What is damaged?

The thread about finding damaged objects got me thinking about this and
maybe someone can help me understand what a damaged object really is. Coming
from a non-OS/400 background, this is one thing that has always bothered me
about this system.

I frequently encounter "damaged" objects such as device descriptions or
communications objects. Usually, you vary it off and on and you're back in
business.

Some objects stay damaged even after vary off/on. For example I have some
APPC devices that are constantly damaged because Virtual Opticonnect is
extremely touchy. Every time I run a SAVE 21, the SAVSYS gets a CPF3772 due
to these "damaged" objects. This generally means I have to drive to work in
the middle of the night to type a "G". But there is nothing really damaged.
The devices work fine. So what is OS/400's problem? Just backup the
(*#$^*#(@!_ data!

Furthermore, the notion of this "damage" makes my mind wobble in the first
place. It is just bytes stored on a disk. There is nothing to damage except
the disk drive, and that is a different topic. So I speculate, the AS/400 is
a database machine, and something has presumably caused some type of
integrity problem in the database entry for the "object" in question, which
is reported as "damaged"? Why bother me with it? It was OS/400 that created
the "damage" in the first place, and I can fix the damage by vary commands
or recreating the object, so turn off whatever bit it is that says there is
"damage" and let me go about my business.

Maybe someone can add some historical perspective to help me understand,
i.e. back on the old System/n when you had a damaged object there really was
damaged hardware, so these errors made sense, etc, etc, etc?

Thanks in advance,

-Marty