vulgarweed | Something I've never really understood...

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Something I've never really understood...

the concept of "innocence" and why it's valued so much.

Usually when you see it thrown around online, it's got to do with sex (as if fetuses haven't been caught on ultrasound wanking in the womb). But it goes deeper than that - I just got into it with someone on a message board about a 14-year-old upset by studying history of genocide.

Urk...I read Anne Frank's diary at 11--after that I started reading every book and encyclopedia entry that I could find about the Holocaust, including lots of crying and nightmares and staring at death camp pictures, trying to understand what happened to her, for she'd become an "imaginary friend" to me, as characters in beloved books always do.

That was almost three years after the months I'd spent staring at the TIME magazine cover with all the pictures of the bloated Jonestown bodies on it, stealing it from my parents and trying to wrap my brain around the concept of people killing themselves...just because I knew my mom's best friend had killed herself 2 years before and she was still grieving - I'd overheard my parents talking about it at night, and they'd given me a dumbed-down "child-friendly" version of why Sally was gone, but just because I was little doesn't mean I was dumb, and I was well aware my mom was still crying about it sometimes.

I don't get it. Why is "innocence" considered worthwhile? Isn't it just a sentimentalized version of ignorance? If I hadn't been aware of intense human suffering in childhood, would I have any sense of social conscience or empathy now? It ALL starts young, or it never happens at all, right? (Believe me, I've met people who never empathized with victims or knew poverty or tragedy as kids. I don't envy them and I wouldn't trust them as far as I could flick them with two fingers.)

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Isn't it just a sentimentalized version of ignorance?

Sure. But with awareness comes worry and anxiety, the realization that Mommy and Daddy aren't invincible - and neither are you. The real world is a very serious place, and being somehow immune from that is a wonderful thing. For a while, anyhow, until puberty hits and you start smelling funny and eventually need to get a job and pay taxes to allegedly try and keep people from blowing your country up. Or something.

Innocence is a wonderful thing, but it ends eventually. I don't think we need to rush it.

And, seriously... 14? Shoot. This kid's old enough to have babies. Kid needs to grow a spine.

I think I had that pretty early on, I had hazy memories of the end of Vietnam and the deposing of Nixon...but more than anything I think what defined my awareness was understanding that nuclear war was a very real possibility and there wasn't jack shit my parents could do about THAT. And I couldn't have been more than 10 when that sank in, because I remember taking the role of John Anderson in our "mock elections" when I was 5th grade and that being my key argument. :D My biggest emotional motivation in that was that, hell, if there was a nuclear war EVERYONE would die, and my parents were the ones I loved most, and I wouldn't want to live without them, so I was doing it for them. (I was dabbling in Christianity around the same time, and my missionary attempts to save them from Hell were less well-received. XD)

Oh, I know. I was fucking and working at 15. (not at the same time, my adolescence wasn't *that* bad). XD

Aww, you as a wee missionary must have been adorable. And annoying, but pretty adorable. ;D

Kidling had some variety of innocence until he was ten or so, when we moved down to the big city and had to take stock of the crime situation. He was aware of world events, but they were so far away. It's different then, somehow. Then, he started getting caught in school drawing pictures with swastikas in them - sure enough, that innocence was showing up as ignorance and got his little self in loads of trouble. ("Honey, read the history book next time. Don't just look at it for comic book ideas.")

It's a careful balance. ;)

mm, I think there is more to it than that. "Innocence" is more about not being tainted by anxiety, confusion, disillusionment, disappointment. Those things are inevitable in life, even if you only get them to a small degree.

Hopefully loss of innocence will be tempered by deeper compassion, etc but sometimes it isn't - sometimes it just leads to cynicism and bitterness.

Oh, I was TERRIBLE. I threw crying fits, "I love you, I don't want you to go to Hell!" wrapping my arms around my miliant-atheist socialist father. They were so generous and open-minded; they were more than willing to get up early on Sunday to drop me off at the church and pick me up afterward (Appalachian public school peer-pressure). But honestly, if I saw that version of me now ringing the doorbell, I"d turn off the stereo and pretend I wasn't home.

I grew up in SUCH an isolated rural environment, but you could only spend so much time there and not notice the graveyard, and not notice how many women died in their teens and 20s. Or have exposure to classmates' parents who died in car wrecks, or hear handed-down stories about WWII (my grandfather, for one) or WWI (my great-grandfather, who lived til I was 14) or even the Civil War, or whispers about alcoholic street-people uncles, or, it goes on and on...and geez, I had my first whispered-about rape-victim peer in 6th grade. (And *that* happened to me about a year later).

I just don't believe in it. This is country of people with one hand in their pants and the other on their guns, and you have to be kind of mentally disabled to not catch on to that in elementary school.

anxiety, confusion, disillusionment, disappointment

But is there a magic age when you're free of these? I can't remember if I ever have one. certainly all my concrete memories involve them to some degree, even my very earliest one of being on a table being diapered and being afraid of falling off.

There IS no state of freedom from these feelings AFAIK.

