On a similar note, Jay wrote:
>Pain is inevitable. Cruelty is not.
This also raises some murky specters for me. Sometimes individuals
can be perceived as cruel (i.e., deliberately inflicting pain) even
when this is not their intention or their perception of themselves.
Whose experiential reality do we use as the benchmark in this case
to decide whether or not cruelty is present? Can we ever behave
in such a way that some one person in our midst does not perceive
us as "cruel"?
On the issue of damage: I'm reminded of the different meanings of
the term "adaptation" in my own field, socioemotional development.
One meaning is of course "ontogenetic" adaptation, or the tendency
of an organism to adapt to a specific ecological niche over the
course of a lifetime (children "adapt" to our schools, however
structured). Another meaning is adaptation in the "developmental
mental health sense." Here, an ideal is present of how children
*should* develop, and their actual development is measured against
this ideal. These ideals are usually culturally constructed
endpoints (what is, after all, "ideal" development?).
Robin