Harm many or Harmony of harm

What is harm? How direct of effects from an action, count as harm?

A basic explanation of harm could be; the cause of a reduction of function, health or well being of something or someone. This could potentially apply to an inanimate object, animal, or person. The significance of harm toward varying things could be subjective, but a lot of people’s perspective (including mine), would likely be that harming an object is least important, harming a living thing without a brain (such as a tree) would be considered the 2nd level of importance, an animal would be the 3rd most significant, and harm towards a human would be the most significant. AI might fit on this scale somewhere, but I’ll leave that out of this context. My perspective is that harm toward a human is most important to avoid, since humans have consciousness which causes a more in depth mindfulness of emotions, and more awareness, comprehension and understanding of their experiences. 

Distinguishing what actions of an individual counts as harm towards something else is a more difficult concept. For attempting to understand this concept, I’ll use a common denominator of harm toward a person, since it seems most significant. 

Direct intentional harm toward someone seems like the most obvious type of harm. Direct unintentional harm towards someone could be considered not as significant as an action causing harm, since the action could be less so to blame (but intention is complex). In a post from about 3.5 yrs ago; Immoral Quantity Question, I went into further detail on how intentions affect the morality of someone's actions. Unintentional harm may be considered not as immoral, but is still harm, and could be regarded as important to learn and avoid. 

The next step of distance for an action causing harm would be indirect harm, where the direct actions of someone cause an effect, and that effect causes another effect of harm. An example could be if someone leaves a campfire burning when they go home, 1 hour later the wind picks up and a bunch of dead leaves blow into the fire. The embers of the burning leaves blow across the ground to ignite a forest fire which ends up spreading and burning someone's house down and injuring them. The action of abandoning the burning fire did not cause direct harm to someone, but the effect of the remaining fire caused the fire to spread once an additional variable of wind was added. This example still seems fairly straight forward that the action counts as harm, since without that action, the other would not have been harmed.

If multiple actions are needed to cause harm indirectly and unintentionally, it becomes somewhat less distinct if each action should be considered an act of harm. For example, as millions of people do every day, driving a car or using electricity causes pollution, which unintentionally and indirectly harms others, through a reduction of health. When it takes many actions to contribute toward an indirect harm which is very difficult to measure or prove, distinguishing this as a harmful action is much more vague. 

Perhaps another difficult action to distinguish as harm, is an action of inaction to aid someone, when it could reduce harm. This could likely be considered to not be an action of harm, since the action of not doing something does not cause the harm. But the trick is, a significant amount of harm, and perhaps much more harm could result from inaction. For example, if you see someone crossing the street, and see a car heading straight for them, which they dont notice, a simple action of yelling “watch out!” could stop the harm, where inaction would cause them to be harmed by the car. An example of indirect inaction causing harm, could be simply not donating money to a charity that reduces harm. The problem with considering inaction as harm, is there are countless inactions any 1 person is taking at all times.

In all, an action counting as harm can be obvious when its direct or if its the sole cause of indirect, but the more steps of cause and effect to result in the harm, or less measurable, or the more actions it takes in total to contribute, creates a fogginess of appointing an action as harm. If harm is the important thing to avoid, it seems inaction could potentially cause as much, or more harm, as action. Besides what action or inaction causes harm, distinguishing blamability, responsibility and morality seem to be another very difficult related element. Perhaps the potential to reduce actions and inactions that harm many, is the harmony of harm.

Dear God above all

Thank you for large and small

Thanks for all taken for granted

including any board thats slanted

Sorry for any fault that I’ve done

But with your aid I become one

help me come closer to you

and love for my neighbor to brew

Guide our souls, just in case

We haven't realized your grace

To this amazing God I pray

and thank you for today

ask to forgive for my faults

and aid those to become halts 

ask to guide me in all

before I stumble and fall

Help my family and friends 

in every way that life bends

How can we ever be enough grateful

and avoid our nature of hateful

Help disregard some strife

and be thankful for life

Communicating Communication

Is effective communication important? 

Regarding humans, communication is involved with virtually every interaction from 1 person to another. There's a spectrum of accuracy for which any person can communicate, from actions to detailed words.

Actions or a few simple words can sometimes be effective for fast communication, but are typically very inaccurate and imprecise. This leaves a lot of room for error from the person that is interpreting the communication. For example, if someone sees someone else from a distance on the street that they recognize, they might quickly wave, intending to communicate a greeting, but with inaccuracy of this communication, the other person could misinterpret the wave to insinuate for them to keep walking and move on. Or a friend could ask another if they want to join for a party, and the response might be a very simple “no”. With this low accuracy of detail, the response might have been just because they are tired and don't want to party, but the other friend might misinterpret it to assume they don't want to join because they don't like hanging out with that friend. If they make this misinterpretation, they might never again ask that friend to join anything, even though they might have wanted to join plenty of things in the future. A simple lack of detail (for reasons why) in the response, could change the rest of both of the friends lives.

Inaccurate and fast simple communication is often more effective after the people communicating know each other well enough, and have enough experience from each other, to interpret effectively what the other is intending (such as a couple that has lived together for 10 yrs). Or fast communication can be used after explaining ahead of time in detailed communication, what certain fast actions or words are intended to mean. For example, in a sport, such as ultimate frisbee, teammates could clarify before the game what certain fast words or gestures mean, to maximize speed during the game. They could specify and agree that the word “zone” means run to the zone for scoring a point, or that pointing at the ground is intended to mean come closer. 

When it comes to initial, more personal communication between people that will be around each other a lot, detailed communication can be slow, but allow much more accurate understanding, and the ability to gain trust. In my last post; Trusting Trust, I distinguished that 1 of the best tools someone can have in order to trust another on a larger scale, is communication. This allows someone to understand why the other person makes decisions and takes actions, which builds an understanding of their overall values and tendencies. 

