We think we know selves. We think someone is a certain way.
But they are a different way when they are happy, and a different way when they are in pain, and such ways elicit responses in those they come into contact with, affecting the way the other is as well.
Granted there are core personalities and behaviors that characterize an individual, but many of these behaviors only manifest when they are elicited by social/environmental inputs.
Changes in the way an individual is perceived can happen fast and exponentially. One change in one person due to some chance occurrence can be transferred to everyone else that person comes into contact with. This might be sort of what the concept of karma was getting at. Good energy and bad energy pass through in waves. And since everything is so densely connected, these energy waves must necessarily wash back onto the originating agent, if the concept of an originating agent is even possible. It is conceptually anyways.
Possible behaviors elicited in an individual exist in an array that is programmed through repeated immersion in a society, the programs themselves established through repetition until the array of behaviors forms a system which is faithfully administrated through repeated mechanical action. Such systems delineate the array of possible behaviors, outside of which become transgressionary behaviors. But then when a system breaks down, the array of possible behaviors widens.
One takeaway from this metaphysical speculation is that causes don't necessarily originate in individuals. We will ultimately find that we are all bound together within a system, a system that constricts the array of possible individual actions, which therefore dictates how individuals can act in any given situation. As a system deteriorates, each individual bound to the system deteriorates in turn, and the same goes with the converse: augmentation in power.
To simplify this further, when things go bad we should all do our best to be nice to each other. Not always possible, or even desirable. Sometimes a kick in the teeth is just the thing to move everything along. Sometimes its not. But it is best to remember that that one guy who is a raging asshole is just really the weakest link in a long chain of deterioration, and that we are in this together and we need each other to get out of this.