I have toyed around with this concept and why it's in place and why the hell it's so sacrosanct, too (and I think saying "so sacrosanct" is actually grammatically fucked-up, but whatever). My gut reaction to most of these discussions about the "innocence of childhood" is to scoff because it was a Victorian concept and Victorian-era concepts piss me off. The fact that my own childhood was so sheltered I was eighteen before I started learning sexual terminology like "come" and "missionary position" just makes me kind of want to whiplash in the other direction.

But that's part of the reason I don't ever want to have kids myself--the responsibility of crafting that kid's worldview (when I may, in fact, just scar them for life and make them distrust me as much as I distrust my mom) is way too great a burden for me. I mean, I turned out okay, I think--who's to say that wrecking my innocence earlier instead of having it drag on through adolescence would really have turned me out any better? Maybe I could've turned out WORSE*crossesself*. XD

...Every time I try for "thoughtful" in your LJ I end up with "stupidly rambly." My apologies. -_-

And WHY do we feel this need to "protect" children from fears and anxieties? If they don't have "adult" ones (fear of death or failure or competition), they just develop or construct their own. Seems to me kids get more neurotic by being ignorant, and you end up with people deathly afraid of sex or of God's wrath. Who needs more neuroses in their life?

Have to agree with you. I have memories of acute horror and concern about environment disasters (which I latched onto as a subject for some reason as a child; Captain Planet ahoy?) when I was around eight, and things kind of escalated in my thought process from there to other subjects. If I didn't start getting seriously thoughtful and worried about the world as young as I was, I don't know if I would have turned out to be the person I am today. O.O

No, I think this is totally smart. Because the idea of the "innocence" of childhood is VERY Victorian, and upper-class at that. (In the 19th century, only upper-class children had a shot at "innocence"; the rest had factory jobs). For that matter, the idea that DEATH of all things is an adult concept is only about 100 years old...for most of human history, those who were lucky got to die at home, with the whole family attending. I'm grateful for the experiences I've had of being there when people passed on, personally.

"Innocence" for children is SUCH a notion of privilege. 14-year-olds in the US come home in tears from seeing pictures of corpses in textbooks? NEWSFLASH: chidren half that age in Iraq see (and smell) the real thing coming home every day. We have NO IDEA how privileged we are, that there hasn't been a war on our soil in living memory. It WILL happen eventually, though--even Rome fell. I grew up in a Confederate state, so at least that memory is still alive of bein on the losing side, so, cross fingers, a small degree less hubris.

I never had kids because I was just never interested enough - no regrets there. But I would still recommend my parents' approach - no censorship. Ever. Disagreement just means you've raised a person with her own mind - high five. But if you snoop, that trust can never be rebuilt, so don't.

Yeah - I see no value in trying to "protect" children from this. My dad's a park ranger, and was always very attuned to environmental issues, and that's very important to me now. Why hide this from children? They will inherit the world, start them on understanding what needs to be done as soon as possible, right?

"Innocence" for children is SUCH a notion of privilege. 14-year-olds in the US come home in tears from seeing pictures of corpses in textbooks? NEWSFLASH: chidren half that age in Iraq see (and smell) the real thing coming home every day. We have NO IDEA how privileged we are...

A-fucking-men. Many American ADULTS wouldn't be able to handle that kind of exposure, and I think our knee-jerk "protect the children" response probably just produces head-in-the-sand irresponsible citizens. The kind of people who go on not caring about people in other parts of the world because, gosh, we just can't imagine that kind of stuff happening.

I ditto everything you said about raising kids. I haven't written it off totally, but I really hope that if I ever do spawn, I have the courage and humility to raise a person who may very well challenge my worldview.

Well, I'm no degreed expert, but I know I was well aware of death and the related fears and griefs by age 7. I know I was thinking about death and walking around in the rain in my little galoshes and crying and trying to make sense of it all by then. I wasn't getting a lot of help from my mom but now I know better than to blame her, because her own Mom died when she was 10. She had major unreconciled issues too.

**More** information at the time would have helped me, not less.

I'm still a bit sheltered in that I have yet to have a close relative die (by some miracle, I'll tell you). I understand, I guess, the desire to spare your kids the same pain you're feeling. I would just hate to think I was causing my daughter or son MORE pain by leaving them in the dark.

My god, how do parents balance those decisions at ALL??

SOME American adults. But in the time of Katrina, there were so many abandoned bodies floating in the floodwater and being eaten by dogs, we might as well be in some "Third World" place. Oh, I can see thestrals so many times over, but the first time...well, I was honored to be there when my great-grandfather passed. I was only 13 but I understood it was an important occasion. That's really all I ask of my inevitable end, that there be someone who respects me bearing witness.

If it's a child, all the better. IF it's in a time of peace, that's all any generation can hope for.

Well, I was there when my WWI vet GGF passed on, and I was actually SO grateful for that --that the Masonic hospital was so family-friendly (which, at the time, meant letting children in). I know he liked that he had four generations there. I know that I played a small but meaningful part in letting him think life went on.

