Is it cruel to trees when we bend and wire them?

Slow by Slow Green is a collection of our thoughts behind the trees. 

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Is it cruel to trees when we bend and wire them?

I have two approaches to think about this question - one narrower & one wider
 
The narrower approach, acknowledges that there're more than one angle to look at a question. Will the trees have more freedom if we leave them unwired, and they will grow taller if planted in the ground instead of small pots? Yes. But, will it enable the trees to tap into their hidden potentials and stand out from the peers if we do wire them? Yes. I definitely won't argue against sending my kids to school and teach them to read books. And many a people do get a kick out of doing more complicated activities, be it playing a hard-to-master games, or pursuing complicated ventures. All these activities would require 'wiring' the branches of a person's mind as a prerequisite. You'd rather not leaving a kid on 100% wild play time on their own. Wiring a tree is a similar issue. As long as the intent is not to kill or gain pleasure at the trees' suffering, then I can't say it's cruel.
 
The wider approach, concedes to the Darwin's principal of evolution by natural selection. We take for granted that we farm vegetables and eat them after they are grown. Vegetable is a type of plant too, people don't scream about the cruelty of eating them. Similarly, animal feed on those who live below the food chain - a tiger eats the deer and a caterpillar eats the leaf. And within any one layer of the food chain, those that are stronger are able to intimidate & dominate those who are weaker. Like how the political elites of one country can incite an war in a weaker country, causing thousands of innocents to die, and at the same time manipulate the media to fool the public that they aren't really the bad guys. They can do that because nature tolerates the dominance of the weaker by the stronger in the short term. And in the long term, the weaker either become extinct or rise above to rebel against the stronger. Nature has evolved in this way for millions of years. Nature is objective, unemotional, and law of natural selection is a rule by which it operates. It does not pass on judgement if something is cruel. Humans, a type of organic creatures, who also live in nature, follow the same principal. 'Cruelty' is a man-made concept that is valid when being used inside the big sphere of human life, but not valid when being used to describe the overall scheme of nature. It's the way it is, and I am inclined to ascribe a sense of beauty to this grand objective plan of nature.
 
 
So, I cannot say it's 'cruel' to bend and wire a tree. But if you say yes, I'd understand your view, because you'd also have a point