Indeed though all things in balance.
Hard liners often allude to the harshness of nature or brutalities of conflict and war, abuses and aggressions of others and exploitation of humans etc as evidence of why we need to be hardened- but this ignores that we have the ability to use cultural, technological, and legal means to shape things so they don’t have to be that way.
By the same token, there is a certain level of Trauma, or traumatic potential, inherent to life which no feasibly conceivable means Can eliminate, at best perhaps mitigate.
Paradoxically, the less resilient you are required to be, the more sensitive you tend to become, and that which you find potentially traumatic often becomes increasingly sensitive.
A key factor in all this is to give people the tools and facilitate their ability to engage in healthy processing and coping of events and information. Bad things will happen, we can’t stop it. Due to differences in people, we can’t predict or prevent what is traumatic to whom, and it is actually possible that for some people, the very steps and circumstances of trying could itself create trauma.
So it is wise to mitigate those almost universal and “obvious” traumas- abuse, neglect, etc. but it is as important or perhaps more important in my view to create a culture that is supportive and conducive to processing and coping with whatever reality we face.
Sometimes it is easier or more prudent to change reality than to change how we interact with it, and sometimes it is more prudent to change the way we interact with reality than reality itself.
We have yet to conquer death and if ever, it doesn’t look like it would be soon for example. All humans, should they live long enough and spend any real time and connection with any other living creatures, will face the potential traumas of death. There are steps we can take in reality of how we discuss and conceptualize and handle death to mitigate trauma, but ultimately one must have the resilience to persevere and see through healthy coping strategies and the processing of such events because we cannot change the event itself.
Focusing on the processing of reality has another upside in diplomacy and personal freedoms.
When we change reality, there are those who usually do not want those changes.
We often must force those changes effectively universally to have them be effective and work for the people who want them.
When we change how the individual processes reality, we are only changing things for the individuals who choose to engage in the processes required to adjust their cognition.
Hard liners often allude to the harshness of nature or brutalities of conflict and war, abuses and aggressions of others and exploitation of humans etc as evidence of why we need to be hardened- but this ignores that we have the ability to use cultural, technological, and legal means to shape things so they don’t have to be that way.
By the same token, there is a certain level of Trauma, or traumatic potential, inherent to life which no feasibly conceivable means Can eliminate, at best perhaps mitigate.
A key factor in all this is to give people the tools and facilitate their ability to engage in healthy processing and coping of events and information. Bad things will happen, we can’t stop it. Due to differences in people, we can’t predict or prevent what is traumatic to whom, and it is actually possible that for some people, the very steps and circumstances of trying could itself create trauma.
So it is wise to mitigate those almost universal and “obvious” traumas- abuse, neglect, etc. but it is as important or perhaps more important in my view to create a culture that is supportive and conducive to processing and coping with whatever reality we face.
We have yet to conquer death and if ever, it doesn’t look like it would be soon for example. All humans, should they live long enough and spend any real time and connection with any other living creatures, will face the potential traumas of death. There are steps we can take in reality of how we discuss and conceptualize and handle death to mitigate trauma, but ultimately one must have the resilience to persevere and see through healthy coping strategies and the processing of such events because we cannot change the event itself.
When we change reality, there are those who usually do not want those changes.
We often must force those changes effectively universally to have them be effective and work for the people who want them.
When we change how the individual processes reality, we are only changing things for the individuals who choose to engage in the processes required to adjust their cognition.