Before much trust is built, extra detailed communication can often be the most effective method to avoid misinterpretation, as well as reveal reasons for any decisions, beliefs, and actions of the past, present and future. Besides misinterpretations, straight forward detail early on can also avoid lack of awareness of the other. Communicating preferences and opinions just once, can avoid a repeated dispreferred situation 1000 times in the future, and benefit both people. For eg, someone could be straight forward and tell their roommate that they find it hard to sleep when the other walks loudly late at night. Then rather than having the lack of awareness that they step too loudly, they can take lighter steps after a certain time of night. This could not only allow the other to gain 2 hrs of sleep every night for a year, but also they will then not feel anger and spite towards the roommate that would have continued walking loudly, and this could avoid them being kicked out of the house by the landlord. 

As this can obviously apply to relationships or friendships, it can also apply to virtually any interaction in society with any meaning. From communication between an employee and their boss, to an online discussion about politics, to a customer and a business owner, excessive detail is usually better than lack of detail, to avoid the vast potential for misunderstandings and to avoid the need for someone to guess.

In all, basic inaccurate communication can be fast and effective in simple scenarios, but easily misinterpreted. Often, more accurate detail near the start can allow understanding, trust, and agreement for faster communication later on. Being straightforward can often save a lot of future discomfort for both people, and excessive detail is usually lower risk than lacking detail. If there is excessive detail in this post, that's to increase chances of accurate interpretation, as I’m Communicating Communication. 

Trusting Trust

What is trust? What affects it? How can you trust your capability to trust? 

At its basics, trust can be considered; reliability to perform an expected action. This can apply to people, as well as animals and objects. If you believe you can rely on something or someone to perform an action, you trust it or them.

Objects might be arguably the easiest thing to trust, since they don't have a brain or mind to make unexpected decisions or actions. Trusting an object just depends on your knowledge and experience of the object. You can trust a bridge to hold you up, based on knowledge that an engineer built it with safety standards, or based on your experience of testing it out and using it repeatedly. There could be fluke occurrences where the bridge eventually fails from decay, but that might be after 10K uses, making it trustable 99.999% of the time. Trust basically comes down to your estimate of a high probability that something will perform as expected.

Besides humans, animals also have the ability to trust or distrust objects, other animals, and humans. Since animals have a mind, they have a high variety of reactions through the complexity of their neural network, so their reactions toward something else can be trusting or expecting an action. An animal can trust a tree to not harm it, either because of the animals instinct to have no fear of the sensory input of a tree, or because of their subconscious having so many safe experiences with trees. An animal can distrust another animal, like a deer would distrust a wolf because of instinct, or it can trust another animal based on experience, such as the wolf trusting another wolf in its pack to help catch that deer. An animal can trust a human, such as my dog trusts me to feed it, or of course most animals distrust humans, since we typically kill them throughout history.

Humans have a different variation of trust towards other things, which typically includes the same psychological reasons an animal trusts or distrusts, but also has a more complex layer caused by conscious thought. We still have the instincts to trust certain things (such as a baby trusts its mother), and subconscious influence to trust what we’ve experienced and had positive reinforcement for, but then we also have the ability to comprehend cause and effect, which includes learning knowledge. This comprehension allows us to trust or distrust something the 1st time we experience it, based on knowledge. 

For example, I trusted the bungee ropes and platform enough to jump from a platform 200 feet high, for the 1st time, because of knowledge of safety standards in my country, and knowledge that many people have done it before me. Virtually no animal would willingly make that jump. Or you might not trust going over to a cute baby bear, because you have the comprehension of cause and effect that the mother bear might be right nearby and will react to tear you apart. 

A person trusting another person is likely the most complex and varying form of trust, since not only do you yourself have such a varying neurological potential for decisions and awareness of knowledge, but you are also aware that the other person has such a wide variety of potential decisions and actions based on psychology. Perhaps the most significant component to trust becoming difficult from person to person, is the awareness of mind of others, and that they can very easily lie and deceive. Animals may be able to deceive in some cases, but humans have a much higher capability to deceive and lie using our conscious thought. Trust may be easy and common as a child growing up, but once the child learns, experiences, and comprehends more about others ability (as well as their own) to deceive and selfishly betray, trust becomes much more difficult to have. 

With trustability of another person to perform an expected action becoming far more difficult to assess, trusting still comes down to knowledge and experience of the other person, but usually takes more time and more evidence. Not only do you need enough experience with the person being reliable in a certain way, but also a significant advantage is to comprehend the other person's overall tendencies and typical decisions. 

This trust can be on a small scale and not require much depth or variety of actions to be trusted, such as trusting an employee to work hard, or on a large scale, such as choosing a life partner, roommate, or long term friend. When it comes to large scale, estimating and evaluating the others’ typical decisions would often be relevant to their overall values and principles. Understanding why that person chooses to do certain things and how they treat others is a significant advantageous tool we can use as conscious beings. By far 1 of the best and underestimated methods for this is communication. Asking questions, and verifying details to understand why the other person has taken (and does take) actions and made (and makes) decisions. To verify overarching  reliability of expectation, verify authenticity. And the simplest way to gain the overarching trust of another, is to be authentic.

Overall, objects can be easy to trust with knowledge, animals can be fairly trustable through knowledge and experience, and humans take more work to be able to trust their complex conscious minds to have consistent outcomes and tendencies. Perhaps once you understand trust to a more accurate degree, and learn effective methods to discern trust, you can trust yourself to be effective at Trusting Trust.