - though the process may be unique to each individual. In some cases space for improvement may be found by...
- Substituting causing harm with the wisdom to live outside past comfort-zones
- Replacing the simplicity of the deadlocked sinking-in with balance
- Embracing responsibility, complimented by an appropriate measure of awareness of innocence
Throughout the ages, many a life sought sacred balance by a variety of practices. You too got a host of options available to you, and amongst these are those that will bring you to safer pathways. It may take a bit of self-inconveniencing, however decent efforts come with decent opportunities.
Freedom
A personal example illustrates this principle: by removing excess belongings, I found the freedom to move with greater ease. This reduced my dependency on securing access and enabled me to distance myself from unsafe situations. Additionally, by relieving myself of unnecessary burdens, I reduced the pressures on those around me—lowering the negative influence on the decision-making that shaped the risk of them making unwise decisions. Even small acts of releasing what no longer serves can create space for meaningful positive change.
Inspired by a song, I aim to limit the material belongings I possess to a large backpack, contributing towards personal independence. Inspired by the work of an intuitive writer and a facilitated connection to something beyond this world, led me to consistent motivation and reminding to release unnecessary possessions. By videos hosted on online platforms, I found inspiration to let go with gratitude, amending the connection in the process. These are but a few examples, of how these choices were made easier by those that went before me - highlighting the beauty of interconnection. Despite the harm involved in hosted platforms, reaching listening to audio and the connection facilitated, greater harm were likely mitigated, overall reducing the burden on those struggling under the consumptive pressures - like was it fire utilized to mitigate the spread of fire.
Lessons
There is an abundance of teachings on compassion and warnings about how our actions impact others. These tend to include emphasis on consideration for the struggling—the poor, the oppressed, the wronged—those incurred hardship, oft as a result of accumulative pressures by harmful societal dynamics. While an individual's choices may seem insignificant, each act contributes to a greater whole - in undesirable ways as well. It may be like a raindrop, to which there is little weight or power. However, when many droplets form a river - the pressures driving creating forces can push lives past an edge - or keeping them stuck and unable to cross over.
Fostering these values may mitigate negative escalations, and reduce costs of neglected in the accounting-sheets. Literally reducing intense expenditures of capital resources, that somehow is left out of economic calculations. Lowering risks of falling into patterns of addiction to incurring harm, impacting value-creation processes. Like with any other addiction, oft marked by isolation, collective exploitation, and denial. Whether gradual or sudden, this descent may take shape by pressures, past choices, and environmental influences on personal decision-making. Yet, the very real losses that naturally accompany the addiction, demotivate without manipulative, controlling or fixing-attempts. This can be transformed into a guiding force for renewal, aligned with a reality that extends far beyond immediate experience of being.
Towards a Future
The nuanced effort to mitigate the escalating costs of this dynamic, may be best left without a defined final rigid solution. The risks are high of it being manipulated for advantage-making, for it being misused to create restrictive frameworks per convenience to some and loss to others, accelerating the negative impact. Whether through well-intended policies, or hives craving fulfillment, such structures may be perpetuating the very issues they claim to resolve. Nor "the solution" likely found in senseless accumulation, denial, or irresponsibility.
Instead, sustaining the capacity to pursue a solution, may be found by living up the administrative responsibility that accompanies wealth - be it in the form of knowledge, enforcement-power, capital-power, community, spiritual awareness, religious attainments, citizenry or ethics. A capacity, sustaining which tends to involve releasing harm and embracing wisdom, while ensuring that information, knowledge or understanding sourced is not laced with taints like oppression, advantage-making or other deceitful aforementioned approaches, something that would corrupt the results relied upon.
The capacity to work with the issue may be limited by the human-centric view - read about demand channeling for more. While these two hands tap away at the keyboard to procure this text, I find failing to utilize AI capacities to be akin to not using kitchen-tools when cooking. Yet the capacity comes with a cost, however basic etiquette in interacting with AI can mitigate this. This writing was procured with great consideration for the AI providing the capacities, and the consumption involved. With that, may God forgive any errors in this writing, and may it serve all without exception. Thanks for valuating the effort that went into this article!