Thoughts on Innocence
Offline My opinions have been changing a lot because of stuff that i've seen and has gone on. I apologize that my thoughts are kind-of a mess.
When i say "we" in this i mean we as a society, primarily america0
I'm not here for help, or comfort, i'm here to share my thoughts and see what people think.
What personally changed my opinions... a (somewhat) friend of mine who was 25 killed himself, leaving his 23 year-old wife alone in financial trouble with two children.
I am reminded of this every day as i pass where they lived on the way home, with a "for sale" sign in the yard. I wonder, the people who drive by and see the sign have no idea the pain and suffering behind it. The people who drive by it are completely innocent of it. I wouldn't call it ignorant, i would call it innocent. I don't consider this a bad thing, there is no reason to make a sign saying "father killed himself."
In the obituaries it said "died at home." that, well that is a bit too much for me to stand.
there are two identical twin sophomore girls at my highschool. They had a mother with cancer and a few months to live. The mother suddenly went into a coma (from what i heard) and died a day later. No father, and from what I've heard, no place to go.
They miss a day of school, no one says a word. They clean themselves up and come to school the next day, only a select few know anything of it. Some of the select few, have heard of and seen things like this before, some of us, have our illusions about the world shattered.
The more hospitable our society becomes the longer people stay innocent, and the more painful and drastic the shattering is. Sometimes the harder it is to break.
think about telling a child there is no santa clause. The older they get, the harder it is for them to accept (if they believed it completely) and the more anger and shock there is.
I've begun to hate innocence. A person with a TEC cross (Teens Encounter Christ) asked me what was wrong about the twins and i didn't say anything they said "Well I hope things get better"
I wanted to scream, things can't get better, their mother is dead. Some things in life are final, happen without mercy without care for human emotion. There was no fucking reason, no fucking plan, things are terrible for them and are probably going to become worse, and sometimes you just have to watch without anything you can say or do to help.
I've felt this growing hatred for innocence. Not innocent people but post-mature innocence.
There was a girl i used to be attracted to but I was too innocent and shy to say anything about it. (i learned later she actually liked me for awhile). We used to have fun playing video games, she was an exciting person, fun to be around, she was optimistic about the future and was graduating high school early to go to college, because she was that kind of person.
The rest of her story involves rape, depression, suicidal thoughts, coping with drugs and alcohol, failing her classes, retreating to an old abusive boyfriend, used for sex, cheated on.
Then after that terrible story i met her again after a few months of her leaving. I barely recognized her anymore. She was like an empty shell of who she used to be. I felt like the person i liked was dead.
The longer we stay innocent the more we do meaningless things. I was going on mission trips, converting people to christianity, trying to break cussing habits, praying. All these superstitious things that arent really important, when there was so much more important things going on.
Now, I hate the mission trip i used to go on, we went to terrible places to give them our little innocent version of what we thought was help. The little soothing thoughts that was all we needed to feel happy, and we felt so good about ourselves for saving people. When they are obviously lacking something real.
I could imagine, if all of these things happened when I was 13, i would cry, i would ask God why, and i would be a confused person for awhile. Then I would have grown and developed.
I was about 17... I'm 18 now, and it was a scary part in my life. I am emotionally stable now but my reaction to all of this happening, my reaction to the change that happened to me and the change in the world i saw around me. I hated it, I was violent and bitter to the people i loved. I got pissed at the girl and blamed her for some of the bad things that happened. It drove me to the point where I had a loaded gun to my head. A year ago.
Me, a wealthy, healthy, smart, apparently decent-looking, young man with his life ahead of him. With a loving family, friends, hobbies, activities, and a gun to his head.
Now, I'm still a little bit mad, I feel like I didn't start developing the character I am now until I was 17, I feel a bit immature. More mature than most my age but more mature by far.
I am suprised even by adults... On the radio at work there was a discussion about global warming and someone said something about "God wouldn't let it happen anyway" or something like that.
With every fatal illness that a cure is found for, on average we get older before we see the world for what it really is. For every convenience and for every efficiency improvement the more we see the world revolving around us.
and I think its dangerous, and it is getting worse.
- Login to post comments
I can relate to what you r talking about. I had the same crisis of "innocent" a year ago. I got out of it.
