प्रवृत्तिं च निवृत्तिं च जना न विदुरासुराः।न शौचं नापि चाचारो न सत्यं तेषु विद्यते॥
pravṛttiṃ ca nivṛttiṃ ca janā na vidur āsurāḥna śaucaṃ nāpi cācāro na satyaṃ teṣu vidyate
Word by word
The verse says
People in that state do not know what to take up or what to leave alone. There is no cleanness in them, no decent conduct, and no truth.
In plain words
The first thing named is not cruelty. It is not knowing what to do.
Pravṛtti - going toward. Nivṛtti - stepping back. Between them they cover every choice there is.
Someone who cannot tell those two apart is not evil yet. They are lost. Everything else in this description grows out of that.
Where you've felt this · with money
A cousin of yours borrows from one friend to pay another, then from a third to pay the first. He is not stealing and he never set out to cheat anyone. Ask him at any point what the plan is and he will tell you, in detail. Two years in, nobody has been paid and he has run out of friends. He never once decided to do this. He only ever decided the next thing.
Going deeper
Not knowing when to move and when to hold still is named as the root here, before any of the uglier items.
Pravṛtti is going forward into action. Nivṛtti is drawing back from it. Every situation you have ever been in offered you one or the other, and most unhappiness is a sorting error between them - pushing where you should have waited, waiting where you should have moved.
That is why this is the first charge laid. It is not a moral failure. It is a navigational one, and the moral failures are downstream of it.
There is something oddly encouraging in that. Nobody here is said to have wanted the harm they caused. They genuinely could not tell. Which is also the warning, because that state does not feel like confusion from inside. It feels like being certain.