I hate the fact that kids are shielded from death now. Why? It happens to all of us eventually!

Hmmm, I'm thinking traditional fairy stories were and are often used as coping mechanism and education for children, whether they are some form of innocent or not. "Look! Horrible things can happen to children like you! Here are ways of dealing with it." To what extent the cleaning-up of fairy tales has affected the education of children and their "innocence", I can only theorize. :\

I work with children and parents all day long and I think we can all agree that the next generation is spoiled beyond belief. Parents give their kids everything they never had as children or everything they think their kids deserve. I think innocence, which is essentially a sense of nostalgia for when the world seemed pleasant and easy, is just part of that; something their kids should have, even if it's an impossible fallacy. I'm very afraid of what the world will be like in thirty years or so...

But is there a magic age when you're free of these?

No, but parents and teachers like to pretend. At least mine liked to tell me that I didn't have a care in the world and expected them to fix all my problems. (While I was wishing I hadn't been born so my parents would have been spared having to deal with my 'unfixable' problems.)

"A child doesn't have stress." and "There is no such thing as depression in children." are nice easy responses when somebody tells you your child is stressed or depressed.
Oh, and of course the well tried killer phrase in teacher's training when asking how to deal with a disobedient child: "Children don't do that."

Isn't is mostly about making the parents feel better, who equate innocence with safety. And we know how that turns out in the end.

I don't know how I feel about this. Watergate was exceedingly hard for me (I was in high school when the shit hit the fan) because I believed in the system. I knew the government had problems (I remember the summer of 1968 very well. I was 11), but I didn't know how bad it could be. I think most kids realize that adults are not superhuman when they're about five or six. They can see through you pretty well. I'm still a cornball old person, though, and I hate to see people become jaded and lose hope. The loss of innocence to me means becoming someone who doesn't have anything/anyone to believe in or care about. That is really damaging. The rest of it--knowing how cruel people can be and also the flip side--how generous and good people can be just prepares you for life.

As for the kid who didn't know about the Holocaust--what stupid parents don't teach their kids about history? We took our son to the Anne Frank house when he was seven. We thought that would be the way to introduce the whole topic to him without overwhelming him with that information. We were in Amsterdam as part of our vacation that year, so it was the right place/right time thing. He studied the Holocaust in 8th grade and then we dragged him to the museum in DC.

as if fetuses haven't been caught on ultrasound wanking in the womb

*lol* Seriously?

Isn't [innocence] just a sentimentalized version of ignorance?

Agreed, it is. I'm glad I was always curious enough to avoid it.

Why is "innocence" considered worthwhile?

I think you view the issue from the wrong direction. Being an innocent person yourself is clearly a disadvantage, but being surrounded by innocents while not being innocent yourself? Damn practical! *has another cynical day*

I still think it's immoral to keep children stupid this way. Of course the opposite (say, child soldiers in Ghana) of having seen too much too young is even worse, but there has to be some middle way, right?
The modern overprotectiveness of many parents towards their children is something that I never understood anyway. I was glad my parents let me climb on trees, for instance: I may have skimmed my knees once in a while and there was a good chance I'd break an arm or something, but that's the only way to learn, isn't it? Of course you should warn your children about dangers, but pretending bad things (or things you simply don't like) don't exist runs exactly counter to that, does it not? How shall children learn to existimate risks later, if they've only known invulnearabilty? How will they deal with the facts that no, they can't have whatever they want right now; no, the world doesn't revolve solely around them; no, criticism isn't evil; no, not everybody loves them and wishes them well; no, working for their money is not going to kill them, if they don't learn it young?
Many Parents really don't seem to see that.

Same with me. It's been a family tradition to watch the world news together every night for as long as I remember. It means you are conscious of things like environment problems, famines, wars, crimes etc by the time you are five at most. And I can't help but feel that's a good thing. If this horror just doesn't happen (in this disgusting Ignorance-is-Bliss way so many people seem to adopt nowadays), how can we ever hope to change things? Only strong feelings can give birth to resolve. If you tell a 15-year-old for the first time that the rain forests are dying, you'll get something like, "What rainforests? I've been living well enough without caring about them so far!" for an answer.

I think I've been going on rants about how innocence is ignorance since I was at the age where people were saying I should be innocent.
I *was* very innocent, but I think that's more due to my own late-bloomerishness than anything else. I knew about sex when I was in kindergarten, but wasn't in the slightest bit interested in it until I was 18 or 19. I felt bad about not being interested, but I just wasn't.
But I would get very annoyed every time someone praised someone else's innocence. I was convinced it was a conspiracy to keep us dumb. Ignorance was never something I aspired to.

So, in short, well-phrased.

I always find descriptions of your life interesting. So many experiences (sadly bad ones as well)... Though it does always make me glad to be European (though it's getting worse here as well, mentality-wise).

And I agree about the war stories! I always pestered my grandparents and great-grandma for them, because I sensed that they grew up in a completely different and much much darker world than I did and that was fascinating and made me admire them. (Seeing especially as they didn't go to war but grew up with it taking place all around them.)

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