This paper presents a unified, multi‑layer framework explaining how symbolic awareness generates environmental imbalance, systemic disruption, cognitive divergence, and finite‑state consciousness dynamics. The model integrates three previously independent strands of work the emergence of religion, the structural origins of greed, and the mechanics of finite consciousness into a single causal architecture. The central claim is that symbolic self‑reference constitutes a cognitive singularity that destabilises natural balance, produces identity‑driven behaviour, and reshapes human systems across multiple scales. The paper outlines four layers environmental, systemic, cognitive, and consciousness each expressing the same underlying mechanism at different levels of organisation. This framework offers a non‑moral, non‑supernatural explanation for human imbalance and provides a coherent structure linking behaviour, belief, and consciousness. It contributes to evolutionary psychology, systems theory, cognitive science, and the philosophy of human behaviour.
samuel james willoughby (Thu,) studied this question.