Most modern systems are filled with policies.

Policies for safety.

Policies for dignity.

Policies for fairness.

Policies for grievance.

On paper, it looks like progress.

Yet inside offices, families, institutions, and everyday life, something else keeps repeating.

People feel afraid.

People feel small.

People feel tired in ways no policy can measure.

So a quiet question begins to form:

If so many rules exist, why do so many people still feel unsafe?

When Following the Rules Still Hurts People

 

We are taught to believe that harm happens when someone breaks the rules.

But most of the damage in life happens when everyone follows them.

People don’t lose themselves because someone openly mistreated them.

They lose themselves through small, repeated moments that were all “reasonable.”

Staying a little longer.

Adjusting a little more.

Keeping quiet a little often.

At work, it sounds like:

“Can you just stay back today?”

“Let’s finish this first.”

“It won’t take long.”

In relationships, it sounds like:

“Don’t make a big deal.”

“Just adjust.”

In society, it sounds like:

“That’s how things are.”

Nothing here looks abusive.

Nothing here violates a rule.

But slowly, something inside you changes.

You start choosing words carefully.

You stop saying no.

You feel watched even when no one is watching.

On paper, everything is fine.

Inside, you feel trapped.

That is where most harm actually lives — not in scandal, but in normality that never asks how you feel.

 

How Power Learns to Stay Clean

Modern institutions have learned a clever trick.

They don’t need to violate rules.

They only need to write them narrowly.

So policies focus on: committees, timelines, procedures, forms, portals

But they avoid: power, fear, dependency, retaliation, silence

Systems become very good at proving they followed process, even when they failed to protect people.

Paperwork becomes a shield.

Human experience disappears behind it.

 

Why So Many People Feel Bitter

Most people today live with: uncertain boundaries, constant pressure, unspoken expectations, fear of being marked difficult, fear of losing opportunity

So when someone else receives a safeguard — a protection, a policy, a cushion — it feels like favoritism.

But that protection does not exist because someone is lucky.

It exists because someone else’s basic safety was never guaranteed.

The real imbalance is not that some people have more.

It is that too many people have too little.

 

The Fight We Were Taught to Have

Instead of asking why power is so unchecked, we are encouraged to fight each other.

One group against another.

One identity against another.

One struggle against another.

When people argue about who deserves protection, no one asks why so many people feel unsafe to begin with.

Resentment flows sideways.

Power remains untouched.

 

The Thought That Lingers

A world where dignity was common would not resent safeguards.

It would barely need them.

But in a world where fear is normal, any form of protection feels political.
any form of care feels unfair.

So we argue about fairness

while quietly living without security.

And maybe that is the real illusion.

Not that some people are protected —

but that any of us ever truly were.