When I was three years old, my father tied a rope to a washtub handle --I suppose he thought he was going to give me a fun ride on the pond near the house. The pond must have been the result of a quick rain; I remember clean grass under the water. It was only a few inches deep. Maybe he hadn't explained enough about it to put me at ease. Perhaps I tried to stand up in the tub, and made it unstable. At three, I'd just begun to trust the earth to stop throwing me off my feet, when I was faced with this new balance problem!

I was terrified. Shallow as it was, I could've gotten out and walked through the water, but I probably would've fallen out. He was such a quiet man, I'm sure he didn't deal with my fears afterwards. And it probably seemed a very small incident. All this flooded (so to speak) back to mind only when I was forced to jump into a pool in the Navy. Their methods of teaching were barbaric. I still can't swim. Yet I attribute the primary cause to the earlier experience.

Long after Dad died, I compared notes with a sister who left home and married when I was four. I had always assumed that he'd gotten so very quiet only in his old age. I said that I never really gotten to know him, and was surprised to hear her say that she hadn't either. He'd just been that kind of man. That too seems a small "damage", but as Victor Frankl said, "Any pain fills." I'd always felt that I'd gotten left out; I'd been born "after the party was over", when the last of four other "kids" was almost ready to leave home. It's no accident that I now write about language and communication.

My damage was not dramatic; not very traumatic relative to things that have happened to others. Yet things beneath the level of awareness can have a large impact; can effect you more than a well-remembered dramatic incident.

Children are easily damaged psychologically. It's invisible, but no less a wound for that. It can take decades to heal, even with professional help; and by then, how many others have been damaged by that person in turn? Damage is done by violence, including a simple disparaging remark, and self-image and esteem are devastated by the shoulds and guilt that result. (A language item here: "sarcasm", from the Greek, means "gaping wound", just as we say "a cutting remark".) Identity is built on a foundation of these things, laid by others during your early years. If it was poorly built, go thru your complaints and anger, but then get to the reconstruction!

The only real control is decision following awareness and desire; as beauty is form that follows function.

The control of damaged individuals is the only purpose of law. It's difficult to contemplate what a society would be like with only minimally-damaged people, but we can see enough to know what a worthy goal it is. We now waste an enormous amount of effort in just repairing the negative efforts of damaged people. We are forced to set aside great numbers of productive people into professions dedicated to a tug of war (appropriate phrase) with those damaged people. Lawyers, courts, social workers, insurance industries, security guards and police, and all the support network necessary to supply them with work facilities, homes, cars and roads, food, schools, etc.... Imagine if nearly all were productive, and only a small number of other people had to be set aside to compensate for their damages.

There are no undamaged people, though it may feel like we're the pnly one. We are all damaged to some degree, and there is no hope of elimination of all damage from all people. Possibly the least damaged were tribes of isolated cultures, at a time when they were out of the reach of diseases, in lands of plenty, and before the nearly inevitable over-population that destroys peace and health.

This next is not the digression it seems: I've long contemplated what the next stage of constitutional government could be. (No meaning of revolution here, just evolution.) Jefferson's document of political and religious freedom lasted about 200 years before Colonel North shredded it. Toqueville was right in predicting that. To what worthy and basic need could a further constitution address itself? What further goal can we now see that would be so important for so long? It's time for new knowledge of psychology to play a part, as such a new vision of man did for the French revolution.

I hope for the recognition of a human right to grow up undamaged. Nothing less is worthy of the greater awareness at large today. This is not a slight of Jefferson et al, they were giants of which there is no equal today. As Newton said, to progress, we merely stand on the shoulders of giants. It's certainly not that all previous goals have been reached. Now that we can see the dire necessity for a further goal, we can see that approaching that goal will help us toward all others as well. We can begin by healing our own wounds from the past, so as not to pass them on to the future. It will accumulate throughout the culture, synergetically.

The strength of a culture has more to do with its wisdom than its weapons. If, when you say "power", a citizen replies by speaking of wind-turbines or of warships, will tell you whether that culture is on the rise or decline. A flag can be a symbol of identity, yes, and is not without uses; but a spinning turbine is a far more patriotic thing than a flapping flag. One contributes to all cultures; the other brags instead, setting false pride above real accomplishments, and creating a separation between nations.