Unkind Actions: Why We Hurt Others and How Awareness Can Break the Cycle

When I see an action that is unkind or unjust, I look at the person who has committed that act and wonder if they know what they are doing. Perhaps look at their intent….do they have a harmful intent….or are they just unaware of what they have done?

If I feel the person is really ignorant of the results of their unkind action then I tend to understand. If, however, I think the person was well aware of what they is doing with an intent of malice, I tend to be very angry with that person. 

Is a person ever intentionally hurtful to another?

I would say the answer is yes. Jealousy, among other things, can drive us to commit unkind acts towards another. And other emotions seem to push us to be unkind. But when we are unkind purposefully, are we truly aware of what we are doing? 

When I am unkind, and I am aware that I am unkind, then why do I behave this way? This is a very interesting question. Perhaps I am aware in my mind of the harm I am doing, but I do not feel it. The pain of someone else does not move me.

“If the pain of someone else does not move me, then the pain of the other person is separate from me and that is not my pain. It is their pain. I do not need to worry about it. It is not affecting me.” (This is how I might think inside myself while I am acting selfishly or unkindly toward someone else.)

If I am not sensitive to another’s pain and another is not sensitive to mine, then we live in a world where sensitivity does not matter. If sensitivity does not matter, then I am not surprised when people hurt each other every day. I say the world is full of suffering and I must live in that world. 

When I think of being angry with a person who sees the wrong in what they are doing and yet still does it, I now think that such a person does not understand the whole picture of their actions. Not realizing that every unkind word and action moves both oneself and another on a very certain course of life – not seeing that that very certain course is the course of conflict – such a person is caught in a web of sorrow.

It seems that we are not aware that every unkind action we take affects ourselves and others and in turn affects every human being through a state of continuing reaction. I hurt him, so he hurts her, so she hurts them, so they (coming full circle) hurt me. This perpetuates a life of sorrows, a life without sensitivity and caring.

Response to Unkind Actions by Fanda Plessl

Jean, as I see it, there is no difference between the person who is ignorant and does harm through ignorance and the person who intends to do harm, because they are both conditioned to do the “unkind actions.”

An intentional unkind action comes from wanting to get revenge from a hurt — a hurt that comes from childhood that is conditioned into you. The same goes for a person who is ignorant of their unkind action.