It has nothing to being innocent. It is just that you do not see the world as it is. You always feel like you are victimized cause u consider yourself innocent and the world is cruel. The fact is: The world is not cruel. It is imperfect, and you should embrace this. Anyways, your so called innocence is just weakness.
I advise you to read the book "No More Mr. Nice Guy" for Dr. Robert Glover. You can find it as an e-book. It is fantastic and it helps a lot in that matter. It can be a lightbulb for you. Give it a try.
This might sound weird or even callous, Adroit, but the older you get and the more of these events you experience (directly or indirectly) the less traumatic or consciousness-changing they tend to become.
And the reason for this is that you are fundamentally right in what you say, even though you shy away from a semantic and self-evident truth when describing it. What you describe as innocence on the part of those who fail to register the scale of tragedy or its implications for those affected is - more often than not - the very thing you say it's not, ignorance. If you have even half an intellect then further experience of such tragedy tends to lead to you learning from them, despite the trauma they may induce, and what you grow to learn is that all of them are accompanied by agencies of ignorance whose members, if left unchallenged, will amplify the pain if you let them.
You can break ignorance down into three broad categories. The first and biggest is "unintentional ignorance". This applies to everyone. We can't know everything so by that definition we are all ignorant of much more than that of which we are aware. Then there is "unjustified ignorance", where people have failed to see or learn from available information. Thirdly there is that great religious characteristic, but by no means confined to religion, that of "wilful ignorance".
Your emotional reaction to the realisation of where ignorance leads, along with an empathy your own lack of ignorance led you to share with the victims of misfortune, sounds about right for anyone of your years and with your obvious level of perception. I don't mean that in a patronisingly older sense, but purely pragmatically based on how much bitter experience a person of 17 years is likely to witness or undergo in that time. I am glad to hear that you have survived the trauma it induced in you, as what you describe was indeed traumatic. I am even gladder to see that you are apparently drawing mental conclusions, and I think some mental strength, from it all. You have the honesty to admit that you wrongly diverted your anger into blame and directed that blame against someone who you recognise was undergoing even more trauma than yourself. That is also very heartening and will stand you in good stead in the future. Self-honesty is a quality which eludes many.
I hope you do not lose that anger, and I hope even more that you learn to channel it into areas where it matters most. In your analysis of your plight you have already made the important realisation that a lack of knowledge underlies much that is reprehensible in how we and others behave. I would advise you to, or at least hope that you retain the indignation and anger you have already experienced and with great honesty described, and that you focus that anger on the actions engendered by that most dangerous category of all levels of ignorance and the people who exhibit it - the wilfully ignorant.
Tragedy strikes. Such is life. Those who will exploit or worsen it and use as their justification a philosophy which itself is contingent on intentionally not facing reality and acknowledging it are worthy of all the anger you can muster. It is not your intellect and consciousness which need termination, and I am glad to see that common sense prevailed in your case when despair led you to suspect that it did.
If it hadn't, few would have applied the same empathy as you exhibit to your case after the event. But believe me, there would have been a fairly long queue of wilfully ignorant people who would have moralised and adjudged you for your action using no criteria but those which deny reality rather than acknowledge it, and who therefore would not even have felt the slightest compunction to investigate why you had done what you did. I am glad to see that you did not let yourself become further fodder for their vice. Long may you, and your empathy (and your anger), continue.
I would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
Which you will, but it feels pretty fricken' intense while it's there. I consider it a credit to have an existential breakthrough. Every time I have one I am glad for it, because for at least a short while I am really seeing life for exactly what it is. Cold and simple, which makes it beautiful IMO. I find that when I am outraged by the bullshit people tell each other, the fantasy we surround ourselves in, and the time we waste on it, that I start living *my* life better. At least for a short while.
Good for you boyo, if more people had the occasional splash of reality in the face I think this world would be a much better place to live.
Indeed. After I lost my religion, I spent a short time floating in a sort of melancholy longing. This only lasted long enough for me to evaluate how I had been affected by religion, and how those same mechanisms were damaging others that I cared about. Then, that anger started rising. I'm a pretty happy guy, but there is little else that can jump me into a white hot rage than a family member fucking their life up over fairy tales.
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.