Every person has something he or she finds difficult to do. For some it is talking to opposite sex, for some it is saying i love you, or it can be anything such as just saying hi to your neighbor can feel awkward because you have never done it before for so many years.
Every person has this line beyond which it is awkward to go, but for some this line is so close that talking to you neighbor is strange, and for others this line is so far away that they feel no awkwardness even when hurting others.
How is this line regulated then, it is very simple, by doing something it becomes easier, while not doing something for a while makes it harder. For example calling a friend just without reason becomes difficult if you haven't spoken to that friend for a while, but keeping regular contact makes it easier to just call to chat. The whole prison system is based on that idea, keep people away from things until those things become alien, and awkward to do, the line is so to speak has contracted, or at least that is the thought, it works in some cases, it doesn't in others. In the same way with people that study a lot, they spend much time alone, limit contact with outside world and in some cases this result in that the line if not well established during the childhood contracts, those people are called nerds, that know a lot but don't know how to interact with other people, because it has become difficult for them.
Now when this line is contracted it is very difficult to expand it, which is good in the case of a criminal, but for a nerd that wishes he could just speak his mind to other people so that they could understand, it is not quite as good, because it involves taking of the first step into awkwardness and remain there until it becomes the norm. And that is also principle behind facing your fears, because facing your fears many times enough and you get used to it, most of the time.
Hence it is an easily observable pattern, things we do becomes easy, things we don't becomes alien and frightening.
It might start with awkward feeling talking to strangers because you predict in advance that you don't have so much to talk about, then it becomes awkward talking to friends of friends, after that even friends you haven't talked to for a while, and finally if you spend long time enough without friends it becomes difficult to speak you mind to your friends.
In the same way taking one step in wrong direction makes it easier to do it again, because you know what to expect, and if you keep doing it it becomes easy and that is how people for example get cruel, how a police officer for example having abused his or her power once can more easy do it next time, and then it becomes easy, and when one such corrupt police officer gets arrested for beating someone dead, without any reason, we watch saying how can people become this evil. But in reality it is a simple process experienced by all of us every day.
Hence by being aware of this process there is a chance to stop if you feel things that ought not to be easy such as hurting others are, and there is a chance to start in a direction you want. And it is a simple process, it is how we human beings learn, what we do repeatedly becomes easier, what we don't do we forget how to do and it becomes more difficult.
We forget in every day life that it is so simple, pick up a phone and try to call a friend you haven't spoken to for years, you will start to make all kind of excuses, we have nothing in common to talk about, I am not the kind of person that just calls, he or she might not want to talk to me, he or she might be busily, or moved on e.t.c. but those are just excuses to justify your reluctance to do it, the reason it is difficult for you is because you haven't done it for a long time, do it once, do it twice and it becomes easier.
Hence we do contract and expand as human beings so to speak, by not doing things we contract, doing similar things becomes awkward, in the same way doing things we expand and doing similar things becomes easier, and where we draw the line is what decides what kind of people we are.
What is the point then?
For a person afraid to do anything and who is restricted by this fear of everything: Decide what you want and just do it, it will be hard, but by not doing there is no chance of it becoming any easier.
Similarly for a person with power over others, should consider how this power is used, should it be so easy to punish others? Because it might feel easy because it has become every day experience, but nevertheless it might be wrong.
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