We all agree to feel the sun and then protest it burns. We all agree to kiss and love and then are startled that such pain can follow in that wake.
Mutual motion is all right—until we act in cruelty to the rest.
Tied by agreements and coactions, we dare be cruel to that to which the hard steel clasps of promises have bound us.
And so in being cruel to part of self-extended self as in a couple or a group—we then find pain in self with great surprise.
The overt act sequence is simple now to grasp. The scope is limited. But it began when we first had a cruel impulse to others bound to us by mores or coacts.
Why does one suffer pain in his own arm when he or she has struck another’s limb?