The people around us influence what feels normal, acceptable, and possible. That influence deserves attention, but relationships should not be reduced to an investment portfolio or a count of supposedly greedy acts.
Greed is also too imprecise for diagnosis. A behaviour may reflect self-interest, fear, scarcity, competing duty, or exploitation. The response depends on which is actually present.
The social signal audit
1. Describe the behaviour
Name the action and its effect without turning the person into a pathogen or a defective node.
2. Look for a pattern
One event may matter, but repeated conduct under comparable conditions provides stronger evidence. Avoid arbitrary thresholds that create certainty from a small sample.
3. Examine context and responsibility
What did the person know? What incentives, pressures, promises, or power differences shaped the action? What part of the pattern is yours?
4. Treat fear as one signal
Fear can alert us to risk, but it can also arise from history, uncertainty, or misunderstanding. Investigate it without treating it as biological proof.
5. Choose a proportionate boundary
Clarify expectations, limit access, seek repair, ask for support, or leave when safety and evidence require it.
Our social circle is not our ceiling, and another person's conduct does not force our own. The audit is useful when it replaces vague unease with a clearer account of behaviour, consequence, and boundary.
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